[Original post: September 25, 2005]
This is the house (known as Slowness) where we've been based for much of the last four weeks, since we evacuated for Katrina. It's just off Bluetown Road in Marksville, near an old Confederate fort site. There's been a drought here for some time, and this week temperatures were in the high 90s every day.
Tonight Hurricane Rita is still just offshore, swirling towards the Texas/Louisiana border. The rain has been thundering down on the roof, drowning out talk and music, rinsing away the last of the love bugs. The pond between the house and the studio bubbles like a boiling cauldron.
The dog on the porch (in the picture) is Claude. He's sleeping in the laundry tonight.
This morning we drove to Alexandria, which is crazy with evacuees - the ones from Katrina who've been stranded there for weeks, plus new arrivals from Lafayette and Lake Charles in southern Louisiana. Albertson's, the big supermarket there, was packed with people buying supplies, especially charcoal, water and snacks. (The "Beverage Boulevard" section was particularly popular.) The gas station there had sold out of gas.
Marksville is thirty miles from Alexandria. Motels and shelters are already full of Katrina evacuees. Tonight, the parking lot of the casino here is filled with Rita evacuees camping out in their cars and trucks.
We'd hoped to go back to New Orleans last Wednesday for the day to clean up our house, but re-admission was canceled. Now the levees are leaking again, flooding the Ninth Ward, and St. Bernard's Parish, and even Gentilly. I don't know when we're going to get home.
Last night I dreamed I was standing in the eye of the hurricane, a clear circle of sky above my head, desperately thinking of ways to run with the storm, to keep pace with the still of the eye.
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