For those of you who didn't know-

and there are apparently many throughout the world, my hometown of Nashville, Tennessee got flooded during a torrential bipartite downpour last weekend. There are a horrifying number of people who have lost everything- their homes, their possessions, their vehicles, their pets, some would say their very selves.

I was lucky. Luckier than most.

My house flooded, I lost a bunch of stuff, and I've spent the past week hopping from one friend's couch to another, trying to keep on keeping on, as the axiom goes. I'm back in my home, with a place of my own to sleep in, and I am grateful.

But I can't even begin to express the surreality of the situation, and part of me (perhaps praeteritively) questions whether I should even try. The water shortages are a hurdle, to be sure, and there's nowhere in the city you can go that isn't offering up personalized devastation, sitting in the front of thousands of yards. And the number of homeless pets is heartwrenching; I've seen so many animals in and around the city, with collars and a frantic look on their faces, trying to find home.

But there's something that feels completely off in the air, and it isn't just the near-omnipresent stank of stagnating water (or the mosquitoes that ensue in such situations). I love this city, in the way that you can only love something that occasionally threatens to push you over the edge into madness. I love this city like an old married couple who occasionally exchange gunfire at one another while remaining completely devoted to one another.

The way to avoid feeling helpless, they say, is to help others. And that's exactly right.

In the words of Haven Hamilton, "They can't do this to us here in Nashville! Let's show them what we're made of."