One of my favorite people that I have met is also someone about whom I have the most conflicting feelings. Of course. He is a man, and we will call him El Vasco, the name that he says he uses in his paintings. I have seen one of his works of art, a highly textured and abstract depiction of a house and some flowers. It is a beautiful work, but given the way he articulately describes his mental illness and sees the spirits, souls, and ancestoral histories of others, I think he can do better. Maybe I expect too much.
When he lived at the Family Shelter, each member of the staff had strong and wildly varying opinions about him. We all had different relationships with him depending on our individual tolerance and/or appreciate of his mental illness, the severity of which varied depending on the situation, and his pension for reading palms, spirits, and auras (auriolas, in his broken/spanish-inflected English). I spent most of my time talking to him and trying to convince him that he could not afford to live on SSI (disability checks that are, at most, $623 per month) in New Orleans, and also listening to him tell me my life story and make predictions about my personality and relationships with others. He correctly guessed (saw) that my father is an alcoholic, that I am often nervous, and that my family is very important to me and also very supportive. But he said that my father was Casanova--not a casanova, but THE Casanova. Wow. And that is why I have "strong sexualities."
EL Vasco is creative and eccentric and pisses off many people and confounds even more. But that is part of his charm. The men and women who come to stay in homeless shelters, their lives tainted with seemingly endless hardships and bad luck, have had the creativity forced out of them. Certainly empowerment of low-income residents--and here I'm talking about a movement that comes from within the Black community--would include empowering people to once again be creative. Modern life, modern poverty, is exhausting. To create is a luxury, and to see someone who so clearly has been through it all--revolutions in two different countries, day-to-day life of a refugee, a hurricane, and alcoholism--yet still has the drive to create and the desire to see visions even though they make his life harder, is beautiful and should be admired. No matter how frustrating it was to provide him with services or to mediate when people complained that he spit in the shower, his creativity inspired me
Friday, June 22, 2007
Thursday, June 21, 2007
I'm trying to remember all of the Learning Experiences that I have had since I came to New Orleans. When I first arrived, everything that happened seemed so remarkable, seemed to teach me something. People offering me drugs or giving me hugs at the gas station, stepping over large piles of junky shit in the middle of the sidewalk, hearing peoples' stories ( the story), everything was interesting and important. A week or two into my stay, when I was busy and so many crazy things happened in a day, I realized that I no longer found these things remarkable. They were just a part of my life. And maybe some of them don't deserve to be remembered, but some do.
The first time I slept at the Family Shelter, for example. I had just started working there (like, the day before) and already the coordinator wanted me to stay the night. It was part because she trusted me, but mostly because she lived there and hadn't had a day off in three weeks. I went over late. I was tired from working in a dirty volunteer kitchen and my belly was full of crawfish. It was my first time eating them and once I got the hang of it, I probably ate two pounds. But when I got to the shelter, I sat up late in the kitchen and talked with one of the residents, a woman full with energy, with life. Her voice thundered throughout the house, high and hoarse from cigarettes (and yelling). Her six-foot frame was imposing in the low-ceilinged shotgun that housed the shelter; she towered over me, over the bunkbeds, and especially over her children, who she intimidated into doing what she wanted with her yelling, a booming ghost following them into the kitchen and backyard, somehow always able to see what they were doing. I loved her. She loved to cause a ruckus. On their way out the door, she made fun of the shelter coordinator, who she claimed was going out "so she can fuuuuck" and then when I asked what she had done that day, she said "I was hookin'." oh. really? No, she worked at McDonald's. "same thing."
I had long kitchen-table conversations with other women who lived there, too. They were always late at night, after the children had gone to sleep. Part of me felt as though I was taking up their only free time, the only time they had to be alone. But having someone to listen, someone who is over the age of 8, that's important too.
The first time I slept at the Family Shelter, for example. I had just started working there (like, the day before) and already the coordinator wanted me to stay the night. It was part because she trusted me, but mostly because she lived there and hadn't had a day off in three weeks. I went over late. I was tired from working in a dirty volunteer kitchen and my belly was full of crawfish. It was my first time eating them and once I got the hang of it, I probably ate two pounds. But when I got to the shelter, I sat up late in the kitchen and talked with one of the residents, a woman full with energy, with life. Her voice thundered throughout the house, high and hoarse from cigarettes (and yelling). Her six-foot frame was imposing in the low-ceilinged shotgun that housed the shelter; she towered over me, over the bunkbeds, and especially over her children, who she intimidated into doing what she wanted with her yelling, a booming ghost following them into the kitchen and backyard, somehow always able to see what they were doing. I loved her. She loved to cause a ruckus. On their way out the door, she made fun of the shelter coordinator, who she claimed was going out "so she can fuuuuck" and then when I asked what she had done that day, she said "I was hookin'." oh. really? No, she worked at McDonald's. "same thing."
I had long kitchen-table conversations with other women who lived there, too. They were always late at night, after the children had gone to sleep. Part of me felt as though I was taking up their only free time, the only time they had to be alone. But having someone to listen, someone who is over the age of 8, that's important too.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Transience
Three months ago, I came to New Orleans as a transient relief worker. I made the decision to go to New Orleans because of a strong desire to participate, to know more and gain an understanding of the situation by being here rather than sitting at home shaking my head at media reports of philanthropic “Katrina fatigue.” I put my bike in the back of a pickup truck and rode down to New Orleans from Indiana, a state that one New Orleans native has described to me as "flyover country." Rather than insult me, this remark was intended to cement my status as an outsider: if he didn't understand the simple college town I was coming from, I certainly could not understand the complex social and political realities faced by native New Orleanians.
Through my work with the 7th Ward Family Shelter, I have been told I was crazy by a woman overwhelmed by toxic houses and crime; thanked profusely; eyed suspiciously; cried to; and made fun of for turning my own suspicious eyes on a plate of turkey necks and rice sitting in the fridge. Apparently, my native Kentucky is not as far South as I thought.
I came to New Orleans to understand the realities of the situation. I expected to find stalling, setbacks, backwards police and upside down politicians; I also expected to find straight-up good people working hard to rebuild the city. What I did not expect was the extent to which the long history of corruption, racism—and a powerful music and artistic tradition—affect the political and social culture in the city today. All I can understand now is that it will take me years to uncover all of these layers and truly participate.
Before I came to New Orleans, I ran into two articles about the rebuilding efforts that made me want to come here. One was a New York Times op-ed by Walter Isaacson in which it was reported that President Bush said “if he were young and looking to make his mark or some money, he would move to New Orleans.” The other article was by Naomi Klein in The Nation, in which she asserted “evacuees must be at the center of all decision-making.” Bush’s statement asserts the power of the market; Klein’s the power of being a native, a community member. I did not come to New Orleans to exploit the booming housing market; I came here to work with people who made the difficult and brave decision to return home to a city devoid of old friends, jobs, houses. Because it’s their home. Even if it isn’t mine.
Through my work with the 7th Ward Family Shelter, I have been told I was crazy by a woman overwhelmed by toxic houses and crime; thanked profusely; eyed suspiciously; cried to; and made fun of for turning my own suspicious eyes on a plate of turkey necks and rice sitting in the fridge. Apparently, my native Kentucky is not as far South as I thought.
I came to New Orleans to understand the realities of the situation. I expected to find stalling, setbacks, backwards police and upside down politicians; I also expected to find straight-up good people working hard to rebuild the city. What I did not expect was the extent to which the long history of corruption, racism—and a powerful music and artistic tradition—affect the political and social culture in the city today. All I can understand now is that it will take me years to uncover all of these layers and truly participate.
Before I came to New Orleans, I ran into two articles about the rebuilding efforts that made me want to come here. One was a New York Times op-ed by Walter Isaacson in which it was reported that President Bush said “if he were young and looking to make his mark or some money, he would move to New Orleans.” The other article was by Naomi Klein in The Nation, in which she asserted “evacuees must be at the center of all decision-making.” Bush’s statement asserts the power of the market; Klein’s the power of being a native, a community member. I did not come to New Orleans to exploit the booming housing market; I came here to work with people who made the difficult and brave decision to return home to a city devoid of old friends, jobs, houses. Because it’s their home. Even if it isn’t mine.
Monday, June 4, 2007
To put out the raging oil fires in Iraq during the first Gulf War, firefighter soldiers dynamited the center of the fire, which in some way or another extinguished it.
Lately, my mind has not only been blown, it has been a raging oil fire that needs to be dynamited lest it burn forever, polluting everything around me with a slick cancerous fog.
For the past three months, I have worked twelve hours a day, six or seven days a week. I was not the only one doing this, and in fact, I worked less than some of the other volunteers. We ran a homeless shelter. The residents respected us because we worked hard but also knew that there is joy and love and fun in these situations sometimes. We stood around the kitchen and made fun of each other, watched laughing while kids fished toys out of the flooding backyard, and ate endless amounts of home-cooked fried and barbequed chicken. I have eaten my weight in red beans.
After three months of hard work, the shelter lost funding because apparently, providing shelter to New Orleanians returning home is not a part of the organization's vision. Relief, apparently, means building ponds and gardens in the Lower Ninth Ward, taking up space, money, and labor to create a middle-class alternative community rather than rebuilding the community that now exists. Relief means sacrificing a shelter that houses families--couples, men with children, women with children, single men, single women--and is the only one of its kind in the city. Men with children are forced to leave the parish, possibly giving up their jobs, their children's schools, and their families, to stay in a shelter that does not even feel like home. The Family Shelter felt like home, it felt like home to me, and to the residents seeking shelter. There was always food in the fridge, grits on the stove, and toys in the backyard. Volunteers to alternately play with the kids, talk to the adults, and make endless amounts of phone calls looking for health care, free eyeglasses and dentist appointments, and the ever-elusive affordable housing.
For the past week, the atmosphere has alternated between heavy rain and high humidity. Sticky or soaked, I haven't been dry for days. Within hours the streets fill with water, backyards flood six inches deep, small cars get stuck on huge boulevards. It didn't flood like this before, Ms. C told me, not before the storm. Everything from the lack of good drainage to the mosquitos can be traced to the storm, one storm, a few hours of rain and high winds, and an entire city is brought to its knees. A city that, mind you, has more dignity and small-town feel than any city in the United States. The rain, though, it is dramatic and has brought on fights between forty year-olds, a rage storm of criticism from organization leadership looking for scapegoats on whom to place the blame for the failing program, and run-of-the-mill childhood boredom.
This city is extreme in every way. All services are stretched to their limits, the residents are the most friendly in the most violent city in the United States, the potholes are bigger, the cops are soldiers who drive hum-vs, and the music is the best, just the best. I've had to call the cops on neighbors, escort drug-addled residents off the property, and break up fights. But yesterday, I was invited to watch a woman's ultrasound, a confusing gray and black anatomy lesson during which I saw a tiny heart, a tiny spine, and some kidneys. And that moment, in the eleventh hour of my work with the shelter program, almost brought me to my knees. In prayer, or defeat, or pure humility towards life, I am not certain.
But I am here and it is hard and I have failed in many ways, and I understand next to nothing about this city. So it goes...
Lately, my mind has not only been blown, it has been a raging oil fire that needs to be dynamited lest it burn forever, polluting everything around me with a slick cancerous fog.
For the past three months, I have worked twelve hours a day, six or seven days a week. I was not the only one doing this, and in fact, I worked less than some of the other volunteers. We ran a homeless shelter. The residents respected us because we worked hard but also knew that there is joy and love and fun in these situations sometimes. We stood around the kitchen and made fun of each other, watched laughing while kids fished toys out of the flooding backyard, and ate endless amounts of home-cooked fried and barbequed chicken. I have eaten my weight in red beans.
After three months of hard work, the shelter lost funding because apparently, providing shelter to New Orleanians returning home is not a part of the organization's vision. Relief, apparently, means building ponds and gardens in the Lower Ninth Ward, taking up space, money, and labor to create a middle-class alternative community rather than rebuilding the community that now exists. Relief means sacrificing a shelter that houses families--couples, men with children, women with children, single men, single women--and is the only one of its kind in the city. Men with children are forced to leave the parish, possibly giving up their jobs, their children's schools, and their families, to stay in a shelter that does not even feel like home. The Family Shelter felt like home, it felt like home to me, and to the residents seeking shelter. There was always food in the fridge, grits on the stove, and toys in the backyard. Volunteers to alternately play with the kids, talk to the adults, and make endless amounts of phone calls looking for health care, free eyeglasses and dentist appointments, and the ever-elusive affordable housing.
For the past week, the atmosphere has alternated between heavy rain and high humidity. Sticky or soaked, I haven't been dry for days. Within hours the streets fill with water, backyards flood six inches deep, small cars get stuck on huge boulevards. It didn't flood like this before, Ms. C told me, not before the storm. Everything from the lack of good drainage to the mosquitos can be traced to the storm, one storm, a few hours of rain and high winds, and an entire city is brought to its knees. A city that, mind you, has more dignity and small-town feel than any city in the United States. The rain, though, it is dramatic and has brought on fights between forty year-olds, a rage storm of criticism from organization leadership looking for scapegoats on whom to place the blame for the failing program, and run-of-the-mill childhood boredom.
This city is extreme in every way. All services are stretched to their limits, the residents are the most friendly in the most violent city in the United States, the potholes are bigger, the cops are soldiers who drive hum-vs, and the music is the best, just the best. I've had to call the cops on neighbors, escort drug-addled residents off the property, and break up fights. But yesterday, I was invited to watch a woman's ultrasound, a confusing gray and black anatomy lesson during which I saw a tiny heart, a tiny spine, and some kidneys. And that moment, in the eleventh hour of my work with the shelter program, almost brought me to my knees. In prayer, or defeat, or pure humility towards life, I am not certain.
But I am here and it is hard and I have failed in many ways, and I understand next to nothing about this city. So it goes...
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