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The
photo sale I had this past weekend went just about the
same as the one I recently had at Atsugi. Needless to
say I am pleased.
I now get a two week break before
my next sale which will take place at Yokota air base
on the weekend of October 15th and 16th.
But the really cool thing about this
past weekend was that I got to get together with ConansOtosan,
one of your fellow Sushicam readers/viewers. We met
in Shinjuku on Friday afternoon and spent the rest of
the day there taking a few photos, grabbing some sushi
and putting away a fair number of beers.
I always enjoy meeting those that have been following
Sushicam. There seems to be an instant bond and understanding
and the time just flies. I'm always curious to find
out how a person found out about Sushicam, or what I
could do to make it better.
Sadly enough the night had to come
to an end since he had to catch his last train home
for the night. But since I still had a couple of hours
before my last train I decided to stop in at another
bar for a couple more beers.
And I'm not sure if my Japanese is really improving
that much, or if it was just the beer that made me think
my Japanese has gotten better, but I was able to carry
on a nearly two hour conversation almost completely
in Japanese with the people I met there.
I think that after I've had a few beers I stop being
so self conscious about making mistakes and instead
just "let it flow".
(Isn't it kind of wonderful that beer
can be justified as a language study aid?...)
All of today's photos were taken last
Friday.
--
Following is a Hurricane Katrina survival story that
a fellow Sushicam follower has been kind enough to allow
me to share with the rest of you. It was written by
the Sushicam readers brother and captures the experience
in a visceral way that a network news program never
could.
-
Hey man, nice talking to you again.
Here's the run down...
So the story won't build up or take
a different spin,
I'm writing this down once, that way if you ever think
I'm not a complete idiot you can refer to this and remember
that I am.
Despite dire warnings Sunday night from a good friend
who works at the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency,
and how they were ordering body bags for the Coast,
and despite a spirited effort from my boss that afternoon
to pick me up and evacuate with her husband and kid
to her mom's house in Mobile, and despite watching the
late news early Monday and noticing a decided skew of
Katrina to the east, toward the Coast, I decided to
ride out the storm, mainly based on a neighbor in my
apartment building saying that during Camille water
"only got up to the steps"
of the apartment building I live in.
I did, in a last minute effort, move most of my precious
electronics into my big, walk-in closet, blew up an
air mattress, laid in some cookies, a couple candles
and a bottle of Glenlevit and made me a fort. I conked
out on my real bed for a couple of hours and woke up
around 7 a.m. to some pretty forceful wind and rain.
I turned on the TV one more time to hear how I should
not have been where I was, how New Orleans was doomed,
and how most of the big stuff should hit the Coast and
be over with by around noon.
I unplugged my 32" flat screen TV and put it in
an elevated place of honor in my fort. I made a bowl
of steel cut oats I never touched and almost by the
time I decided the winds dictated manning the closet
the power went out.
I took a Xanax.
I laid down on my mattress. After laying there about
an hour the winds picked up and the phone started ringing
(my ring tone is Tubular Bells from The Exorcist). So
I still had phone service and was
talking back and forth to my brother James in Orlando
and my sister Barbara and her husband Aaron in Eritrea,
Africa. I think at first I was probably making it sound
like a ghost story, and trying to convey a bit of excitement
to the whole thing. That was before during one of my
forays to the living room window, where I saw the sea
about halfway past my slightly elevated apartment building.
I think I was talking to Aaron and I know it was at
that moment I got scared. I went back to my closet for
some pep talk from Barbara and Aaron and then back out,
to see that the water had now completely engulfed the
apartment building. I was talking to Aaron, telling
him not to tell Barbara as I didn't want it to scare
her. Then it was back to the closet for what would be
the rest of the day.
I starting taking swigs of the scotch.
I heard the water and looked down and saw it creeping
through the floorboards. I'm pretty sure I was still
on the phone at this point, the point I decided I could
now mentally let go of trying to save all my stuff and
concentrate on my life. I was talking to Aaron because
I remembered going to the bathroom side of my closet
(too hard to explain-use you imagination) and wringing
the water from the floor (probably around 3 inches)
with a towel into the sink and asking him if Katrina's
eye was still a perfect circle.
I thought it was pretty futile but between rhythmically
doing that and talking to him it allowed me some focus,
kind of like taking a deep breath when I take off in
a plane.
Unexpectedly, the wringing appeared to work, I swore
the water was actually going down, along with part of
my fears and by this time much of my sobriety. I have
this totally cool remote control, a Kameleon, that lights
up when it feels a vibration (it knows you're coming).
I had laid it on a shelf with some other gadgets and
noticed it had started to sporadically light up, not
a good sign, because it would only do that if the entire
building was shaking.
That's pretty much when all hell broke loose. The last
thing I remember before the phone cut out was my sister
telling me that no matter what I heard or how hard the
wind was blowing Do Not Leave The Closet. She
even told me to expect the roof to "go", which
I then expected. I can't even begin to describe the
next couple of hours. In Biloxi, where I was, trust
me, it was the wind. I took one last peek outside the
closet, coinciding with the glass above my window unit
air conditioner blowing out. That's when my bedroom
began to, literally, suck.
This was the picture for the rest of the afternoon:
me, pulling on the closet doorknob as hard as I could
(it doesn't lock) with one hand and taking swigs from
the bottle of scotch with the other.
Noble, eh? Heroic. (I changed the bottle of scotch to
a Bible the other day in relating a synopsis to a
cashier, who gave me the discount at Winn Dixie even
though I didn't have my card.) And in reality later
I used my foot to scootch over a metal ice cream stool
to sit on. There's actually a mirror in there I could
see my silhouette in, clutching and swigging.
I remember deciding I was growing a mullet, and needed
a haircut.
A couple times the closet door popped open but I got
it shut again, hoping that if I kept a completely flat
profile on the outside the storm "just wouldn't
notice". I heard a constant, horrible howl, broken
only by the sound of even more terrible swells of wind,
rattling the building (and cool remote, which I used
as a barometer to measure gust strength.) There were
horrible thuds coming from the hallway and ominous crumbling
sounds from the bedroom.
It was just like that scene in the odious movie Signs,
the one where the aliens kept banging on the wooden
door and couldn't get in. It went on and on, well past
the bewitching hour of noon, when I thought it was all
supposed to have been over, then past 1, then past 2.
I don't know at what point or at what time there was
enough pause in between gusts to crack open the door
and have a look-see, but eventually there was, and I
was surprised to see the shit I piled up on my bed still
piled up on my bed. The blinds were blowing like crazy
but it was actually dry in the bedroom itself. I imagined
taking a nap on my bed when it was over. Also at this
point I decided I might actually make it through the
whole thing, and took back the Lord's Prayer I had mechanically
recited just in case, and became a big bad avowed atheist
again.
I'd say around 3 p.m. there was enough breaks (but still
enough bad gusts to send me skittering back to the closet)
to step out into the other rooms. I had noticed in the
closet that it was starting to drip water from above
and indeed this was happening all over the apartment.
But the other windows had held. The carpet was
drenched but everything else was intact, including my
beloved books. Outside though, was another story.
I saw an at least 5 ft high pile of
debris on the street. Probably around 4 p.m. I was able
to open my front door, to discover piles of styrofoam
"rubble" from somewhere, and tons and tons
of glass. The front entrance and back entrance of my
building had been totally blown away, supporting frame
and all.
About 4:30 I went back into my closet and conked out,
despite water dripping on me. I woke up at 6. It was
still extremely windy and reddish water was still dripping
all over me, and when I realized it was also dripping
on my Burberry shirts I mopped the ceiling, my first
effort at disaster recovery. I got up and made jaunts
outside my apartment building.
Trust me, what you've seen on the
news cannot begin to convey the utter, utter destruction.
My building stood, though almost every window in every
other apartment was blown off and it was obviously there
was something going on with the roof. I wandered around
a bit in zombie-like trance then went back inside and
laid down on my incredibly comfortable bed and $100
pillow. Within minutes I woke because of a shimmering
light from outside and people screaming in Spanish.
I got up, ran out and saw a car on fire in my parking
lot. I ran back in, got my laptop, the one thing I would
take if pressured to pick the One-Thing-I-Would-Take-With-Me
and waited for my apartment building to burst into flames,
a fitting end I thought, to a retarded "survivor"
story.
And trust me, I didn't care at this point. From out
of nowhere a fire truck arrived, and extinguished the
fire. I went back in, back to sleep and woke up to a
whole fucking New Day.
Anything else to this story you've probably seen on
TV, read in the paper or heard on the news. I'm just
telling y'all what it was like to go through Katrina,
which is all your morbid curiosity really wants to know.
Trust me, I was not brave. I thought for awhile I might
die, but with as numb as I've become since my parents
deaths last year, it was No Big Whoop. I was stupid,
admittedly, for staying despite all the warnings, but
then too this isn't a let-this-be-a-warning story. Stay
through hell if you like.
What I was, however, was cruel to the people that I
know love me, and to the people I love, especially to
my beloved sister Barbara My anguish over making her
cry and thinking I was dead resulted in me bursting
out in tears a couple days later. The deep concern from
my brother James, who I spent that Friday night with
in New Orleans, wondering if these would be the last
couple days of the city as everyone knows it, also touched
me. Or hearing that my other brother Mike gave much
more than a shit. Or all the touching text messages
I got in the next couple days (R U OK?).
They were wonderful, several surprising. I never knew
I was so fucking popular.
And loved.
Honestly, I haven't changed much. I always knew it was
great to be alive, but right now it all feels more
like a sad, poignant epilogue rather than a beginning.
And so far, I'm not much nicer. When I came out of my
apartment Tuesday I was dreading having to save someone.
After retrieving my untouched new car (a two-toned silver
Subaru Baja, with XM Radio) from the covered lot I had
moved it to Sunday night (the one brilliant thing I
did during this whole mess) I drove as far as I could
into Alabama, to Monroeville, to a little mom &
pop hotel.
To me, survivor's guilt feels like I should have gone
at least two days without air conditioning. Though to
hand it to myself, I didn't bitch about the lousy service
at the Pizza Hut buffet.
It was something, huh? There's a bit of Scotch left
in the bottle that I was swigging from, I snatched it
yesterday from the apartment when I went back in to
Biloxi to pick up my glasses, and anything I thought
sentimental. But as I looked around at all the displaced,
wet furniture and strewn books and
especially into my wretched little closet with its
deflated air mattress, I decided it was all too
sentimental and left with just the scotch and the
glasses.
Maybe on my deathbed I'll finish that bottle, in a
dramatic flourish, with a toast to life. It'd be cool
to keep it around and make that the absolutely very
last thing I ever do.
For what's it's worth, I'm really glad there's still
some left.
Comment 21
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