Ellis Anderson
There is a man living in my driveway now and I don't find that at all unusual. He makes his bed in the back of his small SUV and sleeps there with his little dog. Many afternoons he can be found sitting behind the wheel, reading the paper, his Shitz Su nestled on his lap. He calls his car "home." It's part of the new vocabulary that is emerging on the Gulf Coast since Katrina.
The man is the grandfather of a nine-year-old girl and one of my new residents. She and her parents actually live inside my house for now because the storm took their own. She tells me that the Shitz Su is fussy and will pick fights with my dogs, so her grandfather would rather stay in his car than intrude. I've tried to insist that he come inside – we'd find him a bed to sleep in - but I think that now he'd rather be in the one place he can call his own.
He's not the only one. I have other friends living in tents in their driveways or in cramped travel-trailers rather than taking refuge with family in other towns. They want to stay connected with the place that has been their home, even if the structure is no longer standing. It may not seem very practical, but practicality flew out of the window along with everything else when Katrina tore through the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
The community that remains behind on the coast has evolved into a new animal – some fantastic creature I've never seen before. It's fiercely loyal, incredibly hardy and deeply determined. Amazingly, it's developed a wicked sense of humor and doesn't whine very often. No matter your loss, too many others have lost more. It's bad form to complain.
And this new community is developing its own language, with an extensive and colorful vocabulary. There's "mucking out." That used to mean cleaning out a horse's stall. Now it's something you do to the inside of your house. "Gone-Pecan" is used frequently – it's a designation for anything that got taken out by the storm – houses, businesses, cars, family photos. It's interchangeable with "Got-Gone."
When we leave the region and go someplace that wasn't affected by the storm, we call it "the outside world." The outside world has cable TV and working phones. You can walk out your door and look at a neighborhood instead of rubble. You can drive to any number of gas stations and stores and they're actually open. You don't have to stand in line four hours to buy a washing machine or talk to a FEMA agent. A chainsaw isn't a necessary household item. You can call an insurance agent and actually talk to someone. There isn't a 10 o'clock curfew. And in the outside world, the word "Katrina" is just a name instead of an adjective.
Here, we have "Katrina-mind." That refers to blanking out, forgetting something absurdly simple, like your own phone number or the name of your best friend. We say "Katrina-ware." That's the paper and plastic we mostly eat from now. There's the "Katrina Cough," a persistent hacking from breathing all the silt brought in by the storm. This dust hangs in the air and coats everything with a fine, malevolent grit.
A portable toilet has become a "Katrina Latrina." Fetid water that has hidden in corners and plastic boxes, a dark brew of multi-colored molds that emits an unmistakable stench, is "Katrina Juice". And my absolute favorite new phrase is "Katrina Patina."
Anything that survived the storm is coated with sludge, discolored, mangled at least to some degree. It's got that "Katrina Patina." Jewelry, artwork, tools, photographs, furniture, clothes – all have been transformed by the storm into something vaguely recognizable, yet inalterably changed. Even friends, at the end of a long day of mucking, covered with grime and sweat and a substance resembling black algae, will refuse an embrace. "Stay back," they'll warn. "I've got the Katrina Patina."
Even after a scalding shower, scrubbing with soap and disinfectant, the Katrina Patina remains, marking every one of us. It doesn't wash off. We, as well as our belongings, are vaguely recognizable, inalterably changed. We can only hope some of it wears away as the years pass.
Yet beneath that patina - under the sludge and the mud, the loss and the mourning - a bright determination flourishes. Our spirit as a community is evolving as surely as our vocabulary. We're fluent in the language of loss now, but we're also learning more about the language of love.
Ellis Anderson is a 48-year-old jewelry maker and co-founder of the grassroots nonprofit organization Coastal Community Watch formed to fight planned condominium projects near Bay St. Louis, Waveland and Hancock County.
 Back to Notes from the Gulf main page.
Have your own story from the Gulf Coast? Contact us.
Up to Top
HOME |
Email Signup |
About Us |
Contact Us |
Terms of Use |
© 2008 Sierra Club
|
