hurricane tender square it’s like a tornado that lasts for hours, he said. i’m surprised he wants to track the landfall on twitter, follow all the grainy cell phone videos coming in from those who didn’t evacuate, given how much he went through. but he says watching this way is easier than living through it. his mom picked him up at loyola during freshman year when ivan was set to hit. they got stuck for 16 hours trying to drive to san antonio—8 hours on an unmoving interstate and 8 more to arrive at their destination. years later, he returned home from ole miss a week after katrina’s mayhem and there were no landmarks to guide him anymore. their house was fucking gone. they had to keep making mortgage payments for months afterward, on a bungalow that didn’t even exist. i ask if he’s okay; he’s been quiet lately, but that’s also the norm for him. he tells me he’s worried about everyone down there, even though he doesn’t really know anyone living down there anymore. maybe it wouldn’t be so bad: roofs could be fixed, power could be restored, the streets could be drained. but his family never rebuilt. ida has already reversed the flow of the mississippi, impelling water from the gulf into the river, inundating the floodplain. at 12:30 last night, his phone vibrated with an incoming call, a name flushed from his past, someone he hasn’t talked to since college. he figured it was a butt-dial (they hung up after a couple rings), but maybe they were reaching out to all they knew from the area to see if he survived it. 210830 what's it to you? who go blather from