Drowning, AIDS, and Other Hurricanes That I Have Known
by Perry Gideon
My husband and I were vacationing on St. John (U.S. Virgin Islands) last year and we couldn't leave before Hurricane Irma hit on September 6, 2017. The island had been lush and green but after hours of winds reaching up to 185 mph, it looked downtrodden, grey and charred.
Buildings seemed to have imploded. You could not walk without hearing your steps crunch over broken glass. The many displaced iguanas would frequently jump out with a hiss and surprise you from their hiding places as they'd skitter their dog-sized bodies away into the drifts of debris. Wounds from being jabbed in the leg with spears of broken wood or cut by jagged lances of metal were common.
We were told that 85% of the islanders lost their homes. It was apparent that they were fearful about the future. The island's beauty had been blasted away. This was a hurricane that was surprisingly intense and damaging.
It would take a long time for the tourists to return. These were not wealthy people. It was difficult to see their lives in ruin. You could see the furrows of shock and worry in their faces.
We were stranded there for several days and while being immersed in this sense of bewildering upheaval, I began writing in a journal. The following pages are some of my own life experiences that I credit the hurricane with helping me to look back upon. I've presented these memories as journal entries.
I've included some of our hurricane video (before, during, and after):
In reality, you don't ever change the hurricane. You just learn how to stay out of its path. - Jodi Picoult
<<audio mainsong loop play>>
My [[father|S1P2]] said that the shypoke was killing his fish. Said they were useless birds.
He took me to the [[muddy pond|S2P1]] which lay at the bottom of a sloping field down from the house. The fields blazed green under beads of dew.
There were two quick shots. I jumped at both.
The bird lay serpentine and gnarled. Its eyes, feathers, beak, and feet were dull black like licorice. I stroked its feathers. It smelled tangy and feral. I asked when it would wake up.
<p><div class="imgFloat">[img[ $ImagePath + "S1P2.jpg" ]]</div>I was with my mother in the little field outside the kitchen door where the strawberries grew. The air was chilly with melting frost.
My older brother was playing with a man. He was excited. Happy. I started to [[run|S1P3]] and the man’s slicing voice commanded me to stop and come to him. I didn’t like his voice. I didn’t stop.
He ran after me. I laughed thinking we were playing. He grabbed me and heavily hit my butt jarring my guts. I cried. The metallic tenor of his voice cut into my ear, “When I tell you to come here, you better come here.” He shook me as he half dropped me to the ground.
I walked to my mother crying. “That man hit me,” I said to her as if she were not aware. “That man is your father,” she said.
</p>
My sister was crying and holding something small, black, and limp. She laid it on her neatly made bed. It was a dead baby bunny. She held her hands prayerlike and bent down over it sobbing loudly. Her long blond hair draped around it.
From the open windows, I heard yelling and the light running sounds of my other sisters outside. I will understand later that they were trying to find hiding places for the bunnies still alive before my father could kill them, too.
I heard my father’s heavy steps vibrate the wooden floors of the house as he stomped into the bedroom. He was tall with black hair and shirtless. His narrow shoulders were glistening and his skin was an outdoor working man’s bronze.
He stood above with [[raised hands|S1P3a]] before grabbing the dead animal from my sister. There was a scream from her before it was abruptly cut short.
<span class="imgScale50">[img[ $ImagePath + "S1P3.jpg" ]]</span>
<p><div class="imgFloat">[img[ $ImagePath + "S1P3a.jpg" ]]</div>When I tour Chichén Itzá in the Yucatan and learn of the sacrifices painted blue, [[slain|S1P1]], and thrown into the deep cenotes of water by Mayan priests, for some odd reason I remembered my father like this... with his eyes wide with anger at his daughters’ defiance and his snatching and raised hands.
The building near the Sacred Cenote is in near ruin. But the succession of rooms where those being prepared for eventual sacrifice through gradated steps are still visible. I wonder if any ever managed to [[run away|S1P4]].
</p>
I have a memory. I neither trust nor [[distrust|S2P2]] this memory. It is just a memory.
I am 3 or 4. I go alone to the muddy pond. There are feathers on the surface. They are curved up with fuzzy down bottoms. They glide like tiny sailboats. I push and follow. I’m in the water. The bank slopes away steeply and I plunge down.
I remember the thrashing. The gulping. The burning murky water. There was pain. But more than anything, I remember rage. Then there was the sensation of ripping. I am fine.
The murky brown water bursts into a brilliant emerald. I see the bottoms of feet drift past me. I am on the bank watching the odd streams of gold waft like zig-zaggy candle flames off the tall field grasses. I move. Fast.
I am many yards away up the hill near the barn. Something is different. I feel missing. Disoriented. I look at my hand. It is molten. It looks like I’m wearing mittens. My fingerless hands are translucent with gold-flecked shimmering.
I look down intending to look at my body, but I look too deeply. I feel myself pour down into the grass. The blades are huge like streets. A flock of lights moves to and around me in a swarm pattern like a school of fish. Then I am pulled or pushed away.
I am back upside and I can see my sisters pour out of the front door of our house. Years later I learn that my mother had just screamed my name before fainting. This wakes my napping father. One sister points to the muddy pond.
My father is running. He only has on [[jeans|S4P2]]. I go to him. I want to place my feet on top of his and hold his legs as he dances with me. But he goes through me. I smell the dusty smells of cow and work from his jeans. I move around him to try again. He seems to be suspended mid leap through the high grass.
<span class="imgScale50">[img[ $ImagePath + "S2P1.jpg" ]]</span>
I do not trust my memory of the resuscitation from my near drowning. The memory is of me surrounding myself with cold, slimy fish. I went through a period of researching near death experiences and I think the weakest memories are tainted from what I’ve read. One of my sisters said that my lips were blue and that my eyes were set.
I am coddled until I’m not. I’m not sure if the strange coldness originated from inside me or from outside of me. There may have been sibling resentment. Maybe there was a needed rebalancing of affection.
I remember being really mouthy before almost drowning. Afterwards, pieces of me felt absent and silent. Putting [[thoughts|S2P3]] to words was not as easy as I think it once was.
<span class="imgScale50">[img[ $ImagePath + "S2P2.jpg" ]]</span>
I have dreams after the near drowning of being pushed face down into water.
I also dream of owls with monkey bodies coming down the big white oak tree outside my window and coming through my window.
I dream of being carried outside at night and left on the wet, dewy grass. In the early morning I wake up, let myself in, and slide back into bed.
Sometimes I dream of a dark-haired woman who talks to me with kindness and tells me things that she says [[I will forget|S2P4]]. That is true.
<span class="imgScale50">[img[ $ImagePath + "S2P3.jpg" ]]</span>
My parents take me to register for first grade.
The school has huge windows divided into tiny glass panels by wide metal muntins. The floors are slabs of concrete in the newer building sections and thin, creaking slats of brown painted wood in the older parts.
I’m given a small container of vanilla ice cream as a treat. They’re supposed to have little wooden spoons, but the administrator can’t find them.
She asks my parents if I have any health problems that the school would need to know about. My father says that I don’t. My [[mother begins to speak|S3P1]] and I vaguely know it’ll be about the drowning.
My father interrupts her before she gets far and says that I’m completely fine. He says that I didn’t even have to go to the doctor. Then he looks at me. I know that I’m supposed to smile up at the lady and act like I’m complete. I try not to shift my eyes away, which I tend to do if I’m distracted by the fragmented shadows inside of me.
The ice cream was good. I had to use the lid as a spoon.
<span class="imgScale50">[img[ $ImagePath + "S2P4.jpg" ]]</span>
My mother left a message on my answering machine today. She said that she doesn’t understand about me being gay. Her voice cracked and she started sobbing. I remember rolling my eyes. Ok, this is it… I steeled myself. I’m going to finally be [[disowned|S3P2]] and free. This is the day I’ve been expecting since I realized at 16 that I was gay. Zero Hour Bullshit Storm commences.
I am mentally girded for war. My body and mind are set with grim determination to endure the next long weeks of cherry picked bible passages, copious tears, dump truck loads of guilt, calls from pastors or siblings or some other sucker that they can rope into pestering me, opinions poorly masquerading as pseudo-scientific and/or pseudo-psychological reasoning, and then there will be the anger and threats.
Then it’ll likely start all over again.
Oh, I’ll have to move and change my number. Damn. This is going to really be a pain. It’ll be the same never ending crap that they did to my sister when she [[fell in love|S5P1]] with and married a black man. I wonder if they’ll also threaten to turn me in to the KKK. Are the KKK still even around anymore?
My friend listens to my mother’s message and hugs me tightly. He’s tall and strong with Jimi Hendrix’s [[handsome|S5P2]] looks. “It’s going to be alright,” he says.
I’m going to finally be free, I think.
<span class="imgScale50">[img[ $ImagePath + "S3P1.jpg" ]]</span>
I dream that I'm in a fishing boat. Droplets fall from my oar. I peer down into the black water to see an Asian face reflected back at me. I am an old man. Edo is where I live.
Zero Hour Bullshit Storm never happens. I am not disowned. My mother calls me and tells me that they love me. I am disappointed. I was expecting a direct attack. This was unanticipated subtlety.
My mother can be as wily as a tigress. I am wondering what kind of mindfuckery they’re up to. I begin to wonder if my sister’s marriage to a person of color has made them exhausted.
My father is given the phone and speaks to me in a hesitant, weirdly muted voice. He says that he always knew that something was wrong with me. I still think that that's the most fucking hilarious thing that he’s ever said.
The conversation ended politely if unsatisfyingly with my parents. Mulling over my options, I strategically prepare to do the only thing a sane person could do in my situation. I plan my escape to [[Japan|S3P3]].
<span class="imgScale50">[img[ $ImagePath + "S3P2.jpg" ]]</span>
My father and I were never friends or really ever liked each other much. One of my sisters says that it’s because we’re so much alike… that we’re both ridiculously stubborn. I absolutely refuse to believe that about myself.
However, there are some things that I do love about my father. I loved his stories. I loved the funny ones like the one when he was a boy and the floor of their house had large holes…. and when he didn’t want to go to the outhouse in the cold or dark, he’d lie down and pee through a hole… until a chicken underneath the house pecked him pretty hard.
His father was a bootlegger (among other things) and never around. My grandmother divorced him and raised my dad and his four brothers single handedly on scratched means and a hotel maid’s salary.
I particularly loved his stories of Germany when he was stationed there during the 1950s. I think that he fell in love with someone there. There are old black and white pictures that I’ve seen of him with a beautiful blond German woman. Her family had stables. She loved horses. I think that he had intended to return and just didn’t make it back. I loved the calm, wistful tones when he remembers.
<p><div class="imgFloat">[img[ $ImagePath + "S3P3.gif" ]]</div>In Japan, I felt a small earthquake. It felt like a nudge from a big dog. I navigated the color coded subways of Tokyo. I rode bullet trains and hiked around Mount Fuji. I ate the black eggs of Ōwakudani boiled in volcanic springs.
I had never met a Syrian, but then I met one who had never met an American. His eyes were exotic... amber in fringed black. He was beautiful and wary. I met a German who loved to talk with an attempted Southern drawl. I befriended an Australian from Perth with HIV. He had wanted to see Japan before he expected to become too sick for travel. I did mundane things with extraordinary people.
I had wanted to see Hiroshima, but I could never find the stomach. Like my father, I had always intended to return. I felt guilty for leaving my sick [[friends|S3P4]]. One of them had said that he probably wouldn’t be alive by the time I’d get back.
</p>
Before I left for Japan, two of my friends (a couple… [[one with HIV|S4P3]], the other with full-blown AIDS) were evicted from their home. They were the last two of my circle of friends left alive.
They were living in a mobile home that had belonged to the deceased mother of the one with full-blown AIDS. The evictor was his brother who had decided that he and his wife should have the home instead.
[[My friends|S4P1]] moved into an apartment next to me. Sick and vulnerable, they were always fearful that the brother would break in and steal what little they had left.
I came out to myself at 16 in the summer of 1981. The AIDS epidemic officially began on June 5, 1981, when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on an unusual form of pneumonia found in five homosexual men in Los Angeles (Wikipedia.org).
I graduated from my high school in May 1983. AIDS was cutting through my community like a sling blade. I was terrified, but I still wanted to find somebody to [[love|S5P1]]. Unfortunately, I had no money and no real means of getting away… except a scholarship for college. With this, I planned my escape.
My parents were watchful and they thought that I was "on drugs.” For some reason, I’d fainted outside and my father finds me passed out on the ground. For them, this confirms their suspicions.
Mother woke me up several mornings around 3 a.m. and tearfully asked me to quit shooting up with needles. She frightened me, but I asked her to find the needle marks on me. I realized that this is some kind of gaslighting bullshit, but I didn’t know why or who was behind it.
My brother had confronted me and said that he’d heard that I’ve been seen smoking pot with my friends (something that I wouldn't actually do until my early 20s). I looked at him incredulously and I should’ve pointed out that 1) I had no money to buy drugs, 2) we lived way out in the boonies, so there’s not a lot of street corners to find a drug dealer, and 3) that I had no friends cool enough to be of the pot smoking variety. Instead, I asked the worst question possible… “Who told you this?” For him, it was confirmation that it was true.
A compromise was formed. I was to move in with my sister so that she could keep a watch on me. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t happy about it. She probably felt that I was there to keep an eye on her, too. I realize now that there was a kind of Machiavellian network of checks and balances positioned between family members.
<span class="imgScale50">[img[ $ImagePath + "S4P1.jpg" ]]</span>
AIDS became so rampant. It intruded upon everything. Death was always an expected guest where two or more were gathered. Despite living with my sister, I did find circles of friends. I am almost always the youngest guy in the room. Most were already sick.
There was wonderful defiance. And there were suicides. Some moved to hospices or back home to be taken care of by their families. One of them worked with horses in rodeos. He had a smile full of teeth, thick thighs, and a muscled ass. He had to move back home. His parents forced him back into the closet and told everybody that he had cancer. We were forbidden contact. We never saw him again.
I was determined to not get sick. I think that I was more frightened of having to move back in with my parents than of AIDS. I couldn’t bring myself to date anyone. I again [[gulped stagnant waters|S2P1]].
I was at a club when somebody walked up to me from the shadows. He was so gaunt that I wasn’t sure if I was looking into his eyes or empty sockets. He spoke to me with familiarity.
His height accentuated his skeletal body. He looked to be just bones and ligaments draped with baggy clothes and a voice from a hollow place. He stopped speaking, realizing that I didn’t know who he was. He said his name, but I couldn’t reconcile the name with the moving cadaver before me. He looked down and shambled away.
I then realized that he was one of my first friendships that I had made as a gay man. He and his boyfriend had taken me under their wing after they realized my naiveness. But I had not seen him after that time we all were together and he was worrying about some kind of results from a doctor’s visit. He had been so beautiful and fit.
I looked through the crowd for him to apologize. But he was [[gone|S4P4]].
<span class="imgScale50">[img[ $ImagePath + "S4P2.jpg" ]]</span>
Holes were drilled into his skull to drain the buildup of blood pressing into his brain. Dried trickles of blood had seeped from the drainage catheters poking through the scalp. It looked like a crown of metal and ivory thorns were poking through the skin of his shaved head.
He writhed on the seizure bed, oblivious to me. I held his hand as best I could and [[apologized|S4P4]]. At least 6’ 5”, he was the tallest man that I had ever known. He looked so small. My friend was barely 30 years old.
<span class="imgScale50">[img[ $ImagePath + "S4P3.jpg" ]]</span>
<p><div class="imgFloat">[img[ $ImagePath + "S4P4.jpg" ]]</div>They’re gone. I no longer have any friends who are suffering from AIDS. I feel tired. I go through periods of assessing myself. Was I a good enough friend to them all? When that friend reached out to me for intimacy… should I have given that to him?
I realize now that he was needing comfort. To be held in place and [[exist here|S2P1]] for a moment longer. But I thought… I’m not sure what I thought. That he was paying me with sexual currency? Affection is the truest gift that gay men can give to each other. It is something that we cannot expect from those who don’t understand. It is our language of understanding. I still feel inarticulate.
</p>
When I first saw him, I thought that he was out of my league. So... I just forgot that he was there. But then he asked me out. I didn’t even realize that it was a date until he told me. I asked, "How did you know?” Apparently, I am bad with secrets.
We become friends. [[And more|S5P2]].
<span class="imgScale50">[img[ $ImagePath + "S5P1.jpg" ]]</span>
<p><div class="imgFloat">[img[ $ImagePath + "S5P2.jpg" ]]</div>We’ve been together for a couple of years. I am sick with the flu. He made me chicken soup. Mmmm, so good.
Over time, I find out from him some of the difficulties of being a black man. I really had no idea. He had been stopped twice by the police on the way to my apartment. I had lived [[downtown|S5P2a]] just a few blocks from our workplaces. No reason was given to him.
He worries about being accused of something that he hasn’t done. I tried to assure him that fairness always wins. Then I realized that even I didn’t believe that.
</p>
I dream that I’m walking about a block away from the TCBY Tower building where I work. There is a deafening explosion that knocks me and others onto the ground. My ears are [[ringing painfully|S5P2b]]. I’m choking on dust. I see people screaming silently. I cannot see the building but I see shadows of pieces falling on top of us.
I tell a coworker of my dream. She looks a me strangely and says that she’s had the same dream.
<span class="imgScale50">[img[ $ImagePath + "S5P2a.jpg" ]]</span>
For several nights in a row, I dream of a phone ringing in my ear. It is loud and insistent. Later the ringing phone is under rubble. I dig through the rubble to find my father. His bones are crushed. His forearms are bleeding stubs. But he tells me that he’s okay. I know that he is not. I think that I’m being forewarned that my father is [[about to die|S5P3]].
When I go home, my father is confused as to why I’m spending time with him. I spend a few days with him as a last ditch effort to mend fences between us.
Ironically, that is exactly what I do… for three days I help my dad mend the barbed wire fences around my parents' 40 acres. He is thankful and I think a bit weirded out.
<span class="imgScale50">[img[ $ImagePath + "S5P2b.jpg" ]]</span>
I am just back from helping my father mend fences when my boyfriend's mother calls me. She tells me that he’s gone. Her voice is raspy and distant. I don’t understand. She tells me that he has [[killed himself|S5P4]].
I have a dream that I’m a woman who has lost her son. I am a woman of some elite bearing. I have attendants. I sweep past them as I learn that my son has died. Agony burns through me as I scream into the night. I scream my son’s name. It is a flow of syllables.
I grab a torch to find my son. Attendants scramble to follow. I scream my son’s name. I hurtle to the river. Servants place their bodies in front of me to prevent me from going further. The light from my torch is reflected back to me from the dozens of eyes of crocodiles lying on the river bank. I collapse in sobs.
<span class="imgScale50">[img[ $ImagePath + "S5P3.jpg" ]]</span>
The Oklahoma City Bombing occurred a few days after he died. I find out later that the TCBY Tower building had been cased by Timothy McVeigh for his bombing target before he changed it to the federal building in Oklahoma City.
I imagine that I hear my boyfriend's voice. It is just under my hearing like a murmur behind a closed door. I can smell his scent at times.
I buy jigsaw puzzles and put them together on a small table while I sit in the doorway of our bedroom. The jigsaw puzzles let me focus on small pieces of reality that I can mentally handle and fit into their proper place. For weeks I would sit in that [[doorway|S6P1]]. I don't know why I did that. That was weird.
<span class="imgScale50">[img[ $ImagePath + "S5P4.jpg" ]]</span>
I have a stack of books to read. I love to open the doors to the balcony, [[listen to the ocean|S6P2]], and send my daydreams into the unreal blue water between pages.
Scene from our balcony overlooking Cruz Bay.
<span class="imgScale50">[img[ $ImagePath + "S6P1.jpg" ]]</span>
It will be five days before [[Hurricane Irma|S6P3]] hits the island. We see projections that it is coming across the ocean toward us. We decide to cut our vacation short. Better safe than sorry.
Unfortunately, we've waited too long. All flights are booked.
<span class="imgScale50">[img[ $ImagePath + "S6P2.png" ]]</span>
It is Monday. The hurricane is supposed to hit [[Wednesday|S6P4]]. Currently, it looks like we are dead in its path.
We've asked the front desk of the resort about preparing. We assume that all of our large, glass windows and doors with our beautiful ocean views will need to be boarded up.
We are lulled by the happy attitudes of our hosts. Mañana, they say. We will deal with hurricane, mañana. We are waved away with a warm smile. They seem unconcerned and… well, they’ve been through many more hurricanes than we have so they must know when and how to prepare. We go for a swim.
I think that this is the tree that splintered, became uprooted, and flew into our windows.
<span class="imgScale50">[img[ $ImagePath + "S6P3.jpg" ]]</span>
It is the morning of the hurricane. The time slides past 10 a.m. It’s supposed to be on top of us by 2 p.m. I saw a peacock and a dove casually strolling outside the window earlier while I drank my coffee.
We’re restricted from going outside by the resort’s management. They call us occasionally to make sure that we’re complying. We’re supposed to already be taking shelter in our bedroom. I have moved furniture and piled furniture cushions in front of the large bedroom window which has tempered glass slats.
I watch through the zip-tied, French patio doors as the ocean turns into a white mist and vegetation twists and flops. A [[shriek of wind|S6P4a]] pulls at one of the large, bolted windows by me and pulls it open enough to pierce my coffee-sedated calm with a gust and a loud popping snap. I scamper to the bedroom pulling my husband with me.
<span class="imgScale50">[img[ $ImagePath + "S6P4.JPG" ]]</span>
I’m not sure how I expected a hurricane to sound. If a tornado sounds like a freight train, I guess that I expected a hurricane to just be a bigger, louder freight train.
It doesn’t sound like a freight train. It is a hoarse, gasping choir. It sounds like roars and screams that vibrate your skin just under your hearing range with occasional high-pitched screeches of frustration that it hasn’t gotten to you yet.
Its full voice hides muffled under the [[shuddering|S6P4b]] of wood, glass, plaster, and brick. The world is torn apart outside quietly by a sound-deadened blizzard of power.
<span class="imgScale50">[img[ $ImagePath + "S6P4a.jpg" ]]</span>
The air pressure is [[fucked up|S1P1]]. My body feels floaty while my head is buried deep in the earth. My ears are continuously popping. My sinuses have always been sensitive to storm fronts. Now I bury my head into pillows and mattress, pressing and whimpering. I expect my pineal gland to slickly squish through my forehead like a lemon seed.
I hear the sickening, hollow sound of tempered glass exploding and cracking.
<span class="imgScale50">[img[ $ImagePath + "S6P4b.jpg" ]]</span>
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Works cited:
Barrington, Judith. "Using Your Senses." Barrington, Judith. Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art. Portland: The Eighth Mountain Press, 2002. 109-117.
Bascom, Tim (2013). Picturing the Personal Essay: A Visual Guide. Retrieved from https://www.creativenonfiction.org/online-reading/picturing-personal-essay-visual-guide.
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_HIV/AIDS." 3 July 2018. Wikipedia.org. Website. 31 July 2018.
Iseke, Judy M. (2011). Indigenous Digital Storytelling in Video: Witnessing with Alma Desjarlais, Equity & Excellence in Education, 44:3, 311-329, DOI: 10.1080/10665684.2011.591685
Ryan, Marie-Laure. "Will New Media Produce New Narratives?" Narrative across Media: The Languages of Storytelling, edited by Marie-Laure Ryan, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004, pp. 337-359.
Audio:
Despair and Triumph by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Source - http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1400012
Artist - http://incompetech.com/
Images:
1) Background Picture of Wrecked Boats after Hurrican Irma - Personal Picture
2) Black Heron - Creative Commons license image from Wikimedia Commons
3) Blurred Running Child - Creative Commons picture from Flickr.com by Lance Shields
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/legalcode
4) Black Bunny - Copyright free picture from pixabay.com
5) Mayan Fertility Goddess Ixchel with Rabbit - Creative Commons license image from Wikipedia Commons
6) Open Gate - Copyright free picture from pxhere.com
7) Misty Pond - Creative Commons picture from Flickr.com by Chodhound
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8) Puzzle over Water - Creative Commons picture from Flickr.com by kbetart
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9) Night Clouds - Copyright free picture from pxhere.com
10) Perfect Family - Creative Commons picture from Flickr.com by in pastel
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11) Answering Machine - Creative Commons picture from Flickr.com by Scott Diedrickl
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12) Japanese Fishing Boat - Creative Commons picture from Flickr.com by Vintage Japan-esque
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13) Hiroshima Bell Tower - Public domain picture from Wikimedia Commons
14) Cracked Glass - Copyright free picture from pxhere.com
15) Hidden Child - Copyright free picture from Pixabay.com
16) Crowd - Copyright free picture from pxhere.com
17) AIDS Quilt - Creative Commons license image from Wikimedia Commons
18) Time Lapse Star Trails - Copyright free picture from pxhere.com
19) Love Written in Sand - Copyright free picture from Pixabay.com
20) Same-Sex Couple Holding Hands - Copyright free picture from Pixabay.com
21) Fiery Smoke - Copyright free picture from Pixabay.com
22) Broken Fence - Copyright free picture from Pixabay.com
23) Nile Crocodiles - Copyright free picture from Pixabay.com
24) Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial - Copyright free picture from Pixabay.com
25) Cruz Bay from Balcony - Personal digital photo
26) Hurricane Irma Path - Creative Commons license image from Wikimedia Commons
27) Locust Tree on Beach - Personal digital photo
28) Hurricane Destruction - Personal digital photo
29) Gallows Point Resort (before damage) - Personal digital photo
30) Gallows Point Resort (after damage) - Personal digital photo
Video:
Personal video
<<button "Start over" "Start S0P0">><</button>><H1>Drowning, AIDS,
and Other Hurricanes That I Have Known</H1>
by Perry Gideon
My husband and I were vacationing on St. John (U.S. Virgin Islands) last year and we couldn't leave before Hurricane Irma hit on September 6, 2017. The island had been lush and green but after hours of winds reaching up to 185 mph, it looked downtrodden, grey and charred.
Buildings seemed to have imploded. You could not walk without hearing your steps crunch over broken glass. The many displaced iguanas would frequently jump out with a hiss and surprise you from their hiding places as they'd skitter their dog-sized bodies away into the drifts of debris. Wounds from being jabbed in the leg with spears of broken wood or cut by jagged lances of metal were common.
We were told that 85% of the islanders lost their homes. It was apparent that they were fearful about the future. The island's beauty had been blasted away. This was a hurricane that was surprisingly intense and damaging.
It would take a long time for the tourists to return. These were not wealthy people. It was difficult to see their lives in ruin. You could see the furrows of shock and worry in their faces.
We were stranded there for several days and while being immersed in this sense of bewildering upheaval, I began writing in a journal. The following pages are some of my own life experiences that I credit the hurricane with helping me to look back upon. I've presented these memories as [[journal entries|S1P1]].
I've included some of our hurricane video (before, during, and after):
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<i>In reality, you don't ever change the hurricane. You just learn how to stay out of its path.</i> - Jodi Picoult
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Artist's Statement (Perry Gideon):
On September 6, 2017, Hurricane Irma hit St. John (U.S. Virgin Island). My husband and I were vacationing there and couldn’t obtain a flight to get out in time. The island took massive damage from sustained winds reaching up to 185 mph. We were stranded there for five days afterwards with no communication to or from the outside world.
Much of my time was spent befriending the peacocks and an occasional iguana searching for food… and writing my thoughts in a journal. The surrounding destruction left within me a sense of turmoil and upheaval. The days of forced reflection and the surrounding turmoil resonated within me and seemed to exhume my own experiences of profound loss and distress from my past.
The title of my digital nonfiction (DNF), “Drowning, AIDS, and Other Hurricanes That I Have Known” is meant to designate these past experiences under the thematic “hurricane” trope and the resulting feeling of disorientation, fragmentation, and devastation that similarly occurs across different event spectrums.
Using Twine (an open-source tool for telling interactive, nonlinear stories) as my creation medium, I created a “digital journal” to echo the journal writing experience on the island. To introduce multimodality, I’ve included audio, pictures, text, and video that reflect the mood and textual content of my narrative. Each page of my core project includes a journal entry to further the theme of my project about self-reflection regarding traumatic occurrences and the fragmented nature of those memories in my life.
I’ve implemented the key concepts introduced to us in our Digital Nonfiction class of interactivity, linearity, sensory expression, and representation to tell my narrative. Interactivity is shown via the navigation buttons and linked text, which encourages the audience to play with the linearity of my narrative. I wanted my methods of interactivity, particularly with navigation tools, to be tied closely with an exploration of linearity. In Marie-Laure Ryan’s discussion of hyperlinks in “Will New Media Produce New Narratives?,” she references George Landow who states that "[i]n a hypertext environment a lack of linearity does not destroy narrative. In fact, since readers always, but particularly in this environment, fabricate their own structures, sequences or meanings, they have surprisingly little trouble reading a story or reading for a story” (Ryan).
The reader of my DNF can choose navigational buttons or hyperlinked text to experience linearity passage by passage, random passages, or a mix. I wanted the reader to create their own experience by filling in fragments with their imagination in my narrative. As the reader interacts with the DNF, the navigational tools can be used to reflect the random, unordered nature of thoughts. In Marie-Laure Ryan's "Will New Media Produce New Narratives?" article, she refers to George Landow's theory of readers as coauthors... which puts the burden of filling in the logical gaps between fragments on the readers' (or users' or audiences') imaginations (Ryan). I think that this is how the process would have to work for any reader... how the story unfolds requires an interaction (an internal journey) on the readers' part. They have to internalize the material and make sense of it as a story within themselves. This animate approach to a narrative is also described in Tim Bascom’s article “Picturing the Personal Essay: A Visual Guide.” He states that “[o]ne of the benefits of such a circling approach is that it seems more organic, just like the mind’s creative process” (Bascom).
My journal passages uses descriptive text and visuals for sensory expression. When considering descriptive details, I kept in mind the suggestion by Judith Barrington from “Writing the Memoir - Using Your Senses” the idea to select a few details “that capture the essence” of what is being described (Barrington). Judith Barrington states in her that “[i]f you find yourself having trouble getting into a story you want to tell, it is always a good idea to get up very close and start using your senses.” I found using Barrington’s advice in my digital journal narrative, particularly when I wanted to succinctly capture the essence of something particularly emotional to me without dragging the narrative down.
I’ve told my story as an openly gay man and I’ve included details about losing friends to AIDS during the 1980s and 1990s to show LGBTQ representation and what it was like to be a gay man during those uncertain and tragic times. Since so many gay men died of AIDS during this period, they cannot tell their stories. It is my hope that I can at least be a witness to their lives and to bring back them back to memory. In Judy Iseke’s article, “Indigenous Digital Storytelling in Video: Witnessing with Alma Desjarlais,” she states that this witnessing “... process brings what has been forgotten or lost back so it is possible to be attached to the remembrance — bonding emotions, cultural identifications, and historical narratives to particular groups, families, or communities” (Iseke).
<<button "Start over" "Start S0P0">><</button>>I used to run away. Not really intentionally, I think. Sometimes I would just walk out the door and keep going. I think that I felt that I needed to be somewhere else. I think that I felt that I didn't really belong where I was.
I'm told that when I was at that age when a child isn't ashamed of being naked, I left unnoticed through an open door. I had a following of dogs. They followed me or I followed them to the lake. My pack. They weren't all our dogs. Maybe I was attracted to the collection of strange, new dogs outside and I went to them and followed.
I was found miles away by an elderly woman. I was in her yard playing with the dogs. I remember that she stood on her porch looking at me. She had a kind face. I went to her. She lifted me up onto her kitchen table. She clothed me with an old t-shirt.
One time I came back from one of my excursions into the woods and my mother lifted me up to a chair. Almost in tears, she asked me to promise to not run away again. I realized at that moment that she was beautiful. I wanted the world to only be the two of us. I promised her that I wouldn't run away again. It was a promise that I kept until I moved away.
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