Fascination with the inundation

When the Old Man came to bed last night, he grumbled at not seeing trees bent over or lashed with horizontal rain.

"Are you envious of the people on the East Coast? Do you want a superstorm?"
"Yeah, I kinda do."
"No you don't."
"Why not?"
"You like having power."

I think severe-weather-as-entertainment has got to be one of the odder features of This Modern World of Ours. I've had friends of mine express horror at the destruction while simultaneously complaining of not being able to find streaming footage. All the stills from The Day After Tomorrow being passed off as Frankenstorm photos confirm for me that the psychologists are right: there really is something in us that longs to see familiar places destroyed.

But one thing that no one live-streams is the cleanup. I related to monshu how our family had been the victim of two serious floods, one the result of a foot of rain dumped by the remnants of Hurricane Eloise, the other caused by a high water table and a faulty sump pump. Eloise was exciting at first; we got evacuated in the middle of the night to the home of the old lady who lived at the end of the road. But the basement flood was simply tedious: months afterwards, we were still stumbling across rotting cardboard boxes filled with half-rusted detritus.

So I confess to getting a momentary thrill from seeing places I've walked--like the promenade just south of the Battery Park hotel where we stayed during our last visit to NYC or the main drag in Atlantic City--covered in more than a foot of water. But the next moment I imagine all the mud, mould, and garbage which will be left behind when the water recedes and I want to retch. I try to take comfort in Chicago's plum position relative to the coast, then I remember that I live in a drained swamp that's one serious storm sewer failure away from reverting and I sleep below ground level.