Obscured View

New Orleans 2005

Doesn't look too bad from here. All brick home, new roof. A few high water marks on the outside walls. Let's step inside shall we?

We walk in through the front door that bears those familiar markings that everyone witnessed on their TV screens. They don't begin to fully explain what is behind the door. The markings and what they foretell, was not, and could not have been, properly explained through a TV screen. Nor can it be told through the following pictures or words. Although a picture can speak a thousand words, there are no words that adequately portray the scenes inside the buildings or the minds of those that have, and continue, to suffer. Therefore these pictures too are forever sentenced to inadequacy.

A view down one of the hallways. All personal belongings that couldn't fit into a car with two adults and two children, now exist under a layer of toxic film and mud. What would you have saved? Your wedding dress to hand down to your daughter? Your grandfather's pocket watch to hand down to your son? Your laptop or the manuscript you'd been working on for five years?

This used to be a kitchen. A place where family dinners are prepared and mothers teach their daughters to make cookies for the first time.
Someone forgot to take the dishes out of the dishwasher. I guess that isn't a real concern when you begin packing to outrun a hurricane. Strange how priorities can change in an instant.

A view down another hallway. Beyond the door is an SUV and the summer lawn furniture. The owners moved the furniture inside before they left so it couldn't be blown around the neighborhood by a presence to be known as Katrina. Afraid of possibly damaging their neighbors cars or homes.

A partial view of the living room. Molds of differing types and of various levels of toxicity grow on the walls and furniture. A home that used to raise a family, now raises toxins. Toxins that work feverishly on erasing memories. Antique furniture that had been passed down a few generations, ruined. A chair is not always just a chair. Sometimes it is has been a lasting connection with long gone family members. Gone and forgotten but for a chair.

All that floats must come down. Never where it began. Nature has it's own way of decorating a home. Sometimes the smaller the memento, the bigger it's importance. The mother of this home found a plastic name band that one of her children wore from birth and snipped off when she took her home from the hospital. She picked it up, carefully rubbed off the mud as if cleansing a wound, to read the name and date of birth one last time. Another memory sent off to the curbside. It was easier hauling things to the curb when the owners weren't around.

Something to ponder the next time you tell your kids that their room looks like a hurricane hit it.
How long do you think it will be before another child born along the gulf coast, is named...... Katrina?

Past the couch near the back door is a custom made entertainment center that was recently installed. Its not the loss of another "material" item that hurt. The owners never spoke of it's monetary but only that it had been hand made by a local craftsman, of ancient Cypress. The life's work of many local craftsmen and artists, washed away.

No matter how hard the sun tried to bring life back to the world outside, the view from within was one of muted color, or none at all. The only colors on Katrina's palette were brown from the mud and misty gray from the salt water.
As fresh air came through the door, it quickly became as foul as that which it replaced. Nature does have ways of healing itself, but it takes much longer to heal than it took to injure all in it's path. Our job was to lend nature a hand. Molds and moisture would surely decompose all it could, but it would have to reclaim it's bounty in a landfill, as a family tried to reclaim their home.

Enough said.

Just the beginning of hauling "everything" out to the street. The grass was even trying to return to it's normal green color after being turned brown by the salt water bath. Amazing, the strength that can be found within a single blade of grass. The strength to recover from disaster. Just as it will take more than one blade of grass to make a lawn, it will take more than one home to make a city again. The lawn didn't give up and will return, one blade at a time. The city must do the same, one home at a time.

Years worth of personal belongings and memories. Consider your favorite book? Your high school jacket with the varsity letter? The faded old photo of your great-great grandfather in his uniform. You know, the gray one he wore at Vicksburg?

Doors that sit under water come out of their frames much easier than they went in. They don't put up a fight. They surrender to the slightest prodding. I would like to speak with the carpenter that installed the closet shelves though. He takes him job very seriously and would do well for himself if he entered the tank building industry.

Some items seem to stand out more than others. Maybe it's a final cry for salvation before being carted away. Can years of memories attach themselves to inanimate objects, making their colors glow a little brighter, pleading to be remembered? Are brief moments in time, of happiness or tears, merely thoughts and feelings that quickly vanish or do they create an aura that surrounds and penetrates articles in their wake? When you walk into a home, are you met with a feeling of what type of home it is? Have you ever walked into a home and felt comfortable and others where you feel a bit cold. A feeling of a place, void of life? Do these feelings arise from the decorating done by the paint on the walls, or by lives shared within those very walls?

It all may look like common trash from a distance, but upon closer examination, it's really so much more. One day Tigger is being picked up by a child and three months after being buried in muck, it will next be hugged by a front-end loader from Jersey. How did these toys escape visible damage? Tigger must have quite a story to tell. Only a microscope could bring to view, the billions of mold spores coating them all. Could you explain that to a 5 year old if you had to?

The first of many truckloads of items is about filled and taken away. One toy truck, would fall back to the street several times as if refusing to leave. It was finally tossed rather unceremoniously by hand, into the truck, as the parents quietly discussed it's past. It is a process similar to a wake that is needed to begin healing. No, it was not a life, but it was certainly a memory, too soon discarded.

Inside a wall, mycellium (fungus root system in basic terms) grows unabated, feeding on the wet paper backing of the drywall. We wouldn't let it stay long enough to produce it's fruit, mushrooms. Fungus such as this is actually one of the earth's more interesting organisms. Mycellium helps to hold things together with it's hidden web. helps to hold a forest floor stable enough to support giant trees. Stable enough to withstand most of what nature throws at it. It will help speed decay to make way for new growth and cleanse the moisture and the earth of toxins. One of Mother Nature's best and most important filter systems. Where this growth was about to be transported, it would have plenty of cleansing to do.

Once the belongings had been moved out, all the drywall was stripped and insulation removed to finally allow the framing to dry out. Fixtures, cabinets, flooring, electric....All of it, must go, and it did.

Once the remaining interior is cleaned, treated and sealed, the home, the family and the lives, can begin adding color and life back into the picture. But that will have to wait. Wait for the government agencies to decide IF they can rebuild. Wait for the government agencies to decide which of them will even make that decision.

I can wait. After all, I have a home to return to while others ponder the futures of hundreds of thousands of people. When decisions are made, I will return to help. Please don't make the people of the gulf coast wait too long before they too, can return home.

For those that don't know where to start, it matters not. All that matters is that you start. The first move is always the most difficult. You can not look at the entire scope of the job that sits before you for it will surely appear to be too heavy a task, too large a burden. One step, one room, one home at a time.

posted by Unknown @ 10:37 AM