Reeling

Within an hour of arriving home last night, my blissful, tranquil state of mind splintered. My room is a disaster. I don't know how I'm going to fit everything into my suitcases without taking a hammer to every three-dimensional object I own so I can pile all the fragments into the bags. My dog is old -- too old -- but that's another post, one I've written but can't bring myself to publicize yet, in case family members still in denial choose to read it. Hell, what do you do when your dog's fine one day but falling apart the next, only to swing back to "good" again?

And then there's the hurricane.

I was away for most of the aftermath, so I'm learning the extent of the damage now. What I cannot get over is the racial composition of the victims. Or the absence of discussion around it. Hey, America! There's a massive elephant stampeding through the room with renewed fury, probably because it's been cooped up with us for a couple of centuries. Could we please acknowledge and deal with its presence before I ever have to look at the television again and remind myself that I'm not viewing images from Somalia? The hurricane is a class issue AND a race issue -- it's a sickening reminder that everything is not equal in the USA.

I can't even write about it now. If the pictures don't speak for themselves, what will?