Email From NOLA IId
Yesterday, about dusk, I saw the ghost of Shorty, who is the cat you are looking at if you glance to left of this page. I took a bowl of cat food and placed it on the concrete up against the Auto Title establishment, which is next door to me on the other side of the vacant Pentecostal lot, and that ghost ate hungrily and then pranced about with great vivaciousness. Earlier, I had fed the facsimile of K-2 using the same bowl, but from the raised bed to the right of my steps, wherefrom now grows only the dead stalks of a photinia bush. I took the chainsaw to the bushes the other day because they did not survive the toxic soup soaking. And then later, who else could it be but Kitten, with those very exact markings, and always staying close to that Bienville property which had once claimed her. With Shorty, being all black, its harder to tell but also, there is no way to absolutely refute the possibility that the cat I am seeing is actually the original Shorty. Definitely from the same street-cat gene pool, these street cats rarely growing to a size bigger than the appearance of adolescence. And the other evening waiting for the arrival of The Rebirth Brass Band, in the FQ, where they locking the gates of Jackson Square early, I saw three cats moving confidently, pridefully, inside their own private compound. Aristocratic cats.
And this morning I saw my first wild dog, checking out the Rocheblave refuse. I did not bring back to New Orleans my bb gun, or my shotgun, for that matter. Most dogs either drowned or were shot or were evacuated after the levees broke. Cat's just climbed higher. That dog I saw maybe belonged to one of the workers sucking out the storm drains down the street a ways. I keep the chauffeur's dog in my back yard when he goes to deliver his advertising circulars. The dog's name is Flash. He is brown.
Which brings me to this--There hasn't been a murder recorded in New Orleans since the hurricane. I contend that there has not been a two month stretch without a murder in New Orleans for at least twenty years. It would take a lot of microfiche spinning to prove that I guess but for now I'm just throwing it out there casually.
There is uniqueness happening here in a city that was unique to begin. There may be less of the unspeakable happening but no less of the unfathomable. More and more of us are camping inside our powerless homes, eager for the uncertain future, mesmerized by the present. There is talk of a new New Orleans being ruined by bureaucratic incompetence and malfeasance and a master plan designed by carpetbaggers with a Disney vision. But there will be no death to this ground that has been New Orleans, by bureaucrats or by any means, because there has been so much death upon it. It will be the ghosts who decide what happens here. And if its Disney that ends up here then it will be the Disney of your youth suggested to you by your college prof when she said--you really must take some mushrooms and go see Fantasia. You cannot kill ghosts, they do not drown. There will be no method which leaves this place unhaunted.
All day long, from sun up to sundown, I can hear the whirring engines of bobcats with front end claw loaders filling up dump trucks. I will stand in the middle of an intersection in my neighborhood for minutes and not be disrupted in my lolly-gagging reconnaissance by vehicle or any recognizable life form. And sometimes I can't see anything in the way of workers, in all directions, but I can hear that whirring, and scraping of metal front end buckets against asphalt. Other days I can't go a block in any direction without seeing a guy on a powerline, or a bobcat, or sewage maintenance truck.
Bobcat and dump trailer pausing at my block of Rocheblave right now, a discussion is going on. Bobcat guy clearly wants to move down Iberville, no wait, he's making a circuit of the block, just drove behind me, dump trailer pulled by heavy duty Ford truck parking at the end of the block...
They worked for about two hours, five white people, three men, two women, one of the trucks had a vanity plate on front that said "Bama." They left behind as much as they took and during breaks looted small items from houses across the street that were left open, and in one case not being able to force open the front door of a home, forced open a side gate that was duct taped shut, a guy disappeared for a while and came back smiling and said, found me a brand new garden hose, and tossed it in the back of the truck.
I called a couple of electricians today. Inspections will be mandatory to get any power back. First inspection from an electrician and then a city building inspector, the latter of which are coming from a department that has been sliced and diced due to the city having no income. Thousands of us are beginning to wait in line for a visit from one of four available inspectors. Electricians, however, are plentiful, and charging approximately a little more than double what the going rate was Pre-K.
I started writing this in the morning but am just getting back to it now. The sun is setting. Heard the crunching of leaves in my side yard, went out front to investigate. Two more wild dogs, foraging. One looked like Benji from Hell, had a frayed section of rope hanging from his neck.
This is me, reporting from the passenger seat of my truck, dateline, New Orleans.
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Yesterday, about dusk, I saw the ghost of Shorty, who is the cat you are looking at if you glance to left of this page. I took a bowl of cat food and placed it on the concrete up against the Auto Title establishment, which is next door to me on the other side of the vacant Pentecostal lot, and that ghost ate hungrily and then pranced about with great vivaciousness. Earlier, I had fed the facsimile of K-2 using the same bowl, but from the raised bed to the right of my steps, wherefrom now grows only the dead stalks of a photinia bush. I took the chainsaw to the bushes the other day because they did not survive the toxic soup soaking. And then later, who else could it be but Kitten, with those very exact markings, and always staying close to that Bienville property which had once claimed her. With Shorty, being all black, its harder to tell but also, there is no way to absolutely refute the possibility that the cat I am seeing is actually the original Shorty. Definitely from the same street-cat gene pool, these street cats rarely growing to a size bigger than the appearance of adolescence. And the other evening waiting for the arrival of The Rebirth Brass Band, in the FQ, where they locking the gates of Jackson Square early, I saw three cats moving confidently, pridefully, inside their own private compound. Aristocratic cats.
And this morning I saw my first wild dog, checking out the Rocheblave refuse. I did not bring back to New Orleans my bb gun, or my shotgun, for that matter. Most dogs either drowned or were shot or were evacuated after the levees broke. Cat's just climbed higher. That dog I saw maybe belonged to one of the workers sucking out the storm drains down the street a ways. I keep the chauffeur's dog in my back yard when he goes to deliver his advertising circulars. The dog's name is Flash. He is brown.
Which brings me to this--There hasn't been a murder recorded in New Orleans since the hurricane. I contend that there has not been a two month stretch without a murder in New Orleans for at least twenty years. It would take a lot of microfiche spinning to prove that I guess but for now I'm just throwing it out there casually.
There is uniqueness happening here in a city that was unique to begin. There may be less of the unspeakable happening but no less of the unfathomable. More and more of us are camping inside our powerless homes, eager for the uncertain future, mesmerized by the present. There is talk of a new New Orleans being ruined by bureaucratic incompetence and malfeasance and a master plan designed by carpetbaggers with a Disney vision. But there will be no death to this ground that has been New Orleans, by bureaucrats or by any means, because there has been so much death upon it. It will be the ghosts who decide what happens here. And if its Disney that ends up here then it will be the Disney of your youth suggested to you by your college prof when she said--you really must take some mushrooms and go see Fantasia. You cannot kill ghosts, they do not drown. There will be no method which leaves this place unhaunted.
All day long, from sun up to sundown, I can hear the whirring engines of bobcats with front end claw loaders filling up dump trucks. I will stand in the middle of an intersection in my neighborhood for minutes and not be disrupted in my lolly-gagging reconnaissance by vehicle or any recognizable life form. And sometimes I can't see anything in the way of workers, in all directions, but I can hear that whirring, and scraping of metal front end buckets against asphalt. Other days I can't go a block in any direction without seeing a guy on a powerline, or a bobcat, or sewage maintenance truck.
Bobcat and dump trailer pausing at my block of Rocheblave right now, a discussion is going on. Bobcat guy clearly wants to move down Iberville, no wait, he's making a circuit of the block, just drove behind me, dump trailer pulled by heavy duty Ford truck parking at the end of the block...
They worked for about two hours, five white people, three men, two women, one of the trucks had a vanity plate on front that said "Bama." They left behind as much as they took and during breaks looted small items from houses across the street that were left open, and in one case not being able to force open the front door of a home, forced open a side gate that was duct taped shut, a guy disappeared for a while and came back smiling and said, found me a brand new garden hose, and tossed it in the back of the truck.
I called a couple of electricians today. Inspections will be mandatory to get any power back. First inspection from an electrician and then a city building inspector, the latter of which are coming from a department that has been sliced and diced due to the city having no income. Thousands of us are beginning to wait in line for a visit from one of four available inspectors. Electricians, however, are plentiful, and charging approximately a little more than double what the going rate was Pre-K.
I started writing this in the morning but am just getting back to it now. The sun is setting. Heard the crunching of leaves in my side yard, went out front to investigate. Two more wild dogs, foraging. One looked like Benji from Hell, had a frayed section of rope hanging from his neck.
This is me, reporting from the passenger seat of my truck, dateline, New Orleans.
- jimlouis 11-03-2005 3:10 am