Requiem for the City I Never Met: New Orleans

I have many life-long obssessions with places, people, things that I cannot explain: Ancient Egypt, Santorini (Greece), Malta, pirates, all-black towns where white people never entered the picture, the song Amazing Grace, cemeteries, Marie LaVeau (the VooDoo Queen), and New Orleans. There are more, but New Orleans has always held a prominent place on the list. I am an easy mark for any book set in New Orleans. Anne Rice fed that fire, stories of Marie LaVeau fed that fire, and photos of the old cemeteries and houses fed that fire. I have been in love with the town for as long as I can remember, have dreamed of that place, have seen myself there. Two days before the hurricane I was thinking that it would be an ideal place to meet a friend who lives far away; to meet in the middle, and to finally, oh finally see this city of my heart that I had never met. I wasted so much time. And now it is gone.

No matter what gets restored, the fact is that New Orleans has been disappeared by a monstrous storm with a perky little Yuppie name. Why couldn't it have been Hurricane Otto? Or Gertrude? Maybe Vlad. Something to imply a bit more force and destruction. Katrina sells you Girl Scout cookies that you don't really want. Vlad lays waste to your favorite city, scattering its beloved citizens to the four winds, not caring.

I realize now that I had this strange, foolish notion that New Orleans was protected by a divinity of its own making. New Orleans is where traveling saints and imported dieties of old came together to dance around the same fire. To embrace and support their fervent worshippers as they collapsed in a moment of spiritual ectasy, caught up in the heat, the night, the flames, and the power. The power of the Orishas who are so personal in nature that they will call your name in the quietest moments of your life and punish you just a little if you don't respond. The power of New Orleans also flowed from the potent, sad-faced Catholic Saints who wore two sets of robes at all times: the original cloaks of their native lands and the new garments draped over them by warm, brown-skinned people in need. People in need of safety who depended on melding the saintly names and faces to the fiery hearts and stories of their ancient gods and goddesses; tried and true spirit beings brought here on ships in the darkest hours of humankind. Also swimming in this thick soup were the people of vodoun, led by Damballah and people like Marie LaVeau, the VooDoo Queen of New Orleans. What is her spirit saying now, as she sees her children chased from their homes, sees her beloved town drowned?

And there is a delicate sweetness that was achieved in New Orleans: that greate Creole juju. While certainly not free of problems, there somehow came to be an intertwining of cultures, colors, and creeds. People stretched out their creative wings and some amazing art forms resulted. Perhaps it is naive, but I somehow always felt that the many shades of skin colors in New Orleans represented an ideal, a snapshot of what we could become if we were to more truly embrace and accept each other. I've always said that the world needs to do a lot more loving and get more brown, because if we can accomplish that, the easy dividing lines of black and white will not hold so much sway with the masses and the hate-mongers will have a much harder time convincing people of their inherent differentness. It will be harder to develop the notion of "Other" when there's just "Us."

A friend forwarded me the article that Anne Rice wrote about New Orleans for the New York Times. It is the best thing that I have read in the days since Katrina struck. She is a true daughter of New Orleans, for good or bad, and she exhibits the feisty, eccentric, sensual, loving nature that is common to so many people in that city. She moved out of New Orleans last year after her husband died, finding herself weighed down by his familiar presence in their huge house, and by the costs of maintaining the giant antebellum house that her fans so adore. But the fact remains that Anne Rice is responsible for waking up thousands of readers to the hidden, lovely face of the Big Easy, and that will never change, no matter what her zipcode is. For this I am grateful.

It wasn't till yesterday that I figured out that I am depressed by this whole thing. Depressed and thoroughly angry at the federal government for their lack of, well, everything. I am heart-broken for the huge numbers of Americans that now have nothing, who experienced more than any person should have to see. I am desperately worried that once the media stops front-paging them, the rest of America will return to its usual apathetic state and begin the process of forgetting their continued plight. I am grieving for the city I will never meet.

All of this makes me feel selfish, self-centered. But perhaps acknowledging that will lessen it. I have researched the organizations helping survivors (both human and animal), and have made donations. I have cheered on my friend who loaded up his truck and a rented trailer with supplies for the victims. He is now in Texas, comforting people with the safety of big hugs given from his 6'6" frame. I do believe that people can make a difference with meditation, or prayer, or visualization - whatever you wanna call it. So I do a couple of those too. Reading the blogs of some of the folks displaced by the storm has made a difference.

And here I am, crying in my soup. Don't know whether to scratch my watch or wind my ass, as the old folks used to say.

*Photo above is by Michael Hibblen