25.11.06
i swear this isn't all i've been up to...
i'll post some of my real work by the end of the week.
promise.
promise.
19.11.06
i suppose
i have reached a level of momentum where 2 days off is too much.
after 4 days off i worked straight through 4 more at a pretty solid pace, then took a day off, then a second day was forced off by circumstance and boy was i itching to get back to it.
that feels good.
the finishing part is much slower than the starting.
roughing in is so instantly gratifying. i usually never have time to actually finish anything.
and since the progress is not particularly noticable, especially with the small icons, i probably won't be posting as often.
but i will be going to new orleans again next week with my dear friend alice who is coming in to visit for a couple days.
so i may have some new photos and insights from her.
after 4 days off i worked straight through 4 more at a pretty solid pace, then took a day off, then a second day was forced off by circumstance and boy was i itching to get back to it.
that feels good.
the finishing part is much slower than the starting.
roughing in is so instantly gratifying. i usually never have time to actually finish anything.
and since the progress is not particularly noticable, especially with the small icons, i probably won't be posting as often.
but i will be going to new orleans again next week with my dear friend alice who is coming in to visit for a couple days.
so i may have some new photos and insights from her.
16.11.06
death in the family
fiona, our puppy died this morning.
i still don't know exactly what happened.
but it's a shock.
i still don't know exactly what happened.
but it's a shock.
13.11.06
on a boat
4 kind of arduous days of relaxation.
arduous cause i would have prefferred to be working.
but it was very nice to spend the time with my mom, and she pampered the hell out of me.
and for the most part any work or active thught i did was...not active. subconscious.
i'm sure my brain was doing something on the matter but, hell if i was aware of it.
the only very relevent thing that happened was that-
my mom was on the boat for a nursing meeting. on forensic nursing.
and the last speaker they had was the coroner during the aftermath of the hurricane.
so-i got to sit in on that discussion.
first off, the lecturer was not the official coroner.
both the orleans and st. bernard parish coroners were missing in action. they turned up days later having had to swim from their homes and offices and no phones or power and all that,
he was organizing emergency medical examiner or something, ambulances.
and people knew he had previously been a coroner so they asked him to step up.
i forgot to write down his name,..
but. 'he' got thrown right into the mix. the dead bodies floating and stuck in attics and homes and the murders and deaths in the super dome and convention center, all of that.
he was responsible for organizing and identifying the bodies.
and since he was speaking to a bunch of nurses who are quite accustomed to gore, he did not refrain from graphic imagery.
he talked about how hard it was to ID a waterlogged body where the skin may have fallen off and scavenging animals had eaten off their fingers and the medical and dental records were all flooded...not an easy task.
well, first they had to find the bodies. the coast guard and wildlife and fisheries and private boat-owners were performing their own search and rescues--this is what we all heard about. governm,ent was way too slow and the only reason most people were saved was cause local people took action--but they would drop these bodies off on the elevated portion of freeway the morgue and emergency people were occupying and they had no idea where they found them. not that it mattered cause bodies floated or when they were alive they swam to higher ground and neighbors hoses and stuff.
but after all the water went down he had the task of going through all the houses to find and account for bodies.
the marks his men made are still on almost every building in the city.
one slash when they enter, one slash when they exit. the top quarter held the date, the left the team ID, the bottom the number of victims found, and the right any hazards.
at first if the door was locked and there was no answer they couldn't go in (red tape)
anywya- you've seen some of the pictures of house interiors i've sent. imagine them with fresh mud and wet and stench. he said every house smelt like dead bodies cause of the meat left in the fridge or whatever. they had corpse dogs, but they weren't all very good. there were some that were invaluable. he told anecdotes about someone knowing their family member had to be in the house and insisting and his men had checked 3 times, but they sent the dog in and in 25 seconds he founf the body. and that dog would follow behind other dogs and find bodies they missed.
this was kind of intense: more often than not bodies were found in the attic.
when they saw the attic stairs open he called that 'the death trap'
sometimes bodies would be tangled in the chords of the ladder as they tried to swim out of the attic when the water flooded all the way up the attic roof.
they learned, when looking for bodies, to look around the vents. people would tend to hang on to the vent cause it was the last place that had air as the water rose in their attics.
how gorey avision is that?
he said families were furious but he often refused to let them see the bodies of their family members.
oh-and he got in trouble for praying over bodies.
and the whole organizing and cleaning and IDing bodies was a very arduous task.
not only all the toxic shite, and difficulty with no finger prints or tattoos on bodies, and then having to
literally excavate the dental records out of mush cause LSU and Charity hospital stored their records in the basement, go figure, and the xrays would com eup blank and they'd have to take photographs of the manilla folder wehre the image was left imprinted,
well, evetually all but 246 of the 13,200 missing bodies were found. and i think there are a little over 100 bodies unidentified/unclaimed and there is still some fear over what they'll do with em cause previously in our history we've done mass graves, but he insists that won't happen.
anthro department helped by identifying the age bracket of victims.
cause of death more often than not was drowning or dehydration.
also heart attacks and deprivation of medicine.
only 18 homicides despite rumors,
but it is true that the suicide rate in NO is up 300%.
also-transfer trauma.
people, especially the elderly, rescued off rooves, bused or flown to dallas or oklahoma or somewhere where they didn't know anyonw, waking up to strangers asking them if they know their name and where they live and...trauma.
people died from it.
and 141 died in hospitals. (i'm gonna interview one of the refugees at my dad's house who was working in a hospital in NO during the storm and 5 days after till they got rescued.
52 dies in nursing homes, 35 are in court over wrongful death-euthenasia investigation.
the rescue people are having bad post traumatic stress now. alcoholism and domestic abuse.
yep.
what else did he say?
oh, he was pissed off at the media's coverage of the deaths. exaggerating and even posing images (he caught one international group posing a maniquin under a tarp as a deade body)
and they had to declair the area over the temp morgue a no fly zone and put up camofluage cause the media was so desperate to get a body count.
and he was pissed off at "hollywood"'s intervention. they just got in the way.
also-"we are an armed community"
EVERYone had guns.
that's something to think about.
not quite a week's worth of adventures to expound.
but...here's the gist.
getting back to lousiana, i spent the night in slydell,
which is on the more exposed eastern part of the north shore, a place i had not visited.
they had a lot of regular hurricane damage from wind and whatnot (my aunt lost 40 trees on her property and had roof damage leading to some minor flooding)
but as far as i could tell life went on normally there after the storm, people moved back into their houses.
repairs and stuff are taking forever due to labor shortages and insurance hoopla, but otherwise...normal.
coming into new orleans from that side of town, though, i crossed the I-10 bridge into new orleans east and...that was not ok.
a whole other chunk ...whole other city, really, to add to the list of ghost towns.
you know, apartment complex after apartment complex destroyed and abandoned.
i saw my first "Help" written on a roof, next to a hole the people had punched through to get out of the attic as the water rose.
i wandered around there a little bit, but could only take so much.
and i wasn't sure what to do with my day.
half of it had gone to escporting my grandmother to the grocery store and bank, and i hadn't done the neccessary prep to work on the painting i should be working on, plus there wouldn't be enough daylight.
so i fumbled my way to audabon park,l for no reason other than i like it.
huge oak trees and old houses and old nice comforting new orleans.
as soon as i parked i remembered that the art museum was there too. brilliant! my subconscious had figured out my day for me.
ok-so the art museum was actually in CIty park, but after a detour around audabon park i figured it out.
NOMA is small by any metropolis's standards, but served my purposes precisely. (certainly not premeditated purposes but it served me anyway)
just seeing fine art was good for me.
kind of grounded me and reminded me that its tangible and real. you know- you put some paint on som eobject in some form of representation and other people find some meaning in it.
and really, that's all its about. no pressure.
heh.
and there was a lot of local-american and lousiana artists that brought that home even more.
in a way makes "acceptance" (not that that's what i'ma fter-hehemn) less intimidating. cause, honestly, ...some of the art isn't very good. but its significant. either cause the person who did it did something ELSE that was good, or...cause tis just significant for one reason or another.
falling into the great AND significant category, i got to see what i think is my favorite painting--rodrigue's aiorioli dinner.
i turned a corner and there it was and i think i gasped and .. savored. its so much better in person. gave me more respect for him for sure.
but the thing that was most productive about the afternoon was seeing the other katrina art.
there were 6 peices.
4 as part of a preview for an exhibit that will be there next november. rolland golden.
he's a local artist who has been well known for paintings of new orleans, and is, aparantly, one of the first fine artists to take the katrina subject public in the non-craft art world.
(they sell all kinds of memorabilia type art--glass houses with blue rooves ((for the tarps)) and...all sorts of folky type art)
his paintings were fairly literal.
people reacting to the flooded city.
very powerful images, well composed and executed, but very literal.
which is the thing i'm struggling with with my own stuff.
and there was one lovely landscape. of a 9th ward block.
i think that one was phil sandusky. and i liked the way it was painted. a little more loose, impressionaistic.
and one photograph.
so-gave me a nice sense of perspective before is et off on 4 days of forced reflection.
on a boat with my mom. no work.
but...here's the gist.
getting back to lousiana, i spent the night in slydell,
which is on the more exposed eastern part of the north shore, a place i had not visited.
they had a lot of regular hurricane damage from wind and whatnot (my aunt lost 40 trees on her property and had roof damage leading to some minor flooding)
but as far as i could tell life went on normally there after the storm, people moved back into their houses.
repairs and stuff are taking forever due to labor shortages and insurance hoopla, but otherwise...normal.
coming into new orleans from that side of town, though, i crossed the I-10 bridge into new orleans east and...that was not ok.
a whole other chunk ...whole other city, really, to add to the list of ghost towns.
you know, apartment complex after apartment complex destroyed and abandoned.
i saw my first "Help" written on a roof, next to a hole the people had punched through to get out of the attic as the water rose.
i wandered around there a little bit, but could only take so much.
and i wasn't sure what to do with my day.
half of it had gone to escporting my grandmother to the grocery store and bank, and i hadn't done the neccessary prep to work on the painting i should be working on, plus there wouldn't be enough daylight.
so i fumbled my way to audabon park,l for no reason other than i like it.
huge oak trees and old houses and old nice comforting new orleans.
as soon as i parked i remembered that the art museum was there too. brilliant! my subconscious had figured out my day for me.
ok-so the art museum was actually in CIty park, but after a detour around audabon park i figured it out.
NOMA is small by any metropolis's standards, but served my purposes precisely. (certainly not premeditated purposes but it served me anyway)
just seeing fine art was good for me.
kind of grounded me and reminded me that its tangible and real. you know- you put some paint on som eobject in some form of representation and other people find some meaning in it.
and really, that's all its about. no pressure.
heh.
and there was a lot of local-american and lousiana artists that brought that home even more.
in a way makes "acceptance" (not that that's what i'ma fter-hehemn) less intimidating. cause, honestly, ...some of the art isn't very good. but its significant. either cause the person who did it did something ELSE that was good, or...cause tis just significant for one reason or another.
falling into the great AND significant category, i got to see what i think is my favorite painting--rodrigue's aiorioli dinner.
i turned a corner and there it was and i think i gasped and .. savored. its so much better in person. gave me more respect for him for sure.
but the thing that was most productive about the afternoon was seeing the other katrina art.
there were 6 peices.
4 as part of a preview for an exhibit that will be there next november. rolland golden.
he's a local artist who has been well known for paintings of new orleans, and is, aparantly, one of the first fine artists to take the katrina subject public in the non-craft art world.
(they sell all kinds of memorabilia type art--glass houses with blue rooves ((for the tarps)) and...all sorts of folky type art)
his paintings were fairly literal.
people reacting to the flooded city.
very powerful images, well composed and executed, but very literal.
which is the thing i'm struggling with with my own stuff.
and there was one lovely landscape. of a 9th ward block.
i think that one was phil sandusky. and i liked the way it was painted. a little more loose, impressionaistic.
and one photograph.
so-gave me a nice sense of perspective before is et off on 4 days of forced reflection.
on a boat with my mom. no work.
7.11.06
casino coast
i can't upload pictures, but couldn't resist getting on aunt philly's computer.
and i guess i'm living up to the 'pictures being worth a thousand words' thing cause my fingers just kept going and i couldn't control it. you may wish i'd just shown pictures...
spent last night in biloxi, mississippi at a casino with my grandmother.
she had a complimentary hotel room so i took her and while she gambled today i drove around the gulf coast.
but first, last night, i followed her down to the casino.
she can play slot machines--penny slots-- for days without stopping if you'd let her.
and i never got slots, so i asked her to show me.
and-yep-she doesn't get it any more than i do. i guess you're not supposed to. she couldn't tell me what won or why, she just kne wthe colored lights went off and the credit number rolled up.
pretty soon after we got on the casino floor the power went out-everything went black and the whole room gasped in unison. it came back on after aminute, but i can only imagine how odd that has to be for these huge money machines.
and it reminded me of nicaragua, where the power went out every night. there they were used to inconsistencies in power, but here we take it for granted that we have power (more on this issue later)
so i couldn't help but kind of look at everyone in the casino in awe. they have these umbilical chord things to the machines--their ID cards so they earn points (and are kept track of by the casinos) and people just sit there pushin that button like zombies.
but-it keeps my grandmother entertained.
and its kept mississippi's kids educated (kind of)
they are really dependent on the income from casino's and almost all of them were destroyed.
there are only a couple opening up, a year later.
the whole coast was just completely demolished.
at first driving around i didn't see the damage. it didn't feel so bad. there were a few deserted shopping centers
but when i talked to my mom and mentioned that it didn't seem so bad she was like "What are you taling about!? it's gone!"
and as i went a little further, i realized (see, i havn't spent much time there so i didn't really know what was there before)
but amongst all these empty lots there'd be an airbrush t-shirt shop sign,
or the 2 waffle house remnants in a matter of blocks,
and gradually i realized that this was a total beach resort. the street was packed with tourist stuff- hotels and souvenier shops,
a put put golf place you could still make out,
but other than a handfull of signs and slabs, there is absolutely nothing.
just nothing.
gone. wiped out.
my mom pointed out that there were all these antebellum homes,
that are just gone. i passed a sign in front of a feild...just an empty feild now, said "built 1886"
not even sure what it was. its just gone now.
and then i wondered back towards louisiana, but through back roads (and it becomes quite a detour cause all the major bridges are out...and this is like marshy wetrlands we're talking about, so just to get from town to town along the coast i had to go all the way up and back around. huge chunkcs of interstate are just gone. not a trace.
a lot of it just looks like country. and you can tell by the homes that are left that its a lot of camps and vacation type homes, and there are a coupl eslabs and a couple risers (like just the risers left that were at one time under a house) but otherwisre the only real sign of damage is all these plastic tarps and bags still stuck in trees 15 or 20 feet in the air.
like, stuff that floated on the top of the water when it came in and got stuck well enough on trees. but its so strange. slip-n-slides and twister games and bright bklue tarp[s,. just...up in trees. all over.
then the thing that really makes you realize how bad it is, you're driving through this nice country landscape. feels like kind of virgin land. the beach and everything feels kind of untouched.
and then you'll come to a big feild, with like 300 trailers.
i swear, i must have passed thousands of trailer homes, and you realize--all those people had homes here at one time. and they are just simply gone.
as the sun started getting to a nice angle i found myself stopping every few minutes to take pictures.
the first thing that pulled me over was these men walking on the water.
see-there are no waves to speak of regularly on the gulf. it's like a bath tub. just kind of lapping at the coast. literally, no waves. so at parts you can walk out a few hundred feet and only be upto your ankles.
so i saw what at first i thought were remnants of a peir, but turned out to be men just kind of walking on the water, looking down, casually, picking stuff up.
and i went up and took some picutres and eventually asked what they were doing.
the coast guard hired them to pick up stuff drifting onto the beach from the gulf. they were picking up all sorts of crap, putting it in a little boat and a lift thingy, to try to clean up the beach so people will come back to it by next summer, i guess.
and they've been doing it every day for 3 months.
craziness.
then i drove around a bunch of backwoods stuff along the coast and found all sorts of pictureque landscapes and was very much enjoying my mobile office,
(except that i had to run for my life (!west nile is REAL!!) from mosquitos every time i stopped.
(wonder if them being so bad right now is a symptom of the 6 weeks of stagnant water??)
anyway, i wondered back to wehre i knew i might lose myself and it was starting to get dark and my mom's warning about filling my gas tank so i didn't have another episode like a year ago was ringing oh too true in my head as the road turned to gravel and my car (jeep, but no 4 wheel drive) started getting stuck.
and i was having moments of glad my mobile office is a mobile home too (i keep a sleeping abg in the abck), just in case i got stuck out there in the night.
see, last year (and this will be the brief version) i drove from north carolina home 3 days after he storm, cause i couldn't stand it any more and i accidently went farther south than i meant to, right down the 59 into the heart of mississippi and there was no power or cell phones and it was dusk and i almost ran out of gas but picked up 2 guys carrying gas tanks and they gave me some to take them to their car and then i waited 3 hours or so with about a hundred people and a gas truck came and i was thankful for my life and i didn't realize how much the experience effected me until i came back this time, and driving through all this again has definitley brought back the reality of that time.
you are just vulnerable. it is a full on reality check to have nothing out there protecting you-no law, or authority or anything. and no one had neough gas to leave or escape ... i'll probably write a lot more about this cause i'm processing stuff about it in my head for some elements--the more personal ones--of this project.
the thing about the gulf coast that is different from new orleans, though,
is that the damage is 100% natural. this is just severe, SEEVERE hurricane damage.
makes you realize just how collosal the hurricane was, when you consider how many hurricanes these places have been through and survived.
but the thing that's different about new orleans is the man-made responsibility.
well, i guess you have to take responsibility building on the coast too,
knowing we have hurricanes.
and the levees in new orleans lasted as long as those buildings did too...
but the damage in new orleans was from flooding. not the hurricane.
i mean, 20 feet of flooding.
that is just...well i'm not sure but tis something. different.
maybe i'll have more intelligent thoughts on the matter one day.
i'll try again later.
and i guess i'm living up to the 'pictures being worth a thousand words' thing cause my fingers just kept going and i couldn't control it. you may wish i'd just shown pictures...
spent last night in biloxi, mississippi at a casino with my grandmother.
she had a complimentary hotel room so i took her and while she gambled today i drove around the gulf coast.
but first, last night, i followed her down to the casino.
she can play slot machines--penny slots-- for days without stopping if you'd let her.
and i never got slots, so i asked her to show me.
and-yep-she doesn't get it any more than i do. i guess you're not supposed to. she couldn't tell me what won or why, she just kne wthe colored lights went off and the credit number rolled up.
pretty soon after we got on the casino floor the power went out-everything went black and the whole room gasped in unison. it came back on after aminute, but i can only imagine how odd that has to be for these huge money machines.
and it reminded me of nicaragua, where the power went out every night. there they were used to inconsistencies in power, but here we take it for granted that we have power (more on this issue later)
so i couldn't help but kind of look at everyone in the casino in awe. they have these umbilical chord things to the machines--their ID cards so they earn points (and are kept track of by the casinos) and people just sit there pushin that button like zombies.
but-it keeps my grandmother entertained.
and its kept mississippi's kids educated (kind of)
they are really dependent on the income from casino's and almost all of them were destroyed.
there are only a couple opening up, a year later.
the whole coast was just completely demolished.
at first driving around i didn't see the damage. it didn't feel so bad. there were a few deserted shopping centers
but when i talked to my mom and mentioned that it didn't seem so bad she was like "What are you taling about!? it's gone!"
and as i went a little further, i realized (see, i havn't spent much time there so i didn't really know what was there before)
but amongst all these empty lots there'd be an airbrush t-shirt shop sign,
or the 2 waffle house remnants in a matter of blocks,
and gradually i realized that this was a total beach resort. the street was packed with tourist stuff- hotels and souvenier shops,
a put put golf place you could still make out,
but other than a handfull of signs and slabs, there is absolutely nothing.
just nothing.
gone. wiped out.
my mom pointed out that there were all these antebellum homes,
that are just gone. i passed a sign in front of a feild...just an empty feild now, said "built 1886"
not even sure what it was. its just gone now.
and then i wondered back towards louisiana, but through back roads (and it becomes quite a detour cause all the major bridges are out...and this is like marshy wetrlands we're talking about, so just to get from town to town along the coast i had to go all the way up and back around. huge chunkcs of interstate are just gone. not a trace.
a lot of it just looks like country. and you can tell by the homes that are left that its a lot of camps and vacation type homes, and there are a coupl eslabs and a couple risers (like just the risers left that were at one time under a house) but otherwisre the only real sign of damage is all these plastic tarps and bags still stuck in trees 15 or 20 feet in the air.
like, stuff that floated on the top of the water when it came in and got stuck well enough on trees. but its so strange. slip-n-slides and twister games and bright bklue tarp[s,. just...up in trees. all over.
then the thing that really makes you realize how bad it is, you're driving through this nice country landscape. feels like kind of virgin land. the beach and everything feels kind of untouched.
and then you'll come to a big feild, with like 300 trailers.
i swear, i must have passed thousands of trailer homes, and you realize--all those people had homes here at one time. and they are just simply gone.
as the sun started getting to a nice angle i found myself stopping every few minutes to take pictures.
the first thing that pulled me over was these men walking on the water.
see-there are no waves to speak of regularly on the gulf. it's like a bath tub. just kind of lapping at the coast. literally, no waves. so at parts you can walk out a few hundred feet and only be upto your ankles.
so i saw what at first i thought were remnants of a peir, but turned out to be men just kind of walking on the water, looking down, casually, picking stuff up.
and i went up and took some picutres and eventually asked what they were doing.
the coast guard hired them to pick up stuff drifting onto the beach from the gulf. they were picking up all sorts of crap, putting it in a little boat and a lift thingy, to try to clean up the beach so people will come back to it by next summer, i guess.
and they've been doing it every day for 3 months.
craziness.
then i drove around a bunch of backwoods stuff along the coast and found all sorts of pictureque landscapes and was very much enjoying my mobile office,
(except that i had to run for my life (!west nile is REAL!!) from mosquitos every time i stopped.
(wonder if them being so bad right now is a symptom of the 6 weeks of stagnant water??)
anyway, i wondered back to wehre i knew i might lose myself and it was starting to get dark and my mom's warning about filling my gas tank so i didn't have another episode like a year ago was ringing oh too true in my head as the road turned to gravel and my car (jeep, but no 4 wheel drive) started getting stuck.
and i was having moments of glad my mobile office is a mobile home too (i keep a sleeping abg in the abck), just in case i got stuck out there in the night.
see, last year (and this will be the brief version) i drove from north carolina home 3 days after he storm, cause i couldn't stand it any more and i accidently went farther south than i meant to, right down the 59 into the heart of mississippi and there was no power or cell phones and it was dusk and i almost ran out of gas but picked up 2 guys carrying gas tanks and they gave me some to take them to their car and then i waited 3 hours or so with about a hundred people and a gas truck came and i was thankful for my life and i didn't realize how much the experience effected me until i came back this time, and driving through all this again has definitley brought back the reality of that time.
you are just vulnerable. it is a full on reality check to have nothing out there protecting you-no law, or authority or anything. and no one had neough gas to leave or escape ... i'll probably write a lot more about this cause i'm processing stuff about it in my head for some elements--the more personal ones--of this project.
the thing about the gulf coast that is different from new orleans, though,
is that the damage is 100% natural. this is just severe, SEEVERE hurricane damage.
makes you realize just how collosal the hurricane was, when you consider how many hurricanes these places have been through and survived.
but the thing that's different about new orleans is the man-made responsibility.
well, i guess you have to take responsibility building on the coast too,
knowing we have hurricanes.
and the levees in new orleans lasted as long as those buildings did too...
but the damage in new orleans was from flooding. not the hurricane.
i mean, 20 feet of flooding.
that is just...well i'm not sure but tis something. different.
maybe i'll have more intelligent thoughts on the matter one day.
i'll try again later.
5.11.06
excercise
the hurricane's damage seems to have lost its potency for me.
i find myself becoming numb to it the way the 'refugees' around me seem to be.
so, driving home in my own hometome--the place i've lived in since i was about 6--i decided to try imagine what lafayette would look like after the damage i see in chalmette.
like judge perez, johnston street is the main veign of town, an even mix of chains and local businesses,
branching off into suburban neighborhoods, including my own.
i started at the far end, coming back into town.
driving down a fully alive, nightime street. cars on the road with people running errands for the week ahead.
etc.
normal.
imagined myself then just coming back after the 6 weeks when they wouldn't allow anyone back into their neighborhoods.
when the water had only been down for a very short while.
of course, there'd be no power. no street lights, no glowing signs.
no cars on the roads, except those that had been left or abandoned, swept into the middle of the street or front yards.
roofs and signs and whatnot would be debris all over the road, a common sight after a hurricane.
but the whole city, also, covered in black ooze.
like the ghostbusters had finally won the crusade in a heated interdimensional battle.
i passed a car dealership and imagined the lot full of piles of junkers, still with the new price stickers on the windows.
their ordered parking an unintelligble patternless chaos.
thinking of the value of each car. that someone months before would have spent thousands of dollars on, now worthless.
past the ice cream parlor--baskin robins--where we first explored our independence. walking from my friend's house.
empty and deserted. .. even a year later.
which businesses would come back first?
when maybe 5% of the population returned, which ones could afford to come back?
the office depots and kinkos and corporate names so familiar and 'trusted', that you'd think certainly had enough money.
or the locally owned Don's and leBlanc's autoshop.
i passed the Daiquiri hut and knew (proven in chalmette) that bars are the first businesses to come back.
the Daquiri hut would probably be the first sign lit up again on the street.
and then actually being excited when mcdonald's is the second.
driving through, an awareness of the landscape you never had when you just saw the obstacles to the day's errands.
instead, now, seeing the absence of a certain building, now exposing the field behind or the small dip in the ground becoming a resevoir for debris.
turning into the neighborhood. the busy sub-veign that i've come to expect to be caked in xmas lights during the holidays, dark..completely abandoned.
not a single house showing any signs of life.
windows blown out, some still boarded up, but dark all the way through.
cars at one time familiar, tilted up against the wrong neighbors house or tree.
someon'e showy boat, left proudly under the carport,
now floated who knows how many blocks away.
the trees. our neighborhood is old enough to have grand shady trees--they'd all be leafless and dead looking. covered in a layer of grey muck.
same for people's lawns, that they struggled to manicure so their kids had a soft place to lay and watch the clouds, or the dog to poop or even just the neighbors to envy,
black.
nameless street after nameless street of lightless ghost town.
so familiar yet so completely foreign.
so much like a bradbury story about a parrallell dimension.
expecting the ether to just ripple and show the real neighborhood reflected underneath.
but it doesn't. and you're here, whether its another dimension or not.
where do you start.
how do you even begin to decide what parts of your life to try to piece together.
the school accross the street, the churches, grocery stores- every institution and social center completely incapacitated.
the streets not only littered with debree, but even when that finally gets cleared away, every street being pocked with pot holes.
approaching my own block. imagining coming back to the pool at my mom's old house, lifted entirely out of the ground and drifted to the neighbors yard.
driving up to my dad's house. where i have all my art from my whole life stored,
knowing, when you left, that you'd be back in a couple days just like every other time you had to evacuate.
the things we brought to the second story or attic thinking it'd be safe, even if it did flood, strewn about the floor covered in caked mud. waterlogged if at all recognizable.
trying to think of anything valuable that could possibly have survived...and then combing for it in a foot of mud with rubber gloves. and even when you've found the silver...would you ever really eat with it again?
finally coming to terms with having lost everything you've saved and kept for that day far in the future when you'd appreciate just looking back on it.
accepting that that day is now every day cause its only left in your memory.
and you start by just figuring out today, then this week or month. wehre will you live? where will your kids go back to school.
something to do to occupy them so you can focus on dealing.
then once you have any semblence of routine, do you have a job?
and then finally starting to figure out insurance. what are you worth now. are you gonna get anything back of the investments you had before?
months and months later starting to plan, finally, for the future.
starting to figure out which of your neighbors are gonna do what.
who has enough cash to even start to think about fixing their homes, or eventually, when insurance gets dealt with,
who will try to rebuild or who will just pick up and go somewhewre else.
and when you have to make the decisions yourself, you're really just guessing.
no one is actually doing it, you don't know if they're being optamistic, or in denial.
if they'll ever really come back.
or you know your neighborhood isn't coming abck.
the people who made it your neighborhood, who made life bareable and fun, who took years just to find and then you had kids at the same time and informed each other when you found out they'd done something bad at school,
they're not coming back. they're gonna tear down their house. or try to sell it.
how scary too, if you're trying to sell yours, to see the nicest ones in the neighborhood, the ones that had any structure left at all, selling for shit change.
but still, just the ghosts.
driving through the nieghborhoods, even the ones i never knew as normal, or with life in them,
are so freakin eery, block after block after block after block of empty ghost dark dry dusty deserted damaged wreckage.
shells. like locust trails after they demolish a crop, leaving the most recognizable parts of themselves behind.
and just knowing that this is it-this is how its going to be for months and months, life breathing back in so o o o o o
slowly.
life bursting and overflowing everywhere else. why would you ever try to rebuild this from scratch.
yep.
ok.
i remember how it feels again.
now to try to channel that into something more than just the documentary images i've been making.
and so is my task.
for the next week.
i'll be out of the office for a week probably,
going on a wee trip with my mom.
and when i come abck, it'll be the home stretch.
to really see what it is i'm doing here.
i find myself becoming numb to it the way the 'refugees' around me seem to be.
so, driving home in my own hometome--the place i've lived in since i was about 6--i decided to try imagine what lafayette would look like after the damage i see in chalmette.
like judge perez, johnston street is the main veign of town, an even mix of chains and local businesses,
branching off into suburban neighborhoods, including my own.
i started at the far end, coming back into town.
driving down a fully alive, nightime street. cars on the road with people running errands for the week ahead.
etc.
normal.
imagined myself then just coming back after the 6 weeks when they wouldn't allow anyone back into their neighborhoods.
when the water had only been down for a very short while.
of course, there'd be no power. no street lights, no glowing signs.
no cars on the roads, except those that had been left or abandoned, swept into the middle of the street or front yards.
roofs and signs and whatnot would be debris all over the road, a common sight after a hurricane.
but the whole city, also, covered in black ooze.
like the ghostbusters had finally won the crusade in a heated interdimensional battle.
i passed a car dealership and imagined the lot full of piles of junkers, still with the new price stickers on the windows.
their ordered parking an unintelligble patternless chaos.
thinking of the value of each car. that someone months before would have spent thousands of dollars on, now worthless.
past the ice cream parlor--baskin robins--where we first explored our independence. walking from my friend's house.
empty and deserted. .. even a year later.
which businesses would come back first?
when maybe 5% of the population returned, which ones could afford to come back?
the office depots and kinkos and corporate names so familiar and 'trusted', that you'd think certainly had enough money.
or the locally owned Don's and leBlanc's autoshop.
i passed the Daiquiri hut and knew (proven in chalmette) that bars are the first businesses to come back.
the Daquiri hut would probably be the first sign lit up again on the street.
and then actually being excited when mcdonald's is the second.
driving through, an awareness of the landscape you never had when you just saw the obstacles to the day's errands.
instead, now, seeing the absence of a certain building, now exposing the field behind or the small dip in the ground becoming a resevoir for debris.
turning into the neighborhood. the busy sub-veign that i've come to expect to be caked in xmas lights during the holidays, dark..completely abandoned.
not a single house showing any signs of life.
windows blown out, some still boarded up, but dark all the way through.
cars at one time familiar, tilted up against the wrong neighbors house or tree.
someon'e showy boat, left proudly under the carport,
now floated who knows how many blocks away.
the trees. our neighborhood is old enough to have grand shady trees--they'd all be leafless and dead looking. covered in a layer of grey muck.
same for people's lawns, that they struggled to manicure so their kids had a soft place to lay and watch the clouds, or the dog to poop or even just the neighbors to envy,
black.
nameless street after nameless street of lightless ghost town.
so familiar yet so completely foreign.
so much like a bradbury story about a parrallell dimension.
expecting the ether to just ripple and show the real neighborhood reflected underneath.
but it doesn't. and you're here, whether its another dimension or not.
where do you start.
how do you even begin to decide what parts of your life to try to piece together.
the school accross the street, the churches, grocery stores- every institution and social center completely incapacitated.
the streets not only littered with debree, but even when that finally gets cleared away, every street being pocked with pot holes.
approaching my own block. imagining coming back to the pool at my mom's old house, lifted entirely out of the ground and drifted to the neighbors yard.
driving up to my dad's house. where i have all my art from my whole life stored,
knowing, when you left, that you'd be back in a couple days just like every other time you had to evacuate.
the things we brought to the second story or attic thinking it'd be safe, even if it did flood, strewn about the floor covered in caked mud. waterlogged if at all recognizable.
trying to think of anything valuable that could possibly have survived...and then combing for it in a foot of mud with rubber gloves. and even when you've found the silver...would you ever really eat with it again?
finally coming to terms with having lost everything you've saved and kept for that day far in the future when you'd appreciate just looking back on it.
accepting that that day is now every day cause its only left in your memory.
and you start by just figuring out today, then this week or month. wehre will you live? where will your kids go back to school.
something to do to occupy them so you can focus on dealing.
then once you have any semblence of routine, do you have a job?
and then finally starting to figure out insurance. what are you worth now. are you gonna get anything back of the investments you had before?
months and months later starting to plan, finally, for the future.
starting to figure out which of your neighbors are gonna do what.
who has enough cash to even start to think about fixing their homes, or eventually, when insurance gets dealt with,
who will try to rebuild or who will just pick up and go somewhewre else.
and when you have to make the decisions yourself, you're really just guessing.
no one is actually doing it, you don't know if they're being optamistic, or in denial.
if they'll ever really come back.
or you know your neighborhood isn't coming abck.
the people who made it your neighborhood, who made life bareable and fun, who took years just to find and then you had kids at the same time and informed each other when you found out they'd done something bad at school,
they're not coming back. they're gonna tear down their house. or try to sell it.
how scary too, if you're trying to sell yours, to see the nicest ones in the neighborhood, the ones that had any structure left at all, selling for shit change.
but still, just the ghosts.
driving through the nieghborhoods, even the ones i never knew as normal, or with life in them,
are so freakin eery, block after block after block after block of empty ghost dark dry dusty deserted damaged wreckage.
shells. like locust trails after they demolish a crop, leaving the most recognizable parts of themselves behind.
and just knowing that this is it-this is how its going to be for months and months, life breathing back in so o o o o o
slowly.
life bursting and overflowing everywhere else. why would you ever try to rebuild this from scratch.
yep.
ok.
i remember how it feels again.
now to try to channel that into something more than just the documentary images i've been making.
and so is my task.
for the next week.
i'll be out of the office for a week probably,
going on a wee trip with my mom.
and when i come abck, it'll be the home stretch.
to really see what it is i'm doing here.
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