Chapter Nine: Flood
The book turns here. "Flood" is about a washing away. She writes a report about Hurricane Agnes in 1972.
My favorite line:
Tinker Creek is out of its four-foot banks, way out, and it’s still coming. The high creek doesn’t look like our creek. Our creek splashes transparently over a jumble of rocks; the high creek obliterates everything in flat opacity. It looks like somebody else’s creek that has usurped and eaten our creek and is roving frantically to escape, big and ugly, like a blacksnake caught in a kitchen drawer.
What an image? I would never have thought of a blacksnake caught in a kitchen drawer! Does that happen at your house? I am not opening your drawers if that is happening at your house!
We have seen some of these world changing weather events. Hurricane Andrew in South Florida in 1992, Katrina in 2005 and this year (2008), Ike. New Orleans will be changed by Katrina. Galveston has been changed by Ike. We will tell stories about our experiences in these storms. Something has been washed away. I wonder about floods of different types in our life. On one side of the flood our lives were a particular way, and then after the flood, life is different. It could be a death in your family. The flood could be a failed relationship, or the loss of a job, or a career. There is a line in the movie, Angels in the Outfield, where the children see the pitcher and excitedly say, “You used to be Mel Clark!” The pitcher gets it. He says to the kids, “Yeah, kid, I used to be.”
There is something on the other side of the flood. In our family, we have come to call it “new normal.” Old normal will not be returning. Our routines have changes. Our perspective is changed. Our bell has been rung, never to be un-rung. In our culture we use Latin phrases to speak of the era before, like ante-diluvium (before the flood) and antebellum (before the war). If find that interesting. We don’t talk about the present, or the future that way. We must, in some way, be like Lot’s wife (Gen 19:26) or a poor plowman (Luke 9:62), looking back over our shoulders, considering what we used to be.
The book turns here. "Flood" is about a washing away. She writes a report about Hurricane Agnes in 1972.
My favorite line:
Tinker Creek is out of its four-foot banks, way out, and it’s still coming. The high creek doesn’t look like our creek. Our creek splashes transparently over a jumble of rocks; the high creek obliterates everything in flat opacity. It looks like somebody else’s creek that has usurped and eaten our creek and is roving frantically to escape, big and ugly, like a blacksnake caught in a kitchen drawer.
What an image? I would never have thought of a blacksnake caught in a kitchen drawer! Does that happen at your house? I am not opening your drawers if that is happening at your house!
We have seen some of these world changing weather events. Hurricane Andrew in South Florida in 1992, Katrina in 2005 and this year (2008), Ike. New Orleans will be changed by Katrina. Galveston has been changed by Ike. We will tell stories about our experiences in these storms. Something has been washed away. I wonder about floods of different types in our life. On one side of the flood our lives were a particular way, and then after the flood, life is different. It could be a death in your family. The flood could be a failed relationship, or the loss of a job, or a career. There is a line in the movie, Angels in the Outfield, where the children see the pitcher and excitedly say, “You used to be Mel Clark!” The pitcher gets it. He says to the kids, “Yeah, kid, I used to be.”
There is something on the other side of the flood. In our family, we have come to call it “new normal.” Old normal will not be returning. Our routines have changes. Our perspective is changed. Our bell has been rung, never to be un-rung. In our culture we use Latin phrases to speak of the era before, like ante-diluvium (before the flood) and antebellum (before the war). If find that interesting. We don’t talk about the present, or the future that way. We must, in some way, be like Lot’s wife (Gen 19:26) or a poor plowman (Luke 9:62), looking back over our shoulders, considering what we used to be.
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