Corner of Bourbon & Division

I can’t begin to wrap my mind around what’s happening to New Orleans. It seems unreal to me, so far away. Yet part of me mourns for the city I visited so long ago and wanted so badly to go back to. There was something beautiful and old and sacred about the place when I was there, and memories of the bayou still haunt me.

I can’t believe that the city might be abandoned to its fate. I don’t want to believe that I’ll never have the chance to walk through its cemeteries, to wander through its streets and marvel at how large the trees are.

I wonder, too, whether the people I knew there with whom I long ago fell out of touch are all right, whether they are among the hundreds of dead, whether they left the city in time or are stranded somewhere amidst the devastation. Although I haven’t spoken to them in twelve years, I wish that there was some way I could tell them that, in a small and insignificant way, I grieve with them for the loss of their home.

New Orleans is meant to feature a lot in my serial. It feels odd that I may be writing about a city that no longer exist, when I get to it.