What It's Like Here, Part 2

There's 2 sides to everything, I guess, and there's certainly 2 sides to New Orleanians feeling like this beloved old city, battered as she is, is the "center of the universe" as Chris Rose writes. The other side is that post-Katrina New Orleanians, across almost all the categories of race and class and gender, are hurting.

A friend of mine who used to live here (and who moved away before Katrina) alerted me that her former landlady was deeply depressed and agoraphobic, and on top of her own worries had an adult son who was apparently "drinking himself to death." Agoraphobia is rampant in the city right now, and some folks do indeed have the full-fledged deal, stuck in their house or trailer, unable to go outside. But a lot of people in New Orleans seem to have a milder form, kind of partial agoraphobia, meaning they can go to work, to the job they need to live on, but then they go back in their shell, and stay holed up and away from other people til the weekend's over.

A great deal of my ministry right now is just pastoral care, finding resources for people, referring them to what few counseling/social work/psychiatric/psychological services we actually have right now. Resources are scarce, plus there's that inertia and agoraphobia, so people are self-medicating big time with alcohol and other substances, legal and illegal. Big Man, who is in AA (sober since 1990, yay!), has been out on a number of AA-related intervention calls in the 6 months since we've been here, more than the 4 years we lived together in the Philadelphia area.

We don't like to talk about it, especially not in the media, since it just leads to copy-catting, but suicide is endemic here. Almost every person in the city is connected, either directly or indirectly, to someone who has committed suicide. The jail is our biggest mental-health facility these days. In addition to agoraphobia and suicide, there's also recurrent nightmares, chronic, clinical and subclinical depression, anger issues galore, and weird traffic accidents. You wouldn't believe the number of light poles and traffic lights lying on the ground as a result of being hit by cars -- every day there's more. It's strains credulity to believe all these hits are random, folks have to be *aiming* at the poles, perhaps self-destructively, perhaps without realizing that the poles are designed to break off and away from the vehicle striking them. (It would be VERY difficult to kill yourself hitting a light pole or traffic light pole, but maybe folks don't know that.)

Plus there's the general paranoia, which, after all, is based on having people *really* out to get you and do you harm. The Army Corps of Engineers, the Levee Boards, FEMA, your homeowner's or renter's insurance company, your car insurance company, the SBA, the Road Home, the ITC, the New Orleans Recovery Association, HUD -- who's to say they're NOT trying to hurt us? Isn't it at least a little bit sensible to walk around suspicious?

Then, there's the relationships crashing. In a congregation officially less than 90 adults, I know of 3 divorces/split ups; there may even be more than I'm not yet aware of. One couple in my church, long-time members, are planning to live at least 6 months away from the city, having purchased a house out of state. The wife is traumatized and can't take it here any more; she doesn't feel safe. A New Orleans attorney, friend of mine for close to 30 years, says that right after Katrina it was the men who went crazy while the women held things together; 2 years later, the men are doing OK and the women are dropping like flies. My friend says that periodically his wife brings up leaving the city -- and they go round and round for a while, talking about where they might live, and in the end, they come to the conclusion, Where would we go? How could we live anywhere else?

How could we? How could we live anywhere else? Living someplace else would mean having to explain yourself all the time, why you are the way you are, translating the weird things you say into English, trying to fit in a world less wonderful than the one you left. I happen to know all this is true, having lived away from the city for close to 15 years, I can testify that New Orleanians do NOT easily fit in elsewhere. We have likes and dislikes and preferences and expectations that do not fit in a "normal" place.

My attorney friend and I agreed tearfully that living with everything we have to deal with in a broken and wounded New Orleans was better than living somewhere else clean and efficient and safe, where we could not be ourselves.

There is some help out there, but you have to be able to reach for it. As I constantly stress to my poor hard-working, dedicated parishioners, I have access to some therapists and counselors, and I can help fill out the Red Cross forms for anyone affected by Katrina to get money for counseling. My church has started an every Monday Buddhist meditation group, free and open to anyone. A neighborhood group approached me today about starting something in the church for people who just want to talk about how the Storm and the aftermath are affecting them; kind of a self-run help group, like Katrina-Anonymous.

So this too, is what it's like here. We're all a little crazy, including me. We WANT to live here, and we love this place, but we must deal, somehow, with all that is going wrong, all that hasn't been fixed, all the crazy plans the Powers That Be have to make us into something we're not, all the fears, anxieties, and nightmares that we're not safe, that IT could happen again. But, over and over, we come to the conclusion that the craziness here is better than sanity elsewhere.

Topsy-Turvy World

Since the storm, things are a little mixed-up in the Crescent City. (Not like things were "normal" before, but still...) In this newly topsy-turvy world, certain values and expectations are turned upside-down, sometimes in a good way, sometimes not.

One obvious example would be great big piles of debris and trash. Anywhere else in this country, or even here before Katrina, giant heaps of broken stuff on the curb would be cause for concern, a sign that something is wrong. Here, it is a signal of hope, a sign that work is finally being done on a house or a building. Instead of driving by and thinking, "How awful!", New Orleanians drive by and think, "Yes! They're back! Thank God!" We greet these former eyesores the way winter-weary Yankees welcome signs of Spring. (One enterprising local candy shop actually invented a new confection of pretzel sticks, coconut shreds, raisins, and nuts drizzled over with chocolate, called "trash piles.")

Pre-K (as we say here), the antics of incompetent and/or dishonest elected officials were the stuff of jokes, the cause for world-weary amusement. Show us another awful thing done by a governor or a mayor or a legislator, and we'd shrug and give a wry smile, or even top the story with another one. Nowadays, we've been through too much to find it funny. (As Paul Simon sings, "I don't find this stuff amusing any more.") Governor Blanco is not considered a sort of folk hero as Edwin Edwards once was (apparently still is, to some people, judging by the Letters to the Editor to let the "poor man" out of prison), and we're way past finding the inane (insane?) remarks of Mayor Nagin something to laugh about. And don't even get us started with District Attorney Jordan, who seems even more mortifyingly embarrassing than even Big Jim Garrison back in the day. Every day, you hear calls for some elected official or other (sadly, too many to list here) to resign and let us get someone/anyone better to serve in their place. You never used to hear that years ago.

On the other hand, one way New Orleanians cope with all they have to cope with is a savage irony married to a graceful gallantry. Example #1: Discovering that the mayor spent close to a half million dollars on "bomb-proof" tiny trashcans that were too small to be used and thus were going to be quietly (read: secretly) disposed of, the local satirical paper "The Levee" (motto: "We don't hold anything back") announced that the police department was going to be given the cans for use as bullet-proof vests. Example #2: The Bourbon St. band that Big Man plays with was named The Levee Board before the hurricane. After the storm, they discovered there was too much negative connotation to that name, so they changed their name. To Category 5 -- which I guess had a better impact on the public. Example #3: Hand-painted sign seen inside Crabby Jack's (arguably some of the absolute best po-boys in the area) -- "Save da Parish." Gee, before The Thing, who would've supported "saving" St. Bernard Parish, except for those who lived there, who probably wouldn't be eating in Crabby Jack's anyway? Example #4: Printed sign in a yard in formerly flooded Broadmoor -- "I'm not leaving, and they can't make me." Example #5 (really, and then I'll stop, since there are too many): In any poster or T-shirt shop in the city, you can find approximately 2-3 dozen (I'm not exaggerating, for once) different Katrina-related designs of varying levels of artistry and black humor.

The fleur de lis has been on the flag of the City of New Orleans for a long time, and has been the symbol of the Saints NFL football team for several decades. Before the storm, that was about it. We never thought much about it. Now, the fleur de lis is ubiquitous, and is an unspoken and unofficial symbol of love for and commitment to New Orleans. One bumper sticker even says, "I )I( NEW ORLEANS" with a fleur de lis where in other places a heart graphic would be. Fleur de lis float from banners and flags draped on St. Charles Avenue mansions and newly-gutted brick ranchers in Lakeview; one flag notably is a take-off of the stars and stripes, with fleur de lis as stars on a field of purple, green and gold (of course). They appear on T-shirts and backpacks and are woven into silk jacquard for neckties. There's even a polo-style shirt with an embroidered fleur de lis where the polo pony used to be. Candidates for office put fleur de lis on their campaign material. Fleur de lis as decorative hooks for installing in your home and as ornaments to be hung from windows and on walls fly off the retail shelves. Giant fleur de lis painted and decorated by local artists are installed around town in public places -- my favorite is the fleur de lis which has been transformed into a portrait of Chief of Chiefs Tootie Montana. It wouldn't surprise me at all to see folks dressed as fleur de lis at Carnival -- it's become the emblem of the grit and spirit of New Orleanians, and our love for this crazy-wonderful place.