10:20 AM No Business

My next door neighbor just returned home. Her name is Rody. She's 83 years old. She's not very mobile. She takes a fist full of prescription drugs every day. She smokes hand rolled cigarettes. She has no business at all being here right now. If nothing else the infrastructure can't support her. She's not really healthy enough and fit enough to be here now. Heer daughter and son-in-law dropped her off. They stayed with her for about 30 minutes then left her.

I want to very clear about my attitude about staying and returning. I completely understand Rody's compulsion to get home. She told me that her family was driving her crazy. I can get a life-sized picture of that. I can totally identify. She had no power where she was. She was miserable. She figured she could be miserable at home. The only flaw in that is that there are few people here right now and fewer resources. There are no doctors' offices open, no pharmacies open, no grocery stores, no gas stations, no restaurants. If anything at all happens to her she's screwed. I do admit that if anything happens to me I'm screwed too. But a simple fall in my living room is far less likely to be serious for me, and is probably far less like to happen to me in the first place. I also know that I can get out of here on foot or on a bicycle and make it pretty far, especially on the bike.

Anyway, that's my rant. Rody just walked out on her front porch and shouted to me asking me if I knew where she could buy ice. ICE!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

7:10 AM Miracle Juice

Coffee is miraculous. I love it, I really do. I'm not any more well rested because of drinking coffee. But I am certainly in a better frame of mind, especially since my power is still out.

I see more activity already on the street outside, more cars. It looks like some folks have driven early morning hours to return to check things out. It seems kind of strange to have cars back on the street.

6:15 AM 9/3/08 Wednesday • As Expected

So I really didn't get much useful sleep last night. I'm really beat. I'm going to drink my coffee with a vengence this morning. I need me some coffee. I have a feeling this is going to be one of those days. The sun is already up.

10:15 PM Early to Bed

I'm tired. I'm going to bed early. I hope I can sleep. It's really hot for sleeping. I usually have no trouble whatsoever sleeping. But I know that sweating and nerves and rich food and more than a few beers is not the perfect recipe for a great night's sleep.

7:50 PM Seafood Soup

So I didn't quite get into the realm of Santana. But I think I got somewhere around that guy that plays for Hootie and the Blowfish. I got way too sidetracked with cooking this outlandish seafood soup.

A good buddy of mine whose name is Virle, cleared his fridge before he evacuated and gave me these two bags of assorted seafood — shrimp, clams, scallops, calamari, fish, — all smal pieces and chunks. So as not to let this bounty go to waste I carmelized an onion, chopped an absurd amount of garlic, diced two tomatoes, stirred in some bay leaf, black pepper, and tomato sauce, sqeezed a few limes in there, then through in the seafood towards the end. Man that soup rocked!

Things are still rainy on and off outside. The power is still out. It's really dark out here, and very quiet.

3:40 PM Running, Playing, Drinking

I just got in from a very hot run. There are more people moving around, people walking dogs, people riding bikes, people just meandering and checking things out. It's still hot. But it keeps raining on and off. The sun was out earlier. Now it's raining gently.

I had a couple of beers before my run. Although I have been known to run after having a beer or two. Drinking before a run isn't really part of my training regimen. I'm on my second beer since coming back in from said run. I took one in the shower with me. (I love drinking a cold ass beer in the shower after a hot run.) Then I cracked another when I got out. I'm going to sit and play my guitar for a bit before I get started in earnest with cooking.

A guy I used to work with years ago, the now deceased Dave Frazier, was, in addition to being a plumber, a guitarist, ukulele player (ukulele-ist? ukulele-er?), a flautist, and a pianist. Dave was an incredibly intelligent character, in his mid-sixties at the time, mid-eighties, and quite a dilettante. He was a vast source of knowledge of all kinds. One day, at lunch, years ago, on a construction site Dave was describing to me a Friday night jam session he had hosted at his house. He looked square at me, blue/gray eyes twinkling below a wild, Einsteinian mop of white hair, and said very matter of factly, "When I'm playing [the guitar] I like to drink ... whiskey. The more I drink the better I sound." Well, right now I'm going to sit with my guitar and drink, hoping to keep sounding better and better. With an early start like this I might be able make it all the way to sounding like Santana by this evening. ¿Oye com va?

Friday, 9/5/08, 11:00 AM POWER!!

My power just came on this morning. Yeah you right! I'm going to try to catch back up to real time with my posts. Thanks for hanging in there!

1:25 PM Part Fiction

I sit right outside my front door trying unsuccessfully to get an internet connection. I have ice. That’s the primary news in my place. My fridge was on the fringe of barely cool by mid-morning. I had begun planning the next meal or two prioritizing spoil time and delicacy. Tonight, despite having found ice, I will feast on a delicate seafood stew. OK, so maybe it won’t be that delicate. But it will be very good I think. Squid, shrimp, fish, oysters, onions garlic, bay leaf, rosemary … How can I go wrong? The sun has peeked out and it is now officially full on, all the way, ain’t foolin’ ‘round, blastin’ ass hot and humid like we all know it gets down here. It is going to be hot for sleeping. Something I notice is that tropical storms and hurricanes blow all the mosquitoes out of here. Where I’m sitting, directly outside my front, almost always open, front door, is the realm and homeland of a considerable population of mosquitoes, those tiny gray fuckers that hurt like hell when they bite, then itch like they was cast as a pawt of a hoodoo curse. “They go da hoodoo curse!” screeched Dawlene. “Yeah you right!” mumbled Dr. Bob, in deference to the good Dr.John. Yeah you right! I agree. (For copyright’s sake, I made all of that up.)

10:05 AM A Short Tour

I drove out to Lakeview, through City Park, past the track, past the museum, past the homes of many friends, past a friend’s house who stayed. My friend was fine — a little cold— but fine. As an aside, Pal’s Bar is unharmed. I saw some large trees uprooted and damaged in City Park, but only a few. I saw a few damaged store fronts. I saw a few damaged private homes. I saw a few damaged schools. But I only saw a few. The damage I saw is far less extensive and on a far smaller scale than the damage inflicted by Katrina.

7:30 AM Over Coffee

I took my coffee and drove around the neighborhood. I checked on friends’ properties. Everyone’s place is unharmed. One friend had a land line but no power. Whole Foods has a trailer truck sized generator parked in their parking garage. Their power never went down; it stayed on continuously, presumably to avoid losing product. They should be ready to open immediately. Southern Runner is unscathed.

9/2/08 6:32 AM A New Morning

I just rolled out of bed. It’s no longer raining. The power is still out. It’s dark, cloudy, and mildly breezy. I slept intermittently. It’s quite warm and humid.

10:35 PM Sweat

I have a super full belly and a mild white wine buzz. I’m going to bed. I know I’ll just sweat.

10:05 PM Relief

It’s still raining,
not as hard as it was earlier,
but still plenty hard.
The wind is still cycling,
gust then lull,
on a more subdued scale.
The cadence is roughly the same.
But the intensity is considerably lower.
The effect is more soothing than distressing,

a relief,

like that feeling of feeling better right after you vomit,
or that kind of relief I had,
[described to me]
many years ago,
of finally coming down from a particularly hairy mushroom or acid trip,
waves of relief oscillating through
small, rolling, widely spaced waves,
hill and valleys,
peaks and troughs.
I can feel it.

Relief.

6:40 PM Hard for Sleeping

It’s raining hard,
really freakin’ hard,
for the first time during this storm.
I can barely see
the house across the street.

I have
tuna and salmon and lobster tails
on the grill.
I do not have power.

I have five candles lit.
The soft light a lovely contrast
to the gray haze of
the torrential downpour.

It will be rather warmfor sleeping tonight.

4:00 PM A Different Radio

The wind is noticeably less fierce now. It’s still honking. But now it lacks that same destructive fury. I’m no longer afraid of the wind.

I took a brief walk around the neighborhood. I ran into a dozen or so people out walking dogs and generally looking around. The damage is, so far, minimal as compared to the aftermath of Katrina, an aftermath that I saw a full two weeks after landfall. There are a few big trees uprooted and lots of limbs down.There’s a levee in Braithwaite, in lower Plaquemines Parish, that is over-topped and now breaching. This news comes to me through the radio plugged into my ears. Next time I’ll have a regular battery powered AM/FM radio instead of relying on this earphone deal.

5:00 PM A Quick Bike Ride

I just got in from a bike ride. I didn’t go far, just to St. Charles through the park. I also rode around the neighborhood. Lots of tree limbs down, lots of security, little major damage. The wind is winding down.

1:35 PM The Wind

The yellow light has returned.
The wind is shifting wildly.
Some of the gusts are still
very intense.
I’m still afraid to
go out
into the wind
on foot.
I would definitely drive around
right now.
And that still
might be
sketchy.
I really don’t want to piss off
security forces.
Walking around out there
right now,
I think, is
extremely imprudent.

I am afraid of this wind.

11:30 AM Feasting During the Storm

The wind gusts are really extreme and noisy. It’s raining a lot harder. The wind is driving the rain absolutely horizontal at times, and at times, wildly and erratically fluttering, drops like a well-orchestrated swarm of inebriated bumblebees. I saw one particularly strong gust of wind unexpectedly crank out of the south. Everything has been blowing out of the north and east thus far.

I just pulled
some sure
to spoil
unless consumed soon
tuna, and
salmon, and
lobster tails
out of the
freezer for dinner,
a donation
from
the freezer
of friends
who left.

10:15 AM Dancing Trees

The wind has shifted directions. I ventured out to snap a few photos. I stepped out into the jet liner roar. There was little rain and a lots of wind. I walked the 30 yards to the corner feeling relatively safe. I felt as though this was as bad as it was going to get. And it didn’t feel like it was that bad. Then another surprise, this one startlingly frightening. A huge gust of wind cranked up. I was standing at the corner, thirty yards from my protected front door, holding the camera, marveling at the way the sycamore trees were bending, like huge rubber pencils. I was facing river bound, south. As I raised the camera to document the beauty of the resilience of the trees, I heard a gruesome, Frankensteinian, terrifying, electrical arc generator sound, the sound of the high voltage power lines that run above my place, arcing across a two foot gap! Thriteen thousand eight hundred fucking volts (I think) of high octane juice, fucking arcing, shooting a big blue/white flash to accompany the unmistakable humming buzz of an electric arc. It sounded like a 23 foot tall Jimi Hendrix plugging in his 15 foot long Statocaster into a 30 foot high Marshall stack. I nearly pissed my pants. Seriously. Truly. I had a corporeal, full body, fear response that was completely unencumbered by volition, unencumbered by thought, unencumbered by rationale. I was quite literally physically frightened.

I did not take the photo. I did not make a visual record of the alluring sway of the sycamores dancing with the wind. I did not think a single thought. I ran. Or, more accurately, something deep inside me commanded my body to run. Something inside literally ran, just took off in a frenzy, a fit of self-preservation. That blue/white arc had scared the shit out of me.

Two tall trees,
dancing with the wind,
rubbing and grinding
all up on each other,
rubbing and grinding
all up on a
live,
all the way live,
full on,
high voltage,
for real,
source of
piped-in electricity.

Bound to be
sparks.
Bound to be
arcs.
bright blue/white sparks
arcs jumping
and shooting
and punctuating that
swaying dance,
wind,
trees,
sparks…

The awesome power of that dance made me feel vulnerable, squashable. I nearly pissed my pants. Without a single thought, without volition, I ran. I simply ran.

For about thirty minutes after I’d heard that initial arcing buzz, I sat in the what I perceived to be safety of my living room, nervously picking on my guitar, listening to that oh so disconcerting buzz. I physically recoiled each time.
I just got a text message (I can receive texts but cannot send them — a quirk of the phone.) that informs me that the Industrial Canal levees have been “over-topped.” Over-topping is when the water rises so high as a result of the tidal surge that it spills over the tops of the levees and/or floodwalls. Over-topping is different from a breach; a breach is a failure, a structural breakdown, a washing away of mud and concrete and steel that make up our levee system. That same canal, the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal, the official name for the Industrial Canal, is the same canal that breached during Katrina flooding the Lower 9th Ward. I can only assume that over-topping these levees means some flooding on both sides of the Industrial Canal, this is, assuming that the levees and flood walls are the same elevation on both sides, the upper side, closest to Downtown New Orleans, The French Quarter, The Bywater, The Marigny, The Treme, The 7th and 8th, Gentilly, Uptown, Lakeview, Mid-City, Central City, The Irish Channel, Broadmore, and the lower side, away from Downtown, away from the core of the city and the populace, closest to, and starting at, the Lower 9th Ward, Arabi, Chalmette, Mereaux, Violet, and all of lower St. Bernard Parish, and Plaquemines Parish. Nearly all suburban and rural, mostly blue collar, a good portion of the lower end of St. Bernard exists outside the levee system. So they’re already vulnerable to water rising from the south and east. No one on the lower side of the canal, the Industrial Canal, needs any water comin’ at ‘em from the canal, north and west, opposite the lower end, the end that extends out into, and dangles precariously on, our wetlands, not the Lower 9, not St. Bernard, not Plaquemines.Don’t misunderstand me. No one on either end of town, no one in any town, no one in any parish, on any coastline, anywhere, needs to be flooded out. The people immediately adjacent to the Industrial Canal on the upper side are just as vulnerable as those in the lower 9. This city is interlaced with bodies of water and waterways, so many routes for the water to penetrate and swamp and claim, so many routes to backflow IN to the region, pushed by the force of the wind and the storm itself. From there the old “fickle finger of fate,” as Dan Rowan and Dick Martin used to say, goes to work, and sometimes levees fail.

9:15 AM Guns and Pythons

I just finished a huge bowl grits. Now I’m ready for a nap. Instead of napping I donned my raincoat and cap and scrambled up to the upstairs porch. It’s raining harder now and the wind is driving the rain at a tingly velocity. The upper porch is exposed. But through the plants and trees in both directions, river bound and lake bound, I can get a clear view all the way to Magazine, lake bound, and all the way to just about Patton, river bound.

The wind
is still scary
to me. The
low, throaty,
mantric groan
has grown into
the mid-tone
tenor roar of
jets flying high overhead.
I can hear the
thunks and plunks and
booms and bashes of
limbs now the thickness
of my upper arm,
around my biceps and triceps,
my bulging,
distance runner,
middle-aged distance runner
upper arms,
guns,
pythons.
I remember once
thinking that when
I stand
next to Sean,
the Power Miler,
I look so
much more like
a body builder.
So maybe
the scale
should go thusly:
The wind has progressed from tearing limbs down the circumference of Sean’s upper arm to the wind now tearing limbs down the circumference of Tim’s upper arm, my upper arm.
I’m going to get up some gumption in a few minutes and take the camera out into the street to show what I saw from the porch in both directions, lake bound, north, towards Magazine, and river bound, south towards Patton and Tchoupitoulas.

8:15 AM I Sit

I sit
in my kitchen/studio
at my table.
I sit where
I normally sit
when I eat.
I sit
writing instead.
I sit
facing my front door,
looking through
my living room,
through my
open front door,
through the
closed and latched
screen door.

I sit
watching Gustav
parade down Webster Street,
river bound,
a parade route usually
only paraded upon by
the Buzzards,
or an errant
Thoth rider looking
for a place to pee,
or,
at the outset of
hurricane season,
in June,
by the participants
of Barathon —
6 miles
6 bars
6 beers ...
Yeah you right!

Today,
through the Stonehenge
observational slit
that is my front door,
I sit
and watch
hurricane Gustav
parade his (her?
I still have an
old school habit
of thinking of
storms as feminine.)
blustery ass
river bound on Webster Street.

7:44 AM A Tipsy Refrain

The gusts are now
fierce and frightening.
Larger limbs are being
routinely ripped from
their hosts and hurled aloft
towards the south,
river bound.
The sound
of the wind
is like a groan,
a deep,
low-pitched,
whispery,
oscillating,
“ooooooooooohhhhhhhhhooooooooooohhhhhhhhh”
that rumbles and resonates
deep down in my chest.
The groaning of the wind
Is oddly calming,
like an organic mantra,
a majestic reminder of
the power around us,
a reminder of
the impersonal nature
of nature,
a reminder that we are,
in reality,
puny little
insignificant creatures
living on an
insignificant planet
orbiting
an insignificant star
in
an insignificant quadrant
of an
insignificant galaxy,
isolated by so so much.

It is also a reminder of
just how marvelous
it is to be alive,
to have the privilege of
witnessing the
majestic power of nature
witnessing what
we like to
describe as
“reality”
unfolding before me,
experiencing the world
around me,
feeling the world,
watching,
listening,
touching,
smelling,
tasting,
intuiting,
dreaming —
the totality of the experience.

7:05 AM Wind Aided Performance

I took a quick walk to the corner of Webster and Constance, literally about 30 yards from my front door. The gusts have become howling freight trains roaring through the trees and the high voltage lines that run directly above my place. There are small tree limbs down everywhere, scattered about willy-nilly. I snapped two quick photos, one of Webster Street river bound, south, and one of Webster street lake bound, north. Then a monstrous, whistling gust of wind scared the crap out of me and I took off running towards my front door, river bound, south, with the roaring wind at my back. My 30-yard dash would not be recognized in the record books though. It was fast, especially for a man my age wearing a rain suit, flip flops, and carrying a digital camera. But it was definitely wind aided.

9/1/08 6:00 AM Bad Beans

I just woke up. The power went out just as I got out of bed. It blinked back on just long enough for me to realize the flaw in my whole bean fresh coffee idea. No electricity, no coffee. Bummer! In the blink back on I did manage to grind enough for a quick pot. I also realized that another of the spoils of cleaning out friends’ freezers is ground coffee. I’m a coffee addict. Gustav will not deny me my coffee.

The wind is really blowing now. The cycling back and forth, that oscillating between gust and lull is seesawing at the same cadence as last night only now both the gusts and the lulls are much stronger. My very rough estimates are gusts around 50 or 60 MPH with lulls at maybe half that. It’s raining but not very much. Without the wind it would just be a soft, gentle shower. Instead, is a fluctuating, horizontal parade of flowing rain, leaf matter, and light debris moving directly north to south, straight down (or gaily forward) Webster Street, heading from Magazine Street towards Tchoupitoulas. The parade that is hurricane Gustav is passing right in front of my place, moving left to right, river bound.

Every so often I can hear what I believe to be tree branches snapping. Lightning flashes periodically, sporadically. There is little light outside, only that pale, yellow/gray, sickly feeble feeling light illuminating the raw power of the wind. I’m going to get geared up and venture outside after another cup of coffee.

9/3/08 3:50 PM Back Online

Just got an internet connection at work, at the Reily Center. What follows are my notes from my long hand.