That Hurricane

I can't stop thinking about the people in New Orleans and surrounding. Can't stop thinking about them, praying for them, wondering if our inept government can care long enough to offer any significant aid.

I can't really even imagine... If it were me... I don't know. There are only two things, besides myself, that I would have to save: My dog and my icon. Not in that order. But, as I look around I see that the story of my life is told in the things around me. The art I choose, the little things on my desk, all the stuff.

When I lived in Laguna Beach there was a big fire once. I wasn't able to get home and anything I heard on the news made it sound like I very probably didn't have a home to go home to anyway. And, the fire did get very close. Thank God it did not burn my place. Why? I don't know. I know people who lost everything. Why did I escape unscathed?

The night of the fire, though, I drove up to Long Beach to get a little sleep at a friend's house and -- and I remember this like it was yesterday -- as I was falling asleep I thought "What am I apart from my stuff?" That was pretty much the end of my personal age of affulence and consumption. I was secretely relieved, later that summer, when I lost a pair of expensive sunglasses. They had been a visible symbol -- I wore them on my face, after all -- of my success. They told people who I was. Successful. That was me. Identy = your stuff.

Sure, your stuff reflects who you are, where you've been, and your tastes, etc. But, it is not who you are. This was difficult enough for me to grapple with in physical safety and surrounded by friends. Plus, the little hope that you never quite let go of. But, for these people in the South... and it's not just New Orleans, neighborhoods and towns all along the coast are destroyed... I don't know how you deal with loosing the things that reflect and, for some, define who you are.

I just think the psychic fall out from this is going to be enormous. People, and insurance companies, can build new houses and churches and businesses. But, what about those identities, what about the lives reflected by all that lost stuff? That I don't know either.

Give some money to ERD. Give as much as you can.