2005 Federal Flood – Nine Years Later
A quote I heard recently:
“We should be guided by our spirits not our plans.”
Nine years after the great 2005 Federal Flood and where are we now? Wednesday night, I sat at a dinner table with one friend who is moving to Illinois and another who said she would look for work elsewhere. The tragedy cemented people to this city – apathy is helping us wither on the vine.
My pal during the aftermath of the storm was want to say after a few glasses of wine, “We are living in the most interesting city in the world.” And so we were.
Detroit is where it’s at now – I read this in Questlove’s autobiography, saw it in Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive, saw it in 8 Mile on the plane, read about it in the NYT, and saw it again in Searching for Sugarman. The city of Detroit is raw and at rock bottom, go there, it will only go up, start all over again in the new most interesting city in the world.
New Orleans has been invaded by El Lay. What can we do? Who can we call?
This is what my neighborhood looked like right after the storm:
It was surreal – unreal – not real – real.
I had great plans to return to New Orleans after 16 years in California. I moved back May 2005. I had plans to buy a house, to have a child, to be a family and to be near my mother, my family. What I planned and what happened over the next nine years were cosmically mismatched.
My entire self was dashed against the rocks of fate. I was duped by my own planning. I came back to New Orleans and was going to … and then I got lost, found, lost again, found again … . But God laughs while we make plans, right? There was that moment in Trouble the Water, the documentary by the French filmmakers that used footage from a woman in the 9th ward’s handcam. She had stayed and wound up in the attic with the rest of her family. The moment was when this very large African American man who had waded through the water saving people left and right said, “I’ve wondered my whole life why I was born. Why God made me. And until this very moment I didn’t know.”
Plans let us down; our spirits prevail.
I am still guided by my spirit – which is a cloudy navigational tool at times, but seems to always lead me to an interesting place.