They Asked for a Storm From an Open Field

3:00 a.m.

3:00 a.m. The very heart of the witching hour. The moment in the night when the veil is the thinnest.

3:00 a.m. November 6th, 2024

According to many, both on "X" (I don't like that name) and Instagram, I noticed something strange. Many folx, women in particular, were posting about their shared experience of waking up, panicked. Some in a cold sweat. Afraid and shook by some cosmic vibration.

I also woke up, in a haze of Hamm's on the couch. Although a haze, it was not a slow wake. A sudden, shocking wake. Eyes wide open but bloodshot. Confused but on alert. Defenseless but on defense. Like a wolf awakened by a distant noise.

3:00 a.m. on November 6th... Donald Trump was announced the winner of a presidential election.

There is politics, and there is whatever this is. Politics is never normal, but this was something completely different. When 45 was elected, there was a general fear but also a shrug. "We'll see. Maybe he actually takes this seriously. I'm not helping him but I'm rooting for him." 2024 was completely different. I will have much more to say in the near future, but for now...

At 3:30 a.m. a large number of the population was awaken by an energy swelling in the universe. The feeling was not unfamiliar to me. It was similar to waking up on Friday, March 13 2020, the day the world shut down. When business' closed in preparation of the Gov's pandemic closings on March 16th (here in MN). It's the same feeling that I feel when there is distant thunder and my Dog lifts his head and looks at the window. My dog is deathly afraid of storms.

My wife got him before we met but he is a Puerto Rican rescue who lived on the street. Loud bangs awake him in a shaking terror. He trembles while I stroke his neck, just waiting for the next noise. And when it comes, he finds cover under the bed. I can not console him and every single storm worries me that his terrified heart will give out. He spends the night under the bed, and I stare at the slow strobe of lightening on my ceiling as I listen to his gentle vibratto of fear from beneath me. Powerless to comfort him.

This is a trauma response. He shakes because he has seen what those louds noises mean. He's lived a life where loud sounds come from some kind of meanness (he was afraid of me for a year straight because I was a man). I console him when I can to show him men of the meaner species can also hold love in their hearts. It doesn't work.

But at 3:30 a.m., a great number of Americans felt the shiver of trauma too. Mostly Women. We remember what it was like to have a leader who does not take the populace into consideration. We remember a global pandemic in which we were lied to. We remember being verbally beaten by the leader of the free world for 4 years. While we cowered, social media leaders agreed and BARELY protected us. Since Nov. 5th we have now seen them stand beside the perpetrator.

We shake. We tremble. We look for the meaner species that can that can hold love in their hearts, and in return, silence. We sit in darkness. There is a storm approaching. Like the fires of L.A. or the Hurricane's of the South have shown, no one is safe. There is static in the air. There is silence within the forests. We are not alone in our fright. The thunder is in the distance. We know this uncomfortable feeling. We tremble. But we cannot hide underneath the bed and shake.

Because we are the meaner species.

"Batten Down the Hatches" is an old sailing terms referring to nailing thin strips of wood to tarps covering the hatches to the hold below. Those of us who grew up in tornado prone areas know the feeling. Escaping to the basement in the green hue of clouds carrying fate. How does this end? Unknown. All we can do is burrow into the earth that we stand on, surrounded by shelter human hands built. And look after our loved ones.

Maybe the storm will turn south, but we know the power in the swirling clouds. Maybe we wont be hit, but someone will be decimated. There are only two things that we can choose to do. Prepare and Recover. So we must for four years. Together.