Ouragan

"Write something about me" she said earnestly. She was an earnest type of girl, or I probably wouldn't have shown her this blog in the first place, it wasn't my fault that she liked to read poorly written stuff that try to pass as intelligent.  "It's not really as easy as that, I am not talented enough to write on demand. I am not a radio station that takes requests, and can play them within the hour." Which is only sort of true, I do take requests, but it generally takes me a lot longer than an hour to fulfill them. It takes some thought, and if you know me, you know thoughts are sometimes thin on the ground in my world.  She also decided that the request wasn't difficult enough and added the further restriction "that no one can know it's about me, but you and me." That really helped to narrow the focus, and made it a lot harder to write, which is why it's nearly a month later, and the following is the best I can do, and it will probably not be good enough, either for her or for me.

Some women swan, some trundle, and some when they walk, merely tread upon the ground. Not her, she came into my life, and my bar like a hurricane blowing through a coastal city in the height of thee stormy season. It was a stunning entrance, and myself, and the other local swill drinkers were all duly impressed enough to look up from our pints, and pause in whatever lies we were telling each other to mark her arrival. I had the advantage over my fellow wrecks, because I knew, that despite me not believing she'd show up, she was there to see my dumb ass. Which was about the only advantage I ever had in relation to her. It didn't last, the advantage, just like that coastal city beset by the hurricane, I was blown away. After all, I am not much to look at, and I am probably even less fun to talk to, and I figured that this was going to be a quick "one drink and never talk to me again" type of "date". I've had all too many of those in my career as a loser.

Writing something intentionally vague is really not that difficult, it merely requires careful consideration, and a general willingness to bend the truth a bit. Facts must be carefully inter spaced with the obfuscations that are required to not give the game away to everyone. And yet you have to be careful, you can't even say "she was tall with legs like a new born colt" without giving part of the game away, after all how many truly leggy women do you know? You have to get creative in the description, and use things that only she knows are about her, but still may open you to the charge of well it could be about "X" too couldn't it. The answer to that is the paradox that started this post to begin with, how to write something for one person, where other people don't know it is about that person, but that other people can't see themselves in the details as well. You have to get creative.


 Creativity is a very tricky thing, it is very much like the most delicate of flowers it can wither and die in an instant of inattention. It has to be nurtured, and yet still allowed room to breath if it is going to bloom. Even when carefully tended, and blooming it could still end up like the delicate corpse flower which smells of rotted meat when it blooms. It can be stifled as well, like a child that cries too often, and is smothered to death by some desperate mother than doesn't want the North Koreans to find them.  The artistic side of one's nature doesn't pay the bills, and must give way to the practical side, the side that goes to work, pays the bills, and provides the necessary steel in our collective spine. One of these days practical me is probably going to have to kill artistic me. It will be, when it happens, a mercy killing.

Hurricanes, to return to our subject, are formed in areas of extreme low pressure. Those two words in that combination would not ever be used to describe her. She was high maintenance, high strung, and high class. Nothing low about her, except maybe a few of her opinions about certain people in the world. Luckily for me, at least at the time, her opinion of me had not sunk to the current level at which it currently resides. That first date did not go as poorly as I had expected, in fact it went as well as possible. It was like my fairy godmother, that inattentive bitch, was finally paying some attention to my life, and giving me what she considered a dream match.  Perhaps, when the lazy bitch that is my fairy godmother sleeps, she has different dreams than I do.  Hurricanes operate on something called a Carnot heat engine, a complicated (too complicated for me) system that provides them their main energy source. I was never able to fully ascertain her main energy source, she was a driven, uber bitch about a lot of things, and the water around her would literally evaporate from the heat, then she would just as quickly cool down, and be an ice princess that would freeze the blood in the stoutest of men's veins. Thus, in a idealized nutshell, is a Carnot heat engine explained.

The key part to a hurricane is the eye, the center of the storm where it is relatively calm. Of course that is a relative term, and the eye still has it's dangers. Sure it's calm, but the way(s) out, if they exist at all are full of peril and storms. It behooves you, if you can, to stay as close to the eye for as long as possible. After all, no one wants to be flattened like the unsuspecting coastal city that one is beginning to feel like. Hurricanes cause damage, generally they don't discriminate they just merely flatten anything that happens to be in their path. And I had willing placed myself in her path, it was a decision that in theory I should have regretted, but in retrospect would probably make again if I had the chance. 

In the late 60's and early 70's some idiot government employee came up with the not so brilliant idea of trying to artificially dissipate hurricanes by seeding them with silver iodine. It didn't work, in fact it was a fairly spectacular failure. When her Carnot heat engine got truly going I would attempt a similar idea but with alcohol which also usually wound up in a spectacular failure. It was an idea that I quickly abandoned best not to feed the beast anymore than necessary, just batten down the hatches, hope it blows over quickly, hope you survive, and pray that the pieces left to pick up are enough to rebuild the relationship you so painstaking put together.