remembering
2 years ago today.... hurricane katrina in new orleans. i have the oddest sensation today. i have no one/nothing to mourn. i didn't lose a loved one. we didn't even lose much stuff. we came out of it remarkably well. but i do feel like i kind of mourn today.
it seems sooo long ago. so much has happened in just 2 short years. it almost seems like another lifetime ago. but... i still remember how i felt this day 2 years ago. it was horrible, just horrible. and this wasn't even my home town or anything. i guess the worst for me was feeling totally and completely uprooted - no home, no money, no school and what felt like no future for a long while.
tetravus and i have relied a lot on our families over the last couple of years. we couldn't be luckier in that respect... that we have loving families who will support us if the world comes tumbling down. but we have paid the price too....many times and in many ways. we can't wait to be independent again.
in that vein, and barring another catastrophe, he and i are moving back to new orleans in january. this apparently terrifies my parents. although i can understand that hurricanes are worrying, at least you have plenty of advanced warning! it's not like earthquakes in california... but they seem intent to act like we're moving off to iraq or something... permanently. when the reality is that we plan to go for less than a couple of years and for the express purpose of me finishing my dissertation.
it is an odd place to go back to though. i was there a few weeks ago for a week to do research in the tulane library. arriving there i was enormously relieved to see that the area i used to live in (and will return to), hardly looks like anything major happened to it. but then i went for a ride to look at the city, and it is just the creepiest thing. there are whole new orleans neighborhoods that are just.... gone. you see criss-crossing paved roads and concrete pads which houses used to sit upon that are now overgrown with grass. Blocks and blocks of green. It is the eeriest thing you'd ever see. or there are blocks that are all grass except for 1 lonely house standing. and then there are neighborhoods where houses are totally gutted out like empty black shells, some all boarded up, streaked with mysterious and incomprehensible spray paint notations from rescuers and evacuators from 2 years ago. this goes on just house after house after house and then you come across a nice, normal-looking house that's been rebuilt as if the entire block it was on wasn't completely destroyed. i mean, that's either some serious dedication... or some serious stupidity, i don't know which. you drive through these depressing places for blocks and blocks and blocks, cross over a canal bridge, and suddenly it looks as if nothing ever happened and you've returned to civilization... as if you were just passing through a bad dream and you suddenly woke up. weird weird place.
Lord knows... i will always remember that day, that time.
it seems sooo long ago. so much has happened in just 2 short years. it almost seems like another lifetime ago. but... i still remember how i felt this day 2 years ago. it was horrible, just horrible. and this wasn't even my home town or anything. i guess the worst for me was feeling totally and completely uprooted - no home, no money, no school and what felt like no future for a long while.
tetravus and i have relied a lot on our families over the last couple of years. we couldn't be luckier in that respect... that we have loving families who will support us if the world comes tumbling down. but we have paid the price too....many times and in many ways. we can't wait to be independent again.
in that vein, and barring another catastrophe, he and i are moving back to new orleans in january. this apparently terrifies my parents. although i can understand that hurricanes are worrying, at least you have plenty of advanced warning! it's not like earthquakes in california... but they seem intent to act like we're moving off to iraq or something... permanently. when the reality is that we plan to go for less than a couple of years and for the express purpose of me finishing my dissertation.
it is an odd place to go back to though. i was there a few weeks ago for a week to do research in the tulane library. arriving there i was enormously relieved to see that the area i used to live in (and will return to), hardly looks like anything major happened to it. but then i went for a ride to look at the city, and it is just the creepiest thing. there are whole new orleans neighborhoods that are just.... gone. you see criss-crossing paved roads and concrete pads which houses used to sit upon that are now overgrown with grass. Blocks and blocks of green. It is the eeriest thing you'd ever see. or there are blocks that are all grass except for 1 lonely house standing. and then there are neighborhoods where houses are totally gutted out like empty black shells, some all boarded up, streaked with mysterious and incomprehensible spray paint notations from rescuers and evacuators from 2 years ago. this goes on just house after house after house and then you come across a nice, normal-looking house that's been rebuilt as if the entire block it was on wasn't completely destroyed. i mean, that's either some serious dedication... or some serious stupidity, i don't know which. you drive through these depressing places for blocks and blocks and blocks, cross over a canal bridge, and suddenly it looks as if nothing ever happened and you've returned to civilization... as if you were just passing through a bad dream and you suddenly woke up. weird weird place.
Lord knows... i will always remember that day, that time.