"I'll just lean up against my barn and enjoy the sun. What could go wrong on such a beautiful day?"
Finding the Funnel
All my life, I have desperately wanted to see a tornado. There is something about seeing tornado photos that conjures a sort of primal fear and wonder in me. I am strangely compelled by them. I know they are destructive, and that people (including tornado chasers) die in their paths. I don't care. I mean, I care. I don't want people to die, or be hurt. I only want to see the tornado that lands in a field and obliterates some old barns that are falling down anyway. No harm, no foul. And maybe a couple grain elevators. And a car. But that's it.
I need to see the whole thing, too, starting with the funnel cloud. I need to be able to look into the blue-green sky, point, and scream "There it is!" I need to see the white funnel hit the ground and expand into a deep, dark brown as it sucks up the earth and reapportions it over several acres, near and far. I need to see it run its course, and slowly ascend to the heavens. I need to see the family farm it inexplicably spares. And then I need to see the sun shine down on the new landscape left in the tornado's wake.
I need to understand what people mean when they say it sounds like a freight train. Do they mean the whistle? Or do they mean the low rumble of the sound of something heavy and fast moving along the ground? I need to know that.
Deep inside, I already feel like I have seen it. I have recurring dreams about being in a house, and looking out a window to see an impossibly large tornado that invariably is heading right at us. We scramble to the basement. We feel it shake. We huddle together, and we are afraid. I try to break through my own fear to comfort Linus, but I can't even breathe. It lasts forever. Of course, since it's a dream, "we" can be just about anybody: Jane, Linus, my third grade teacher, Kurt Cobain, Bob Dole. The faces change, but we are always scared shitless.
I have always wondered if my obsession with tornados would diminish if I were to actually see one. How does one live in Kansas for 24 years without seeing so much as a funnel cloud? I even had relatives that lived in trailer parks, but to no avail. I have, however, seen first-hand the destruction tornados are capable of. I have seen cars sticking out of second floor bedroom windows; I have seen 2 X 4's sticking out of trees like they were toothpicks stuck through a cheese log.
I know I should be careful of what I wish for. I know a good many people's lives have been ruined by such a force of nature. I wish that fate on no one, particularly myself. But perhaps it is that natural destructive force which draws me to the tornado. It will make me feel small, and weak, and temporary. It will show me firsthand what power really is. It will show me a part of the world that humans can understand and comprehend, but cannot change. I need to see something like that.
Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear...
12:29:41 PM 
|
