There was a story, it flickered in my mind in the darkness. I must have hit the alram and turned on the radio because there were British voices in the background passing an hour of half-consciousness. There is a new candidate in the Democratic Presidential race and Seattle voters have rejected a ten cent tax on expresso drinks. No surprise there, they have chosen their Lattes over financing day-care. They didn’t talk much about the storm, because it is not coming for them. It is coming for us here. The glass of the barometer is going to fall like a crystal cocktail from the hand of a drunk, shattering into a hundred glittering shards, the ice indistinguishable from the slivers of glass. Sudden, abrupt. But not yet. All of the animals know it is coming and I am one of them.

Isabel is supposed to affect fifty-million of us. The surf is coming up now, pounding the Carolina shore with the force of the storm behind it. Vacations are being ruined, of course, that goes without saying. The forecast track will come here, and west of us here in the Nation’s capital; Gov Ridge has held a teleconference and is arranging cots and generators for those who are going to need them. He is a swell Secretary of Trouble, and I am gratified that it is he and his minions who are sweating the preparations now. Mine are done.

Here the sky is clear. I am looking up at Orion this morning. He seems cheery and unfazed by the trouble coming here below. I have not seen him in a while, suddenly appearing in my morning sky. I have missed him. They say on the radio that things will decay over the course of the day, the clear air filling with gray. The surf is beginning that rough-love with the sand, pounding like a great piston. The passion of Isabel will rise just like a woman. Calm now, but her rising need will envelop me in desire and her tendril arms will wrap around me, gathering me in, and then we will shout together, Isabel and I, until she is done with me and she is sated. Her need will outlast me, as it does with a woman. We men arrive at a place and appointed time, spasm, and begin to think of other things. Isabel will teach us about the spectrum of arousal, of the understanding that you can respond again and again. She will leave us drenched and drained and more that a little afraid at the elemental nature of her need.

Make no mistake. This waiting for the storm and the falling glass is raw Eros. That is why I wish my storm buddy was here to share it with me, to monitor the progress of the great passion and be united as she Isabel pummels her need over my Big Pink Building, pressing her loins against the windows, leering at us before she passes away in Pennsylvania. Old before her time, that that is the way of great passion, I suppose.

I still need to clean off the balcony of potted plants and chairs, the bamboo table and some odds and ends that do not fit in the apartment. It will be time tonight to batten down the hatches. Seal the windows, make sure the cars are parked away from leaning trees. Make a last run to the Hispanic market for white squeaky cheese and a dozen eggs that I can eat all scrambled in a gigantic omelet, gooey with cheese and sliding with mushrooms when the power is lost. In the darkness I will dine in the flicker of the light from the candles and listen to the tinny speaker on the little radio and listen to the passion of the rain.

The day began so clear and calm. Cool. Lovely. Serene. As I went to work, Isabel was approaching. Reaching out with delicate fingers to caress the coast of Carolina. She will be coming ashore soon, coming for us. The darkness will be coming upon us. The bands of her fingers will appear like scrolls across the sky until all is blotted out by her presence.

While I can, I will smoke on the balcony and watch the wind rise. When she gathers us to her bosom in her passion I will be entangled in the eiderdown near the window, cracked just enough to feel the drop in pressure. I respond like the dogs to the falling glass, a hollowness within, and anxiety that only the contact of flesh could assuage. The Weather Channel is on, and will stay that way until the service is interrupted, and it may stay on for quite a while, since the coaxial cable is mostly underground now. We will have Doppler radar coverage out to the uttermost dimensions of the storm, until the trees are ripped from the sodden ground and hurled against the power lines. They will fall to her passion and the lights will flicker and die.

There would be no release from her embrace. She will have her way with us and on her terms. The wind rises to a wail and the rain lashes over the balcony in her passion. As the wind roars in the darkness, I can almost hear pounding of surf and dream fevered dreams of old loves. In my twilight state I surrender to the raw power that is Isabel, giving up to it, an intensity never felt before, one with the roaring wind and dancing leaves, penetrated and conquering all at once, saying come to me, oh God oh God oh yes….

She calls to me and I rise and walk to the door to the balcony. I pry it open and the winds rips at me as I emerge and slam it behind me. Five floors above the parking lot the wind rips at me and the rain stings against my skin, soaking me I am one with the storm and rise and step out to the balcony. The wind tears at me and the trees wave frantically. I am doing the only human thing I can do against the might of Isabel, honor it, and witness her flailing of the earth. She is the ultimate mother of fury and desire.

Somewhere something large and is caught by the wind and there is the sound of things breaking up, windows going. I huddle and am thankful I am above the trees and the flying potted plants and branches.

I retire to the darkness inside, pulling the door tight behind me and muting the shouting wind. I latch it against Isabel�s grasp I find a towel and shiver at the power and doze in the easy chair, waiting for the light. Sometime early in the Friday morning the intensity passes and I am left with an eerie soft humid silence and the odor of wet earth exposed by the raking nails of the wind. A light flickers on in the kitchen, one I turned on deliberately before the passion overcame Arlington. It serves as an alert that the power is restored and order is beginning to return. There are masses of branches on the roadway. They will be crunched down under the tires of the die-hards headed to work, and I can hear the hiss of their tires in the puddles left on Route 50. The storm is past and it is time for some tenderness.

I am almost overcome by the need for it, after the storm.

Copyright 2003 Vic Socotra