Culture + Place = Home

Back after the Federal Flood of 2005, when I was still in Seattle,
when New Orleans was too obvious to be ignored and too far away to be real,
I heard a lotta people askin,
"Why do Those People stay when they know the potential consequences?
"Just move!
"Just leave!
"Just find somewhere Else,
"somewhere New,
"somewhere Safe.
"Secure."

And they
They don't get it,
those lovely, young, volcano-enclosed people.

Don't get the thick history in the blood of every child.
Don't get the breathing of the streets.
Don't understand that
Culture
is cumulative and that,
when it has built itself sturdy and
rooted down dirty,
that Culture
Is
Everything.

Everything.

It's not just a street number or a gathering of buildings or parades or parties.
It's a Breath and a Scent and something
so unnameable, so irreplaceable,
tied so implacably to the very personal nostalgic heart of a thing,
that to sever one's physical ties with that Culture would be to cut out one's own heart and place it,
still beating,
gently on the windowsill for the birds' last supper.