Out of a great need we are all holding hands and climbing. Not loving is a letting go. Listen, the terrain is far too dangerous for that. --Hafiz

It's an age-old story. Girl meets Boy. Girl likes boy. Boy appears to like girl. Boy must return to his home in New Orleans for work etc. but gets detoured to Georgia on account of the Gulf Coast being eaten away by a massive hurricane. Perhaps that last part is a new 2005 twist to an age-old story. Not very romantic, is it?

What do you say to someone whose life has been upended so suddenly? This is not just about uninhabitable houses. The media seems preoccupied with peek-a-boo rooftops. These cities looks like war zones. People have not just lost their homes and their contents, they have lost family members, pets, employment, food, water, transportation and banking access. All bets on human behavior are off, at this point. New Orleans is not only under water, now it's burning, as well. The topography of the United States will be permanently altered. Words like I'm so sorry and Somehow it'll all work out are beyond inappropriate. I realize that deep down we are supposed to be thankful for our very lives, and that stuff is just stuff and stuff doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. But my heart breaks when I see a young woman rummaging through the pile of soggy splinters that used to be her home searching for the photo album containing the only pictures she had of her mother who was killed in a drunk driving incident. Some stuff does matter. A lot. Photographs, artwork, music, mementos. It's devastating.

And there's that feeling. That feeling that creeps into you--it's almost clammy. Like a damp sweater. That the world simply Will Never Be The Same. That calamities will just keep piling up, natural or otherwise; we will have benefit concerts accordingly, the news cameras will find something new to chase and then we will just move on to the next disaster. This clammy feeling kept me awake last night. I remember this feeling after September 11th. And the tsunami. And the invasion of Iraq. The world seems very off-kilter; as if we are rolling slowly down a hill. I suppose we've always been rolling, and I've only recently noticed it because we are gaining speed and momentum. I'm a little afraid of what is at the bottom.