06.18.03 - 5:54 p.m.

the weather is horrible, these days. it's relentlessly, oppressively gray. usually i like a cloudy sky, variegated like a quilt made out of scraps of worn-out cloth, darker here, lighter there. only when the air is cooler, or at least less humid than it is and has been for the last two weeks.

we haven't seen the sun in weeks, and the ground is absolutely saturated. every night there's a flood somewhere: flash flooding from the sudden heavy thunderstorms that whirl up and dump an inch or three of rain in an hour. twice in the last week, charleston flooded - the hollers that line the kanawha valley. monday, it was huntingon too. we have urban flooding like they don't in charleston - five or six streets cannot handle heavy rains, and the water rises and floats the cars parked there. if not for the flood wall, we might have to worry about the ohio. as it is, people across the river do have to worry about the ohio.

i've not known the kanawha to flood except where it meets the ohio, and a few places along the route 35. usually, that flooding is flash flooding from creeks, or creeks that get backed up. there are dams on both the gauley and the new that help control the kanawha's levels, so the river itself never floods charleston.

because everyone doesn't get flooded out, it doesn't seem so catastrophic as other natural disasters, but i think flooding must be the worst of all possible disasters: if your belongings survive a tornado or a fire or an earthquake, you don't need to worry about them being contaminated, and usually normal home owners insurance covers those disasters. if you want insurance coverage for flood damage, you have to buy flood insurance from the federal government. it's such a losing proposition that no private insurance company offers flood coverage.

and of course, if you've been flooded once, you will be flooded again and again. every time the rain overwhelms the creeks, you'll be flooded. as we don't have much flat land except for the land along creeks and rivers, well... recipe for disaster.

still, i don't obsess about floods like i obsess about other things. i've never had to deal with one personally, and i'm still fascinated by the way water transforms things that are otherwise familiar. the city used to put up an exhibit of photographs from the 1937 flood on the plaza across from the library every summer, and i loved looking at them. in my building, there's a little plaque - about nose level on me - that shows the high point of the 1937 flood. sometimes i even go down to the riverfront park if the gates in the floodwall aren't closed yet, and watch the river when it's high and muddy.

i suppose it's a good thing that i don't obsess about floods like i do other potential disasters, personal or public. if so, i'd be doing it constantly now. when i walk down the street, i've a tendency to look at the storm drain and wonder what would happen if i, say, fell and got my leg stuck or dropped my keys down there. then i think about it - obsessively, watch my hands and feet, and likely make it more likely that something awful would happen.

i've been watching the news the last two days because i was hoping to see a story, i guess, about this thing i saw yesterday, when someone jumped off one of the high floors on the prichard building and died. this morning, i overheard a conversation on the bus in which one person claimed that the guy had been sleeping on the roof and maybe rolled off? except he was standing on the edge of a ledge, it didn't look like the roof to me.

they still had police tape up this afternoon as i went home. someone else said that he was seventeen, and that he looked like he changed his mind at the last minute, grabbed for a cable. i don't remember that. there was this little crowd, and police on the corner when i came out of the bank - half a block away - and i looked up and, blah. how awful. how much worse to be the person sitting in the window, trying to talk your friend, or son, or brother back in. the fear and panic, then the fall, and the impact and the bounce and he was there, and then gone.

he'd been there for a little while. there were a group of onlookers, the police and the fire department. i went back to work, but i didn't get much done. when i was going home, the body was gone and the police were gathering up their evidence markers. it didn't even make the 11:00 p.m. news.