Sight Unseen

I don't even know where to begin with the whole New Orleans disaster. The destruction created by the storm is, of course, tragic. But the destruction created by some of the people who remain is really just mind boggling. I can't help but wonder, what kind of person, when the worst has happened and the most vulnerable of our society are weakened even further, thinks that the right, no the natural, thing to do is to rape, loot and shoot? It. Astounds. Me.

That inexorable question aside, what can you even say about a city that's never going to be the same? The closest I've come to a hurricane is the tropical storm that blew through Honolulu in 2001. Quite freaky. I have no rational basis for feeling this way, but I am thoroughly wholly and completely terrified of Tsunamis. Growing up near the ocean, I never experienced any real threat of a tidal wave, nevertheless, the fear is there. That day, standing on Waikiki Beach, listening to the old air raid sirens stationed around Diamond Head droning that weird, wheeeaa wheeeaa wheeeaa overhead, I was scared shitless. I huddled in my little crackerbox apartment and prayed. But anyway, it turned out to be just . . . a storm. Trees blew over, but we handled it. Some missed work because the buses were delayed, some of the hotels lost a few of their Palms. But the city's still there. Nothing vanished. No one rioted. No one looted. No one fled.

I will donate to the United Way Hurricane Katrina Response Fund (among others Oxfam Red Cross). I'm not sure what else to do. It feels helpful to give money. But my meager dollars in the face of everything down there just feels insignificant. Also, it's hard to absorb the magnitude of what really happened, what's still happening, down there. Mostly because it feels so far away. So isolated. Listening to the voices, the screaming and those damn weird sound effects NPR insists upon embedding in their "on the scene" spots and it sounds like a disaster movie. This morning, the story was, of course and again, about Katrina. A woman was begging for assistance. Her tear filled plea, "Please, pleeeaase, send us some help. Please, someone help us, please!" had me in tears. And yet, I'm fine. It feels really jarring and discordant to leave work like I normally do and go home like I normally do, and watch TV like I normally do, despite the fact that so many people can't do that any more because their living rooms and their TV sets and their cars are under water, or ruined, or looted.

New Orleans was one of my mother's favorite cities. I imagine how she would have grieved while watching CNN; mourning all the loss of what was, for better and worse, a spectacular city, and the fact that her grandkids will never know the city in which she fell in love. That's the strangest, hardest part -- that New Orleans will never be the same. Not for a long time, anyway. T he buildings are slowly rotting, the toxic sludge that fills the streets eating away at whatever it surrounds. A lot of the buildings will have to be torn down, if they don't collapse on their own. Life as these people know it will not return for years, and maybe not even then. When the talking heads refer to the "near term," they're still talking at least three years out. It's mind-blowing. My husband mentioned last night that his biggest regret (he admitted it was a selfish thought - but aren't most?) was, "I never went there. I never saw it." And sadly, in a way he never will.