December 30, 2005

• Fuckin’ A………..

  
  

  

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

  Serioiusly, a tropical storm forming on December 30th?!?  If I were the bunker-building supply-stocking type, this would be my getting busy time.  I want a bunker like Christoper Walken built in “Blast from the Past”.  That shit rocked!  Except for the hot Dr. Pepper.  I digress.  This storm is just now forming a full month after the official hurricane season was supposed to have ended.  WTF?  This cycle of super storms is forcasted to last the next decade, but perhaps the next 50 years. 

  
  

  This gets me all twisted up inside, because although I can’t wait to finish up school and get the heck out of dodge, I’ll always have some sort of ties here.  I always thought they would just be familial, but after Katrina, I’ve come to realize that perhaps I have some sort of emotional connection to this place. 

  
  

  I was (luckily) put on anti-anxiety medication shortly before the hurricane, so I was more than able to handle the tragedy when it occured.  I sat on my friend’s couch in Natchitoches and watched the nightmare unfold day after day in the adjustment phase of the medication–a total zombie.  Of course, we started each day with a trip to the drive-thru daiquiri store, because that’s how we do, so that might have contributed to my easy acceptance of the situation. 

  
  

  Anyway, my first big breakdown came about a week and a half after the storm when I visited Our Lady of Lourdes church in Slidell.  This was the church my family attended while I was growing up.  I say was, because it is totally gone, along with most of that area of Slidell.  The water mark was four feet up the door, which is already several feet off the ground.  The roof collapsed.  Beams were scattered across the parking lot, burried under debris and scum left behind by the evaporated flood waters.  There were skeletons of the fish that had been brought in from lake Pontchartrain and possibly the gulf.  You could look through the remains of the walls and see straight across to some of the newer buildings that survived the storm.  I broke into heaving sobs in the parking lot and cried for about twenty minutes.  It felt so good.

  
  

  Now when I drive through the city, I have so many demons fighting inside of me.  One just wants to leave and take my family with me to avoid having to face any of this again.  Another is raging: “After all of the damning pictures of the deplorable post-Katrina conditions in the city, why is it taking so damn long for assistance to get here?!?”  There have been so many milestones acheived, yet so much is still in shambles.  The idealist demon (does that even work?) can’t wait to see what happens in 5, 10, 15 years with all these plans being developed for the city – if we can ever get the money we’ve been promised without some fuck-up in Washington trying to tack-on some amendment to the bill to allow his company to rape the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge for oil.  Yet another bastard demon knows that no matter how much funding comes in, it probably won’t go where it needs to go, because that’s just how things get done here.  See the recent tax sale in Kenner for an example of good ole Louisiana politics/economics in action.  And lastly, there is the absolutely hearbroken demon, who cried unabashedly when I heard Randy Newman’s “1927″.

  
  

  The point of all of this is that I don’t understand how I can be emotionally attached to bricks, mortar, and dirt.  So maybe I’m not.  Maybe there really is something different about the way of life here.  Maybe it isn’t all just a tourism campaign.  And maybe I like some of it.  Not the politics, of course. 

  • 4:22 pm
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