coldhearted scientist وداد

Hurricane Ike is coming to Louisiana after all, and we are waiting for it. Everything is hot and still, tense and vivid, as in earthquake weather, and I am displeased. I am told that the wind which will pick up Friday morning at five will be the hurricane’s first band. There is sudden fear but the probability tables suggest a tropical storm at worst, so I do not understand. And now the thick determined rain has started. The storm is here, so we will listen to the watery needles hit the slate and dream of realms of gold.

*

Upon first looking into Chapman’s Homer, or, upon reentering the First World, I got used to having my own car instantly. I got used to having unlimited supplies of hot water far more quickly than I expected to do. Having both in addition to air conditioning and incandescent lighting seems both wasteful and distracting. If I gave up just one of these things I could meet the energy needs of a family down the block, it seems to me.

There is more luxury and voluptuousness than I really need. While I never intend to sit intentionally for as many hours in the damp unheated cold as I did in Peru this time, I miss the energy one has after bathing in winter without hot water. I am considering turning mine off. On the other hand I am still not used to doing all the grocery shopping. Or to cooking. And if I had a choice, I would only engage in these activities recreationally.

The interesting thing I notice is how, since everything in Peru tends to be so uncomfortable, I made comfort – and also health – a priority there, and I savored every drop of tea. Here in the lap of luxury, I am not in the habit of doing this and I ought to be, as it carries no extra cost. We will sleep, therefore, and dream of the Pacific:

Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I beenWhich bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific–and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

It was not Cortés, but Balboa who stared at the Pacific. Still we shall dream. We will also note, with wild surmise, that the Darien Gap is almost as difficult to travel now as then.

Axé.