7/4/20: On Lilapsophobia

7/4/20: On Lilapsophobia

A few days ago, I learned the term "extinction burst." For one thing, it's now on my list of Potential Album Titles Referencing Terminology Used To Describe Grand Dyings, which is a longer list than you might think, especially for someone who doesn't have a band. It's up there with phrases like "Lazarus taxon" and "high place phenomenon." A species turning up after being presumed extinct, the seemingly sourceless urge to jump when faced with a cliff edge. Things disappearing, but not fading. They go out wilder than that.

An extinction burst doesn't, in fact, have to do with the extinction of species at all. I learned it from a video on dog training. I should say I learned the phrase itself that way, because I've known about the concept for awhile, because I am my own bad dog. An extinction burst occurs when you're trying to break an animal of a bad habit and it gets worse before it gets better. At first it only seems to bark louder or pull harder at the leash, trying to use the only way it knows to get what it wants. The first step in training the begging or the braying out of a dog is to break it of the belief that there is no other way.

Today, I paced around the coffee table for twenty minutes and felt my insides stirring with every rumble of thunder. I wished I'd had pointed ears that I could lay back flat and a long tongue that quivered with hot, humid hyperventilation. I wished for a den. But what I did was leave foot-sweat on the living room hardwood and think how, if I heard the tornado sirens, I would have to walk straight and sound level when I faced my roommate to tell him that we should go to the underground laundry room.

I understand dogs better than people, and I'm no exception. I understand myself better as a dog than as a person, and a little dog at that--a Chihuahua or maybe some small terrier, something that shakes for no reason. It doesn't make sense to me that I always feel the urge to take the train north just to avoid an oncoming storm they've seen on the radar. (As I hope everyone knows, just about any form of transport is a death trap in a twister, and you're better off lying down in a ditch than trying to outrun one.) But I don't question it when I hear about pets bolting at the sound of fireworks. No one does. That's the thing about a dog hiding under the bed every Fourth of July until the end of its days. The fact that the noise has never actually hurt the dog will not teach it to fear less. As far as it's concerned, every time it's been worried about the boom, it's ultimately been safe. Worrying, then, is the only way.

The cold front's now just about passed, and there was no tornado. They haven't even issued a warning for the area today--certainly didn't during the couple hours I curled up on the floor of the tub with the Accuweather app and twenty nigh-empty shampoo bottles. Believe it or not, I'm getting better. As a kid, I'd start watching the Weather Channel for a couple hours daily beginning in March and memorize the weekly forecast from their Local on the 8's. That way, if they projected a severe weather event, I'd be able to start stockpiling throw pillows in the basement bathroom as soon as possible, should they be needed for head coverings--most fatal injuries in a tornado occur from flying or falling debris to the head, I internally recited over and over again. I'd also matter-of-factly let my parents know ahead of time to cancel any plans they had for going outside at any point during that day. A supercell could spin up at any time in an unstable atmosphere, I'd inform. But they usually did not see fit to stay home from their jobs.

Now it's not such a process. Sometimes, these days, I can go all the way up until the day of a severe storm before the anxiety starts to make me nauseated. Then I'm happy to sit with my bicycle helmet snug at my side, waiting to bolt into the innermost room of my dwelling.

Besides, I like the tub. We should've never stopped living in tight little dens. I like to curl up with my knees to my chest on the porcelain and wonder if they make ThunderShirts for people.

I refresh the radar map. Dread comes in rainbow blobs. If I'm watching for it, it can't get me, says something that's lived inside me since I knew how to feel fear. It's the same primitive something that used to tell me the shadow in my childhood closet wouldn't come to life if I stayed up all night to stare it down. I worry the way some people pray. There's ritual to it, repeated refrains and lines of thought. There's vigilance. Sometimes I feel like the people around me, Sinners in the Hands of a Mesocyclone, aren't sufficiently aware of the wrath coming their way, so I do their worrying for them, too, watch out for them. These days, I only believe in a Higher Being at my worst moments, and only one who wants retribution. Earlier, during a lull in the thunder, I ventured briefly from the tub in the notably windowless space and pulled out my eyelashes in front of the bathroom mirror with all the solemnity and intention of one saying a decade of the rosary.

Sometimes I train myself, though not as consistently as I should. When the nasty storms come, when I can bear it, sometimes I sit with my back to the windows. I don't even check the radar. I go about my business and ignore the sensation of a gnawing at my ribs, the pacing and panting of my heart behind the bars. I know, and have known for years, that a tiny percentage of storms are supercells, and of those that are, only some drop funnels at all, and of those that do, a small fraction are strong enough to do real damage. If I sit through enough of them like this and nothing happens, then I'll be desensitized to the onset of severe storms altogether. If you can train a hunting dog to not flinch at the sound of a gunshot, then I should at least be able to do this. Right now, though, it's getting worse before it gets better. Something bursting from me.

Some say the thing you fear in this life is the thing that killed you in the last, and "you had an epic death," a friend of mine once told me. I can't deny the romance in it. When an EF5 sweeps anchor-built homes off their foundations, never mind the people inside them, they're said to be taken "aloft," high into the sky. A grand dying indeed, to become weightless in the roaring air. I think anyone who pictures that believes, on some level, that those people taken aloft will never hit the ground again. They might, in fact, not, at least not all in one retrievable piece, since deaths tend to occur through impaling or dismemberment by other flying debris midair. Still, romantic. The Tri-State Tornado, the deadliest in US history, is so named because it went all the way from Missouri to Indiana but spent most of it's time crossing through Illinois to get there. As a young Illinoian child, I took this to mean that my state was cursed, and by extension, so was I. It happened nearly 40 years before Doppler radar was widely used to forecast the weather, nearly 50 before the Fujita scale was instated. Back in 1925, I don't know what one would have thought upon seeing a wall of cloud and wind a mile wide stripping the very soil from the ground on its way toward you, save that it was armageddon at last. The world erased before your eyes, and the outer wall of your house blown out so you can bear full witness. That's what I'd call an extinction burst.

I once knew a family with dogs that would fetch pillows for guests who came through the door. They used to bark instead, but instead of being trained to simply not make noise, they were trained to do something else. They couldn't, after all, bark with a pillow in their mouths, and they'd be less inclined to anyway, while they were focused on retrieving them. Everyone knows that, given nervous energy, it's much easier to channel it into something else than to try smothering it.

I love dogs better than people, myself included. I know there are no bad dogs. I've been learning to be a storm spotter. If you're registered as one, you can report weather phenomena to your local NOAA office, and those reports are spread through meteorology networks, improving the minute-by-minute forecasting. It's nice, learning just how to spot a wall cloud or report hail size. It's nice, specifically, watching for those things in order to do something rather than to torment myself. I can't not track the weather, I don't think. But I can watch it with purpose. I can hold the clouds nicely between my teeth.