Last night was the dead­liest tor­nado destruc­tion in Alabama in my life­time.  We watched the tele­vi­sion and inter­net in hor­ror as an F5 missed our home by mere miles.  There was a moun­tain between us and the storms, so it seemed decep­tively calm as this vicious tor­nado ripped through my city.  I called every­one I could, til my phone failed, then turned to Face­Book.  Peo­ple who couldn’t get their phones to text were able to post that they were safe there.

Tuscaloosa:

Birm­ing­ham (my home):

Yes, those are videos of the same tornado!

At least one per­son I know lost the roof of her home.  A few peo­ple lost their cars, or at least suf­fered severe dam­age.  Thank­fully, the only deaths I know of per­son­ally are three tur­tles.  Iron­i­cally, water may be in short sup­ply.  There are rumors that I can’t con­firm say­ing both of the intake valves at the Birm­ing­ham Water Works Board are non­op­er­a­tional, too.  So every­one, please con­serve water til fur­ther notice just to be on the safe side.

The death toll for the entire South­east is at 202 and ris­ing. Peo­ple are still miss­ing.  The tele­vi­sion is almost unbear­able to watch, as peo­ple cry over the dev­as­ta­tion or implore loved ones to call and check in.  I promised my hus­band I’d not obsess with watch­ing the dev­as­ta­tion over and over, so I’ve turned it off.  It’s prob­a­bly a good thing, because this morn­ing, watch­ing the news, I was sick­ened when the national news (Good Day?  Today Show?  I rarely watch either and hon­estly don’t remem­ber which news­caster celebrity was talk­ing…) switched from cov­er­age of the storms to cov­er­age of the royal wed­ding.  It wasn’t the chang­ing news that did it, but the flip­pant, “And now, let’s take a relax­ing trip across the pond.  We deserve it after those stress­ful stories.”

Yeah… those are real people’s lives, not some movie, you dillweed.

Of course, it’s hit­ting home for me, so I’m sen­si­tive.  My prayers for the suf­fer­ing had been con­cen­trated in Japan this last month, but that’s a lot eas­ier emo­tion­ally than being able to drive through the dam­age.  My heart is ripped open, but I feel help­less.  I plan to give blood later on, which is all I can think to do. I’m sure there will be oppor­tu­ni­ties. Right now they are mostly ask­ing vol­un­teers to wait, because the roads are impass­able and worse, there loot­ers are out there and they don’t want more peo­ple on the scene to have to control.

In short, Alabama needs love and prayers right now.

UPDATES: There is a boil notice for West­ern Jef­fer­son County at the moment.
Here is a Tuscaloosa storms miss­ing per­son loca­tor, if you know any­thing.
The Jef­fer­son County EMA is form­ing teams now. Call them at 205.254.2039 to vol­un­teer.
Other ways to help.

As I was walk­ing yes­ter­day, I saw a lightly blush­ing flower with a corona shape. The octa­gon crown of petals were attached, like some people’s ear­lobes are, and had a darker pink trail­ing tear point­ing towards the cen­ter. In their cup shape, they were about the cir­cum­fer­ence of a nickel. I wished instantly that I had the cam­era, so I could take a pic­ture. Imme­di­ately I began to argue with myself. I thought I wouldn’t be able to get a pic­ture that looked any­thing like what I saw.

Just like tex­ting through a social event, peo­ple seem to be so busy try­ing to record life, that they don’t enjoy it. I think that the irri­ta­tion I have at cam­era wield­ers may spring from my per­cep­tion of real­ity, though. I try to take a pic­ture and can­not repli­cate what I see. I get frus­trated at how it is in no way a reflec­tion of life, really. As a result, I never want to be a pho­tog­ra­pher.  (The Spousal Unit takes most of the pic­tures I’ve posted here.) Pic­tures are so still, even at best. The rea­son my favorite pic­tures are often black and white is because that way they are not false. They sug­gest motion in the real world, and are not try­ing to actu­ally encap­su­late a moment in time. Color pho­tog­ra­phy screams that it is try­ing to breathe, but it is still a flat, suf­fo­cat­ing expe­ri­ence for me to try to cre­ate a pic­ture that is even a shade of the inten­sity and dimen­sions I see and feel. In my mind, I think that what the pho­tog­ra­pher sees through the lens is a frac­tion of real­ity, and I feel pity.

The dis­par­ity is that pho­tog­ra­phy is prob­a­bly my favorite visual art form. Pho­tographs — real ones, never the posed kind for a fam­ily reunion or still life — move some­thing in me that I can’t express. They often give life an angle, a per­spec­tive I never saw before, espe­cially if the pho­tog­ra­pher is tal­ented. And there are pic­tures that are so pre­cious to me, of vaca­tions and moments in life that would have been lost oth­er­wise. Even if I’m busy suck­ing the mar­row out of the moment, the peo­ple who take pic­tures of these min­utes are like the ants to my grasshop­per — stor­ing up mem­o­ries for the cold win­ter when that past is long gone.

To fur­ther the irony, I real­ize that in the first para­graph I’m try­ing to do what a pho­tog­ra­pher does with words. In my mind, I’m not dimin­ish­ing the beauty in my mind by try­ing to recre­ate it that way. I know that the pho­tog­ra­pher isn’t, either, even though they seem to be inter­rupt­ing the actual moment in their preser­va­tion of it.  From now on, I’m going to try and be more patient when I’m on vaca­tion or a hike and I think that other peo­ple are skip­ping all the fun for try­ing to record it.  I am likely to trea­sure the results later.

This theme is The Eru­dite. Obvi­ously it needs some tweak­ing and per­son­al­iza­tion, but it’s nice and clean and sim­ple. There are hardly any options, but I’ll either get over it, or learn how to change what I dis­like, because I’ve been look­ing for a theme like this for a long time. The search actu­ally was an obsta­cle to me writ­ing. I hated look­ing at the page.
Update: This is the free ver­sion of Plat­form by Page­lines. Still not com­pletely sat­is­fied, but unfor­tu­nately what­ever screwi­ness was going on with the header and footer made me dump The Eru­dite, even though it was so clean and nifty looking.

The Spousal Unit starts work in a week, in a posi­tion that is a good fit for the type of work he enjoys and fair pay. It’s a year con­tract with a solid, sta­ble com­pany. It means over twice what we’re liv­ing on now, and fairly close to what we need to make ends actu­ally meet. The relief is over­whelm­ing and dis­ori­ent­ing, and I’m allow­ing myself to think about for­bid­den things like a new pair of glasses or look­ing for a job that isn’t just more money but also more ful­fill­ment. It’s sur­real — like com­ing in out of the cold and tran­si­tion­ing from numb­ness to feel­ing the tingly prick­les all over.

As a result, though, I have a ter­ri­ble con­fes­sion. One week in, and we’ve decided NOT to do NaNoW­riMo — at least not this Novem­ber. We had a grand scheme for a joint project, but the first three days of Novem­ber I tried to dodge a migraine that cul­mi­nated in a mid­dle of the night panic attack wherein I braved the evil light to do a web search to make sure stab­bing twist­ing pain resem­bling a pick­axe to the tem­ple on one side of my head wasn’t an embolism or a stroke. That delayed the start, and then a con­tract for a ghost writ­ing job came up, and next the “you’re hired” phone call, and now we have to fig­ure out trans­porta­tion and child­care and sched­ules and a bud­get (to actu­ally pay things rather than fig­ure out who can wait longest! YES!) and other things mean that we have enough on our plates.