This is where we began...

To prepare for the storm, we spent Saturday morning in a mind-numbing line, waiting to buy plywood to cover the upper windows on the condo and then dashed home to make as many contacts as we could before settling in for an evening of take-out, good wine, and somewhat uneasy sleep. Sunday, we got up and made another dash to the market for a buttload of supplies and such with which to ride out the storm as we had done so many times before and then hurried back to the condo to "get ready." Hahaha...

J. called during this later time and M. asked me if I had a problem with him coming over to stay with us. "No problem here," I lied. "It's a hurricane--where else is he going to go."

Two truths: I did not want him there, owing to a great mistrust from the previous three months' history AND he did have other options that would have kept him safe and sound through the storm and out of harm's way. How could I know that lying about something like that could change my life forever?

M. and I started working like madmen, trying to organize food and water and batteries and toilet paper and people and clean clothes and an old farty dog and several flighty neighbors. The big focus for the afternoon was the effort of getting the plywood installed--Dr. G. from the condo is afraid of heights so he was of minimal help--but we at least predrilled all the holes in the boards and laid everything out to expedite the process. We got the 8 windows covered as best we could and then returned to the other internal issues of resources. J. appeared later with some of the essentials (propane, rum and cigarettes) and the evening progressed--a light dinner and a movie (ironically enough The Life Aquatic...). We all retired for the evening, as restless as we were--having paused the movie too many times to count to check on the status of Hurricane Katrina...reassuring each other that she was beginning to wobble thus and drift there and speed through and vear away and on and on and on...

Some time during the night, the wind picked up and started humming through the closed shutters to the french doors. If Satan played the harmonica, I think it would sound something like that. We all woke early, 5:30ish and were instantly glued to the images on the TV, showing us that the worst of the worst was just going to skirt us but it would be bad...very bad before it improved and to be prepared for the worst case scenario. Soon enough, the power winked out and we were plunged into that eerie semi-darkness that rarely occurs outside of storms like this. The wind continued its rage all day, along with the seventh circle muzak...branches creeked and swayed and shuddered and finally snapped...trees were simply denuded in a matter of minutes during the strongest gusts...and all we could do is make small talk and check the walls and doors and sashes for possible leaks and remind each other to eat something because you won't be of any use to us if you fall over faint from exhaustion. Strangely, we were each able to collapse at different times for tense naps that were welcome yet hardly refreshing.

After several hours--this was the beginning of the suspension of time as we knew it--things eased up and we braved a look outside and around the building and throughout the neighborhood. Can this really be? There were so many trees, bare as empty coatracks...branches strewn about carelessly like giant lincoln logs, thicker than our waists...covering our beautiful avenue with such contradictory destruction and devastation that it was scarcely registering at all. Time and place and focus were removed from any recognizable structure and still have yet to return. What we did not know of the worst the city would face in the very near future was ultimately, we know now, one of the greatest mercies we would receive in all of this. The unthinkable was about to become our reality...