Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2005-2006 - (Page 68)

Approaching New Orleans two days after Hurricane Katrina. Diary of a Displaced Person The winds throttled the trees, paused, throttled them again. They cuffed the house like a fat man jumping up and down on your bumper. The narcotic of television helped keep his mind off of things. Then the electricity went out. He sat in the dark and Mostly, nature can be ignored, so it is. The unseen core watched out the blinds. Lightning with a turquoise tint, of what makes it up never permeates our selves, never leaves flashing their silver undersides. It was a dream makes its way to our inner lives, which are far too busy world, lovely in its way. No creature comforts. This is how imagining sex between strangers or the placement of furnithe grandparents of your parents lived every day, in welture or the capabilities of a phone. come ignorance of what’s coming and what it all means. Then on some dark and stormy night, nature comes to He knew at least that the worst would call and this time, no west-wind caress of by Ronnie Virgets come after dawn. He felt the weather tighten your cheek or blue-bonnet rug at the edge of around the house and wondered what the your vision-field or black swallow-tail bobworst would feel like. The winds. Before the bing among the peonies like a fluttering yo-yo photographs by lights went out, he had picked up the or love-bug tragedy to be swept away by a David Rae Morris mythology book that had languished unread windshield-wiper. Now, nature clucks, I have on top the TV set for years. He flipped it to your full attention and watch, little ones. Watch the pages about Enlil, master wind of the Sumerians, Baal, and learn Aeolus, the most important god of nature for the Greeks This was it. A hurricane. One of those globs of green and and the ancient winds, Aquilon, Kekias, Notos, Apheliotes, yellow that the TV weathermen dance around excitedly, a Zephyr, were his relatives. meaningful omlette. Only now it was here, the weather“Wind is impalpable and invisible and yet makes its man’s choppy fingers pointing at our mapped selves. And existence felt so clearly. The absence or presence of wind suddenly a hurricane was no longer just a television prop. modifies both nature and man’s character. For ages, winds It was outside. The First 72 Hours 68 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES\Winter 2005-06

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2005-2006

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2005 Contents Letters Editor’s Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Louisiana State Museum After Katrina: “It’s time somebody woke us us up.” Missing New Orleans On Perilous Ground The Buildings of Louisiana (Architectural History by Karen Kingsley) Historic New Orleans Collection Louisiana Association of Museums Back to New Orleans Diary of a Displaced Person Jazz Notes (Music History by Bruce Raeburn) Cradle of the Stars The Terrible and the Brave Bookstand (Book Review by Thomas Uskali) Sound Advice (Music Review by Ben Sandmel) Forum (Commentary by James Lee Burke)

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2005-2006

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