Enlightenment leads Buddhists to Nirvana.
However, here in the post-Hurricane Ike Houston area more than one-half million of us wait not for enlightenment but for any sliver of illumination to lead us to the bathroom after sundown.
The Galveston area is without essential utilities such as electricity, potable water, sewage (except that which is in streets and homes). The University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston’s largest medical facility as well as its largest employer, is shut, perhaps for months (I know, I tried unsuccessfully to get a prescription renewed from my doctor there). Texas A&M University’s marine branch will be land locked at the College Station main campus for at least a semester. Neighboring communities are in the same boat –literally with incongruous sailing vessels in streets and yards.
In Houston, CenterPoint Energy, the regulated power company that handles power grids (or in our case, gridlocks), reports that more than 500,000 of residents are still without electricity, two weeks after Hurricane Ike attacked. According to a local TV report, CenterPoint may not have power restored to all its customers until November, so deep frying that Thanksgiving turkey outside may become a nutritional necessity rather than a Texas epicurean tradition.
By the way, CenterPoint Energy, one of the nation’s largest regulated energy utilities, is the step sibling of Reliant Energy, a deregulated electricity seller and wholesaler. In other words, Reliant Energy is what you get when you flip your switch. CenterPoint gets Reliant Energy there. Therefore, I assume that neither Reliant Stadium — home of the Houston Texans so-called football team — nor Reliant Center — big profit-making convention center — both named for that unregulated power family ever worried about food rotting in their concession stands.
Zen teaches that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. However, in Houston the journey toward our post-Ike re-enlightment sometimes falls several steps behind.
Fractured trees abound in every Houston neighborhood. One clean-up team, pruning broken limbs to assist a CenterPoint fix-it crew, accidently severed a functional electric line. The hot wire fell on to the roof of a house which immediately caught fire, thus bringing long-lost illumination temporarily to the neighborhood until the fire department doused the blaze. On the plus side, that house escaped any storm surge flooding during Hurricane Ike.
RIVER OAKS UPDATE
After reading today’s Houston Chronicle, I realize that not only do the poor folks in Galveston and surrounding small towns suffer, but that Houston’s swankier residents also endured hardships due to this hurricane.
So, let me summarize two harrowing stories that appeared in today’s Houston Chronicle:
Ike’s Aftermath: Let Them eat…osso buco?
and Being Powerless Doesn’t Stop The Party
The rich are different from you and me. Their affluent abodes never take on affluence during storms. Many of Houston’s poshest pads accessorize their curbside appeal with invisible buried power lines invulnerable to tempests and the resulting inconvenience of blackouts.
However, some of the humbler River Oaks denizens found that Hurricane Ike failed to distinguish zip codes. Those whose electricity grows on tree poles evacuated to more welcoming climes, jetting to Paris, Aspen or New York (in summer, how gauche!). Those who lacked private aircraft sought out refuge in Four Seasons or Five Diamond lodgings around the Lone Star state. One socialite, already safely in Austin on “philanthropic business” found her suitcase(s) contained only “a cocktail dress, diamond earrings and running shorts and a t-shirt.” Hopefully, she also included some Jimmy Choos to complete that ensemble.
Houston’s movers and shakers weren’t spared moving and shaking from Hurricane Ike. The Houston Chronicle reports that “the prized Bentley of one major player was smashed by a tumbling tree.”
Thus, no one escapes hurricane or karmic forces. All are twisted in the enduring loop of samsara (suffering). Some of us just spend it shoveling sewage from our living rooms and others sweat over gala party rescheduling snafus at Tony’s restaurant, Houston's toniest watering hole.
This is republished from my blog The Winking Buddha Blog. Please log in and enjoy sometime.