Strange day, and clarifying

I had another day to get my bearings, yesterday, and so I did. I’ve been sticking to the streetcar line and the Quarter since I got here; reading the prep work Courtney gave me in coffee shops, exploring well-traveled areas, having fun. I’ve been needing to go back to the disaster zone, and see it again for myself.

I took the streetcar down to the Quarter; the tracks run right past this house, but the closest place I can catch it is four blocks away, at the current end of the St. Charles line. Got off at Canal, and walked. Lunch was gumbo from a café in the French Market; it was a huge bowl of muddy-looking seafood and veggie soup, over rice. Slightly spicy; very good.

I walked all the way through the Quarter and rented a bicycle. As soon as I turned right on St. Claude, I saw signs of the storm, in peeled paint, broken windows, and school marquees reading “Welcome Back 2005.” Before I went even a block, I was out of the bustling, intact French Quarter and into an unrecovered neighborhood.

I rode all the way into the Lower 9th, using the less imposing of the two possible bridges to get there. I had my camera, but I didn't take pictures; I felt very conspicuous, and uneasy stopping. Courtney had told me to stick to the main drag, but I'd never intended to strictly follow that advice. I rode up some side streets, a block or two farther than Claiborne. They looked exactly as they did when I was here nine months ago. I could look down a street and see no signs of anybody. There were lots of areas still deserted, overgrown; piles of debris everywhere, broken houses standing as they had since the storm. On one block, there were two men outside working, with heavy equipment; one moving trash, the other earth. There was a house in the middle of another block, freshly painted a festive Day-Glo green with purple trim, family names proudly displayed above the door. (It reminded me of what Latino families do at home.) On either side of it stood trembling houses with overgrown yards, and no signs of life.

I saw a stand of godawful hideous pink tents, and rode over to investigate. I’d read about them on the web; it’s this Brangelina project. There stood a rickety, makeshift observation tower; I locked the bike to a stop sign and climbed up. 150 house-shaped tents, three blocks or so all the way to the levee, and farther on either side of me. It's designed to be a sustainable-development project; I can't argue with the basic idea, as I do believe in it. But the tents were a color a friend once described as "Silence=Death pink." They seemed unfittingly gaudy. Acrophobia told me to get the hell back down. I did, and noticed a "driving tour" set up around it. (There were people around; I wouldn't have stopped, had I been alone.) Let alone the pink; it just felt so creepy, freaky, wrong. This may be a bulldozed and blown away section of the neighborhood—but the whole time I was in the Lower 9th, I felt like I was staring at the grave of a community. I could almost see the silence. Driving—or biking—around and gawking felt profoundly disrespectful and wrong.

If you come here, I implore you—take the stories home, and tell them. Use the time that you have spent here. Don’t just look, and go on with your lives.

On Tennessee St., I rode past a FEMA trailer with posters, clippings, and a giant white board: memorials of Robert Green’s mother and granddaughter who died in the storm. I'd read about them in the NOLA paper online. (The child's name was Shanai Green, called “NaiNai”; she was 3. Robert had lost his grip on her, and she slipped off a roof and drowned.) I read the memorials, stood there for awhile. Muttered to myself that I needed to talk to people. It’s what I came here to do, and I’m anxious to do the work, not just watch.

I got back on the bike, and immediately rode past a man sitting quietly in a chair next to the trailer. I hadn't even seen him.

I circled in the street twice, wanting to go back and apologize, but I lost my nerve. I felt so guilty about not seeing/talking to him, and being a disaster tourist, that I thought for awhile about calling a priest friend and confessing. (Not just telling him how weird it was; I wrote that in an e-mail when I got home. I felt like I needed to honest-to-God confess my own complete inability even to see another human being.) It was that intense; that piercing.

I rode back across the bridge, not chased by any trucks this time, and returned the bike. I’d been out just under two hours. The clerk asked if I’d been around the Quarter; I mumbled a vague reply.

As soon as I did that, and was walking through the Quarter again, it felt as if the experience I'd just had in the Lower 9th had happened to somebody else. In a different world.

I walked back through the Quarter to Jackson Square and the river. I stuck my fingers in the Mississippi, for Paul and Orthodox Mimi, for whom today is Theophany. (Paul celebrates Epiphany, too.) My hand came out slightly sticky. I did something vaguely like praying; watched the water for awhile. I walked back through the park and listened to musicians, relaxing. Mindful of being back before dark, I walked back to Canal St., and caught the streetcar home.

I don't feel as guilty anymore, but awkward. I know I'm not here to stare at people's pain, but to bring these stories home—but yesterday I was a disaster tourist, through and through. I felt so white, so privileged, so innocent. I’ve never been through that kind of hell. I’ve never been forced to leave my home, without the means to return. I’ve never returned to a place that still looks, sounds, and feels like a nuclear wasteland. Meanwhile I'm thanking God that I've been here before, know what I'm getting into, and know I can approach the people I'm interviewing with respect, that's not complicated by my jaw clattering quite so noisily on the floor.

I’m also feeling fatalistic—in a way I hesitate to share, since I’m working in solidarity with the people here. I don't know how that's ever going to be a neighborhood, again. I’ll be thrilled, if and when I’m proven wrong.

I want very much to talk about this; I need people to process with, even before I start working with actual human beings. Yesterday, my usual suspects were otherwise occupied: taking the GOE, sleeping off a sickness, working hard on a project, doing other stuff. I’m feeling really alone with what I’m witnessing. I can mention it to Courtney tomorrow; we’re supposed to talk anyway, and I know she wants to support me. I chose not to interrupt her writing. Mainly, I need to get past my guilt. I’m not a New Orleanian. I wasn’t here. I couldn’t have changed the culture, erased classism/racism, kept the levees intact, made a safe place to come home to. And though I looked for all the world like a tourist yesterday, I don’t intend to be. I’m here to gather people’s stories, to get them out beyond this city in such a way that people pay attention to themselves and their own surroundings, and don’t let this social devastation happen anywhere else, again.

Not sure what today will bring, other than church—which by now is a spiritual need. I was up several times in the night with a cranky digestive system—whose mood has barely improved. I think it’ll be a day to lie low, read, research, catch up with myself. This trip is less intense than the last, so far—although it’s longer, and once I’m really immersed in my project I’ll think I was nuts for saying that. This city is haunting, just the same.