Monday, September 05, 2005
Five days ago
when people began shooting each other; when bodies began floating past groups of refugees who were beaten numb by the scale and the quickness and the ferocity of the chaos that followed Katrina's passing
when my pleading and sleepless nights finally paid off, and my stubborn parents first managed to break through the cellphone gridlock to let me know that they had made their way out of the city and onto highways leading northward
when the levee break at the 17th street canal seemed irreparable and the powers that be were in tears, at a loss, or in smiling, self-congratulatory denial
when uptown
a place that I do not yet have the vocabulary to describe in such a way as to convey how important, how ageless, how unfaltering and dangerous and rotting and sublime and mysterious and absolutely familiar it truly is
when uptown was predicted to be under 8 to 10 feet of water
I thought:
This will be the day that defines the rest of your days. You will know yourself by your relationship to this day, this storm, this human fucking catastrophe that has proven your worst fears true, undermined your confidence in your country and your fellow human beings, and stripped from you and countless others the sacrament of your childhood home.
You will be better for this day, I thought. You will understand that in the face of this, you will be forced now to confront yourself, you will have to grow up, find yourself, fix yourself, and re-attach your bonds to your family and the people around you.
This seemed noble and promising, until I spoke to some friends from back home. A girl with whom I'd been drinking three months ago at a bar called Pal's along St. John's Bayou in Mid City had lost everything she owned. I went to highschool with this girl. Her Grandmother's house was gone, just completely fucking gone, and they both planned never to return. My best friend's mother lost her house, his father likely lost his as well. I called more people, and got more of the same. I began thinking about people I hadn't given a thought to in years, people who sat across from me at lunch in the courtyard at school, kids who I had homeroom with. I only got through to maybe six people by phone before I realized that I, and my family, had been almost as lucky as was humanly possible. Our worst case scenario was water damage on our first floor, looting, and possibly a dead housecat. That scenario places us in the luckiest 1% of those stubborn enough, poor enough, or too far removed from the gears of society to evacuate in the face of a hurricane long overdue to directly hit and inundate New Orleans.
but how the fuck am I supposed to feel lucky.
The big picture is so bleak that to ponder it is to imagine not the New Orleans of my youth, nor the city I saw three months ago on vacation. It is not a city that I know now, nor a city that many of its former inhabitants feel safe enough, stable enough, or emotionally strong enough to return to. It is a city that now embodies the aching misery that we all come to face one time or another, the knowledge that you cannot go home again. And littered in its ruins are the stains of the dead and the madness that do not dry out with time; these stains seal it in each of our own fallible, fading histories.
My father will possibly teach courses at LSU in a month or so, making up for the influx of displaced students from Tulane. My brother may start work in baton rouge since he worked for a small business which is likely still under water. My mother will worry her hair gray and wait for the middle school she works at to reopen, and for the city to put itself back together.
I will start school in a week, fume at the news and at the back-patting amongst agencies designed to prevent this very cataclysm from happening. I will watch nonstop cable news coverage, watch anderson cooper shriek at politicians, and feel some of my hate and helplessness dissipate each time someone else takes possession of this event as their own problem, their own anger. It is happening everywhere now, celebrities donating, charity drives, the goodwill of a nation stepping up to fill in where it's government failed it. And I am grateful; more so than I can possibly explain, for the human kindness that I have seen.
But with each kindness, each telethon, each angry reporter or flustered politician, they are stealing something from me. This disaster cannot remain my own, nor my city's own - people must appropriate our anger, our helplessness, our fear, and donate feverishly, lash out ardently, demand reform and support the red cross...
...Until our national conscience is satiated, the interest wanes, and people begin to get sick of it now that the city is dry, reconstruction is under way, and it was really those people's fault for being so far below sea level. And then we will be truly robbed, all of us. The country will have lost a tourist spot and a cache of culture it did not understand but truly enjoyed visiting. And then my disaster, our disastster, will become an American disaster, and the details will dissolve in the politics, the coverage, and the inescapable horror that will be what compels future generations to remember it. My claim to this will be drowned by the rabid national conscience, and I will lose this tenuous hold that I have now, typing awkwardly after a week of burning alone in my living room.
And it has been a week, and I still have not set foot into my new life. I have not taken the challenge; I still sit timid in the face of school starting soon and my own petty problems. I drank 10 beers tonight with my roommate and played John Madden Football on my Playstation. More than the helplessness of telling my parents to leave the city and having them ignore me, and more than the helplessness of watching my old life drown on live television, This new helplessness is cavernous and growing with each new headline on CNN. I dreamt last night that I was in a boat in the middle of the ocean, and I suddenly felt compelled to dip my face downwards into the water and open my eyes.
There are still many things I cannot yet describe.
when people began shooting each other; when bodies began floating past groups of refugees who were beaten numb by the scale and the quickness and the ferocity of the chaos that followed Katrina's passing
when my pleading and sleepless nights finally paid off, and my stubborn parents first managed to break through the cellphone gridlock to let me know that they had made their way out of the city and onto highways leading northward
when the levee break at the 17th street canal seemed irreparable and the powers that be were in tears, at a loss, or in smiling, self-congratulatory denial
when uptown
a place that I do not yet have the vocabulary to describe in such a way as to convey how important, how ageless, how unfaltering and dangerous and rotting and sublime and mysterious and absolutely familiar it truly is
when uptown was predicted to be under 8 to 10 feet of water
I thought:
This will be the day that defines the rest of your days. You will know yourself by your relationship to this day, this storm, this human fucking catastrophe that has proven your worst fears true, undermined your confidence in your country and your fellow human beings, and stripped from you and countless others the sacrament of your childhood home.
You will be better for this day, I thought. You will understand that in the face of this, you will be forced now to confront yourself, you will have to grow up, find yourself, fix yourself, and re-attach your bonds to your family and the people around you.
This seemed noble and promising, until I spoke to some friends from back home. A girl with whom I'd been drinking three months ago at a bar called Pal's along St. John's Bayou in Mid City had lost everything she owned. I went to highschool with this girl. Her Grandmother's house was gone, just completely fucking gone, and they both planned never to return. My best friend's mother lost her house, his father likely lost his as well. I called more people, and got more of the same. I began thinking about people I hadn't given a thought to in years, people who sat across from me at lunch in the courtyard at school, kids who I had homeroom with. I only got through to maybe six people by phone before I realized that I, and my family, had been almost as lucky as was humanly possible. Our worst case scenario was water damage on our first floor, looting, and possibly a dead housecat. That scenario places us in the luckiest 1% of those stubborn enough, poor enough, or too far removed from the gears of society to evacuate in the face of a hurricane long overdue to directly hit and inundate New Orleans.
but how the fuck am I supposed to feel lucky.
The big picture is so bleak that to ponder it is to imagine not the New Orleans of my youth, nor the city I saw three months ago on vacation. It is not a city that I know now, nor a city that many of its former inhabitants feel safe enough, stable enough, or emotionally strong enough to return to. It is a city that now embodies the aching misery that we all come to face one time or another, the knowledge that you cannot go home again. And littered in its ruins are the stains of the dead and the madness that do not dry out with time; these stains seal it in each of our own fallible, fading histories.
My father will possibly teach courses at LSU in a month or so, making up for the influx of displaced students from Tulane. My brother may start work in baton rouge since he worked for a small business which is likely still under water. My mother will worry her hair gray and wait for the middle school she works at to reopen, and for the city to put itself back together.
I will start school in a week, fume at the news and at the back-patting amongst agencies designed to prevent this very cataclysm from happening. I will watch nonstop cable news coverage, watch anderson cooper shriek at politicians, and feel some of my hate and helplessness dissipate each time someone else takes possession of this event as their own problem, their own anger. It is happening everywhere now, celebrities donating, charity drives, the goodwill of a nation stepping up to fill in where it's government failed it. And I am grateful; more so than I can possibly explain, for the human kindness that I have seen.
But with each kindness, each telethon, each angry reporter or flustered politician, they are stealing something from me. This disaster cannot remain my own, nor my city's own - people must appropriate our anger, our helplessness, our fear, and donate feverishly, lash out ardently, demand reform and support the red cross...
...Until our national conscience is satiated, the interest wanes, and people begin to get sick of it now that the city is dry, reconstruction is under way, and it was really those people's fault for being so far below sea level. And then we will be truly robbed, all of us. The country will have lost a tourist spot and a cache of culture it did not understand but truly enjoyed visiting. And then my disaster, our disastster, will become an American disaster, and the details will dissolve in the politics, the coverage, and the inescapable horror that will be what compels future generations to remember it. My claim to this will be drowned by the rabid national conscience, and I will lose this tenuous hold that I have now, typing awkwardly after a week of burning alone in my living room.
And it has been a week, and I still have not set foot into my new life. I have not taken the challenge; I still sit timid in the face of school starting soon and my own petty problems. I drank 10 beers tonight with my roommate and played John Madden Football on my Playstation. More than the helplessness of telling my parents to leave the city and having them ignore me, and more than the helplessness of watching my old life drown on live television, This new helplessness is cavernous and growing with each new headline on CNN. I dreamt last night that I was in a boat in the middle of the ocean, and I suddenly felt compelled to dip my face downwards into the water and open my eyes.
There are still many things I cannot yet describe.
