Spent this afternoon sliding and stumbling thru the dead zone.
posted by jeremy on April 05, 2006
The first floors were always flooded, the second floors were looted and the third floors were generally open air thanks to the 140 MPH winds of our darling Katrina. Blazes tagged on the front of these buildings told us stories, ones like Two Kittens-DOA or One Live Dog-BLK/WHT...
We walked carefully, shirts held over noses & mouthes... The smells in some places were foul, in others, as bad as to be indescribable. I stuck my head thru the ripped out doors of a Pizza Hut (the river of slime running out the front should have indicated something right off) only to literally stumble backwards, gagging, trying to keep my bile down.
It is almost impossible to describe the desolation of these places, the sheer creepy weirdness of it all. To see these malls, these huge fucking malls standing silent in the midst of these vast empty parking lots that are filled with debris and fallen light-post, it just cannot be told.
It can't be photographed.
It can't be videotaped.
It just does not translate.
There are a thousand details, even when no damage is obviously visible, that tell you Something is Amiss, that Something is Obviously Wrong here, that Things are Fucked.
Shit, man, I'm telling you, you really just don't & won't get it till you see it with your two eyes. Hell, hear it, smell it, feel it with your very skin.
Matt & me check out a certain two-story apartment in a certain building on a certain street. We make our way thru dark hallways, up to the second floor. The ceiling is mostly intact but still water ruined everything. Pill bottles and papers lay strewn all over. Matt goes back downstairs. I look thru some photos, pick thru some drawers, just seeing, trying to feel out who used to live here. Sunlite shines down into a closet filled with rotting clothes still on the hangers. A pair of glasses sit on a bedstand. An old alarm clock that stopped at 3:37... and then, a noise just behind me. The hair stands up on my arms, the back of my neck. I stop just shy of bolting down the stairs to rejoin Matt and Rachel.
We eventually leave, due to dust and mold in eyes and lungs and hunger urging us foodwards. We drive back towards New Orleans proper where things, though not normal are at least intact, livable, still lovely in its old twisted dirty way. The dead zone, the dead zone, the dead zone... is it forever? I wonder this as we pass the Circle grocery where bodies floated in the days following Katrina & I think simply, some of us got luckier than others, sure as shit.
