Today Michelle escorted me out to Lakeview, Herman's neighborhood. I really can't describe it. The land is an explosion of waste, the houses are broken swollen cracked bodies, the boney dust that is the air, only construction workers, machinery, orange vests out there now. The neutral ground running up West End is an endless 50 ft (at least) pile of unrecognizable debris, And then many more 50 ft high piles of lumber, cut trees, stacked, ground into pulp, looming. Hard caked streets, no children, no groceries, no dogs or stray cats or joggers, no light. It wasn't dark but it wasn't light. It is utterly entirely achingly nauseating.
Gentilly is just as bad - graphic, unimaginable. Why can't we imagine it? Even those of us here, even those of us who lived here for years & knew that something like this could & would happen eventually couldn't imagine it. It's like, you're stunned that Nature could do that. When I was interviewed the other day I was asked, "Why do you think it's so hard for people outside of this situation to empathize?" All I could say was, "They wouldn't get out of bed in the morning." You just can't imagine that force. It will snuff us all in a split of a split of a split second. Here I thought the imagination was a limitless thing but it's really Nature that's limitless. You think you know this, I thought I knew this, but this is knowing now.
Families, homes, businesses - wiped out. Not the "hip" area by any means but I had a great and tender affection for it - the seafood shacks that have vanished, the Hong Kong which is just a skeleton, the somewhat ugly brick houses that always had the best Christmas decorations, all of those small good daily lives crushed. Old people & their life's work completely crushed. You can't breathe, you can't keep your heart in any kind of tidy boundary. It's not for yourself you suffer, it's for all the others.
I got out to photograph Ferrara's grocery store - "Makin Groceries Since 1906" - which looked like a bomb went off on the inside. I could see cereal boxes still on a slanted shelf in the dark cavern. The smell leaking out was rancid and evil. When I used to shop there (some soy milk, maybe pasta) I was always so relieved. It was homey, it felt like a big hug - like it would always be there, and off the beaten path, outside of the tangle of the rest of the city.
Herman's house is a shell of itself. The construction workers back there told Michelle to warn me about "the snakes". Crushed glass, a thick and gray tundra split underneath our feet. The darkroom sink crushed & broken. Our little shed just puking into the yard. No yard even anymore, everything crumpled and dead. The silence, the thick cottoned dead silence. Then one bird singing! A broken broken heart. Herman worked so hard for his life, this city, for his art and people everywhere. And he's just an 83 year old man who has lost everything like everybody else. HIs Bessler enlarger that he had for years & years. You feel so helpless. Then I remember I'm in the same boat. A ravaged, burnt, sunken boat with a poetic name and a pelican on the hull. No, I'm not 83 years old so it's different. And I'm not saying that man doesn't have strength that transcends mine, believe me. We're different but my boat is out there too. In that way, we're together, we're not alone.
And we went to my house again. It's the 3 day visitation rites, it's the day before the burial, I can't stop looking now, I can't believe any of it was even mine. It was all such a part of me there's no separation. You might look inside and think that nobody loved that stuff, those split guitars, the crushed shelves, the collapsed suitcases spilling out years and years of hand-written & decorated journals, jars, feathers, buttons, twine. You might think that they never were alive and glowing talismans, a forcefield of goodness and strength. They stink, everything soaked with brown or red otherworldy stains, webs, rotting, waving goodbye. But then I'd let you look at me with my respirator on, cameras slung all over my body, I'd let you look into my eyes, I don't even care that my brow is so deeply furrowed - my eyes are on fire from my heart burning beneath them. I am only standing because of the power that my "things" gave to me. My buffalos, my sacred elephants, my sacred bear, my whales. They may be gone but the power's still on.
"It stinks. I'm depressed. I'm home!" the new New Orleans motto (kudos to Michelle's Liz.)
After all that, well surprise surprise, I got so sick I could only bathe, drink water, lie in the fetal position hugging a pillow to my gut, leaf through a food magazine, pitiful. Believe me, it's nothing special. Happens to everyone every damn day here. It's not indulgent, it's just a body can only absorb so much. You have to let the body rest. Or you never would believe what you saw and you just wouldn't get up & do it again. Not that you have to go into the worst areas every day but I don't care, man. You could never leave this wonderland between Washington & Louisiana for the rest of your life & you're still gonna feel the burn, you'd still have to fall down sometimes.
So Michelle, eagle that she is, walked her dogs, kept moving, her tender eyes and tender diamond heart shining, showing me by example that every day, every day you get a little bit further, every day you do what you can, you see a little more or you don't see a little more but we're swallowing, we're talking, we're eating salads with hearts of palm. I was wanting to revel in Halloween but just couldn't drum up the energy to drag myself downtown or anything like that. It felt like all of the bones had melted right out of my body.
But you rustle around, light some candles, sip some water. Sitting on my bed, looking at my vintage bunny mask & ears lying over there in the corner, I kept looking and a tickle started in me and that was that. Bent down, picked it up, tied it on, tied the ears on. Tweeked the ears, kept my black tee-shirt & Halloween pyjama pants on (orange & black bats!), pulled my black puffy crinoline over it all. Put my dusty rubber boots on, sloppily tucked the pyjama pants in, & just stood in the kitchen staring at Michelle while she made soup from yesterday's chicken bones. Complete and utter silence. It gave her the eebie jeebies! Yea! Halloween is still Halloween!
So. I turned the key in her door and walked myself around the streets, my bunny ears hanging in such a slouchy sorrowful fashion, my body exaggerating that slouch, shuffling, speechless, anonymous. I stared in car windows & gave a tentative half-wave to people. Some men drinking at a table outside yelled, "C'mere! Sit on down with us! C'mon! Have some fun." I just stared at them & shuffled on & they yelled, "What a stick in the mud!" & I'm thinkin' "Duh. I'm a stick in the mud. That's the point!" but I didn't say a word which inspired a slurred "bitch!" outta them. Oh, you're not from here, are you? God that was funny.
I stared at the bartender & drinkers in Saki Cafe & rubbed my bunny eyes like I'd been crying, straightened my pipe cleaner whiskers and shuffled on. Aw man, it was great. To be this thing I really feel that's SO pitiful, SO sad, to even satirize it, I felt like Charlie Chaplin. & I figured, you know? These people are gutsy enough to get these businesses open, and those other people are out here participating, spending money, keeping this small fingernail of our city alive, the least I can do is give 'em some entertainment!
Little white-haired uptown ladies at Lillette went beserk waving & waving at their linen-covered table. Some people got really scared, young men especially ("Dude, that's really creepy.") which was delightful. And the few kids I ran into just loved it! I hadn't realized it but for them it was truly important, exotic, an injection of the magic that they live for and in and probably wonder where it's been.
To scuffle down Magazine Street, sitting down at an outdoor table with uppity coffee-drinkers, letting the tiny Lebanese girl get picked up by her papa to kiss my bunny nose. 2 boys about 6 & 7 just slayed me when I told them & their mom, "I'm a saaaad bunny." The mom was grinning, "Well can they do anything to make you not so sad?" "They can try," I said in my mopiest slouchiest voice. They started jumping around like marionettes yelling, "Be happier!!!" Underneath my papier mache face I was grinning ear to ear.
I shuffled on past the fire station and the firemen sittin around just fell out laughing. I stared into all the glassy shiny restaurant windows, slouching, so sad, watching people watch the sheer absurdity of it happening right in front of them, over foie gras & wine. Is it more unbelivable that there's a sad bunny in the window or that there's foie gras & wine?
The night air was a big October kiss, my dead went right along with this, and I exaggeratedly dragged myself home to just go to bed. I coulda gone downtown with "my band", Storyville Stompers, and 2nd lined with all those amazing souls but I felt this was equally restorative, equally honorable. And flat-out devastatingly hilarious. Imagine that.
