power crisis!

Currently, every difficult situation here can be traced to The Flood. The waters receded nearly five months ago, and yet they remain.

For example:

Because our central air and heating unit is on the ground, it was destroyed by The Flood. Because the unit was destroyed, we have no heat. Because Bob doesn’t want this scenario repeated next hurricane season, he decided to install the new unit on a platform outside of the attic. Because he needed to work on the attic opening to achieve this, he set a ladder up against the house. Because a gust of wind blew the ladder into our power line, we lost power. Because Entergy is still backed up from complications due to The Flood, they haven’t showed up to fix our power line.

Welcome to Day 20 without electricity. I was up north for days one through nine, so Bob got to sit in the dark house by himself, with only a head cold to keep him company. Foolishly I thought Day 10 would bring power.

But no. Day 10 brought me to my knees. As happy as I was to see Bob after being away for three weeks, I didn’t want to see the rest: Still there are piles of trashed lumber and moldy insulation on the curb. Still broken branches hang from trees. Still so many businesses remain shuttered, their plastic awnings in tatters. Still Xs on the buildings proclaiming the state of things: no one home.

My stomach was already churning when we pulled up to our house. Then I learned that one night while I was gone, someone decided that our dark house was the place to drop off a storm-damaged car. The abandoned vehicle, with its smashed roof and busted windows, sat to the south of our place. To the west, a giant pile of dirt and neighborhood refuse stood outside my kitchen window.

If only I could find refuge indoors. But because of The Flood (and our own seeking natures), we’ve brought home more furniture than our building can reasonably contain. It’s become difficult to walk around during the daytime, and you can just forget it at night. So all of my careful hoarding has brought me to this: a house which I don’t fit into anymore.

Our clutter, the city, our cluttered city—it’s out of my control. Where can I start? Inside, I look helplessly at our stuff. I can’t ditch the antiques or the good deals or the potential projects. I’d be foolish to rid myself of the magazines full of information which I might need someday or the books which I haven’t read or the gifts given to me with love. Add Bob with his antiques and good deals and projects and tools and it’s amazing that the place hasn’t set on fire yet.

Maybe not that amazing—we are still without electricity.

Clearly I need to just bite the bullet and hold a yard sale. A large yard sale, with balloons and bribes for people to take our stuff away. Free cookie with purchase!

But no yard sale could do much for the outside. I could empty my house, but the mess of the city will remain. And even when the trash gets picked up (have faith—our newly-acquired abandoned car went away last week), The Flood’s staying for a long time. People around here talk about nothing else. The newspapers have nothing else to say. Before I went away for the holidays, I was one of those people obsessed with the dramas of the storm and ready to grasp its opportunities.

Now I’m not so sure. While away, I spent a week in the snowy mountains of Vermont, playing in the woods and nestling in a cozy cabin. Then I spent two weeks in Chicagoland, busily working on several projects and enjoying the urban energy. So many voices to be heard, so many different things to be said. In New Orleans, now, there is only one note. And instead of playing that note, maybe I want to go somewhere else, somewhere peaceful and clean.

I don’t know what to do next. I could blame my melancholy on The Flood, but there are other folks who’ve been energized by the angry waters. A psychologist would suggest that I could trace the roots to my childhood family relationships, but my family’s tired of my blame. (While I was home, one family member even accused me of using this blog to “sully our family name”! Good grief!) Perhaps I should blame American culture, with its relentless focus on production and consumption. Since I am producing nothing and consuming very little, it’s fair to say that my existence is specious at best. It sure doesn’t feel that way, though. Something about feeling half-dead that reminds one of how truly, painfully, alive one is.

But on the good side, Valentine’s Day is coming, which means that chocolate will soon be cheap and readily available. And I pray that our mayor’s gaffe will—if nothing else—make that commodity easier to find…