blood paper
They Say Blood is Thicker than Water
Those little clichés that have been ground into your skull; perhaps your preacher used one in a sermon to connect theology your everyday life; perhaps in elementary school your teacher made you write them five times over, perfecting your handwriting in print or cursive, every day a different one. Though most of us have forgotten those sermons or how to write perfectly, we still remember those little sayings: “home is where the heart is,” “beggars can’t be choosers,” “don’t spit into the wind,” “where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” “cleanliness is next to godliness,” “blood is thicker than water.” We have all heard them, we have all repeated them, and yet do we all believe them? “Blood is thicker than water” is one witticism that I do not believe, for my experience proves otherwise. The most recent experience that is evident against this cliché has been the times around August 29, 2005 and September 24, 2005: the days when Katrina and Rita hit Louisiana. Especially when it comes to hurricanes, water is stronger and thicker.
A friend in need’s a friend indeed,
A friend with weed is better.
A friend with breasts and all the rest,
A friend who’s dressed in leather.
A friend in need’s a friend indeed,
A friend who’ll tease is better.
Our thoughts compressed
Which makes us blessed,
And makes for stormy weather.
Perhaps a week before Rita I had a fight with my stepmother. It wasn’t really a fight, more of a materialization of too long repressed silent tensions, an unhappy polarizing clash of what each of us believes. I have worked hard most of my life to get out of this area. She has lived her life remaining here to stay near her family. Eventually every argument becomes a battle of two manifestations of deeply personal beliefs. She defends all that is Louisiana: the strong sense of history and heritage, the almighty home, and the omnipotent family, forever and ever Amen. I take up the opposing view: I grew up seeing issues (gay rights, environmental preservation) and life (spiritually becoming aware that I am not a Christian, politically becoming liberal, and physically--being pro-choice.) Having never felt “at home” in this area nor truly accepted by my family, I feel no loyalty to it. Now I have experienced different places (New Orleans and the aptly named Philadelphia) that have felt more like “home” in their sharing of my beliefs. I have been with other people who have supported me more mentally and emotionally than my “father” or “brother” ever have, particularly four friends I met while living in New Orleans (Cora, Jeff, Sarah, and Justin.) The argument is always at a stand still, with me raging against all of the things to which she clings.
Cool blue reason empties on the page.
Your colleagues are in prison and your enemies enraged.
Cool blue reason comes into your world
There’s two more dead in Texas and it’s probably your girls.
Cool blue reason wraps around your throat
The minutes change like seasons
Only eight more hours to go.
...omission...
Declare this an emergency
Come on and spread a sense of urgency
And pull us through,
And pull us through,
And this is the end,
This is the end of the world.
Thursday morning I woke up and groggily walked downstairs to get breakfast and saw my father. We were going to evacuate and we were leaving at 11 am to pick up my step-grandparents then head north. It was 8:30 am. I ate my morning bagel and took a long shower. I packed one duffle bag of clothing, my mp3 player loaded with four hours of music, a few books to read and study, a sleeping bag, and covered my computer with a waterproof trash bag incase the windows broke. My main possession I was going to bring was my late mother’s guitar. My father said it was too big and I couldn’t bring it. Thus I angrily tossed my bag into his SUV, which was now stuffed with his and his wife’s things. We left at 11:30.
The traffic on the highways that we crossed was incredible. I had never seen so many cars on such quiet highways-all heading one way. We heard on the radio that our parish, Calcasieu, was under mandatory evacuation as of noon that day. We arrived to the quaint but nice home of my step-grandparents. As my father looked at a map to select which of the three highways we should try to get on, I wrote down on a napkin which parishes were being evacuated to try to hypothesize which paths would have the most traffic. All of the parishes surrounding us were under mandatory evacuation. I think I remember a total of six mandatory evacuations and twelve voluntary evacuations being in place in Louisiana parishes.
Ooh, get me away from here I’m dying,
Play me a song to set me free.
Nobody writes them like they used to
So it might as well be me.
Then the car ride began, and I realized quickly that I didn’t have any headphones for my mp3 player. So it goes. I had no choice then to listen to my step-grandmother and step-mom talk. I joined in from time to time, but mostly just stared vacantly out the window. Though at one point they did start chattering about Katrina and how New Orleans became chaotic after the storm. They attacked the African Americans who lived there and were stealing. I defended the New Orleaners, having lived there and friends who lived in poorer parts of the town. We debated, and I finally ended the conversation with, “let’s just drop this before I get angry.”
If God controls the land and disease,
Keeps a watchful eye on me,
If he’s really so damn high and mighty,
My problem is I can’t see
Well who would wanna be
Who would wanna be such a control freak?
The next day we arrived in Fayetteville, home of my stepsister, Shannon, her husband, Steve, and their two children, Hannah who was five years old and Marshall who was two. Steve is a preacher in a strict Baptist church; they pray before every meal and do not allow their children to watch television. Marshall was ever fascinated with my red phoenix tattoo near my collarbone, possible the first tattoo he had ever seen and the only one he will see for a decade. Hannah asked me about my eyebrow ring, wondering how the two metal balls stayed in place on my forehead. About twenty minutes, after she had talked to her dad a bit, she laughingly told me that it looked stupid. I reflected to myself, “Come back and talk to me whenever you can form your own opinions.” A few nights later, Shannon had a recipe for “New Orleans Grilled Shrimp” that required a can of beer to marinate the shrimp. They asked my father to go out and buy it, since if they were seen buying a can of beer Steve might be fired from his job. I will never understand how the Christianity dictates acceptance and love of all people and the lifestyles of Christians are exactly the opposite: exclusionary and contemptible.
(Out in a hurricane,) All these miles of water
(Out in a hurricane) All these miles of water
(Out in a hurricane) All these miles of water
One evening, Hannah was with Mrs. Roxane (my stepmother) and I outside our hotel. The curvature of clouds was unusual, and then I remarked that it was the north arm of Rita. Hannah became a little frightening thinking that the storm that had cause all of us to evacuate was heading towards her and her family with all the strength it once had. We soothed her and told her it probably would only sprinkle here. Though at this time, the southern part of Rita was still over Sulphur. The hurricane was now covering several states; it is odd how it brought us together physically, but I remained emotional separate from all of them.
I will
Lay me down
In a bunker
Underground.
I won’t let this happen to my children.
Meet the real world coming out of your shell.
With white elephants
Sitting ducks
I will
Rise up.
The last night we spent in Fayetteville, I enjoyed the spa and sauna at the hotel. I spent forty minutes in the spa by myself, emptying my mind of my frustrations with my family, listening to Placebo and the Postal Service. Then ventured into the dry sauna and became very nostalgic for my days at UNO where my best friend and I would go to the sauna for half hour periods and sit and talk and let everything go. I missed the unconditional acceptance that everyone in New Orleans had. The only unforgivable action was disloyalty, and most people I knew were too busy with surviving to cause drama.
The hurricane had passed and my father decided to try to head back south, even though our parish was still not open for residents. We drove to Mrs. Roxane’s brother’s house in Youngsville, a small suburb of Lafayette. Lafayette was always a landmark for me during my long and frequent trips between New Orleans and Sulphur; it’s a little less than half-way, and is the last town before the twenty mile long Atchafalaya River Basin Bridge, which is infamous for having emergency phones every two miles that are in a constant state of disrepair and brokenness.
While poison ink spews from a speechwriter's pen,
He knows that he doesn't have to say it,
So it don't bother him.
“Honesty" "Accuracy" are really just "Popular Opinion."
And the approval rating is high,
So someone is going to die.
ABC, NBC, CBS: Bullshit. They give us fact or fiction?
I guess an even split.
And each new act of war is tonight's entertainment.
We are still the pawns in their game.
As they take an eye for an eye until no one can see,
We must stumble blindly forward, repeating history.
Well, I guess that we all fit into your slogan
On the fast food marquee:
Red blooded, White skinned oh and the Blues.
They were small town folks. The daughter, Kay, gave up her bedroom to our grandparents, my mother and father slept in the guest room, and Kay and I slept in the central living room. I slept on the couch, she on an airbed. The second night, we all sat down to dinner and the conversation turned to post-Katrina New Orleans again. The men were the leaders of the attack this time, my step-grandfather and his son, using the N-word to describe the people left after the storm who were rioting. A remark was made about them shooting the med-evac helicopters, and I rebutted with a statement saying that the press had that day taken back their claims that there were ever shots fired at helicopters, since no evidence ever emerged. My point was brushed aside. According to my family, all those people were N’s and would always be N’s and the news did report that day that shots had been fired. So it was and so be it. In general, I do not mind profanity. I will not flinch when someone says “cunt” or “bitch,” and I have occasionally let a “fuck” pass through my lips, but I do not sit still for the N word, it is a word with racial and violent connotations and absolutely is extremely disrespectful in all company. In this case, I could not gracefully take up the other side of the discussion (for it was less of a discussion than a bashing period) for my host was the one leading it, and to do so would be ungratefully causing discord and would border on insulting the person with whom I was taking refuge. Thus I started eating quicker and quicker in a hurry to excuse myself from the table. I did not finish before the conversation had progressed to a joke that one of the men stated, “[he] was glad that [the government] had gotten those three cruise ships to take up the N*****s, we had gotten them back on the boats, and now all we needed to do was to send them back to Africa.” I finished my last bite as they finished laughing, took a large gulp of my drink, then excused myself and went on a walk. I called Sarah and fiercely told her what had happened. At this point I started debating going to a shelter to stay, I could not morally stay with these people.
I sit and watch T. V. I see only me,
though I look for you there.
Oh, where have you gone?
Were you canceled? I change to channel 2.
You were the one who gave me all my answers.
I changed, so did you.
I'm the lucky one. I watch a re-run. It looks a lot like you.
One star lost a family. One family lost a star.
That's why I wait and watch to find out where you are.
One family lost a star. One star, they lost their family.
That's why I sit at home alone and Watch T. V.
I can watch forever, I can watch for hours
It just get better, it gives me power
I can watch for hours, I can watch forever
It gives me pleasure, it makes me better
I'm the lucky one.
Always having fun.
The days following, I spent most of my time watching their satellite television or reading the Bukowski poetry books I had checked out from the library a few days before the storm. There was nothing to do without a car, so I spent most of the day worrying about when McNeese was going to reopen, if it was going to at all. I was constantly debating purchasing a plane ticket to Philadelphia to stay with Sarah; she had looked up departure times and prices for me on the Internet. The one problem was that I had no way to independently get to an airport, and my father would not permit me to leave. In the end, I would have gone, if I did not hear on the news that McNeese was going to finish the semester.
We only stayed there a week, but it seemed to be an eternity of hell. Three days before we left the Calcasieu parish officials opened the parish on a “look and leave” phase. My parents went home and cleaned out our refrigerators, and they brought me back some more clothes to wear and books to read. The next day the power came on in our house, and the following day they brought me “home.”
Take your head around the world,
See what you get from your mind.
Write your soul down word for word,
See who’s your friend, who is kind.
It’s almost like a disease,
I know soon you will be over the lies,
You’ll be strong, you’ll be rich in love and you will carry on,
But no, no you won’t be mine.
As I returned to Sulphur and viewed the wreckage, the mental and personal effects of the hurricanes became clear: Katrina had literally broken my home: Sarah and Justin were now separated in two different cities, all of the familiar places and refuges there were destroyed. Sarah had email me a picture of the Ferrara’s grocery where we used shop, it was so flooded that only top of the sign, which sat upon the roof, was visible.
...omission...
Katrina had taken away my hope of last resort while in Sulphur: I knew I could always get to New Orleans if I needed. Now, there was no New Orleans.
Rita, on the other hand, as it would come to pass, took away all of my comforts and footholds of sanity that I had found while growing up here. The gas station store, where I would buy “Icee”s whenever I (as an elementary school student) saved up enough leftover lunch money, was folded in half. The greyhound buses that I would take to New Orleans on occasion that I did not have a car were now strewn across region, having carried residents who did not have a reliable car to escape the area. During my senior year of high school, I spent a great deal of time loitering an abandoned building, either sleeping there or simply escaping my house. Two weeks after returning from Rita, it was torn down, having sustained too much damage during the storm to ever be gutted and reused. The front wall of my favorite café, Shaky Ground, where I met with my friends when I was in high school and visited on breaks, was nothing but a rubbish pile of bricks; you could see all the way into the back wall of the building. During the daylight, my friends and I would also go to the lakefront near the old downtown, but now after the hurricanes, it was no longer safe. The first time I was there a Mississippian Katrina evacuee hit me on me, and the second time I was hit on by a Yankee government-hired bus driver who was a big guy and old enough to be my father. And so, the hurricanes had taken away the lake from me.
Change everything you are
And everything you were
Your number has been called
Fights and battles have begun
Revenge will surely come
Your hard times are ahead
Best, you've got to be the best
You've got to change the world
And use this chance to be heard
Your time is now.
Many people, after experiencing the trauma of a natural disaster feel a sort of cohesiveness with their community. I only felt more alienated and alone from the people to whom I was physically close and my immediate family. I felt closer to my friends, Sarah and Justin who I consider my true family. Natural disasters bring out the best and the worst in people, and I have seen the best of my family, and, hopefully, the worst of my relatives. They say “blood is thicker than water” and it may physically be, but water is stronger by far. If you think otherwise, you have never what a cat 5 that releases the same amount of energy as one hundred nuclear bombs every three minutes.
Those little clichés that have been ground into your skull; perhaps your preacher used one in a sermon to connect theology your everyday life; perhaps in elementary school your teacher made you write them five times over, perfecting your handwriting in print or cursive, every day a different one. Though most of us have forgotten those sermons or how to write perfectly, we still remember those little sayings: “home is where the heart is,” “beggars can’t be choosers,” “don’t spit into the wind,” “where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” “cleanliness is next to godliness,” “blood is thicker than water.” We have all heard them, we have all repeated them, and yet do we all believe them? “Blood is thicker than water” is one witticism that I do not believe, for my experience proves otherwise. The most recent experience that is evident against this cliché has been the times around August 29, 2005 and September 24, 2005: the days when Katrina and Rita hit Louisiana. Especially when it comes to hurricanes, water is stronger and thicker.
A friend in need’s a friend indeed,
A friend with weed is better.
A friend with breasts and all the rest,
A friend who’s dressed in leather.
A friend in need’s a friend indeed,
A friend who’ll tease is better.
Our thoughts compressed
Which makes us blessed,
And makes for stormy weather.
Perhaps a week before Rita I had a fight with my stepmother. It wasn’t really a fight, more of a materialization of too long repressed silent tensions, an unhappy polarizing clash of what each of us believes. I have worked hard most of my life to get out of this area. She has lived her life remaining here to stay near her family. Eventually every argument becomes a battle of two manifestations of deeply personal beliefs. She defends all that is Louisiana: the strong sense of history and heritage, the almighty home, and the omnipotent family, forever and ever Amen. I take up the opposing view: I grew up seeing issues (gay rights, environmental preservation) and life (spiritually becoming aware that I am not a Christian, politically becoming liberal, and physically--being pro-choice.) Having never felt “at home” in this area nor truly accepted by my family, I feel no loyalty to it. Now I have experienced different places (New Orleans and the aptly named Philadelphia) that have felt more like “home” in their sharing of my beliefs. I have been with other people who have supported me more mentally and emotionally than my “father” or “brother” ever have, particularly four friends I met while living in New Orleans (Cora, Jeff, Sarah, and Justin.) The argument is always at a stand still, with me raging against all of the things to which she clings.
Cool blue reason empties on the page.
Your colleagues are in prison and your enemies enraged.
Cool blue reason comes into your world
There’s two more dead in Texas and it’s probably your girls.
Cool blue reason wraps around your throat
The minutes change like seasons
Only eight more hours to go.
...omission...
Declare this an emergency
Come on and spread a sense of urgency
And pull us through,
And pull us through,
And this is the end,
This is the end of the world.
Thursday morning I woke up and groggily walked downstairs to get breakfast and saw my father. We were going to evacuate and we were leaving at 11 am to pick up my step-grandparents then head north. It was 8:30 am. I ate my morning bagel and took a long shower. I packed one duffle bag of clothing, my mp3 player loaded with four hours of music, a few books to read and study, a sleeping bag, and covered my computer with a waterproof trash bag incase the windows broke. My main possession I was going to bring was my late mother’s guitar. My father said it was too big and I couldn’t bring it. Thus I angrily tossed my bag into his SUV, which was now stuffed with his and his wife’s things. We left at 11:30.
The traffic on the highways that we crossed was incredible. I had never seen so many cars on such quiet highways-all heading one way. We heard on the radio that our parish, Calcasieu, was under mandatory evacuation as of noon that day. We arrived to the quaint but nice home of my step-grandparents. As my father looked at a map to select which of the three highways we should try to get on, I wrote down on a napkin which parishes were being evacuated to try to hypothesize which paths would have the most traffic. All of the parishes surrounding us were under mandatory evacuation. I think I remember a total of six mandatory evacuations and twelve voluntary evacuations being in place in Louisiana parishes.
Ooh, get me away from here I’m dying,
Play me a song to set me free.
Nobody writes them like they used to
So it might as well be me.
Then the car ride began, and I realized quickly that I didn’t have any headphones for my mp3 player. So it goes. I had no choice then to listen to my step-grandmother and step-mom talk. I joined in from time to time, but mostly just stared vacantly out the window. Though at one point they did start chattering about Katrina and how New Orleans became chaotic after the storm. They attacked the African Americans who lived there and were stealing. I defended the New Orleaners, having lived there and friends who lived in poorer parts of the town. We debated, and I finally ended the conversation with, “let’s just drop this before I get angry.”
If God controls the land and disease,
Keeps a watchful eye on me,
If he’s really so damn high and mighty,
My problem is I can’t see
Well who would wanna be
Who would wanna be such a control freak?
The next day we arrived in Fayetteville, home of my stepsister, Shannon, her husband, Steve, and their two children, Hannah who was five years old and Marshall who was two. Steve is a preacher in a strict Baptist church; they pray before every meal and do not allow their children to watch television. Marshall was ever fascinated with my red phoenix tattoo near my collarbone, possible the first tattoo he had ever seen and the only one he will see for a decade. Hannah asked me about my eyebrow ring, wondering how the two metal balls stayed in place on my forehead. About twenty minutes, after she had talked to her dad a bit, she laughingly told me that it looked stupid. I reflected to myself, “Come back and talk to me whenever you can form your own opinions.” A few nights later, Shannon had a recipe for “New Orleans Grilled Shrimp” that required a can of beer to marinate the shrimp. They asked my father to go out and buy it, since if they were seen buying a can of beer Steve might be fired from his job. I will never understand how the Christianity dictates acceptance and love of all people and the lifestyles of Christians are exactly the opposite: exclusionary and contemptible.
(Out in a hurricane,) All these miles of water
(Out in a hurricane) All these miles of water
(Out in a hurricane) All these miles of water
One evening, Hannah was with Mrs. Roxane (my stepmother) and I outside our hotel. The curvature of clouds was unusual, and then I remarked that it was the north arm of Rita. Hannah became a little frightening thinking that the storm that had cause all of us to evacuate was heading towards her and her family with all the strength it once had. We soothed her and told her it probably would only sprinkle here. Though at this time, the southern part of Rita was still over Sulphur. The hurricane was now covering several states; it is odd how it brought us together physically, but I remained emotional separate from all of them.
I will
Lay me down
In a bunker
Underground.
I won’t let this happen to my children.
Meet the real world coming out of your shell.
With white elephants
Sitting ducks
I will
Rise up.
The last night we spent in Fayetteville, I enjoyed the spa and sauna at the hotel. I spent forty minutes in the spa by myself, emptying my mind of my frustrations with my family, listening to Placebo and the Postal Service. Then ventured into the dry sauna and became very nostalgic for my days at UNO where my best friend and I would go to the sauna for half hour periods and sit and talk and let everything go. I missed the unconditional acceptance that everyone in New Orleans had. The only unforgivable action was disloyalty, and most people I knew were too busy with surviving to cause drama.
The hurricane had passed and my father decided to try to head back south, even though our parish was still not open for residents. We drove to Mrs. Roxane’s brother’s house in Youngsville, a small suburb of Lafayette. Lafayette was always a landmark for me during my long and frequent trips between New Orleans and Sulphur; it’s a little less than half-way, and is the last town before the twenty mile long Atchafalaya River Basin Bridge, which is infamous for having emergency phones every two miles that are in a constant state of disrepair and brokenness.
While poison ink spews from a speechwriter's pen,
He knows that he doesn't have to say it,
So it don't bother him.
“Honesty" "Accuracy" are really just "Popular Opinion."
And the approval rating is high,
So someone is going to die.
ABC, NBC, CBS: Bullshit. They give us fact or fiction?
I guess an even split.
And each new act of war is tonight's entertainment.
We are still the pawns in their game.
As they take an eye for an eye until no one can see,
We must stumble blindly forward, repeating history.
Well, I guess that we all fit into your slogan
On the fast food marquee:
Red blooded, White skinned oh and the Blues.
They were small town folks. The daughter, Kay, gave up her bedroom to our grandparents, my mother and father slept in the guest room, and Kay and I slept in the central living room. I slept on the couch, she on an airbed. The second night, we all sat down to dinner and the conversation turned to post-Katrina New Orleans again. The men were the leaders of the attack this time, my step-grandfather and his son, using the N-word to describe the people left after the storm who were rioting. A remark was made about them shooting the med-evac helicopters, and I rebutted with a statement saying that the press had that day taken back their claims that there were ever shots fired at helicopters, since no evidence ever emerged. My point was brushed aside. According to my family, all those people were N’s and would always be N’s and the news did report that day that shots had been fired. So it was and so be it. In general, I do not mind profanity. I will not flinch when someone says “cunt” or “bitch,” and I have occasionally let a “fuck” pass through my lips, but I do not sit still for the N word, it is a word with racial and violent connotations and absolutely is extremely disrespectful in all company. In this case, I could not gracefully take up the other side of the discussion (for it was less of a discussion than a bashing period) for my host was the one leading it, and to do so would be ungratefully causing discord and would border on insulting the person with whom I was taking refuge. Thus I started eating quicker and quicker in a hurry to excuse myself from the table. I did not finish before the conversation had progressed to a joke that one of the men stated, “[he] was glad that [the government] had gotten those three cruise ships to take up the N*****s, we had gotten them back on the boats, and now all we needed to do was to send them back to Africa.” I finished my last bite as they finished laughing, took a large gulp of my drink, then excused myself and went on a walk. I called Sarah and fiercely told her what had happened. At this point I started debating going to a shelter to stay, I could not morally stay with these people.
I sit and watch T. V. I see only me,
though I look for you there.
Oh, where have you gone?
Were you canceled? I change to channel 2.
You were the one who gave me all my answers.
I changed, so did you.
I'm the lucky one. I watch a re-run. It looks a lot like you.
One star lost a family. One family lost a star.
That's why I wait and watch to find out where you are.
One family lost a star. One star, they lost their family.
That's why I sit at home alone and Watch T. V.
I can watch forever, I can watch for hours
It just get better, it gives me power
I can watch for hours, I can watch forever
It gives me pleasure, it makes me better
I'm the lucky one.
Always having fun.
The days following, I spent most of my time watching their satellite television or reading the Bukowski poetry books I had checked out from the library a few days before the storm. There was nothing to do without a car, so I spent most of the day worrying about when McNeese was going to reopen, if it was going to at all. I was constantly debating purchasing a plane ticket to Philadelphia to stay with Sarah; she had looked up departure times and prices for me on the Internet. The one problem was that I had no way to independently get to an airport, and my father would not permit me to leave. In the end, I would have gone, if I did not hear on the news that McNeese was going to finish the semester.
We only stayed there a week, but it seemed to be an eternity of hell. Three days before we left the Calcasieu parish officials opened the parish on a “look and leave” phase. My parents went home and cleaned out our refrigerators, and they brought me back some more clothes to wear and books to read. The next day the power came on in our house, and the following day they brought me “home.”
Take your head around the world,
See what you get from your mind.
Write your soul down word for word,
See who’s your friend, who is kind.
It’s almost like a disease,
I know soon you will be over the lies,
You’ll be strong, you’ll be rich in love and you will carry on,
But no, no you won’t be mine.
As I returned to Sulphur and viewed the wreckage, the mental and personal effects of the hurricanes became clear: Katrina had literally broken my home: Sarah and Justin were now separated in two different cities, all of the familiar places and refuges there were destroyed. Sarah had email me a picture of the Ferrara’s grocery where we used shop, it was so flooded that only top of the sign, which sat upon the roof, was visible.
...omission...
Katrina had taken away my hope of last resort while in Sulphur: I knew I could always get to New Orleans if I needed. Now, there was no New Orleans.
Rita, on the other hand, as it would come to pass, took away all of my comforts and footholds of sanity that I had found while growing up here. The gas station store, where I would buy “Icee”s whenever I (as an elementary school student) saved up enough leftover lunch money, was folded in half. The greyhound buses that I would take to New Orleans on occasion that I did not have a car were now strewn across region, having carried residents who did not have a reliable car to escape the area. During my senior year of high school, I spent a great deal of time loitering an abandoned building, either sleeping there or simply escaping my house. Two weeks after returning from Rita, it was torn down, having sustained too much damage during the storm to ever be gutted and reused. The front wall of my favorite café, Shaky Ground, where I met with my friends when I was in high school and visited on breaks, was nothing but a rubbish pile of bricks; you could see all the way into the back wall of the building. During the daylight, my friends and I would also go to the lakefront near the old downtown, but now after the hurricanes, it was no longer safe. The first time I was there a Mississippian Katrina evacuee hit me on me, and the second time I was hit on by a Yankee government-hired bus driver who was a big guy and old enough to be my father. And so, the hurricanes had taken away the lake from me.
Change everything you are
And everything you were
Your number has been called
Fights and battles have begun
Revenge will surely come
Your hard times are ahead
Best, you've got to be the best
You've got to change the world
And use this chance to be heard
Your time is now.
Many people, after experiencing the trauma of a natural disaster feel a sort of cohesiveness with their community. I only felt more alienated and alone from the people to whom I was physically close and my immediate family. I felt closer to my friends, Sarah and Justin who I consider my true family. Natural disasters bring out the best and the worst in people, and I have seen the best of my family, and, hopefully, the worst of my relatives. They say “blood is thicker than water” and it may physically be, but water is stronger by far. If you think otherwise, you have never what a cat 5 that releases the same amount of energy as one hundred nuclear bombs every three minutes.