There is an underlying belief that the flood we had here in New Orleans was of biblical proportions and some would go so far as to say, it came to wash us clean. Floods and fires have a way of doing that. In California, the fires rage because the underbrush has grown too bushy and the natural barriers have been destroyed to accommodate urban sprawl (oh they all drive Priuses but believe you me, they’re ruining the environment more than the Cajuns who dwell on the bayou – who never get written up for their green tendencies).
Noah’s flood was about a cleasning – a sort of colonic for the masses – and maybe Katrina was ours – who is to say? – but I tell you this, in assessing where we are now compared to where we were then, we are cleaner, our eyes are more wide open, and we all have scrubbed away the moss that grows fat around our heart and soul and have asked the searing questions – who am I? what is New Orleans? why stay here? how can I be better?
The city isn’t necessarily a tabula rasa, no more than any of us are now vestal virgins, but we do feel like we are being touched for the very first time in places we thought had atrophied and calcified.