More so than in other countries, memory and reflection live in an unsettled place in the American psyche.

A new and prosperous country by civilization’s standards, the United States is understandably more comfortable with looking forward than back.  More comfortable with future prospects than past performance.

This forward-thinking mentality, while great at cultivating innovation, has continuously created interesting tension in a population looking to define its place in an ever-changing world.

But what happens when all the physical landmarks that served to ground your life are wiped out, not slowly over the course of decades years, but in a single day?

Inspired by her new non-fiction book, “Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast”, Decatur’s Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey’s op-ed in the New York Times this morning reflects and documents how Hurricane Katrina continues to ravage the memories and lives of people along her native Mississippi Coast, years after the actual physical destruction has ended.

For my brother, the Marine Life sign was an anchor to the past, and Katrina — devastating and symbolic — represents a break with that past, casting us into a present and future in which our personal landmarks have vanished. Of course, life before Katrina was hardly unchanging — we lost the pasture, the road, the persimmon trees. But those losses were incorporated more easily, more gradually, into our narratives. Katrina was different — it was an absolute end to one chapter of our lives, and the beginning of a new and awfully difficult one. Before Katrina, change was natural. In the post-Katrina landscape, all change is haunted by the devastation of the storm, and thus inseparable from it. Even the construction of a house is seen through a scrim of loss.

Trethewey will speak at the Decatur Book Festival next Sunday at 1:15p on the Decatur First Baptist stage.