I saw Obama! I saw Obama!

That’s what we in the crowd were singing as the second-line brass band played. We stood together, on the corner and on the “neutral ground” on Claiborne Ave. in front of the Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School, the first educational institution (K-10th grade) to open in the Lower Ninth Ward since Katrina hit landfall.

The band played, and we danced, waiting behind the barricades for the President to emerge from his meeting with the kids, and I’m not too embarrassed to say I haven’t felt that much joy and anticipation and starstruck-ness in a crowd gathered just to see a person’s head go by in a car, like, EVER.

Obama may be more of a rock star than the Beatles ever were.

the school, where we waited for the motorcade. note the welcoming sign on the kiosk

New Orleans’ Finest were out in full force, proud and alert. (*creepy lecherous old-lady voice*) Many of them looked quite fetching in their uniforms.

copsicles numbering at least a hundred, no joke. what a roar

And then the excited screams of children and adults chanting his name. And then there he was, Mr. America:

squeeeeeEEEE!! Mr. President we loves you

The jumping, wiggling, squealing ladies standing beside us reminded me of my pre-teen self at a Bon Jovi concert:

except it means so, so much more. "Lord please keep him safe from harm," she said out loud, multiple times

And as he passed, the band played a second-line rendition of Louis Armstrong’s “What A Wonderful World.” I usually recoil at that song, but this time, I kind of cried from joy. A little… I’m still cool, right? Punk points!

sometimes it IS a wonderful world. (*I saw Obaaaaama, I saw Obaaaaama!*)

Ironically enough — naaa, SERENTYPICALLY enough — we walked back home via this intersection:

flood stop, levees fix, lower 9th rebuild. yoda talk in street signage

And then we passed this house. Expletive deleted; political sentiment remains.

(that's the squirrelly Louisiana governor who wants to be prez but won't say so)

Not that I want to sign off on a negative note. Because today, in the Lower Ninth Ward, in my new home, I feel anything but. I usually don’t talk about politics, and I know it’s all just showbiz, but I can’t deny what I feel today.

Obama comes to New Orleans today…

…hope he sees my Katrina memorial. I put it up for the 4-year anniversary of The Storm a few weeks back but it’s still there on the roof. A little melted, but there.

For the unawares, Brad Pitt has been doing for NOLA what his comely wife has been doing for Darfur: Bringing international attention to the crappiness of a situation and trying to make it better. He’s been making it right.

In the wasteland across St. Claude from me in the Lower Ninth Ward, where an entire neighborhood’s worth of houses were levelled in a tsunami, the “Brad Pitt Houses” have started to pop up like mushrooms and caused a sensation among New Orleans residents and international architectural buffs alike. Twenty-six houses have arisen, and another 200 or so are slated for construction this coming year.

Now, a mayoral campaign has started.

Soap. I sell soap...-colored art projects outlining how many houses got knocked over by the Katrina tsunami and consequently ignored by America's govt. Then I raise money for new sustainable housing and make sure it gets built, so low-income families can move back to the neighborhood they call home, except in architectural-wonder-type eco-structures. No big deal

After all, the swaggering, punched-up, sleepless, inextinguishable leader of Fight Club certainly would win a City Hall fistfight with our notoriously greasy-palmed Ray Nagin.

The view from the roof:

Close-up of friend Laura Konarczak’s “Such and Such” bag lady:

Now I’ma go see if I can get a look at our handsome president’s car! Woot.

(p.s. Brad, I’m serious)

Chicken Little in the Big Easy

New Orleans knows humanity is hanging on by a thread. Waiting for The Last Wave. Nobody’s interested in obliterating natural landscapes to make way for ugly box stores full of useless things here — not when the city is already lousy with ugly empty box stores which used to be full of useless things. All over town, dilapidated but gorgeous ancient buildings sit and stew in the heat, overtaken by vines like scruffy beards waiting for a hot towel and a razor.

take that, pole! have some beauty, assface!

Like the Situationists said: In order to create, one must destroy. In this case, nature took care of the first part and she probably will do so again. At the end of the earth, you look futility in the face and call it awesome. You don’t nuke and pave over it and pretend it doesn’t exist. You let it grow like a beard. You are ready for it.

well, there is a fair amount of RE-paving

You can be a human animal in a place that’s falling down and sinking. You don’t belong to the modern world anymore. You listen to old jazz, and old-world gypsy type recordings, and anything else from when instruments were made of wood and not computers. You brush your hair sometimes. You smell like a cave-person and sweat and slap bugs and occupy yourself with reintroduction to things that matter — and not things. You realize you are made of meat.

and the sky is made of water

At the end of the earth, roads go to shit, plants bust through the sidewalks, living things overtake factories and graves burp up from the ground. Nature bats last, and there’s no point in denying it. Unlike the manicured, tamed, asphalted and strip-malled suburbs to which I was exiled in the winter months, in New Orleans — in the vacant lots where houses used to be, in the marsh, and in the mighty River — Nature is right there to provide when the power goes out. Can’t fish on a golf course; can’t garden in a parking lot.

BIENVENUE EN LOUISIANE … WELCOME CENTER CLOSED FOR RECONSTRUCTION.

.

Well Hello, NOLA

So I recently moved to New Orleans. Bought a gutted house in the Lower 9th Ward. Not sure what I’m doing here … but at least it’s something different.

An hour outside Moblie, on the way down the I-65 from the East Coast, the land gets a lot flatter really quickly. Swaths of stumpy ex-forests line the highway, clear-cut by hurricanes Katrina and Gustav. The trees have grown back some, maybe all for naught — maybe just to get swiped clean again.

Then, on the I-10 right before the big scary Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, the roads rise above the terrain, a sure sign we’re coming to the end of the earth. “Marssshhh” is the sound of land hitting water.

Why the F am I moving here? Will any one of the rainbows I chased end in a pot of something, anything, or will I drown first? … More practically, is it wise or folly to ride out a recession in the most recessed place there is?

perhaps something to do with this being the view a few steps from my back yard

There is no desire or strong grasping. Ideally, anyway. There is only the hope of survival in the now-here. Safety in the eye of the storm. Farewell to the family who still do amazing stuff way far away. I’m setting up a satellite camp. The well ran dry, but the river never will.

Whether I rise to the top and float is another matter entirely.

Lovely, lovely filth. Chaos provides.

The Ladies’ Guide to the Apocalypse

coming soon….