Before Raking Leaves
I was sketching out in words this scene centered around a New Orleans youngster pulling a gun out of his sock during a three on three street basketball game. Those portable hoops with the black plastic bases are not exactly a ubiquitous New Orleans prop but they were pretty damn common to the neighborhoods in which I lived and traveled, during my ten year stay. And then just a few days later I hear from my nephew, who still lives in NO, that the city has outlawed those types of hoops in the street.
So like overnight what I was writing became history instead of what I was intending, which was a scene, although based on past experience, meant to reflect an ongoing metaphor-laden reality specifically tied to street basketball. This change in temporality is not crucial to any point I would ever intend to make seeing as how I am unclear myself on what the point is I would ever be trying to make.
Probably the street games restrict traffic flow to some degree and also I guess the gun being pulled from socks is not as uncommon as you would want it to be. And often the players will have some connection to the drug world. And there is violence and death in the drug world. No more newsworthy are the street deaths than the deaths caused every year by respectable drug companies but one might argue that the ratio of death versus benefit is more positively balanced in the world of super pharmaceutical companies. Or I should say unbalanced with the benefit side of the scale measuring much heavier in favor of the good provided by big drug companies. I mean I'm only guessing that pharmaceutical companies help more people than they kill, whereas the street dealers might be perceived, rightly or wrongly, to kill more people than they help. And so the city fathers by outlawing street basketball are again taking baby steps to curb a city problem with systemic roots of disease deeper than anyone has yet to effectively imagine a cure for. Even the drug companies are baffled because surely if they could figure a way to enter the lucrative street drug trade and rake into their coffers some of that sweet ghetto cake, they would have by now done so. The donation of Glaxo Kline Squibb Merck Beechum emblazoned backboards to the hood, as entry point to the market, is now out.
I have tons of ideas for New Orleans but they are all ridiculous and require massive hands on city-wide mentoring and out of personal pocket expense and deep personal heartache. And risk of death and lawsuits (you can invert those two in order of importance I guess) and failure. All my ideas carry with them a seemingly unacceptable failure rate, the beauty of which is--this is a thing they have in common with current practices and policies. Still, in a future world gone whack, where profit could be imagined or realized from the lifting up of our "lesser" citizens, I think I could see myself cutting off my hair, putting on a suit and sitting on some board, spewing ridiculous. "So you see, the benefit of populating floats of the (2,500 rich person only) Endymion parade, entirely with area youth from the ghettoes, and having the rich people populating the predominately poorer sections of the parade route and then the mixing afterwards at the big Superdome party, would be that of a first step towards turning the existing, and failing, system asunder..." And then the rich person says but my system is not failing and I would turn to that person and raise my left eyebrow.
All I can do is nod my aching head in agreement accompanied by an involutary weak and weary laugh (at the ideas, I think about solutions of sorts too). . . whew. I am in a bleak space on the drug problems in the ghetto having just returned and seeing too much. Part of the ghetto issues is the impact of abuse in the music scene with its own casualties. But I also realize that I am fortunate in that I have choices. I can leave. But the helpless feeling doesn't leave. Timely piece for me. thx.
Hang in there, just being a witness to it is of some value, even if the end to which you put the knowledge is not clear.
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I was sketching out in words this scene centered around a New Orleans youngster pulling a gun out of his sock during a three on three street basketball game. Those portable hoops with the black plastic bases are not exactly a ubiquitous New Orleans prop but they were pretty damn common to the neighborhoods in which I lived and traveled, during my ten year stay. And then just a few days later I hear from my nephew, who still lives in NO, that the city has outlawed those types of hoops in the street.
So like overnight what I was writing became history instead of what I was intending, which was a scene, although based on past experience, meant to reflect an ongoing metaphor-laden reality specifically tied to street basketball. This change in temporality is not crucial to any point I would ever intend to make seeing as how I am unclear myself on what the point is I would ever be trying to make.
Probably the street games restrict traffic flow to some degree and also I guess the gun being pulled from socks is not as uncommon as you would want it to be. And often the players will have some connection to the drug world. And there is violence and death in the drug world. No more newsworthy are the street deaths than the deaths caused every year by respectable drug companies but one might argue that the ratio of death versus benefit is more positively balanced in the world of super pharmaceutical companies. Or I should say unbalanced with the benefit side of the scale measuring much heavier in favor of the good provided by big drug companies. I mean I'm only guessing that pharmaceutical companies help more people than they kill, whereas the street dealers might be perceived, rightly or wrongly, to kill more people than they help. And so the city fathers by outlawing street basketball are again taking baby steps to curb a city problem with systemic roots of disease deeper than anyone has yet to effectively imagine a cure for. Even the drug companies are baffled because surely if they could figure a way to enter the lucrative street drug trade and rake into their coffers some of that sweet ghetto cake, they would have by now done so. The donation of Glaxo Kline Squibb Merck Beechum emblazoned backboards to the hood, as entry point to the market, is now out.
I have tons of ideas for New Orleans but they are all ridiculous and require massive hands on city-wide mentoring and out of personal pocket expense and deep personal heartache. And risk of death and lawsuits (you can invert those two in order of importance I guess) and failure. All my ideas carry with them a seemingly unacceptable failure rate, the beauty of which is--this is a thing they have in common with current practices and policies. Still, in a future world gone whack, where profit could be imagined or realized from the lifting up of our "lesser" citizens, I think I could see myself cutting off my hair, putting on a suit and sitting on some board, spewing ridiculous. "So you see, the benefit of populating floats of the (2,500 rich person only) Endymion parade, entirely with area youth from the ghettoes, and having the rich people populating the predominately poorer sections of the parade route and then the mixing afterwards at the big Superdome party, would be that of a first step towards turning the existing, and failing, system asunder..." And then the rich person says but my system is not failing and I would turn to that person and raise my left eyebrow.
- jimlouis 3-17-2005 6:59 pm
All I can do is nod my aching head in agreement accompanied by an involutary weak and weary laugh (at the ideas, I think about solutions of sorts too). . . whew. I am in a bleak space on the drug problems in the ghetto having just returned and seeing too much. Part of the ghetto issues is the impact of abuse in the music scene with its own casualties. But I also realize that I am fortunate in that I have choices. I can leave. But the helpless feeling doesn't leave. Timely piece for me. thx.
- L. (guest) 3-18-2005 5:22 am [add a comment]
Hang in there, just being a witness to it is of some value, even if the end to which you put the knowledge is not clear.
- jimlouis 3-18-2005 4:41 pm [add a comment]