When hurricane season hits its peak and the storms are damn near constant, sure, I’ll pour out my offerings to Thor.
But we name those storms. We personify and anthropomorphize them. We hail them as beings with their own energy and presence. Even people who claim no belief in any higher power will do this.
“Remember Andrew? He was a bastard.”
“Irma’s angry; she’s going to hit us hard.”
The strongest? We never call another storm by that name, and in the areas heaviest hit, you see a sharp, sharp decline in children bearing that moniker. Around here we know–you don’t give a kid that name, it has too much power and rage behind it. It’s ill luck.
So I offer to the storms, too. To tell them, hey–I see your power, your might, your rage. I see your majesty. Please, slow down. Please, be calm. Transform your rage into gentle showers and winds that are just strong enough for us to know it’s you.
Be kind to us, great storms; show us your power in a way that causes the least amount of harm.
A writer-friend wrote this about how we Floridians deal with hurricanes. It resonated HARD and promoted the following.
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The World Meteorological Organization publishes a list, every year, of the names they’ll use for that season’s hurricanes. They do this because names have power.
True names would be stronger, of course, than these arbitrary designations. In 2017, UF meteorologist Jeff Huffman heard a single syllable of Hurricane Irma’s true name on the gales. He drove out to Gainesville Regional Airport (airports, fun fact, are the easiest place to fight the element of air from—after all, that’s what planes DO) in the driving rain, while lightning split the live oaks around him and power lines creaked under the weight of the sky. When he got there, they let him walk out onto the barren runways. He stood alone and defiant on the tarmac, and he shouted that syllable into the sky.
The storm parted around the city.
By the time he had recovered enough to share the piece of Irma’s name with his colleagues Jacksonville, though, the storm had changed, and its name with it. That’s the problem with true names: they twist and claw and slide out of ours hands and minds like unwilling cats. So most of us use the fixed, static names we’re given, instead.
And names shape reality.
Names are how you get someone’s attention. Yes, there’s danger in naming the storms. When we name them, when we talk about them, we call to them. We pull them to us. But consider how muchwe talk about them, and from where. Last year, everyone from my mom in New York state to my sister in New Zealand to a friend in Scotland emailed me, and the names were on all of their lips. Harvey, Maria, Irma. Twitter and Facebook and every news page flooded with pictures and stories and forecasts of the storms. Millions of people around the world, around the oceans, all saying the names.
Imagine a million people calling to you all at once from every direction. Even if it’s not your real name, it would get your attention—demandit. And you wouldn’t know where to turn. You’d hesitate. And if you waited look long, you’d fall apart, just scatter to the four winds.
So don’t let people tell you that it’s ill luck to talk about the storms. Don’t listen when you’re told that if you speak a thing, it will come to pass. Consult the list of names, and spread them far.
