blown away, part one...

i. am. speechless.

today dad and i went for a drive through pascagoula, so i could see how things have changed post-katrina. i don't think it's possible to accurately articulate what's going on in my head and heart right now.

parts of the city look okay. parts look much the same. the sky has been emptied of a lot of trees, so things have a general look of shallowness, and yards are pretty much dotted with FEMA trailers. but most of the city is okay. well, it's okay now. this is almost four months later.

but market street, pascagoula street, washington avenue, martin road, beach boulevard -- gone. totally different. homes have been leveled. neighborhoods look macabre, ghostly. houses are skeletal, wall-less, see-through. i saw pictures of all of this in the news, photographs that family members e-mailed me. but pictures don't do justice to how truly overwhelming it is...

dad drove slowly. i sat in the passenger seat as we rode down the beach and cried. cried for several reasons... first, and most powerfully, because what i saw wasn't the remains of houses, it was the remains of homes -- memories, investments, loves, struggles, morning cups of coffee, evening dinners. houses now wear their addresses in spray paint, alongside names of insurance companies or FEMA identification numbers. front steps lead to barren foundations. it's a wasteland, a demolition site, a clusterfuck.

another reason i cried is because i honestly can't remember how it used to look. my memory has lost the details, the intricacies. i know the beach by its landmarks. i know the houses in relation to each other. well, when all of the houses are gone, it becomes pretty easy to lose your bearing. how many times have i driven down that beach? hundreds? thousands? how many nights did i sneak a cigarette while driving alongside the water, car windows down all the way, radio up loud? never again. it will never be the same drive. it can't be. i cried because i can't remember how it used to look. i cried because this is how it looks now.

dad said, "this looks like some sort of forest out of harry potter." it does -- it's a fantasy, unreal, dark, spectral. the trees are full of stuff that used to be in living rooms; curtains, sheets, clothes, upholstery -- dragged by the wind through limbs, caught on branches. dad said, "some of these areas are likely never going to be cleared completely."

he told me where some folks have gone. many are living in trailers, many have moved away. what do you do when something so natural destroys all that you have? where do you go? how do you even begin to rebuild?

yet, people go on. the resillience in this town also caused my tears today. people go on. you can already see signs of construction. families have decorated their trailers with christmas lights. people work in their yards. dad told me that things are already much better than they were before.

my uncle and his family live a few blocks from the beach. they lost the entire first floor of their home. we stopped by to say hello. people go on. life doesn't stop. at this point, their living room and kitchen are whole again, they just put in a new fireplace. they're healthy, happy, hopeful.

so many things in my head about this, but i must stop for now. it's christmas eve. it seems selfish to be blogging, especially in light of all i've seen today. but there will be more. i'll have more to say soon...

home.