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To the left are the two homes that I lived in while in New Orleans. The first is in New Orleans' Mid City neighborhood. Our house flooded to a depth of eight feet. The landlord had the double shotgun remodeled shortly after the storm. This house was the only house occupied on the block the entire year that we lived there. All of the other houses were in various states of decay; some had been gutted to the studs, some were gutted to a height of four or five feet from the ground; some were falling over, and some hadn't (and weren't the entire time we lived there) even been entered since before the storm. We worked very had on the house when we first moved in. There was sludge covering almost every flat surface outside, we hosed, raked and scraped until it was all gone. We planted flowers, made it look pretty. Eventually, things fell a part; there was no reward for living in the empty neighborhood except the occasional prowler or missing garden tool. I was very tired of looking at FEMA trailers, dirty streets, flooded out cars, and plain old loneliness. Once this started to happen I gave up; I didn't have the energy to make our house pretty any more. No one else cared so why should I? Such a bad attitude to have but the neighborhood's emptiness certainly fostered it.
The second house was in a much better neighborhood; situated between the French Quarter and the Marigny. It was a beautiful house that received absolutely no damage from the hurricanes (why? because people knew where to safely build houses when the city was founded). The interior of our part of the house had been redone in the theme of a sailing ship; beautiful wood everywhere. It was absolutely charming; lying in bed at night I could hear the midnight carriage tour as it passed our house: "This is Farbourg Marigny..." But this loveliness carried a hefty price, one that we simply couldn't afford. But it was a last chance play for happiness in one of the saddest cities of all. We just couldn't take it there any longer. I couldn't, you couldn't, we couldn't. Our bedroom is behind the left window and false door; I think the rooms in the front of this house used to be a pair of formal, double parlors when the house was young. We didn't have anyone break into this house, as we did the other, probably because revelers wandered past the house at all hours; it wasn't uncommon to be woken by couples drunkenly cuddling outside our window at four in the morning. Sometimes we would find the unmistakable scent of urine outside our gate; people are animals sometimes.
Ben still lives in the second house, for now anyway; I doubt he will for much longer. It is too hard. And I live in a motorhome in Idaho. Oh the changes a few months will bring!
I have been hearing so many comparisons between the disaster response for the California wildfires and Hurricane Katrina. Yesterday there was a story on NPR about it, and it made my blood boil. I had to think about it for a while, and figure out why it got me so excited. Part of it was that I was jealous, that I wasn’t there. I know it sounds horrible, but I think that my time in Louisiana made me a sort of disaster junkie. And it wasn’t just the volunteering, helping those in need, giving your all for a good cause Red Cross Disaster Relief Operation moments either. It was every minute I spent in Louisiana.
Louisiana, New Orleans in particular, is the modern equivalent to the Wild West; kind of a backwards sort of analogy, but I really don’t know of any other way to describe it. Roads are bad. The infrastructure is very poor; I read a statistic a few months back saying that an astounding sixty (I think that was what it was) percent of the water in New Orleans water system leaks before it reaches its destination; crazy. Crime is rampant. The government is corrupt. It is filthy. Bourbon Street is wild; every Western town had its share of brothels and bars. And it is hard to do anything, just as I imagine it was in the Wild West—or New Orleans 150 years ago. New Orleans is always like this, but pile on top of it the Hurricane Katrina disaster, and well, you can see what happens.
I felt like kind of a pioneer living in the city. When I first moved there, mail wasn’t yet being delivered. It was 2005 in the United States of America and there wasn’t mail being delivered. I understand; hurricane, flooding, etc., but that just takes us back to the “How could this happen in America?” theme that we have all heard a thousand times. It was just weird, eerie even. Imagine living in your neighborhood of normal, family homes, and then take away all of the people. Oh and throw in a flood that damages and covers in mold everything below eight feet above the ground. Now move back in without all of your neighbors. Electric service was scant when we moved in, and yes my house had been remodeled, but it was still creepy to be the only house on the street; even the church in the backyard was abandoned.
There is no way this could happen in San Diego. There are many reasons for this, the majority of the areas evacuated were younger than New Orleans and had better infrastructures being the main reason. But I think the key difference between New Orleans and San Diego (and I feel silly even comparing the two because the things that happened were so different) is the people. I think that the majority of people in New Orleans are out of touch with reality and live in some alternate universe, which only operates during banker’s hours mind you, where things like goals, ambition, self-responsibility and even small things like being on time for appointments do not matter a whit.
Think about the city’s moniker, the Big Easy. Where did this come from? The overarching attitude of the city. Everything slows down a bit in the city, and not in a good way. It is impossible to get anything done between all of the stores closing before you can even get off of work (or maybe they just didn’t open today because there was a Saints game?), the tourists and the heavy, horrible air. And try and do anything on a Sunday? That is just crazy thinking!
People lounge in New Orleans. Drive through any neighborhood—rich, poor, black, white—it doesn’t matter, and you will see people milling about porches and corner stores, at any time of the day. Don’t these people have jobs? And why aren’t the kids at school? I have a friend who teaches in one of the city’s urban schools. She told me that it is the culture for students not to show up the entire first week of school. The culture? This is absurd! No one would even think of doing something like this where I grew up, or in most other places in the United States.
The biggest symbol of people not, no refusing to, take care of themselves in New Orleans, is the unbelievably large chunk of society depending on the government to take care of their every whim; I am frankly surprised that some of them can even use the bathroom without being told to do so. (I have to write a disclaimer here: let me state that I am not racist, classist or anything of the sort. I think that all people are equal, some simply chose to make the best of the attributes they have while others do not, and this has nothing to do with race, heritage, sex, anything; it is a personal choice. ) Many of the people living in New Orleans public housing have lived there for generations. Public housing was built as a temporary solution to the lack of housing for the poor, now it has turned into a lifestyle.
Someone told me that kids in the projects had two paths. If they were a boy, they aspired to be a drug dealer. If they were a girl, they had babies. How unbelievably sad is that? It is sad, and having lived in the city, it is definitely believable. People are born in the projects, watch their parents, and sometimes grandparents, live off of the system. They don’t need to work, so why should I do well in school so that I can get a good job? The government will take care of me! For some reason there is this attitude (among those stuck in the system) that the government will take care of me (food, shelter, money to buy rims, but not birth control) because I am owed it; my great, great, great grandfather was a slave after all. This attitude angers me to no end, but explains a good deal about why and how so many people were stuck in the city following the disaster.
As I noted earlier, the government in the city is corrupt; members are looking out for their own welfare, not their constituents (William Jefferson? $90,000 cold cash). The project living people waited for the government to step in and rescue them when the hurricane’s howl was starting to wane and the flood-waters were beginning to rise. But they weren’t there; they were looking out for their own well being. I have heard about the poor people in the city being stranded. Are you kidding? I honestly don’t believe that if someone had really wanted to get out of the city they couldn’t have. Everyone was leaving; I am sure that a church group, busload of carpoolers, for God’s sake they could have hitchhiked, and found a way out. But they didn’t. They waited for the government to step in and take care of them like it had for their entire lives. Come on, show some personal responsibility people!
There aren’t nearly as many folks living off of the government in San Diego. Granted the fire burned in much more affluent areas (strange since New Orleans was once the wealthiest city in the world; what happened? Laziness?) but why were these areas more affluent anyway? Because people took responsibility for themselves, and didn’t look to the government to care for their every need. And when the fires came, people listened, packed their things and got out, when they were told to; they didn’t wait for anyone to come and rescue them. My 82 year old grandmother has lived in Poway for over 50 years and got out of the way. My brother-in-law in Fallbrook got out of the way. My various aunts, uncles and cousins scattered about San Diego county got out of the way. Why? Because that is what they were supposed to do, they were concerned about their personal safety so they got out of the way; they didn’t wait for the government or someone, anyone else to come and get them.
The information card in the seat pocket of the Boeing 747 is emphatic about placing the oxygen mask on yourself before placing it on your child, or anyone else needing assistance; it doesn’t show everyone waiting for the flight crew to come and put the passengers’ masks on for them. That would just be silly. And so is depending on a (corrupt) government to take care of you during a disaster.
A week before I left New Orleans, the day before my last at work, I called you at home with something exciting to tell you.
I had gotten tickets to an exciting event I told you.
When, you asked.
Tonight.
I can’t. I already have plans.
What kind of plans?
Dinner?
With who?
Someone.
Like a date?
Yeah.
And then my heart fell out. I don’t know where it went, but I hope I find it again.
This whole thing was very strange. We lived together, shared a bed. You kissed me goodbye before I left for work that morning.
Of course I had to come home immediately. I didn’t know what else to do. My ears were ringing, my face bright red. I had to leave to keep the tears from exploding out of me at work; certainly not the way I wanted them to remember me.
When I got home, I was very upset, but it took awhile for the tears to come. The entire time you maintained that you hadn’t done anything wrong. That in fact, you had been out of our relationship for over a month now. This was news to me. I knew I was moving away, but for you to start seeing a girl (the one who had been sending you messages at all hours of the day and night) while my side of the bed hadn’t yet cooled? This wasn't us. This wasn’t you. What was going on with you?
I cried, and cried. You were sorry that your actions had hurt me, but assured me that you had done nothing wrong. You weren’t planning on seeing her for long, she was just someone different that you wanted to hang out with, someone who was not me.
You made me take a nap with you, telling me I would feel better with rest. I would calm down. I couldn’t sleep, but you did. I washed my face and went back to work, sickened.
I went back to work, and told a few people what had happened. I explained what you had done, and no one could believe it. They all thought that you loved me very much; I had too.
You called me several times. I didn’t answer. You sent me a message telling me that you wanted to make plans with me.
I got home and didn’t know what to do. You weren’t there. When you walked in the door you asked if I had gotten the messages. Yes I said. You said that you wanted to make plans with me so that I could see that she meant noting, that I mattered more than her.
So we went to dinner. What else could I do? I loved you. I wanted this all to be some horrible mistake. Dinner was strained. You were somewhere else, thinking about her I imagine. You tried to explain her to me; I didn’t want to hear it. When you told me her name, you instantly ruined that name for me forever. Too bad that the food was some of the best I had had in New Orleans; it was tainted.
You eventually told me that you weren’t going to see her, and you weren’t planning on seeing her. I don’t know if I believe you. I don’t know if I ever can.
After I returned to Idaho, I wrote you a hasty message about being on a date with someone else when I didn’t hear back from you right away. You told me you were asleep. You said that if I didn’t trust your intentions with me that I was more than welcome to have my friends spy on you. I don’t want this. I don’t want any of this.
How could you have done this? How could you make my heart disappear?
I am so excited when I talk to you now, but it isn’t the same. It is guarded, safe, I am not giving you everything. Always in the back of my head is the way I felt on that Thursday; betrayed, beyond hurt, I don’t even know how to describe it except, that my heart died.
How do I bring it back to life again? I want to love you the way that I once did; freely, not afraid. I don’t know how to fix it. You call me every night before you go to sleep. You send me emails and messages almost everyday. You love me. You miss me. But you broke me. I don’t know how to fix it.
I need to. I can’t fully enjoy your love again until I do. And more importantly, I can't really love without it.
My first time visiting Bourbon Street was very different from most visitors. In early October, someone in the technology group decided that we all needed to make the drive from Baton Rouge to New Orleans to go to Bourbon Street. We had heard that there were a few bars and clubs open again, but that was about all we had heard. So, someone created a sign up sheet and passed it around our group. Fifteen, maybe twenty of us signed up. We had a Ford cargo van and a Chevy Impala, but somehow we managed to all fit; granted one of the smaller guys and a tiny girl were crammed in the cargo area and my butt was half on the seat and half on one of the guy's laps, but we all managed to fit.
The drive down was fairly uneventful. I remember passionately discussing how I really needed to find the sound that the communicators on the old school Star Trek (aka the good Star Trek) made somewhere on the Web so that I could download it to my new flip phone. This led to a discussion about Star Trek’s influences on technical design throughout the past few decades. (Remember, I was part of the Response Technology group; many of our group members were in fact volunteers because they had made their fortunes Silicon Valley Pirates style and were now retired, free to devote their time to other interests.)
As we got closer to New Orleans, we were able to see a bit of the unbelievable damage before it got dark. Near the La Place exit on I-10, we started to see crazy wind damage to almost all of the trees. It wasn’t that they were all broken, although a good many of them really were, but they were leaning. Everything growing thing, not broken, had a slant to it. The ground is so wet in Louisiana that it was easy for the powerful winds to simply move the centuries old cypress and oak trees, roots and all. Rather than uprooting them, the wind simply nudged them a bit. Considering Katrina knocking over countless buildings, his is a testament to the strength of the plants.
The sun was almost set as we flew out of the vegetation at the Bonnet Carre’ Spillway beginning to cross Lake Ponchartrain. I had absolutely no idea that the lake was this large (looking back, I suppose that looking at a map may have cleared this up for me). The railroad tracks parallel I-10 at this point, and they were a mess. Some places were flooded, and some were mangled. It was a crazy sight. But things kept getting more interesting.
There was a blue house (I think it is still called a house, despite its obvious use as a fishing camp) once on stilts in the soft earth beside the freeway. There was a dock, and an outbuilding. The house was not destroyed, but was knocked on its side, everything shoved off square. It looked like a rhombus (if I remember my junior high geometry correctly). A very strange site to see. And, the last time I crossed Lake Ponchartrain, almost two years later, the rhombus house was still there exactly as it was the first time I saw it.
By the time we made it across the lake, it was dark, very dark. It was so strange. There were only a handful of other cars on the road, and there were plenty of buildings around, but there were no lights, and no people around. . This was one of the strangest experiences I have ever heard. It felt so strange to see all of this abandonment, and this was only a taste; a few days later I would experience the desertion even more so. I realized technically where all the people were, but where is everyone still played through my mind over and over again. The feelings of confusion at something this horrible being allowed to happen to American citizens flew through my mind again and again, but we were dealing with these issues all day everyday, and this was supposed to be a night out, so we all quickly turned back to the plan for the evening; going to Bourbon Street and imbibing as much alcohol as humanly possible before our ungodly wake up call at 5 the next morning.
As the interstate went deeper and deeper into the city, there were fewer vehicles, and most off ramps were blocked with incredibly young looking National Guard soldiers with big guns and even bigger vehicles. But this wasn’t a problem for us, we weren’t any evacuated residents trying to go back to our homes, we were volunteers, our Red Cross emblem on the windshield explained all of this for us. Because we were Red Cross, we could go anywhere, Bourbon Street included.
We took the Esplanade exit and headed directly to the French Quarter. We parked on the sidewalk on one of the still dark streets near Bourbon, because that’s what everyone was doing; it was like the volunteers, FEMA personnel and military officers had completely lost contact with simple everyday things like how to park like a normal person.
We all piled out of the van and made arrangements to meet up later in the evening so that no one was left behind.
All routes lose their novelty when driven daily, some when driven even weekly. Everyone knows that we drive in familiar places much like our cars would if they had an autopilot. We stop “seeing” anything around us. Our mind simply remembers our surroundings from all of the previous times it has “seen” the red house on the corner, and the sugar cane field over there. It is easy to miss something with our mind working this way. The I-10 corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans lost its freshness for me quite a while ago. Now that I am back in Idaho, it is much easier for me to connect with my first thoughts about the road; it must be that I don’t see it everyday any longer. I am not lulled into a trance as my jeep drives over the rhythmically placed slabs of concrete road sections.
On a normal day (think of a time before the storms, think of heavy commuter traffic flying from to and from the suburbs) traffic screams down the expressway, with heavy forest, swampland; I’m really not sure what all grows there; it is simply the greenest, densest spread of deep dark green growing things I have ever seen, closing in on the road from either side. The growth is so thick that it is impossible to separate the individual growing things from one another. The freeway is literally carved from the growth, intruding on the growth. The power of the plants is almost scary; it is easy to imagine the plants taking over the minute people stop using this path. The only breaks in the overpowering green, aside from the interstate, are the narrow, groomed areas surrounding gas pipelines and powelines gliding off into the green.
Years ago, before Louisiana, I would wonder at the stories on the evening news featuring a pair of brothers or a little girl going missing, only to be discovered three days later in the woods, a quarter mile from their home. Why didn’t they find them as soon as they went missing? I would wonder. Here, in the West (at least the high desert portion) you can literally see miles in any direction. It is impossible to get lost in the woods that close to home. Green; that is how people can go missing and bodies can be buried literally in their own back yard with no one noticing the body for sometimes years.
Not only is there more vegetation in general in Louisiana, everything is a different color. The green of the plants is different; the brown of the earth is different; everything looks different. With my sheltered view of the world, I assumed that plants were plants, dirt was dirt, people were people and bugs were bugs (that is another story all of its own) anywhere you went. Louisiana taught be differently. The dirt has a red tinge in Louisiana, though not as red as the dirt in Tyler, Texas, which seems to rust before your eyes because of the earth's incredible red color. In Idaho, it is a soothing gray brown. Plants in Louisiana are green, very green. In Idaho, plants are healthy, getting enough water, but still aren’t as bright; they seem to have a brown quality to them even when completely saturated.
So where am I going with this? I don’t know. I was thinking about the road between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, and how often I used to travel it at break-neck speeds until I forgot what it looked like. Now the wonder that I first experience when driving the route is coming back to me a bit, and I wanted to write about it. That is all there is to it.
Well, the title pretty much explains it all.
Sometimes...
my heart is growing cold to you. Not because I love you less, but perhaps because I love you more. As time goes on the slights you dealt me become magnified rather than diminished. I cannot believe some of the things you have done to me, and all without even a second thought.
my heart is on fire for you. The breadth of the entire country disappears, and it is like you are here, holding my hands, looking in my eyes, listening to me, really listening, being with me. The past hurts don't matter, only the prospect of seeing you, touching you, feeling you again. The future is what matters. I want you to see me again. I want you to be proud of me again. I want you, again, here (or there, it really doesn't matter) with me.
I hope that one day it will be constant, hot or cold, not flickering. Flickering, glimpses, moments are comfortable for you, but I hate it. I want you to love me all of the time, constantly. I don't want to matter the world to you one moment and then matter less than someone you met drunk in a bar and don't even really remember, the next moment. I don't ever want any random girl with fat ankles to be the right person for you to share a Thursday evening with rather than me. I am so hurt by that. I wish you knew how much.
I have come down with a nasty cold, so the creative juices are a bit congested today. So, I thought I would post some before and after pictures of the awesome chair that I redid last weekend. This is a picture of the chair as it was when purchased from Savers (I Love Savers! Another thing I missed in Louisiana; no thrift stores, understandable, but still...). If you look closely, you can see the $9.99 price tag. But I got it on a half off day. It is a sort of Danish Modern knock-off, dining room-doctor's office waiting room, kind of chair, and it is sweet!
(Apparently there are issues with Blogger's photo upload capabilities right now, so I will post the photos later; I know, I know; everyone wants to see the chair photos. Who doesn't like pictures of furniture?) Issue fixed! Take a gander now! I like the blog as is, so I am not going to update the will bes etc..
Anyway, this is what I did to the chair in the above picture (well, it will be in the above picture):
1. Took off the nasty orange cushions; I thought the color was kind of cool, but the fabric was literally disintegrating under my fingers, and well, you can only imagine what diress my voluptuous behind would cause.
2. Took the horrible fabric off of the cushions using scissors, pliers, and a screwdriver. I found the screwdriver to be the best tool; it pried the staples out with the least effort.
3. Rather than cutting new foam (I was lazy and cheap), I hung the old pieces of foam (nasty yellow, with a few "water" spots) on the clothes line, and sprayed a good half bottle of Fabreze on them. Then, I let the country wind have its way with them.
4. Cleaned the wood with Murphy's Oil Soap. Hmmm. Not so pretty when the grime is scrubbed away.
5. Sanded off the original finish with a palm sander I found in the garage. I used approximately ten sheets of sandpaper, which is a good indicator (to me anyway) that I was using the wrong grit. Oh well.
6. Scrubbed the bare wood with Murphy's Oil Soap. Why? It just seemed like the right thing to do.
7. Applied some stain that I found in the garage. My parents just finished a major kitchen overhaul. My mom refinished all of the cabinets by herself. I am assuming this is the stain she used, because the chair is camouflaged (when naked, minus
cushions anyway) in the kitchen. Where's the chair?
8. Reupholstered the cushions in an awesome retro-ish fabric. I used an ingenious (I thought so anyway) technique of hot glue gunning the final piece of fabric to the back of the top cushion so that staples were not seen on the finished chair.
9. Screwed the seat back in place.
10. Swore at the chair a few dozen times as I tried, with the dogs and cats as an audience, to screw the back in place.
11. Waited for my sister to get home to hold the chairback so that I could screw it in place, sending her more than one anticipatory (that's a nice word for it) text messages.
12. Accosted my sister as she walked in the front door, grocery bags in hand, explaining the chair situation.
13. Screwed the chairback in place.
14. Viola! (Did I spell that right?) Fabulous chair, as you can of course (or at least will be able to soon) see in the picture below (actually to the left; hadn't decided on a layout when I originally wrote this).
I feel awful. Off to a bath and book, and then out to my house for bed. Can you say excitement?
