Swamped

Anybody got a mop?

How many times during my New Orleans life did we tape up the windows, watch the Weather Channel, and wonder if this would be the one that would actually hit? We had some amazing storms, but they were never as big as predicted and the hurricane parties were always good fun.

I guess, as Zelda Rose used to sing at the Can Can Cabaret, Everything Must Change.

Calld my ex, Kevin, on Sunday to make sure he was being a good boy and was getting the hell out of town before Katrina and her waves rolled in. Good news was he and his mom had already left. Better news was he's now the wedding director of a big church down there. It makes me smile that Blanche De Bris has gone from sticking fingers up boys' butts during Oz's weekly Calendar Boy competition to planning French Quarter nuptials for straight people.

I spent four amazing years in New Orleans, and it's heartbreaking to see it all such a mess. Watched the NBC national news coverage of it last night on CNBC International -- places fresh in my memory are potentially destroyed. It's frustrating to not be able to pinpoint the damage ... what about my friends' houses? I see Kenner's underwater, but what about the Marigny and the Garden District? And if I'm having these questions (15 years later and and ocean away), what are the folks who are evacuated and don't know if they have homes to go home to? Not knowing is the worst ... especially when it's your own life and not a fond memory.

80% of the city is now underwater, and water was still rising last night. Of the hundreds of thousands of people who evacuated, many now have nothing real to come home to. Lives, and livelihoods, have literally been washed away.

Over the past couple months I've been dwelling a lot on the impermanence of things, contemplating the choices we make to find balance between control and surrender. This week nature, a force stronger than any of us, reminds us that as much as we think we might have some control ... well, things are just things and they’re easily destroyed.

There’s a lot of rebuilding to be done. Not just New Orleans, but the whole Gulf coast. Saw some shots of Biloxi last night ... the aquarium totally destroyed. I wonder if any of the critters have survived their unexpected return to the wild blue(ish) ocean?

And what about the animals at the Audubon Zoo? Rex and Zulu were probably going, "Grrrr, what the fuck?"

The "city that care forgot" certainly has more than her share of them now. Send help if you can.