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LABORATORY LOG

MARION D. FORD

DINKIN’S BAY, SANIBEL ISLAND, FLORIDA

14 August, Saturday

No sunrise

Returned two days ago, near midnight, 12 hours before a hurricane made landfall. Direct hit on Gulf islands, winds 150 MPH, gusts higher. The marina, my house and lab badly damaged.

When windows imploded, roof began to go, I grabbed a piling, watching whole trees, a canoe, sections of dock, a bicycle tumble skyward, cauldroning like birds.

The storm’s northwestern wall was a phalanx of tornadoes. Tornadoes have a signature sound. A diesel scream that ascends on approach…

15 August, Sunday

Picking through wreckage, Javier Castillo asked about the stitches in my forehead. I told him I was hit by something during the storm. “God plays with us, sending a hurricane like that,” he said in Spanish. I am tired of his shitty jokes.

16 August, Monday

Sunset 19:53 (7:53 P.M.)

Moon waxing

Low tide 7:21 P.M.

Trees are leafless, like nuclear winter. Last night, I watched stars through my open roof, head throbbing, as I replayed the worst of the storm. The wind accelerating past my ears, blowing so hard that it was as if I’d fallen out of a jetliner. No possibility of establishing control, so analysis was pointless. A shadow vanishing into itself. That’s how I felt. Released.

19 August, Thursday

Sunset 7:50 P.M.

Low tide 8:18 P.M.

No power or phones. Islanders with million-dollar homes barter in new currency: water, generators, fuel. National Guard has arrived, trailing insurance adjusters, imposters, contractors, politicians in helicopters, lawyers, land speculators with cash. A few marinas are price gouging—or worse.

A hurricane leaves residual odors: bloating fish and trash fires. The scent attracts vultures, human variety. Bloated prices. Con men.

Greed has an odor, too.

WEEK THREE

30 August, Monday

Sunset 7:41 P.M.

Full moon rises 7:32 P.M.

Low tide 6:54 A.M.

Greed…

Tomlinson says a hurricane is like a beam of light. It exposes decay, and reveals unexpected strengths. Celestial light—his phrase. Cleansing.

He was stoned, as usual. Behavior even more bizarre. Irritable, too—as if he’s been injecting testosterone. Hormones might play a role. Most nights, he vanishes to visit a woman he seldom mentions. She lives in a beach estate, an antique gray house that was hidden until the wind stripped the trees away. I discovered it by accident; was unaware the house even existed until the storm.

1 September, Wednesday

Working late in lab

Winds transformed sea bottom, exposing some structures, covering others. Off Key Largo, in 130 feet of water, a sunken Naval vessel, the Spiegel Grove, was uprighted by storm currents. Off Key West, an underwater forest of petrified wood was uncovered in an area once sand. The forest dates back to the Pliocene.

Yesterday, Jeth Nichols found an unfamiliar wreck—40 feet of water, 240 degrees off Lighthouse Point. He’s been fishing out of another marina where damage was minor. One of those gated condo places, Indian Harbor Resort.

5 September, Sunday

Sunset 7:35 P.M.

Low tide 12:03 P.M.

The hurricane that hit us was the third of the season; more forming in the Caribbean basin. Storms of closed circulation are tropical cyclones. When winds exceed 38 MPH, they are termed “tropical storms” and assigned a name—grating, because a name implies human qualities, intent or malice.

A storm is a mobile dynamic, not a being. Homo sapiens is a mobile being, not a process. The principles of physics and man are diminished by anthropomorphic baloney.

Go to the beach and name waves. Name a lightning bolt. It makes as much sense.

7 September, Tuesday

Sunset 7:34 P.M.

No low tide

Autumn in subtropics: Heat. Jittery wind. Hint of storm darkness even in daylight.

Moon waning; fireflies in mangrove shadow.

Still no phone.