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MY
ROUSES
EVERYDAY
JULY | AUGUST 2015
I
t’s hard to imagine it’s been 10 years.
Sometimes it seems like yesterday.
Then again, sometimes it seems like a
hundred years ago.
But it never seems like it didn’t happen,
right? It’s always there, somewhere. Maybe
in the background, in the deep recesses of
the mind. Or maybe it’s front and center on
some days, still right in your face. But it’s
never not there.
Hurricane Katrina and the Federal Flood
were events of such breadth and magnitude
that they serve as the seminal, epochal date
on our collective calendar. In the historical
timeline of south Louisiana andMississippi,
there is Before Katrina, and there is After
Katrina, and no other date bears any close
significance.
Before and after. Those two words color
everything. They put whatever is being said
into clear and stark perspective, lend layers of
context, subtext and implication They speak
to different eras, different times, different
mindsets. Completely different lives.
Consider this: What are you doing now?
With your job, your money, your family,
your leisure time, your priorities, your goals
and your religion?
How different would it all be if it had never
happened?
It’s almost laughable, isn’t it? How it
changed everything? How the way we live
now bears so little resemblance to the way
we were, and how the two lives seem so at
odds with each other on the space/time
continuum?
It was a shift in the cosmos. An existential
pause, reset, rewind and — then hit play
and see what happens.
I guess that’s how it goes when you have
a near-death experience, when you close
your eyes and stop breathing, when you see
that bright light at the end of a long dark
corridor, when you are overcome by a sense
of calm, of letting go, of … And then your
eyes open.
And that’s when you have your choice: Get
busy living or get busy dying.
Back in the summer of 2005, headlines
across the nation pronounced unequivocally
the death of an American City. But reports
of our demise were premature speculation.
Or worse — misplaced wishful thinking —
in some quarters.
There was no death of an American City; it
was the drowning of an American Dream.
The loss of American Innocence.
Everything changed in that moment for
everyone. But letting it all go, giving up –
as so many from the media and Congress
suggested? That was not on the table for
negotiation.
You can’t beat down a people who parade in
tragedy, dance at funerals and love among
the ruins.
Like the Mardi Gras Indian chant goes:
Won’t bow down/Don’t know how.
New Orleans may be the most death-
obsessed city in the world, but we weren’t
quite ready for our own second-line just yet.
Consider the view of first-time visitors
coming into town from the airport. To
enter New Orleans, they must pass between
the
Anniversary
issue
by
Chris Rose +
photos by
Frank Aymami
Before After
05
15