Life Goes On.. Sunrise Over Hurricane Country

A beautiful sunrise over Miami today. Muted pastels across a light blue sky. Battered pine tree silohuetted against the sky... it's beauty and damage highlighted. Beautiful sunrise. Probably was a beautiful sunrise in New Orleans as well... and the colors may have even been reflected in the flood waters below.

Is it any less beautiful because of that or for a moment does it give one person inspiration?

Others.. never see the sunrise. They never notice it. It is simply there a part of life and holds no magic or mystery to them.

People see magic.. or they don't.

They feel they are blessed or cursed.

Two types of human nature emerge at moments like these. Moments that are now collective moments for us all.

Some refuse to watch it and turn it off. Some refuse to stop watching.. they cannot turn it off; they cannot watch anything else.

This is not about whether we watch obsessively or whether we refuse. This is about what we do in the end and how it changes us.

People in Wyoming and Seattle know that something can suddenly hit them out of the blue. A tornado or a terrorist attack. A plane crashing into their home safely situated far away from the unsheltered shoreline.

It is easier when we have someone to blame. A "THEY" and a rallying point for our anger and dismay. But, there isn't always a "they" you can rally against. Some do of course. I've heard people complain about "stupid people" who live in places like that. Right... may the your fate be always in kind hands. People are always looking for a "they" and for some reason people want to complain about New Orleans being built low (like many places around the world... like Holland for instance) as opposed to people who live in Gulfport. People seem to feel it is smarter to live "far inland" or "far up north" and they are smarter and wiser than others who live shrimping their lives away in places like Bay St. Louis or Pass Christian.

I'll leave smart up to you and your own eyes. For me to walk around packed up into layers of clothes with a bitter winter wind blowing in your face for weeks and months out of your year and not know what it is to sit on your porch in the afternoon and watch a thunderstorm build out over the Bay or feel the stars come out on a warm summer night, feel the balmy breeze and watch the palm fronds dance a bit in the moonlight.. well you choose your life and I'll choose mine. I live a block from a wide canal and as I write this I can hear seagulls singing their morning song. Then again my best friend who moved to Maine has gulls flying around too.
We all love the song of the sea.

I love mountains and deserts.. of the desert sky cannot be compared to anything in a planetarium and I love planetariums.

And, love is where the heart is and many move places because that is where they mate lives... their job is.. their family is.. their dreams.

New Orleans is flooded... it is a big city.

Last night I heard on the news it was the 35th largest city in America.

Number 35 on some list.

And, people in places all over America say stupid things like "well they shouldn't rebuild it there" or variations on that theme. They seem to believe that New Orleans is one block long and it is called Bourbon Street. They seem to believe it is nothing more than a box of pralines and too many drinks of beer or an expensive meal in a fancy restaurant while on convention in the convention town of America.

Got news for ya.. it's a big city. People work at the port, the docks.. the docks that are now under water. They have some of the best colleges in the country ...they are professors and professionals.. not just some guy down on his luck playing a trumpet on Bourbon Street collecting money in a suitcase sitting on the floor waiting for tourists walking by. It is a city full of people who work in jobs like you and me. They work in libraries. They work in hospitals. They work in banks. They even work at the Wal Mart that is being wandered through and picked through like the skeleton of a dead animal still warm but dead.

The city of my life.. my heart is Key West. And, I hear people do this all the time. To them Key West is Duval Street and they know nothing of the city that was Tennessee Williams muse. It is like Bourbon Street .. a street to get drunk, to go back to some hotel drunk and a little more in debt and then drive back out of town. Okay..to many Key West is sunset on Mallory Dock and a drive down Whitehead Street to take a picture by the big bouy that shows you have made it to the end of the road. It is more.. it is a beautiful, sweet town filled with people who care about each other and live by the motto "One Human Family"

People's perceptions are imprinted on their memory by a scene in a movie or a picture postcard Grandma and Grandpa sent. or Dear Aunt Sally.

Nope.. they are working, vibrant cities.. and New Orleans is the 35th largest in the country. Do not tell me we should not waste our tax dollars rebuilding it.

Gulfport.. Biloxi and Highway 90 are towns like the towns that run along the rim of the Great Lakes.. Michigan, Minnesotta.. Buffalo. They are working towns. People work in other jobs beyond the casinos. They are bankers and teachers and store clerks and it is all washed away.
I am not a gambler. I have gambled.. but I don't live for it.

Many live on it..the money the economy is based on for now... and they don't like when I complain on the board about their bitching over the loss of the casinos.
Sorry. My preference. My vote.

Most people I know who have been to Biloxi.. almost ALL the people I have met who have been to Biloxi have never done anything but flown in on some cheap junket out of Ft. Lauderdale International Airport with one cheap hotel room, cheap air fare and they are looking to get lucky in the casinos.. maybe pick up some girl (or guy) and get lucky for the night and fly out 2 days later. They have seen nothing of Biloxi...nothing of a place that is truly one of the most beautiful areas in America. They have lost money they probably would have wasted on something else.. it's a cheap thrill, a wicked woman robbing them blind and leaving them asleep, dead drunk in the middle of the night in a motel room somewhere. They don't even know what hit them.. they spent hundreds more than that expected to.. than they planned to and they fly back to Miami and tell their friends how they really didn't lose any money.. came out even (biggest lie of any gambler) and that is the way it goes and goes.

I've sat in Vegas and watched people shove coins into machines and pull the arm of the bandit like it was no longer money but tiddly winks. And, it's hypnotizing. Everyone should go once in life just to see it.. to put how we look at money in perspective and hope that the bell will ring for you and you will take your coins and leave fast...before you put them all back in hoping to win more. It's all perspective.. you won $75 in coins.. you spent $20.. maybe it you put all $75 back in you might win the bigger jackpot... and then usually, not always it is gone. And, you walk out.. tell your kids you broke even.

It's fun. Not lying but it's a sick way to build an economy and to hear people in Miami bitching that "the casinos were destroyed" makes me want to puke.

TWC lady saying Hard Rock Casino is going to push back their opening several months. Gee.. I didn't know they could rebuild a place at ground zero THAT fast.

What about the schools? What about the churches? What about the gasoline stations some guy owns and works at? What about the Piggly Wiggly?

We all choose our paths.. and that area put all their eggs into the basket of the casinos built out over the water and there was more denial there that they would not get hit by another Camille ...than there was in New Orleans.

Trust me.. not one person in NOLA ever thought the city one day wouldn't flood. Not one person in Key West ever thinks a big one won't come through and trash the Rock and blow out a bridge somewhere down along the way. Not one person in Miami doesn't think somewhere, sometime a storm like Katrina can hit Miami dead onto Flagler Avenue. Not a person living in New York City doesn't worry it will be hit by a terrorist again and again.

We all choose our paths, our poisons and our addictions.

My addiction is Key West.

And, if I move away somewhere for some reason ..somewhere that it is harder to get to than it is right now.. I will dream of it. I will long for it. I will come and visit and walk up and down the streets of Simonton and Southard and maybe down Eaton or up Fleming.

And, when New Orleans is rebuilt I will go and listen to the sounds of jazz wafting out of dark bar... throw coins into a suitcase on the ground of some trumpet player and smile down and tell him what he already knows.. he plays beautiful music. I will look up at the wrought iron balconies and think how beautiful the city is..

We are not about our disasters and floods and tornadoes that touch down.. we are about our ability to survive, to pick ourselves up, to mourn and to move on.

Yes my long ago friend.. Life Goes On.

Put a Jazz CD in the CD player.. or check your IPOD for that song you downloaded and..reach deep into your pocket and give money to the Red Cross.. let them choose where the money is needed most. Maybe it will go to some family in Gulfport, in Biloxi... in Pass Christian.. or maybe it will eventually make it's way into the Big Easy.

Please.. do it now!

Watching The Weather Channel.. beautiful wave off of Africa... strong big red ball attached to it.. maybe the Red Cross will end up giving to your town.. you never know.

You never know what life will bring you tomorrow..

May it only bring you sweet things...