now boarding...

In all of my travels, it remains one of my most enjoyable experiences to look down out the window of the plane, like a kid on his first airplane ride, at dusk on communities of various sizes as the sun settles below the western horizon. The main arteries through the town are often wide winding lines of greenish white light with smaller orange streets attached to them like pieces of spaghetti left on the plate as the meatballs have been devoured in a greasy tomato sauced mess.

I’ve only started flying with some degree of regularity since two thousand six, the aftermath of Katrina providing an all too familiar back drop for many drastic changes. Its not that I was reluctant to traveling prior to the mass evacuation whose effects are still being studied by NTSB, it was this unfamiliar release, like my mind, body, and soul all exhaled at once as my eyes were forced to look upon an unfamiliar land and assess its potential to become the new home of my family’s future.

It wasn’t until I made the first trip back home, that I appreciated what was the mundane scenery of rural Arkansas. It wasn’t that the water rose higher than it should have and sat longer than it should have it was the film that remained that was so disconcerting. There was this grayish tan film that was allover everything that the waters touched. It was as though the rains had come to wash the city’s dirt away and the dead skins cells of the life that was left allover everything. It reminded me of nights in my youth that involved me taking a bath (my rise to the privileged shower was a steady one) and on the nights when water sports carried my attention farther than the measly notions of my land based toys, I would find my skin covered in the dead skin cells I had so diligently sloshed off, forcing me to repeat my cleansing. This was all I could see everywhere I looked, in the lingering summer heat that was abundant in the end of September 2005. The open road promised landscapes that were soap scum free & I was desperate need of clean buildings and foliage.

I needed to know that elsewhere when the rains fell the dirt was removed making the mortar and glass shine anew. The grass had to benefit from water elsewhere, even when shifting weather patterns were the explanations that meteorologist gave for the droughts that burned the grass from lawns as smoothly as those Laser Hair removal commercials advertise. I needed to see rush hour traffic in a city unaffected by a natural disaster. Running late for work in New Orleans can be an uber depressing experience, the time you spend navigating clogged logistical arties entertaining the most dire questions, should I even be living here, let alone putting up with this bs @ work??

At first I couldn’t exactly place my finger on it, the air was fresher (it wasn’t, smog is a problem everywhere), the people were more serious (American’s can be some rude mofos, big surprise) & all other sorts of evasive rationalizations that I turned towards, feeling guilty for needing to escape the chronicles of death that a city in the building process showcases. The varying stages of return illustrated down several blocks of a side street between two boulevards, the ones that encourage drivers to cut thru the neighborhood making a game of football in the street a little more dangerous than touch/tag on concrete normally has enraptured in it. I need to see life’s difficulties unfold in a much more appealing landscape…