Still reeling after Irene

Holding Back the Chaos

acrylic on yupo

 It's been more than a week since hurricane Irene struck New England and we are still recovering. Odd to think that New England, particularly Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont, as well as the shorelines, took the brunt of Irene.

The community where I work is still without power in many areas and people are grappling with downed trees, wires, transformers and such. This is a fairly rural area and pumps and well water are out of commission, schools delayed, etc.

But what everyone is muttering about is the sense of disorientation, of having daily rhythms and routines disrupted, of being confused at to what day it is. It's as if summer never existed, just a faint memory as the rains continue and the temperatures drop. Whipped and destroyed trees are shedding leaves and roads are filled with downed leaves.  It looks more like November than early September.

Chinese traditional medicine pays great heed to the junctures of changing seasons, of when forces disrupt and anxieties rise. It is a tumultuous time.  This entire year, weather-wise, has been chaotic, heightened, strained -- a winter that never seemed to quit, tornadoes, an earthquake in the northeast followed quickly by a hurricane that slipped up the coast, missing where expected, landing where unexpected.

This is a painting I did last winter amid the weekly snowstorms that hammered New England -- and it still captures how I feel about these past days, these past months -- unsettled, wary, waiting for that other shoe to drop . . . 

not a good place . . .