Channeling the Sleepless Weather

 My friend Anakana Schofield is an insomniac weather reporter. She writes in her blog about what is happening at night. Fogs make her philosophical, high winds send her into a whirl of excited chatter. She apologizes if she fails to record weather events and they become a blur in her memory, superseded by current events and practical concerns. Her weather obsessions are highly entertaining and comforting. It is good that someone still cares about the weather, notices it, and records its effect on one's life. There's something about hooking into the weather as a current event that is intimate and beautiful. Weather news is being replaced by financial reports, sordid reportage of the increasingly shallow and exploitive media, and the ups and downs of stocks and bonds. The importance of weather in our lives is being minimized by corporate agendas. It's the yellow jacket in my bonnet.

If a flower blooms in the forest and no one is there to record it, does it still bloom? Yes. The world blooms without us. The fog rolls in and out without us. But which events we choose to record and mark and chat about make them events. Noticing the crocus is one thing, but recording it makes it an event. We need to focus on the events in the natural world to affirm their presence in our lives as something that brings us together and weaves the fabric of our culture. In this way we can become more tuned in to how the weather affects the crops that feed us and the bees that pollinate them.

We can watch the currents of predicted weather patterns rolling across the globe in real time thanks to some brilliant software. When I have insomnia, I put it on my screen like a nightlight and I am soothed by the gentle whirling of the patterns, sending out prayers to those whose weather patterns are difficult to bear.