Escape from Grey Gardens

The outer bands are here. It would be nice to pretend it's just raining outside, but I can't. Gary is being strange. All day he would not listen to me about what, where, when, so I kind of just gave up. We were watching a DVD (satellite totally gone since the rain began) and it was as if suddenly it dawned on him that Gustav was in the 'hood. (We're watching "The Wire," so some of this is that weird kind of bleed from life to watched fiction.) So all of the sudden he's all action, getting the drill to fix the one shutter I'd been asking about ALL DAY, getting Sonny moved in, asking "when exactly is this thing supposed to hit?" Talk about denial. I love that man but sometimes he just misses the clue bus by miles and miles. And I am not the native here!

Meanwhile I am scrambling to get all the laundry done before we lose power. I mentioned this and Gary said, "We could use the washboard." We, sure. No way, no how. This is the kind of thing I mean. Aggravating. YOU go use the washboard, thank you.

Gustav, you are just one of the boys. Go AWAY.
(Um, hurricane nerves? Yup. Venting? You bet.)

I am going through customs in Amsterdam and the nice young, so young, Dutch fella asks, "Baton Rouge? Where is that?" Cutting to the chase I say, "Close to New Orleans." "New Orleans?" he says, "Katrina?" Oh bloody hell I think. And I say, "Jazz, gumbo, Creole culture, Mardi Gras, Louis Armstrong," surprised at my own defensiveness. If I look down at "comments" in one more news story and see something snide or self-righteous like "Those people chose to stay and now my tax dollars are" blah blah blah or "if New Orleans floods again then they should just let it go" blah blah blah I will scream. I have never felt particularly patriotic (except about voting, which always, always moves me, no matter how "insignificant" the stakes) but I feel something like what this must feel about Louisiana, my home, dammit, where the people are funny and odd and sometimes a little thick but lovely and they know how to tell a story and mostly they are themselves, funky and fine and flawed. I don't expect the outside world to understand. I don't expect a shockingly young Dutch customs official to understand. Hell, I didn't understand until I saw what I loved so sullied. My home.

Whoo, that was a rant. I am hearing some loud motors out on the river. Hattie, who has become my conscience, is lying here close, looking up with her sad clown face, trying to read my mood. My mood is complicated by a couple of glasses of purely medicinal not very good Chardonnay.

We did everything on the list but I don't feel ready, and I know somewhere under the Chardonnay blur this is residual Katrina, which still enrages me, just enrages. I will now allow myself to be political. so Bush has cancelled his Minneapolis appearance in view of the hurricane. How nice. We won't forget what you did last time, and we don't much care what you do this time. You are IRRELEVANT.

We're fine; I'm just flashing back to some of the people I met at the PMAC 3 years ago. They haunt me. They made my moral compass, so to speak, point certain directions. I should be grateful; not everyone gets that kind of directive.

What we do to one another, how we respond to one another, matters.

And now I shall break a rule and visit The Weather Channel Website. There's a greying man on it who is not hysterical and I would like him to tell me what the heck is happening out there. It's harder now that it is dark.