The Beginning

I started to feel like the Twilight Zone had wrapped itself around my life. The sensation that I was losing my way, not quite in control of my life, was starting to become my new normal. That is what we started to call life here in New Orleans after The Disaster; the new normal. A condition that was the result of life as we knew it forever changed; destruction, death in all of it hideous forms, grief, anger, sorrow. The list is as long as all of the words for the ugliness of existence. How does person, a community, a culture survive and find meaning and the will to continue? The strength of character, the resiliency of survival, humor, love, culture, friendship, and family. New Orleans is no stranger to the cruel and capricious ways of Nature, but fortunately it has an abundance of wealth in the ways to continue on.

The last round of storms this season, brought back all the fear and anxiety of what transpired in the waning days of August 2005. Yet, somehow some of us escaped another round of horror, others weren't so fortunate and another chapter of lives destroyed began. Are our lives becoming a progression of the nine circles of Hell?