KATRINA V

Sorry for the lapse since IV.

A certain dark heart of despair is past. There are things happening and deals dealt with.

My original impetus for writing these missives was to let people know what was happening that wasn’t being reported (as far as I could see). There is so much material out there now about what is going on and the percentage that seems responsible is getting high enough for a certain critical mass of accuracy to evolve which will eventually be the way this story is told. Like all historical (or for that matter non-historical) events, there is no one unified truth about what happened. It is a massive bundle of human experience. Much of it contradictory. Little of it simple. I have never experienced war. I hope I never do. I have a slightly expanded context for imagining it now.

One of the great sources of information is the New Orleans Times Picayune. Many of their reporters have stayed on in the most horrid conditions and continued to provide information about their city. What’s really kind of inspiring about these people is that they are hardly ever even alluding to the fact that they are still down there. That they are scrounging for food.
There was a bit of controversy about the two pictures that you might have seen circulating the net: Each showing similar activities, one captioned as people having found food, the other captioned as looting. The only difference being that the looter was black. The guy who wrote the caption on the picture of the white people “finding food” was still in New Orleans and he responded to the criticism by saying basically that he was perfectly willing to have a conversation about the issue but right now, he’s wet, hasn’t slept or eaten much in days, and could we all just cut him a bit of slack until he’s on dry land. This kind of journalist is a universe away from Geraldo Rivera holding up a baby in a refugee camp.
To paraphrase John Steward last night, the media has kind of gotten it together on this one and is doing a pretty good job for once.

Life in Baton Rouge (the fastest growing city in America!) is: A veneer of normality punctuated occasionally by intense and jarring surrealism. You’ll be going about your day and suddenly a phalanx of 12 unmatched ambulances will shriek by, lights and sirens, going god knows where, at 75 miles an hour. You’ll be stuck in traffic and a convoy of trucks carrying air-boats will be winding their way east. Military helicopters (the big pregnant ones) swoop overhead like Tolkien’s Nazgil. I don’t know anybody who is not putting someone up or planning to. Every business is doing something. This is not an exaggeration. Everywhere you go there are rescue personnel from New Mexico or Illinois, all with arm-bands and various pieces of equipment.
There is still no gas, but that’s not so much of a problem because there is so much traffic you can’t drive anywhere anyway. There is some sort of mathematical phenomenon where the clogging of the traffic patterns has an exponential relationship to the expansion of the population. We’ve just over doubled the population but it seems like there’s 10 times as much traffic. We’re hovering right over the tipping point where no traffic is moving anywhere. Traffic reports are saying things like “Airline hi-way will be backed up all day. Also I-10. Please try to use alternate routes.” ALL DAY!

I got out to Target over the weekend and there are certain things that are just gone (men’s underwear, practical candles, certain camping supplies) and then huge cases of batteries sitting on pallets in the aisles.

One of my colleagues had a birthday over the weekend. A bunch of us got together. There were valiant attempts to talk about things other than the Hurricane. We failed. But at least we tried.

I don’t know how he’s being perceived in the rest of the country, but NO Mayor Ray Nagin is quickly becoming a folk hero down here. As far as I know, as I write this, he is living on the 25th floor of the Hyatt Hotel, which is now a walk-up. Yesterday he was choppered out to the Iwo Jima so that he could shower, change his cloths and sit in an air-conditioned room for awhile. I have seen some controversy about his staying in NO but to most people I have talked to down here, it is a shining example of a leader leading from the front. People tick off the facts and factoids about how Nagin is living (there’s no electricity. No… No many things) and what he’s doing, with a proto-religious awed reverence.

One of my students, who is a complete comic-book, seventies-music/eighties-movies geek of the highest order (and also an amazing dancer who spent the summer with the Joffery Ballet), was looking at the total loss of his extensive and invaluable collections (This included some archival video stuff that I had brought back from Japan, that he was helping me digitize over the summer). It turns out, his house was miraculously spared. No damage. None. There were leaks in the house, and some minor flooding, but nothing of any value was lost.

On the other hand there are more and more stories from people who are getting back into the outlying areas to asses. My housemate Michelle went into Slidel with our neighbor from across the street (who now lives with us, because her parents and grandparents live in her apartment). You can’t get into these areas without some proof that you live there. They showed me some pictures. Huge boats, upside-down in the middle of the hi-way, stacks of cars arranged around car dealerships like a crumpled house of cards, and trees, trees and more trees. Most of them at angles not conducive to photosynthesis or orderly life in their proximity. But the thing that they said was absolutely overwhelming and impossible to convey was the smell. Pervasive, intense, offensive and dark. The mind starts to get frantic, not just from the physiological stifling of it, but from the imagination trying to come to terms with what could possibly be causing it. I’ve gotten whiffs of it. I don’t want more. I don’t enjoy retching.

There are signs everywhere in the quarantined zone that say: “Looters will be shot.” I want to tag them with “Shooters will be looted.” Reasonable people are seeming to find that death is an appropriate consequence for burglary. The American dream: Get away from my stuff or I’ll kill you! You use the government to create a situation with an impossible disparity between the haves and the have-nots. Then you take away their infrastructure and dip them in a sea-water/petroleum/sewage concoction. Carnage ensues. What did you think was going to happen? Some people didn’t like the way things were and have no vested interest in returning to the status quo. On top of which, many of them have been de-toxing on national television. Speaking of both New Orleans and Iraq: Why are Americans so confused about what is motivating people to shoot at them? Can’t they figure this out?

The three reasons I have heard for why snipers shoot at rescue choppers:
1. They are evil.
2. They are hallucinating on account of the lack of drugs.
3. They are not being rescued and are trying to get attention in the only way available.

Denial and delusion play a critical role at a time like this. It is an invaluable survival skill. So many people tell me about evacuees who are staying with them who talk about getting back to their homes next week and wondering if they’re going to have to take the carpeting out. Despite the fact that it’s pretty clear that their house is or will be destroyed, these people NEED to think this way to get through the next week, the next day, the next five minutes.

The internet is playing a critical role. E-mail is better than cell-phone service. Even text-messaging is better than voice. There are web-based portals that are serving up, up-to-date “shingle-level” satellite imagery based on street addresses. It’s really pretty amazing. I’ve helped a number of people find pictures of their homes, and try to figure out what’s left of their property, 80 miles away by looking at it from outer space.

There are SO many stories now. We started classes yesterday and everyone… EVERYONE has an engrossing story that is heartfelt, heartbreaking or heartening. I have also started finding and meeting with friends amongst the diaspora. I have found that one of my primary functions at a time like this is to tell tasteless jokes:
Yeah… I got hit pretty bad. A house fell over and hit my tree.
Then some cloths and books and all kinds of appliances got all over my water and mud.
…or
See the problem is that you left the wrong people behind. If you’d left the middle-class white people on the roofs, this wouldn’t happen.
…or
After a hurricane, everyone is Amish.

My sarcasm circuit is stuck on full throttle. Just mention the federal government to me these days. I’m like a walking, one-man Daily Show. This is not an accomplishment. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.

The other thing that more and more people here are talking about is the fact that so much attention is being focused on New Orleans that we are forgetting that other areas of the gulf coast were hit worse. Of course the footage of New Orleans looks new and dramatic, what with the water all over places many Americans may have visited as tourists. Whereas the footage of Mississippi has the been-there-done-that quality of the tsunami aftermath. Also, the broken Super-dome is more dramatic than a bridge, highway or building that just isn’t there any more. Footage of sand doesn’t really grab you unless you’re from the town that used to be on it.

And then there’s the whole thing about pets…