The Day Before the Day After
~Buggin'out with Editilla the Pun...Tuesday, September 1, 2009

The day before Katrina made landfall, almost 12 hrs exactly, the Math Shopper and I were walking dog Flora on the neutral ground (what we in New Orleans call the grassy median) between Elysian Fields, smoking a nice joint beneath the trees and kicking logic theorems around like they'z jail-house punks, when I spied a dozen fat trademark New Orleans Nightcrawler cock roaches lined up on a tree end to end, nose to tail, completely still but for their long antennae that wriggled about either side like fishing poles off a parade of longboats.
These legendary beasts usually stand about 3 1/2 inches long
by 2 inches wide. Though rarely seen in broad daylight, you can actually hear them walk across a street. When you do see them (and you will see them) at night, crawlin' across the banquette in the Quarters you must stop, look & listen. More often than not the roach will stop too, as if...considering you.
If you somehow find the need, gonads or ova to mount one when it charges, or even manage to Pop It under both feet, every person within a block will duck as from the sound of gunfire.
{Perhaps I embellish juuuust a bit:)
But there they were, lined up and down the side of a Live Oak tree. "What the fuck?!?", we wondered. What if they notice us? Should we run now or just back away slowly, no sudden movements? Can they even see in broad sunlight? Aren't they blind, like so many in this city who find themselves somehow awake in the middle of the day? And hey! Why that particular side of the tree anyway and why nearly six feet off the ground? Duuuuherah...it turned out.
In the aftermath, we realized from the various & sundry debris nailed into the tree's windward side that the roaches had aligned themselves aerodynamically on the tree's leeward side to ride out the storm's approach, exactly. Bugs know...or at least next time we see nature going so oddly with her own grain perchance we should, errra, pay more attention? Ya' t'ink?
~Editilla Sew'tellas~
For me there was freak-out in the 2 weeks leading up to this year's Anniversary. It is so every year. Bad weirdness.
But then I come home to the City for the Commemorations and Commiserations, and now everyt'ing is way'mo'betta. I did miss some hanging out da'Ladda, which makes Editilla a bit dinked.
But the weather was sublime and the locals lapped it up.
I really want everyone to know, there is no stopping Nola.
Hence, I may try to "post" some of the "other" "memories" of each day from the 29th until I excaped the city in a pick-up truck with dog Flora, guitar, backpack and bicycle. No lie, like in a long line of fleeing refugees in a frickin'damn Apocalypse NO movie, over the bridge with civilization burning to the ground behind.
Everyone will Note the Day Our Heart Stood Still.
But then the Levees Failed, and Life took on several new meanings in the valley of the shadow of Death.

And me, I think about this stuff every morning, all day, into the night, still in my dreams on the long road home the back hand path... just the way it is and will be until it ain't I suppose.
I'm in no hurry never was, as such, so thus began to realize harsh differences in Marking such an unending scenario as the flood of New Orleans, as if it has merely happened and is past, after the Deluge so to speak, since for me it will remain 2 separate stories, to wit: The Storm and The Flood. The Storm, Katrina, was a truly bad-ass extravaganza to be sure. It lifted me, literally and physically, to a new appreciation of my own place within the bosom of our Earth Mother. Suffice to say, had She taken me that day in August, I would have at least understood the passing.

However, what came after our levees failed is The Never Ending Story, to which I have devoted the past 4 years (and every day of Your New Orleans Ladder) to figuring out, with and without therapy and no proper endings. Frankly, what I saw then sorta freaked out my therapists. What I see now in New Orleans leaves me sufficiently breathless and never alone.