I've been away, and I know the place has gone to hell. My TTLB eco-status is fast devolving to the paramecium level, and I'm too distracted to care. The news, when I let myself think too much about it, feels like a chunk of sharpened obsidian trepanning into my skull. If I'm going to be lobotomized, at least let it be by my own hand. The abortion thing, Alito, Iraq, Rod Stewart singing old standards...any number of rampant stupidities at large in the land at any given moment make me just want to hide my head and cry.
So I can't blog now. I feel like I owe it to the people who have read my stuff to at least give that much notice. Fatigue, depresssion, constantly phasing in and out of illness, I'm pretty useless for anything except work, for which I save all my energy, and even there I'm pretty much phoning it in. I've decided to take a sabbatical for the next month, in hopes that after the holidays I'll be in better shape and more worthy to add my two cents here and elsewhere. I may sit down and work on the template now and then. Maybe even type something brief. But probably not.
In the meantime, keep plugging NOLA. And watch out for others who want to cover it over, using the excuse that it's not healthy to dwell on all the bad. There's a fine line to be walked between keeping up morale for the people who dream of rebuilding their homes, and rah-rahing a bunch of no-nothing bullshit to make the rest of the world think the place is going to be just like new in another couple months. The second approach is a sure way to let people off the hook from caring about the worst natural disaster to ever hit our country. It was 95,000 square miles of damage. Over 5000 people are still missing. Bodies were still being pulled out while I was there, only a couple miles from my shelter in Kenner.
If it was your home, you would tell anyone else who advised you to cash it in and move away to go fuck themselves. We owe it to them to remember, and do something about it.
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