An Exploration of Land in Richmond, Virginia
📸: “[Thunderstorm],” Portsmouth Public Library (Portsmouth, Va.). Esther Murdaugh Wilson Memorial Room. n.d
The recent eclipse has made us turn to all things celestial in this exploration. April has been bringing a lot of showers & thunderstorms. If your Southern upbringing was anything like mine, or if you spent time with older people in your family from the South, then you know that thunderstorms meant silence.
My grandmother would turn off all of the electronics & the lights with every storm that rolled through until it was over. Thunderstorms demanded silence, stillness, & darkness. Even as an adult, I don’t turn off the lights, but I still take the time to slow down & get still during storms.
This memory & archival memory brings to mind the visceral thunderstorm that Janie & Teacake got caught in within Zora Neale Hurston’s book Their Eyes Were Watching God. Often within art from the South, you can trace symbolic meanings in the landscape or natural events that occur. Moreover, the natural events that occur can provide insight into the mirror moment of other ways of knowing. While the storm in the novel turns into a hurricane, the ritualistic reverence of silent darkness remains the same.
