DauphineDreams: Writings About the Travels of Life

In 2005, I created this blog as a real time journal of my post-Katrina experience and have continued it to this day. The mini-essays, observations and little bits of "flash nonfiction" published here now span several continents and almost a decade of my life. I hope you enjoy them! Note: The entries are copyrighted and cannot be republished either in print or electronically without the written permission of the author.

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Location: Taos, New Mexico, United States

Thursday, September 29, 2005

THE MAN FROM LAKEVIEW

September 4, 2005 Shreveport, LA

Inside the Shreveport State of Louisiana Building, sitting on round chairs in a non-
descript room waiting for the EBT Card, so we can buy some food at the grocery store. A man to my left- he says he came to Shreveport with his wife. They are from Lakeview. Their house was completely destroyed. They sent their children out of the city two days before the storm hit, but they stayed, as faithful and stubborn service-industry workers will do (especially when they are under orders to do so as “essential personnel”). They camped out at their respective hotels of employment, the Hilton and the Holiday Inn, and tried to wait out the storm. The man described the smell of dog and cat shit in the lobby of the hotel.

“Its amazing how fast the whole thing can break down you know? People began coming in from the street. A lot of them had pets. There wasn’t any other place for them to go, so they just let them do it right in the lobby. No bother about cleaning it up. After about a day and a half, boy did it start to stink.”

He described their get-away on day two after the storm. He had to wade through waist-deep sewage water for two blocks to get to his wife’s car, which was parked at the Holiday Inn. The man tells the story like it happened to someone else- flippant, nonchalant- but if you look real close you can tell that it happened to him. A small bead of sweat had begun to form on his upper lip, despite the cool air of the buildings A/C unit swirling around us. An extra set of wrinkles encircled his eyes. Most of the time, he looked right at you. But when he began to talk about his kids and how much he missed them during that time, he looked at the floor.

VIVA NEW ORLEANS

September 27, 2005

Sick in bed today, I am pigging out on CNN. I know I should turn it off, but I don’t seem to be able to. It has been a day of information for me. I haven’t been able to do much else but lay in bed, check my email, type on the computer. It has also been a day of frustration and hope. Today I got an email from a friend who is back in the Quarter- and full of spitfire about rebuilding the city the way it needs to be rebuilt. He says that he has toured the neighborhood and believes, despite what they are saying on TV, that many of the houses can still be salvaged- if the repairs are done fast before too much mold sets in. This friend has been a mover and a shaker in other arenas in the past, so I believe he will become a major player in getting the wheels turning with this as well. Yet he is working against time, and he knows it. Not just because of the mold, but also because of public policy. The government seems damned determined to bulldoze almost the entire city. And put up what? More Wal-Marts? Trailer parks? Track homes? I understand why my friend is in such a frenzy to save these homes in places such as in mid-city, the Treme’, the Ninth Ward. These are neighborhoods within which has grown the seeds of a culture and a history I am just beginning to understand. Music and art builds community in New Orleans, not stores and housing tracks. That’s what makes it unique, so different from so many other places, where suburbia has already strangled the vital energy of the place In New Orleans, streets are famous for bars whose walls shake and shimmy themselves with the music that is played within them. Artists paint the day to day pain of their own existence in bright oranges, royal blues, majestic greens-then dance in the second-line, celebrating a life just past or a new one just beginning.

The government, the negative collective unconsiousness, the powers that be- they all have the agenda of wiping the uniqueness from the face of New Orleans after the hurricane. Could that have been the plan all along? Were the the levees intentionally jeopardized? Mr. R comes to mind, the eighty-five year old retired mechanic and engineer with the thick Cajun accent who almost rented Jeremy and I a house in Youngsville. He was a levee worker in New Orleans during the time of Betsy.

“Can I tell ya what I know?” he asked. We nodded while our ears strained to understand his Cajun-French accent. “Listen here, I don’t think it is much of a coincidence that the levees broke in the same exact spot during Betsy. And it is a might unusual for them to break at that point at any rate. Its not the weakest point, ya know? I suppose ya all can make up yer own minds as to what a I’m talking about?”

A planned flooding of the East side of New Orleans, St Bernard Parish, the lower ninth ward. Why? St. Bernard has always been the sacrificial lamb, this is common knowledge to long-time residents there. The Ninth Ward- too much culture, too much black independence, too much music, too much dancing, too much restless beauty and venomous art steaming from the double shot-guns and run-down two-story houses. On the East side, perhaps just too much of everything. Too much of race, too much poverty, too much that the powers-that-be says it has to go.

Yet everyone who knows anything about New Orleans knows that there is absolutely nothing that can detroy her spirit completely. It runs just too far deep into the loomy soil, into the very water itself. Its in the land, its in the swamps, its in the river most of all, the arterial vein that runs right through the city. What makes my blood boil though is the pattern of human suffering she seems to wear as a permanent cloak around her shoulders. Its like a role she and her people play here in America- over and over again, taking the fall, spilling the blood, feeling the weight of compound years of oppression. When will it end?

Now it appears as if the next phase to this newest chapter is upon us. The denials, the disclaimers, the masking of the concrete events of history. In effect, the brain-washing of the people. 1984 is really not that far off, it would seem. Now there is talk of what happened in the Convention Center, the Super Dome. Fox news (owned by the Bushes in part) is running stories claiming that nothing really happened there at all. It was all just a made up story, people exaggerating the truth (you know, those folks in New Orleans, they like to tell stories). Sure, there were a few rapes, but no murders, no craziness, none of that despite the lack of authorities, three days without water, the blistering heat. So the erasing of history has begun. Like other genocides of the past- like the atrocities of slavery, like the genocide of the American Indians. Our mainstream media and our government is so very skilled in the art of sweeping things under the rug when it is convenient to do so- and the American people are so skilled at letting the rug go unshaken. Yet tell me, why would the woman I met at the Shreveport Social Security office lie to me? What did she have to gain by telling me and the others waiting to get food stamps the story of her friend, who at that very moment was sitting at her house, scared to death, replaying images over and over in her mind. The images were of two teenage girls sitting outside the Convention Center doors. A man came up to them and slashed their throats, then left them for dead as the woman stood there helpless, looking on in horror. “I don’t think she is ever going to be the same,” her friend says. Why would this woman lie?

One story among thousands. There are so many others. I have heard them, many others have too. And I say that these stories must be told. They must live on so that people can know and remember the truth of what went down at these two spots in the very center of New Orleans. Two dents have been made in the wheel of history, two grey smudges, two warbles in the record. And who-knows-how many souls who will search and search for redemption, explanation, a way home. A hundred more ghosts that will haunt the city, creaking doors and brushing through magnolia trees in the dead of night.

There must be a way to beat this case of collective short term and long term memory loss that America suffers. There must be a way to preserve the lessons of history, even recent history, so that the pattern of oppression and suffering can be broken. For New Orleans. Indeed, for the country as a whole.

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

AFTER RITA

Youngsville, LA

Rita has passed through the area for the most part, yet the winds and rains still linger as she spins to the northwest. At nine this morning, P. woke us up by knocking once and then sticking her head in the door to the bedroom where we were staying.

“We’re fixin’ to head back to Kaplan. W. (aka Bozo') is anxious to get home and see about the house. You comin’?”

We decided to stay just a few more hours at F. and E.'s, a family of four who are the our host family's friends from Columbia. It had been a pleasant stay, albeit amongst stressful circumstances, and we did not want to rush the departure. All yesterday, as images of the storm loomed on the TV and the ticker-tape announced shelters opening, area curfews and school closings, Jeremy and I had romped and played with the three boys. Their thirteen year old daughter and I had bonded through jewelry-making and spent the afternoon comparing beading materials and making necklaces. Jeremy took one of the boys (who must to be called John) under his musical wing and began to teach him chords on the guitar. Yesterday was a day where we were able to enjoy the simplicity of children, good company , idle time and home-cooked Cajun gumbo (compliments of Bozo). We plunged right in, perhaps forgetting for a little while that this was not our family, this was not our town, these kids were not Dimitri and Chalaya (Jeremy’s niece and nephew who evacuated to Washington state with their mom) who were running around us in the living room, wrestling and calling each other childish names.
As I heard our family from Kaplan's eight-cylinder Chevy truck pull out of the driveway, I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach. It was a “here-we-go-again” kind of dread that lodged itself in my upper chest- a mild desperation, a slight panic. Jeremy, we had fallen asleep again, opened his eyes at the sound of the truck’s departure.

“There they go,” he stated simply and looked at me through the fog of just-waking-up. Then his gaze shifted towards the window. Outside, trees swayed back and forth like sea grass and leaves blew down the street in every direction. As partners often do, we were both thinking the same thing. What the hell would we do next?

P.'s cousin, her husband and small daughter, who live near Forked Island in Vermillion parish, were left homeless by the storm the night before and were already on their way to P. and W.'s house in Kaplan. Their daughter’s house had part of it’s roof blow off. Their own home would probably have mild storm damage that needed to be tended to as well. Ironically, with Rita, the family who had opened their home to evacuees had become evacuees as well, at least for a day. And now they had their own crises to attend to.

There have been times in my life when I have chosen homelessness and the vagabond ways of the traveler. Yet, as I hitch-hiked with other ragamuffin twenty-somethings out for adventure, I always knew that I did so by choice. I could go back to the “straight” life (job, school, apartment) at any time. The difference with this is that this was no one’s choice. Not those in shelters, not those staying with families, not those who fled or were transported to the other side of the country- not Jeremy and I. I hold the fact that Jeremy and I are among the fortunate ones high in my consciousness these days. We have a vehicle, jobs and each other. Yet the fear and anxiety for the future remains. We are still looking for housing in a market that is saturated with 40,000+ evacuees. There are simply not enough rentals and even houses for sale for the demand. Meanwhile, rumors of FEMA trailers being brought in, of more checks to pay for rent swirl epherially around the evacuee community. My question – where are they? When will one see those trailers, that rental help to arrive in the state that needs it the most (LA)? All we see instead most of the time is a sea of busy signals and red tape.

Then there are the big questions in our little lives to consider, those that we avoid until they bubble over in us like sores that have turned blue. Are we staying nearby in vein, waiting for the city to reopen and our lives that we were just beginning to lead to resume? With the waters and winds of Rita, the fragile infrastructure of New Orleans is beginning to crumble again. Most of the levees have over-topped or are leaking. There is five foot of floodwater in the 9th Ward. Every time we hear news like this, our hearts break a little more. What I wouldn’t give to take just one step again into the French Quarter- that microcosm of humanity, history and mystism. To walk down Dauphine Street on a sweaty summer night. To watch for ghosts along Gov. Nichols. To curse the tourists who call for directions when I am on my bike and in a hurry. To hear the chimes of St. Louis Cathedral or the “Woo, baby’s” of idle men cat-calling to big-bootied women (including me) on Rampart St. To be a witness to the world in one of the places in the world that has witnessed the most.

But when I really and truly think of New Orleans, I think about how much I can never really leave her. Of how much I want to hold her in my arms, stroke her sticky, sweaty hair, tell her I will never let her go. “Not this kid, sweet baby, “ I would say amongst the sewage-water and trash, the little kids on stolen bikes and the armed national guardsmen rushing me out of the way. I would stroke and pray, stroke and pray. And I would say: “I ain’t never gonna let you go.”

THOUGHTS ON NEW ORLEANS #1

September 1, 2005 Chatanooga, TN

The year the city went underwater. The year that I understood the poem that I wrote, the city as turtle. She dives with swampy, webbed feet under the soft waves- folds of water caressing her neck, her scaly shoulders. I have to believe that she had already gone underwater- I mean, the essence of her- long before her outer limbs reeked of gasoline fuel and all the stink of humanity.
I believe she had a plan and a back-up plan. You know, like mothers do. One for children that behave and one for those who don’t. WIth her reptilian nose, she blew out the last bubbles of oxygen thirty feet below the surface before she went even further down and out into the shimmering sea. Her turtle cap turned to fins and the tiny holes used for breathing turned to gills. Her webbed feet remained the same, however. Sturdy, able to carry the weight of water. The tears she shed were not hers alone and she shed them as giant droplets resembling golden sand. A new earth, like a million tiny seeds for her children’s children to find and plant again. It would be just like her to turn her own pain into a game of hide and seek. Sing a song while you search for the kernels to start a new life all over again.

Friday, September 23, 2005

KATRINA NOW RITA EVACUEES

There is no school in Lafayette today. We have fled Vermillion parish with our host family and are staying in Lafayette because of Hurricane Rita. We still have power, neighbors walking their dogs in the blustery wind and dry land. But the weather will deteriorate rapidly with almost certainty within the next 24 hours. Right now, Rita swirls in the middle of the soupy, bubbly waters of the Gulf, dancing her sufi dance towards Houston and the Louisiana border. Over here, we are to expect 60 mile an hour winds and possible power outages. But anyone who is from New Orleans knows that what we can expect these days is the unexpected.

The day the storm was announced I was numb, and a strange panic engulfed me, making it impossible for me to feel anything at all except a deep, forboding dread and a sense that I am drowning. Jeremy said I had a bad case of Destiny, that I have to be optomist. And I tried, I really did. Then the images began to come in on the TV- she was moving more towards Louisiana, she was in between the border and Houston. The sense of panic I felt two days earlier was merely a foreshadowing of the future which was yesterday- nothing more. The frantic hustle-bustle of the mass of a population as they too are faced with the unexpected, a wild-eyed Latina named Rita, whose flayling arms are the winds and her legs spin within the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Here is where she belongs, here is where she will land.

But why? I have to ask the impossible question. Why is this happening? I mean, not so much to me, or to us- my family and friends. I can accept being a ping-pong with the unexplainable rhythms of the universe. I am simply a single organism among trillions of others. My question is directed outwards, towards this year and this season and the whole of everything that has led up to these experiences. Ms. M, the slightly-hippy but highly Catholic school secretary at Lindon Elementary where I have worked as a K teacher for the last two weeks, shoved a folded piece of paper in my hand as Jeremy and I prepared to walk off campus and drive out to Kaplan to pack our things. She looked into my eyes in slight desperation. "When are people going to wake up? This is so much bigger than any of us. God bless. " In the truck, I opened the piece of paper and read the small parpagraph printed there:

Prayer to St. Rita
(patron of impossible causes)

Holy patroness of those in need, St. Rita, so humble, pure and patient, whose pleadings with the Divine Spouse are irresistible, obtain for us from your Crucified Jesus our request (mention it). Be gracious toward us for the greater glory of God and we promise to honor you and sing your praises forever.

Amen.

I am not Catholic, but at this point I think I am willing to make a prayer. Yet at the same time, I don’t see her humble and patient. Pure? That goes without saying. But a woman within which a wildness has let loose. Not a humble wife- perhaps an outraged one. A voodoo priestess, a dancer and caller of natural things, stomping the ground and making the mountains shake. An extension of the female earth, who shakes and shimmies and adjusts herself so that creation may continue. Still, I will pray to this Saint, because I know that there are many others who will do the same thing today and tomorrow and there is strength in the collective energy of the many. Plus I like Ms. M, she has a kind smile and she loves the kids who pass by her window every morning.

The beginnings of a thought about Katrina and New Orleans: and I ponder this admittedly amongst a sense of outrage. As Rita makes her way slowly towards land and FEMA makes hourly updates, the Coast Guard plots strategies on a white board for all the nation to see, as trucks stand by with ice and supplies, as local and national officials get organized and people are evacuated long before there is any kind of emergency to attend to- I ask (and by now I am screaming inside), why not in New Orleans? And also- why again? This city that is a jewel, a red ruby in the rough. Why did she have to be the guinea pig? Why did the people living within her battered yet loving arms have to suffer, go insane, die? Why are her people never worthy of respect and forword thought? Not just right now, but throughout history. I think of the Superdome, the Convention Center. They now are symbols of oppression, death, genocide- they are added to other landmarks around town- the land underneath Maspero’s where Africans were herded like cattle before they were auctioned off as slaves. The Mississippi itself, where the earth at the bottom flows clockwise, counter-clockwise, up and down and forwards and backwards and mixes with the bodies and souls of so many deaths, murders, hangings. I think of these things and, in desperation, I cry out- this has to stop. It is a pattern in history, a record stuck on a groove- and it pisses me off. New Orleans, land of music and celebration, doesn’t have to be the martyr again and again. And I think- when will it end? When will it end?

Peace to all,

Nicole

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

HELLO AND FIRST ENTRY

Dear friends and visitors,

This is Nicole Pugh. I live on Dauphine Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Like manyothers, my fiance' and his family as well as myself evacuated from the city on August 28th, 2005. We packed three outfits, a couple of pairs of shoes, some books and a couple of picture albums and hit the road- thinking that we would be back by the end of the week. That was almost a month ago. And like so many others, now we watch the news like fanatics and practice our patience (sometimes we are better at it than others). We are learning not to plan too much for the long term and are grateful that for now, we are settled- albeit on opposite ends of the country. We have food, housing and those infamous FEMA checks in our wallets that will get us by for a little while. Lafayette has been kind to Jeremy and I. I am teaching Kindergarten in Youngsville. He will be starting a job in mental health next week. Although we still don't have permanent housing, we have a place where we can stay for a little while, a tiny room with a family in Kaplan where we can close the door and retreat from the world rushing around us at the end of the night, and hold each other safely in each other's arms.

Our realities are like a home that had been submersed in flood waters. The structure looks sound, the walls intact. Yet on the inside, it is an upside down world of broken boards, mud and indeciferable objects that could topple at any moment. In these weeks after the evacuation, we pick up the pieces of our lives and attempt to start over- kind of. That is, start over as best we can as unanswered questions swirl around us. When will we be able to return? Will it be safe healthwise when we do? Can the city rebuild? Will the government on all levels aid New Orleans in the recovery? And even closer to the immediate future- what will this weekend bring to New Orleans and the rest of the gulf, as Hurricane Rita churns herself into a Category 5 and heads in our general direction? In these uncertain times, one thing is constant for us. This is New Orleans herself- the marrow and raw energy of her, the rthyme, pain and celebration of her. Never have I lived in a city with such a pulse and a heartbeat, never have a lived in a city so alive, even as she oozes and bleeds, heaves and coughs. New Orleans remains in our dreams and in our hearts. Our little casita on Dauphine, which we have yet to revisit, whispers softly to us in those rare quiet times- in early mornings as we wake up and stumble around our host family's house like ghosts, not quite sure where we are. During our respective days of teaching and talking and driving- suddenly, we remember a smell or a taste- fried rice from the Frenchman Deli, the smell of manure on Royal, the pulse of manic music on Bourbon Street in the summertime. Things that we took for granted and sometimes cursed in the sweltering days before Katrina. These things bring tears and smiles- and a desire to return to her breast. For me, to go back will be to give back- to say thank you for all of the lessons she has offered and what I have learned from what she had to teach.

To sum up, this blog is being created in order to document one family's odyssey within the storm, to pose questions, tell stories and to communicate. I truly believe we are living in historic times and no one really knows where this road will lead. What I strive to achieve in the midst of it is to simply be present with it, and to be a witness in my own way, every step of the way.

With love and smiles,

Nicole :)