Been focused on the storm...

and went to a reenactment yesterday (something scheduled a year in advance and that I didn't feel right not going to, although it wasn't the most pleasant trip - I have sprained my knee and was having one of those days where if I picked something up, four things would jump off the shelf.)

Someone stole about a sixth of a cord of wood out of our woodpile while we were gone. Hubby suspects son's friends.

I found out that the son of one of my girl friends who passed away years ago made it out of the storm area. I think the house he was raised in (and is still in the family, I see, from the phone number there, so maybe he lived in it) was under water.

The only non-family person outside of one friend who emails me regularly that I have confirmed made it out alive. But that's the nature of the disaster, it's hard to know who made it for a while. I suspect more names will pop up.

O waters lapping at most of my life's memories,
thou art accursed,
evil,
swirling away my hopes for tomorrow,
my dreams,
the lives and dreams of so many.
Can there be enough tears
to curse these winds,
these rains?
The broken roads,
the smashed buildings,
the bodies found in rubble,
in trees,
in attics
speak out my curse,
my anguish,
my loss.
My loss,
their loss,
your loss,
wrapped up in wet, splintered wood,
broken trees
and flames upon the waters.
La Belle Nouvelle Orleans
Je t'aime toujours,
Je pleurerai toujours la pensée à vous.

I am watching and reading the news, dumbfounded.

I lived in that city almost 30 years. I have been down Highway 90 well into Florida, and know what those ocean front cities are supposed to look like, the light, wonderful in the summer, the smell of the water, the feel of the sand.

O, my heart aches. I see places I lived under water. Places I walked to or along or shopped at shattered.

O my city, my home, where my heart has been in the 12 years of my wanderings away. I remember still the first time I rode into town, and remember why and how I left.

Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans? O God, yes.

I don't know what I will do yet, but I have to do something.

Like a knife,
the lacuna came,
storm driven,
the gap,
the missing place.
Where is the roof of that building?
Where is the tree that stood here?
Where is the wife, pulled away by the water?

Windblown and wave washed,
a lacuna of the heart and memory,
written in disaster.

Stayed up all night watching the storm news...

Hurricane Katrina, that is. I lived in New Orleans for 28 years, and it's still home. Slept 2 hours cause I had to have a nap.

Storm's not over yet.

Caught teenager smoking on the back porch last night. I could wring his neck.

But, on a good note, today I reached 202. That makes it an even 50 lbs. When I lose another 14 lbs. I will be halfway to my weight goal. Another 3 pounds, and I will be below 200, and that will be a day I buy myself some new clothes to celebrate!