The five hurricanesThe five hurricanes.

In Key West, so the story goes, “El Finito” is the final hurricane, the massive tempest that erases the island, leaving nothing behind.

People who live on the coasts of oceans have always lived under the specter of the water turning on them, their provider, without warning, becoming their enemy.

St. Louis, MO, early June 1996.

She was trying to wake me. Evidently, I had woken her. “What’s wrong?” She said. “Why are you making those noises?”“The five hurricanes.” I said, still not conscious of being conscious. My roommate slept on the day bed; I slept on a love seat at least two feet too short. The St. Louis heat in our third floor studio oven, even in the middle of the night was more than uncomfortable. She told me of the exchange later, in the morning. I had no idea of its meaning. I was stoned when I went to bed.

Denver, CO, January 1999.

A few days before this particular day, a friend from work suffered a serious head injury while skiing. Most of us were wondering how long it would be before she died. The two of us had lived in Key West at the same time, shared some common acquaintances while there, and yet had never met; then. Fast forward to Denver and the realization of our near-miss friendship, and the bond of similar experience in the now, and my realization that our time this time around was to be brief. Now she was comatose, her brain swelling, her friends in disbelief, her death at hand.

Her effect on her co-workers was strong (As she was charming, beautiful, magnetic…), and her effect on me, intense. It was all right to reminisce with her. She understood that life; what it was like to live it (or live through it). She had experienced it also. Knowing her enabled me to let go of so much baggage just by talking with her. Her impending death was devastating; it’s impact driving me further and further into my own inward recesses, metaphorically parallel to the recesses of the loft apartment at which I was house-sitting. I could literally seal myself off from the rest of the city, co-workers, and the few friends on the outside with whom I chose to communicate.

I was completely anesthetized, stonedstonedstoned, the television on with no sound, music loud, dancing with her memory, waiting for more news from my more courageous friends who stayed at the hospital. A friend who called directly after the accident kept saying “What a bad, bad girl,” her tone far away, her state of psychological shock evident. The muted Weather Channel cut to a map of the Caribbean and South Atlantic. The map reported four hurricanes and a system brewing. I had forgotten about that night in St. Louis, but then, the memory returned. My thoughts turned to the past, then to the future. The eventuality “El Finito” will come to Key West.

My friend has made a miraculous recovery since. She now lives in St. Louis and is friends with some of my friends there. They’ve said, had they not known about the injury, they would have never guessed that anything happened to her, much less the time line of her injury and present recovery, which is just a week over five months. She doesn’t remember the accident, the eventual groggy return to this world, where her mind was during…which is probably for the best. These turn of events have significantly altered my life, my wanting to forgive, to live in the now, to make sense of this precious gift of life.

St. Louis, May 1998

My former roommate told me of a recurring dream of her being in charge of a group of people, their leader. She did not want this task, but felt like their entire lives depended on her. Her aunt has strong psychic abilities and some of those gifts, she feels, have been passed on to her. She didn’t understand the significance of this vision or dream.

St. Louis, April 1999

While waiting for my former landlord to return home so I could retrieve the last of my belongings left hastily in St. Louis before my move to Denver, I wound up in a New-Age bookstore near her house, thumbing randomly through books. I came upon a chronicle of Nostradomous, channeled and interpreted through three psychics, the book written in a multiple interview format. By 2006, according to this book, to these psychics, the geography of the United States has been severely altered through shifts in tectonic plates under the North American continent. California and Florida were gone, the Southwest, to the Rockies, underwater.

The most disturbing information in these pages to me, if this indeed transpires, the words that stunned and rendered me dumb struck in the well lit and pleasantly scented Mystic Valley bookstore was this: The three prominent cities of the new “Mid-West” were Omaha, Nebraska (A seaport), Jefferson City, Missouri, and Harrison, Arkansas, a town 36 miles to the south of my hometown of Branson. Most everything to the west was under water. Reading further, the psychics were questioned on the status and how these changes affected St. Louis. St. Louis, according to them, was gone. No trace left of the confluence of the rivers Missouri and Mississippi. Metro St. Louis, almost three million people in two states, nowhere to be found in seven years.

If the rains come, if the changes happen, I hope my friend will be ready. As for the dream of the five hurricanes…I hope…I really hope I’m wrong.

Maybe though, there’s no way to prevent the coming cleansing rain.