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Email From NOLA IIh
I was a goddamn liar yesterday for saying there's not too many people here.
With daylight the streets are fairly well clogged with workers in this lower Mid-City/Downtown/Bienville corridor--some white, mostly Hispanic, a few black, looking for work, and malingerers like myself, hitting the Red Cross for first meal at 11a.m., but it is after sundown that you get a true count and there's just no one here. Like before, you wouldn't necessarily see people out at night if it were really cold or cold and rainy, but you knew, really knew the people were here, and felt the vibes coming out of the houses, and now, nada, just a few of us doing this occupying thing. And its not cold, its hot in the day and pleasant at night, perfect night air, and people in the hoods would be out, en mass, stoop sitting, corner standing, cruising in their automobiles. Gone. The houses and the projects, dead, unoccupied or mostly unoccupied. The the eight block long by two block wide Lafitte projects and the similarly sized Iberville projects, both located between this Rocheblave house and the French Quarter, are empty.
If at nightfall you turned your back on the 9th ward and kept going west through the 8th and 7th and 6th (which is skinniest sliver of all the wards but the backbone, spleen, liver and heart, of Treme, or vice versa) and all the way down to Canal in the 4th ward, where the Rocheblave house is, you will not see any of that deliciously flavored humanity I may have previously mentioned here, or to individuals, in emails.
So I'm not a liar.
But I am an asshole.
And I just f***ing hate it, you know I do, it is a thing which makes me unreasonably mad, and that is having my driveway blocked. I'm coming back from checking my email in the FQ this morning and I had lingered a little longer than usual because these young travelers, two boy girl couples they were, from either Wisconsin or Norway is my guess, and they were plopped on the sidewalk with their sketch pads doing quick little sketches of the scenery and it made me feel a sense of something that is described by a word I cannot access due to apparent neurological damage. But I wanted to sit there and check them out while searching for products I don't really need, on the web. So I did. They left and so did I and it was close enough to 11 and I thought I would check and see if the Red Cross was still holding court at the Orleans and Broad Shell Station (the Shell station by the way has seen some better days, and hey, this is right across the street from the very first Ruth's Chris steakhouse, which did never let the hood daunt it, although today I read they are moving there corporate HQ to Florida). And people, oh, now its coming to me the seed of my discontent, some nimrod was blocking the entrance to the parking lot, sloppily taking one space that blocked four or five more. So I had to park and walk. I'm standing in line for free food behind six or seven others at a major New Orleans intersection and I'm a little self-conscious I don't mind telling you. But they are literally hawking these styrofoam dinners some days with a guy waving a box at motorists from the neutral ground. And anyway, if contractors are going to be charging twice as much in some cases, I really do need to be saving every penny I got, as I am not seeking any assistance from the gov., nor is my insurance any good for anything (it just a fire policy, and possibly not even that as events have unfolded.) so welcome to hard times but really this stuff is easy compared to the tension that used to come off these streets on any average day or night of the year.
Or at least I think I'm all chill about everything until I run into the cops, or, hired security ex-cops ex security I don't know, they looked sort of official but there were like four of them in some guy's chevy, fully uniformed and with the blue light on the dash. It became evident though, that I was holding on to some tension when I met them head on.
I had just got to my driveway and one of the sculptor's friends, or a hired contractor, has their passenger car parked as neatly as can be right in the nicely swept crumbled concrete across the front of my driveway. I did that heavy sigh thing, said fuck fuck, and then backed up pissed off and sped to the Iberville corner. I was turning right against the one way so I could go the half block to the L of the vacant Pentecostal lot and jump the curb and drive cross country to my driveway.
The cops are coming the proper way down Iberville at just that moment (by the way, great decoy undercover piece of crap car, guys, totally fooled me), and as I'm just starting to turn right these guys pull head on to me to block my progress. There were, I knew, nails in that debris of boards at the corner, but I had for a moment contemplated taking the sidewalk to evade these whothefucks. That is how seriously I was taking them as a non threat. To further state my lack of concern for this roadblock I opened my truck door and stuck my head out, which is a thing I would never ever do to real cops, that is, try to exit the vehicle without permission.
The driver sticks his head out his open door, just like me, and says, this is a one way street. I said there some yum yum blocking my driveway and I need to jump the curb and drive through the vacant lot. I was really pissed (and sort of mean looking I noticed later in the mirror). For backup a cop started getting out of the backseat but only halfway, like me and the first cop. None of us were really into this confrontation. In an effort to not make matters worse I purposely did not make eye contact with the second cop because I was intuiting that he would not take well to the look of contempt I would have for him. All kidding aside, I love cops, for the most part. We as humans are not to be trusted without them. But this was some bubble gum bullshit and I don't know what really was at the core of my discontent but it would not improve if there was going to be a rent a cop hovering every time I was guilty of minor infractions. The driver cop said again, just in case I was a complete moron, this is a one way street, you need to circle the block and come in the right way. The hell I needed to do any such thing and to prove that I said, as a last gesture of respect, I know it's one way, sir. I then shut my door, backed up, and turned back down my two way street and pulled to a screeching halt, in the street, parallel to the car blocking my driveway. I got out in a hurry and headed to my house, while keeping my left periphery alert for the cops, but they just kept on going down that one way Iberville.
After I ate I felt better. Red beans and rice, again.
The other day I was trying to think of that steamed vegetable that I like, but only in New Orleans do I like it and I was at a grocery recently and the man in front of me had two heads of something that looked like lettuce and a dim light bulb went off in my head and I thought, there they are, those things I can't remember, and I almost blurted out--Cauliflower, It's Cauliflower, but I knew instantly that was wrong, and then it just happened, not cauliflower, you idiot, cabbage, its cabbage.
Email From NOLA IIg
Yesterday, the end of the first week of November 05, in New Orleans, it was hot and muggy enough to require a full immersion cold shower and I feel even now, the next morning, baptized by the refreshing water of hope flowing from out of my pipes, here in this mostly vacant city.
I have potential support from many sources and am not in bad spirits, nor, as of this date can I create a list of unmet needs. That there are people suffering far more than I is such a constant in my frame of reference that--although I am not without some guilt for how relatively fortunate I am--I am trying not to waste too much time wallowing in what is mostly a waste of emotional energy.
Every new week brings new senators and activists who take their bus tours of the city and see what it is we are all seeing once arriving--a scope of devastation much larger than we were prepared for. All of them purport to having seen prior devastation, worldwide, and all say the same thing, they haven't seen anything this bad before. I think that has to reflect more on their lack of really getting out and seeing prior devastation worldwide than on the severity of this catastrophe versus others, but still, no shit, the scene here is mind boggling.
It's foggy this morning.
It is going to get cold eventually.
Mayor says eastern New Orleans might have power in six months.
The energy company (Entergy) in charge has filed Chapter 11.
New Oreans' bond rating has been downgraded, making investment here even shakier.
Out of town worker-looters are still a factor but relative to the crime that existed here Pre-K, those little punk ass bitch overpaid fuckers are really only a baseball bat away from eradicating. I wrote on the refrigerators still in the street this morning, "clean.up crew looted here."
I spent a cumulative three hours on hold, for three separate calls to Entergy, on Saturday. Entergy has always been very easy to deal with, very polite and helpful operators, and this is coming from a phonecallaphobic, but the second operator on Saturday was noticeably on edge, very grumpy, surly even, and essentially, just hung up on me. What I accomplished, I think, was having the utilities put back in my name. The renters are now set up on the West Bank. So the good news is I'm not incurring any utility costs, the bad news of course--got no utilities.
But Uptown and the FQ are up and running, only slightly crippled, and these are good things. Hundreds and hundreds of fine structures survived the flood. Being able to park in the French Quarter for morning grocery or breakfast runs is a thing I never thought I'd experience. I am constantly being cautious, taking the first spot I see, and then seeing numerous spaces, closer to my destinations.
I can pick up the Internet via wifi signals in various locations around the city (although I do have one favorite spot).
I know it is a better read when I report on actual characters, and my occasional interaction with them, and like I've said, the FQ and Uptown have quite a few people roaming around, but where I live, and did historically roam, is all but devoid of human beings, and still, completely devoid of operating businesses. Well, I know a couple of car washes are open. And, that newspaper box is selling papers on a nearby corner. And the Rockn'Bowl is opening back up, but, I never really dug it there.
I have run a hundred foot extension cord from the charging device in my truck and down the sideyard and into the bedroom window, and can now power up and use the laptops from the comfort of this air mattress. And although there is no mail delivery, and you have to take your mail and deposit it inside an actual post office, and then, one by one, try to retrieve your mail after giving one of 3 or 4 employees your ID, I do have hopes of resuming my Netflix addiction; I got the email notification yesterday that they had received the three I sent back last week. I was getting a really good turn around time those last few months in Virginia, but if I can get half that good of a turnaround here in New Orleans, I'll be happy. I bought some new batteries for my little clip on reading light because the days not only seem really short, they are short. And then I realized I can use the blank screen of this laptop as a reading light. The obstacles to my well being are simply no match for my desire to overcome them.