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superseded by current events and practical concerns.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.
