Uncomfortably Numb

For years after the levees broke and my city flooded I raged and wept at Wet Bank Guide, naked as an Old Testament prophet in our ruined temple and praying as best I knew how for New Orleans. At some point, I felt that part of my life had reached an end. I stopped posting there, and collected some of what I thought worthwhile as Carry Me Home — A Journey Back to New Orleans. I learned to live (through my writing) not in grief or anger but in the pure joy of New Orleans.

Now I stare for hours at the oil flooding into the sea and rolling onto the coast, scroll past picture after picture of things dead and dying, a pelican black wings half-raised and bill open as if to scream, read endlessly about the simmering anger and the broken blankness of the people of our coast and the flailing of incompetent government, powerless to protect it’s people. I cannot live in anger for ever. Someone I know, a fellow blogger, died in part from anger. Now I try instead for a calm something like numbness but it’s not working; the slow drill grinds against the rotten tooth and I’m yelling Stop! Stop! It’s not enough. It’s not working.

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