New Orleans reminds you that it's important to slow down and absorb life, rather than let it run through you, or over you, however you want to look at it. The colors, sights and sounds belong in our skin, seeping through our pores and filling our veins with inspiration. No one can create without looking outside of one's self. This must be why this city is saturated with so much pulsing creativity, there's an ingrained understand that we are a part of this hungry place, in the dirtiest, visceral, vivid way possible. It inseminates us with ideas and guttural vibrations.
As I was rushing down St. Claude on my bicycle, I heard the train howl in the distance. In order to get into the lower 9th ward, one must cross the traintracks, the physical and symbolic gateway into a post apocalyptic zone. Boarded up, dilapidated homes slump in dismay, in loneliness, in abandonment, with prison tatts and battle scars that remind us of the day hell escaped from the gulf. Shops push poison, people push poison, people carry their poison behind them, shoulders heavy and sore. My new friend told me that this is a city full of ghosts, both living and dead. As the dead weave in and out of the rickety rafters, the living weave in an out of the cracks of life. The vacant stares, the hollow hearts, we all have the potential to become broken, to become the creaking branches hovering over rotten rooftops.
However, I refuse to believe anyone here went down without a fight. I have never seen a more tenacious people. Roots somehow manage to cling to slippery swamp here, and the winds that once blew all the trees away are pulling them back. The dead can't even bring themselves to move on.
I rapidly approached the tracks as the train came into view. It trudged along under the cotton candy clouds, amplifying the brilliance of the earth and sky with its mundane, flat cars. Toxic waste and explosive fuel sloshed inside giant vessels rumbling under rusty wheels. It creaks and trudges slower than my stride. I could beat it to its destination with a leisurely stroll. It was hard to understand how such an industrial eyesore could fill me with such intoxication. I was hypnotized by the rhythm of the wheels and the whistle sexed my ear drums. There was no way I could be angry. I would be 45 minutes late because of this, but it's a moment in time. What right does my schedule, my clock, have to rob me of the bridge sprawling across the expanse? or the gnarled branches wafting with the breath of the freight train? These are the tiny moments that never leave us. These are the reasons the dead never leave.
After 20 minutes, I decide to sit on the median shoulder with an older man. The line of cars has grown about 5 blocks, and everyone is just waiting, accepting their fate, taking it for what it's worth: a moment in time. The man's eyes carried about 65 years of sorrow, and about a thousand years of joy. He couldn't have been more joyful that I decided to sit next to him. I asked him where he's from and he said the lower 9th. I asked him if he was there during Katrina and he said yes, and so was his Mama . She was also there for Betsy. He had to carry her away from her house kicking and screaming during Katrina, she didn't want to leave. She was hollering "I made it through Betsy, I can make it through this!! Leave me here!!!"
"But Mama, you can't swim!"
Many people weren't as lucky as Mama. They didn't have a son to carry them away.
Can you imagine swimming out of your home as you watch it submerge under apocalyptic flood waters? Sinking beneath waves 30 feet above your driveway? This is beyond my realm of understanding.
The man told me God blessed this city with my presence. He thanked me for my good work.
As the train ultimately passed, I biked at half speed towards the industrial canal, and hoped the bridge would be up. I wanted to watch a ship go by. I wanted more whistles, more steel, more patience, more fissures in time's hands.
The bridge was down, but rose on my way home. Each way in and out of the lower 9th, I was reminded to slow down and look around. When waiting doesn't feel like waiting anymore, you know you're on to something.
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