"It's hard for me to make a living now", Lee quipped, alluding to the chaos on Wall Street and in the banking system, complaining that he can't make any money by investing in a bank, that CDs and saving accounts now pay next to nothing in interest. He doesn't even want to touch the stock market.
And as he looks around him, all Lee sees is growing impoverishment and environmental catastrophe in southern Louisiana. "Things definitely need to change. Our area has been crippled." So he hopes there will be a big change with the elections in November. Those were his last thoughts as he said Adieu and drove off.
I can't help but think that Lac des Allemands is a metaphor for the country right now, as the formerly clear, oxygenated waters of life supporting the teeming American masses have been clouded and degraded by the toxic runoff of financial capital and industrial excess, creating a satiated environment of the wrong kind of nutrients - unbridled power, unbridled concentration of wealth, unbridled pollution - leading to a debauched explosion of noxious weeds, parasite blooms so-to-speak, that are strangling the oxygen out of the land and the population.
*********
After that moment at the lake, I didn't stop again until I reached New Orleans. I was trying to drive back to the Lower Ninth Ward one last time before my flight left, but we got stuck in some heavy traffic backed up around the Superdome for a Saints game. Finally we got through that mess and headed out Claiborne Avenue for the Ward. But we will talk about what transpired there next time.
In the back of my mind I kept thinking of how I had run into, of all things while driving through southern Louisiana today, a remarkable statue of Kwan Yin, as if this was a portent from the Universe:
She is the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, and she stands right off the highway near Houma. Will she bless southern Louisiana and America with her divine love this November?*********
By the way, if you would like to look at my photo album of the Voice of the Wetlands Festival, 2008, as well as more interesting shots of southern Louisiana, click here to go to my Kodak Gallery webpage. Once there, just click on VIEW SLIDESHOW. You do not have to sign in.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
