Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Dazed victims

I pass below the silent, un-used corpse of I-10. Heading further south. Into the midst of the real damage. And reality implodes on me. I do not recognize half of what I am seeing. Store fronts ripped off. Signs twisted like perverse origami sculptures. Endless lengths of tattered cabling droop from exposed walls. Chunks of brick strewn everywhere. Shingles by the tens of thousands. Fragments of wooden beams. Cars flipped onto their backs. Sand covering the streets. Dirt covering the sand. Leaves and limbs covering the dirt. And somehow clothes in the mix. And somehow furniture in the mix.

Gulfport has become the sobbing twin of post-bombing Nagasaki. Complete with dazed victims who wander the streets, wading through the drying remains of their former lives.
I can’t absorb it all. It doesn’t make sense. This foreign city under siege. It can’t be Gulfport. Can’t. So I don’t look at it any more. I just drive. I have to get home.

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