Some Thoughts on Katrina

(for when you have a little extra time for thinking)

Date: 9-01-2005
From: My Journal

What do you do with a disaster as momentous as Katrina? Two days ago was probably the prettiest day the city of Atlanta has seen all year. It was beautiful. Crisp and clear, with big cotton-puff clouds rolling across the sky and a breeze that never settled down. The sharp blue sky and the patterned clouds made the buildings in Atlanta look so bright and clean; it was an incredible contrast to the typical smog-haze background. It was the perfect late-summer day. But at the same time that I was driving home and admiring the beautiful Atlanta skyline, people were dying. Not just your everyday car-crash, heart attack, or elderly person, but thousands of people were being inundated with raging waters as the levees of New Orleans spilled their preciously guarded contents onto the streets of a drowning city. Even though the city had already been evacuated, especially since the city had already been evacuated, the number of people still in the city was ridiculously high. And those that had evacuated were watching their whole lives and possessions literally wash away before their eyes.
I'm so glad I grabbed my violin.
How do we deal with things like this? Can we even fathom how incredibly disastrous this event has been to people? What do we do with our thoughts and our time? Do we just pay our token of respect and move on with our lives as though nothing has happened? Because in all actuality, nothing has happened to me. My gas prices are higher. Damn.
I wonder if I'll be able to salvage the house...
But what am I supposed to feel? In a earlier, less technological world I wouldn't even have known what was happening; I might not have learned of it until weeks or even months later. But I'm not in a less technological world, and neither is Katrina, and I watch her in real time from a distant, emotionless satellite as a colorful twirling picture.
So much for that $5,000 flat-screen HD television.
Canned responses come to mind: "Wow, thats so sad." "Damn, that shit sucks, man." "What a tragedy." But what do these empty phrases really mean? Nothing. They mean, "Hey, I'm glad that didn't happen to me."
My house is underwater. Where am I going to stay for the next month?
But we're so distant from disasters like this. Is the brain really designed to feel sympathy for something that we cannot see? Are we capable of understanding the depths of this disaster without tasting the polluted water as it splashes into our mouths? Without feeling the sharp sting of wood against our knuckles and wet smear of blood on our hands as we try and break through from the flooded attic to the roof? Do we know what it really means to lose everything?
What if it takes longer than a month? How will the kids go to school?
And why should we bother even trying to imagine? We still have our cars, our houses, our children, our friends. Hell, people starve to death in Africa everyday. More than 700 people were stampeded to death in Baghdad just yesterday. Do we make concessions for these people? Do we take time out of our busy days to think about what it means to be stampeded to death? Maybe. But time waits for no man, and the deadlines keep getting closer. We pretend, we take a second to imagine, but it never really sinks in.
My entire company headquarters is underwater.
Maybe it's because we're afraid. Maybe it's a defense mechanism. Maybe we sincerely don't have the time because we're strapped for cash and it's time to pay the bills again and there's paying customers out in the dining room.
I never did back up that computer...
And what do I feel? I don't know. I was hoping maybe I would have some kind of a revelation as I wrote this. A spiritual awakening: I'm going to devote the rest of my life to charity and help those less fortunate. But really I just wonder. I don't know what it means for the clothes that I'm wearing to be the only clothes I have left. I'm sitting in front of a computer in an office building earning my paycheck. The French Quarter might collapse in on itself because the brick and mortar is so old that it might dissolve, but I've never seen it before. The words "French Quarter" barely mean anything to me.
Will my city ever be the same?
The dazed thoughts of the refugees run through my head as they sit in shock in the aftermath of what looks like a warzone. These people haven't just lost the big things, they've lost the little things as well. That's what makes it a true tragedy. And yet, there's Tulane students being given places to stay at Georgia Tech. There's an email in my inbox that was written by the director of sports at LSU describing the grim hospital/morgue that their stadiums and gyms have become because they offered to help. There are people on craigslist.com who, instead of selling cars, are offering their homes as a place to stay and their extra car as a means of transportation. These little offers of help, these signs of love, they mean something. They mean hope and a chance to get through the worst of the hard times. They are a true reason to be thankful. And they're things that we should do, in the hopes that others will help us when we fall on hard times. Or even, heaven forbid, just out of the kindness of our hearts. So what will I do? I still don't know. I'm just a broke college student. But maybe now I'll put a can in a food drive or find some other way to help. Maybe I'll write an inspiring letter. What will you do?