IKE 9-13-08
September is almost over. In this election year, I remember that years and years and years ago there was a saying, “I Like Ike”. Well this year, I do not like Ike.
He was a blow hard wind bag with tornado tongues and a bladder full of tidal surges on a full moon. He sailed through like it was Normandy all over again and drowned the beaches of Bolivar and Galveston. He changed his mind five or six times before centering on the north east Texas coast line; that being Houston, but first the chosen beach head needed to be thoroughly assaulted. We still do not have total power and the bodies are not tallied. There is a speculation that they will never be counted being washed out to sea later to enter swamps filled with southern demons that be there feeding on flotsam.
It is almost October and people are thinking about Christmas Trees and still clearing their land of fallen trees. I have enough fire wood stacked to heat Virginia. In South Texas a heat fire is for fun and atmosphere. It will be years before I burn all my atmosphere wood.
The Galveston Art League on The Strand took nine feet of standing flood water after it had filled all the basements and rearranged the seawall. So any paintings left hanging floated. I looked at the situation on Highway #6 and realized that if I got down there in time to retrieve them, I would only be stuck there in the last minute crush to leave; one more unnecessary car on the road. Ike shifted in the night so quickly that most were left flat footed with little time to board up their houses, secure their yards, hunker down and ride it out.
There was an aftermath news photo of a Texas tall thin woman eighty years old standing in the middle of her own personal rubble. She said, “Things is things. I am alive.” I suppose that is how everyone feels today.
My friend wrote today that she had power (sixteen days without power). Her personal studio flooded to the ceiling. I looked at my ill kept studio and was ashamed at my lack of appreciation and poor maintenance of the gift of luxury in the mere sentence “my studio”. Hers was gone. In respect, I have started straightening and cleaning mine. I will think of her with purpose throughout the entire process.
All I am able to do at the moment is pray and hope my limp crippled praying joins up with the voices of stronger souls than mine and make their way to solace for all the afflicted of body, mind, soul and spirit.
UPDATE: October 2, 2008:
300 still missing: At last we are starting to count those who cannot be found.
May God Bless Us Everyone!
October 17th 2008: Four Weeks and Four Days following IKE Paul and I drove the streets of Galveston (the ones that were open). The entire STRAND is not up to working order. The beach is mostly gone. The storm broke up the sea wall and pitched it into parking lots across Seawall Drive. All the paintings in the gallery drowned and then grew black sewer mold. The stories are sad ones and tears involuntarily fall of their own will. We will have to consider changing the present hurricane codes to a category for the winds and a separate category for the surge.
I did not know my mailbox resembled a large tombstone. I looked at my two retrieved IKE paintings covered in mold. I watched the little mold flowers grow. The frames were pealing up and gathering little mold flowers of their own. Early on Monday morning following our Friday Pilgrimage the garage had already taken on a sickly sweet smell. We made strong efforts at cleaning the paintings but the smell of death and the grave refused to leave.
I asked out loud to that great Whoever in the sky, “What would the Amish do?”
It doesn’t take long to get an answer to that one.
I got the Hefty bag: this part hurt; all paintings contain the life and thoughts of the artist. I properly stuffed the bag and placed it out against the tombstone awaiting the Monday Morning Trash.
IKE had enough immortalizations without adding my two paintings.
Some things are best let go of before they immortalize themselves in spite of us. Our necks carry around enough millstones without adding more. Apart from my Space painting, I do believe they were truly two of my better works in the present painting phase. There will be more, but for now, I will be writing and painting on the side.
It is very hard to let go of millstones, relics and ashes. Hurricane IKE has created a life all its own and will live along side Carla, Hugo, and that Sweet Virginia Breeze we name Isabelle.
Filed under Hurricane IKE | Comment (1)