Last night we watched the first half of that Spike Lee documentary on HBO about Katrina and the Levees. I knew it was something I wasn't gonna want to see. I had things to do that I could have clouded with more emotion than is already filling my head lately. I had to get some writing done, maybe go for a jog and call my friend in Portland back. I knew it was gonna tear me up, and just start that whole cycle of shaky doubt and moral desparation that it's so easy to slide into when I see this stuff. But sometimes you end up watching something like that not out of desire, just because you know that when it's over and the lights come back you're going to be filled with this spirit, this feeling that for every vile and wrongheaded act there's still the indominable burn of compassion floating around that can never be repressed. Call it Karmic obligation. It's the sort of thing you just walk into knowing that you'll leave a little worse for the wear, but with a glimmer of hope in your eye.
And this started out the same way as usual, harrowing stories and film, stuff that I've already heard about since the day after it happened. Which hits a lot harder when you can hear the people screaming, crying for help. Wondering why nobody is coming to help their children and their parents. It's a lot harder to think about how far away New Orleans is during a montage of of bodies strewn across the streets for days, left in makeshift graves under garbage bags and moldy blankets. Of course it was only the first half they showed last night, and that the second is to be aired tonight. It didn't matter though. It didn't matter a fucking lick, because by the time I realized that it was only half of it airing, I knew that I wasn't going to have that realization I was hoping for. There's not gonna be any warm milk after the nightmare tonight, because New Orleans is still massively fucked up. There's still neighborhoods to this day that have no running water, there's people that are still getting kicked out of their FEMA sponsored trailers and i'm willing to bet the levees are yet to rebuilt to the condition they should've been in in the first place. That's just about e damned nough to break my fuckin' heart right now. I still got shit I should be doing, but I know I won't get to it tonight. Still a damned shame.

oh, and the very thought that they're going to reopen the Superdome is just disgusting in every conceivable way. Really. The companies that have effectively devastated the coastal wetlands there should have to pay for the reconstruction of a new stadium by themselves.