The Geography of a Split Second

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It’s been a long time since I last wrote. This place is a maelstrom, and once it lifts you up, it can be quite a while before it lets you down again to pick up the scattered pieces of your previous plans and objectives. It can tie you up in knots, and you don’t even notice until you slow down enough to feel.

Three weeks ago I left for a men’s retreat in Oregon, I have been going every year for quite some time. I finally had time to catch up with myself. I awoke during my fist night not knowing where I was. This has never happened to me, and I lay in bed looking out the window of the little cabin at what I thought was another disaster zone, all broken cinder block and bent steel. It felt like the netherworld, and it wasn’t until I walked to the door and looked out on snow and trees that I remembered where I was. That night I got so nauseous that I was vomiting for about 12 hours, and took on a fever and a headache for the rest of the weekend… I figure it my body untying itself. Someone from the Health Clinic told me the other day that it is very typical for volunteers to have similar reactions when they return home — a kind of decompression.

Living down here is unlike anything I have ever done. The social fabric is torn apart and there is a sometimes subtle, sometimes in-your-face orchestra of human loss all around you. Life is raw, and I have seen so many people fall apart in the last two months, drifting into addiction, crime or the Orleans Parish Prison. Mostly they are residents of the neighborhood or volunteers who drift in for a place to stay. If you are around for long enough you begin to build a clearer picture of what really goes on In this area. You learn to look out for each other constantly, and have to be ready at any moment to deal with any kind of situation. And there is always between 20 and 200 college students running around who will never be here long enough to soak it in like you have. The fact remains that post-Katrina New Orleans is like a small town with all the problems of a large city. So you have to try to explain to them why the friendliest neighborhood in the world is not the same at night — or tell somebody during their late night security shift that the addict who is shouting in their face, threatening homicide, is really just playing, so get him a bowl spaghetti and it’ll be alright. How do you reclaim a stolen object without getting in a fight? If it’s a child just shake him upside down who knows what will fall out of his pockets. How do you stop a fight, or interrupt an argument before it gets that far… Don’t look police in the eye, but wave to the national guard. The best lesson I have learned is show respect to EVERYONE in everything you do, recognize their humanity, and they will show at the very least an oz. of respect for you. This has been my M.O. and my greatest armor.

A few days after I returned from Oregon the weather turned warmer, and with the chill wind gone, my outlook certainly improved. Riding to the media center to work on this website, I turned the corner and came through the gate into the backyard, just as automatic weapon-fire went off in front of an adjacent house. There was an air compressor running, and it almost sounded like nail-guns, so I stood there for a moment perplexed by the noise and looking at a couple from Germany who stood looking back at me the same way. A woman behind me sprinted up the walkway and dove to the ground as a bullet came through the fence and missed the german couple by a yard, cutting in and out of the tent they were standing next to.

This is where I digress, because tracing the path of a single stray bullet is a unique study. A line only a quarter inch wide cuts through your world in a slit second. At that moment there is no time, just space and this arbitrary border drawn by some mysterious architect. Then its over and you go on, thinking that maybe driving on the freeway or riding your bicycle here was more risky anyway. But it just shakes you up, because you can’t help but trace that line – and map out the geography of that split second.

I still do not know how many were hit, but I watched them bring one of the wounded on stretcher from the corner store where he had fled. The police put little cones on all the bullets they found, mapping lines in their own way, as residents left their homes and came to stand in front of the police tape, watching and talking. It seemed as if the whole neighborhood showed up, as if it were a common ritual in this area. I watched, thinking about the geography that separated me from them in that split second, realizing that it was more than a second, but a lifetime long. For the residents of this area bullet lines trace themselves in and out of lives like some strange friend who knows everyone. He comes to dinner, or hangs around the bar, rolls with the police. When children play outside he stands in the distance, he is a regular part of their lives, a feature of the geography.

In August I remember with a kid from south chicago. on his last day he wouldn’t leave the house we were gutting until he was wheezing so hard with asthma that he could barely breath. “leave me here, fuck ‘cago! he yelled as we poured cold water over his head in the 95 degree heat. At 25 he never had the chance to leave home, until he found the youth group that brought him here. Of course he didn’t want to go back to drugs, gangs, incarceration and violence. We went back into the house and he had swept the place clean, all the last remnants of plaster in neat little piles. Later Dave, my crew leader remarked over breakfast “show me a road map for Dante! Where is his american dream?”

One day after the shooting, I had been out for a friends birthday, and returning from the bar, we found ourselves finishing off an impromptu crab boil in the kitchen. Louisiana crab boils are an amazing experience. There is always lots of laughing and joking as you stand around a table breaking shells and sucking down the meat while the spicy sauce dribbles down your chin burning everything it touches. Oblivious in our giddy state, we looked up as the security coordinator came running into the kitchen. He was shouting at us. “EVERYONE IN THE BUILDING…NOW!” We scrambled out of the kitchen toward the back door of the school, still dripping crab broth, in time to see one of the houses next door literally erupt in flames. Glen had heard what sounded like automatic weapon fire and came to warn us before any of us saw the flame. What followed was the hottest structure fire I have ever seen. Two houses literally burnt to the ground within an hour, before the fire department could stop it. No news crews showed up this time, but we all stood and watched the inferno, wondering what might have started it, and what it had to do with us. I can’t go into all the details here, but there had been trouble with a particular local, and beef between him and the man who was squatting one of the houses because of our support for him. It took me a long while to find my ground after that week. A few days ago I watched the boy some of us suspected of the arson get arrested by the NOPD with a large amount of crack cocaine on his person. He was probably no older than 18, and I suppose he will be locked up a long time.

Regardless of all the drugs and violence in the area, we stay relatively safe. Most of this stuff doesn’t involve us, so we try not to let it slow us down. But to be in the middle of it for just two and a half months certainly does broaden your perspective. I am just beginning to scrape the iceberg; to comprehend how difficult it must be to grow up in this environment, and the way that race and class compound. The floodwaters of Katrina merely further eroded the already deep valleys of inequality, as if oppression like toxic floodwater follows some kind of gravitational law. For those of us here as volunteers, we seem to age faster, grow closer together, and find great joy in our camaraderie, even when things get frustrating or scary. There is something beautiful and fulfilling about co-operation, and the way it brings out the best in us. I know this blog entry took a dark turn there for a minute, but I think it needed to happen, these things block up my writing. But the truth is there is plenty of wonderful things going on, and you can expect more on that coming. Nick and I are moving forward in all the ways that we had hoped, learning about ourselves and the world a mile-a-minute, developing our own leadership, and gaining strength from adversity.

We have also been taking time to see more local culture. I got a chance to see Angela Davis speak on her first visit to New Orleans after the storm. We have seen brass bands and ’second lines’, and stuffed ourselves on spicy greasy Cajun cuisine.

As for our involvement here at Common Ground, we continue to do the work that we find most valuable. Nick has taken over the tech team, and is doing amazing things, even without a budget. Yesterday we installed another on-demand water heater that we ordered online, providing two more hot showers for the lines of volunteers that wait every evening after gutting. I also worked with another volunteer to create a fund raising workshop so that outgoing student groups can begin to raise funds that go directly into an account for St. Mary’s. Hopefully we will not have to ration toilet paper anymore, or cook without oil. We have already trained a few large groups, and will continue the workshop throughout the holiday season.

We still do a lot of odd jobs around the place, keeping things functional. I have just begun to prioritize this website, so that we can get more content up and turn it into something really interesting and sustaining. We would like to branch out to a larger audience and turn it into a more self sustaining project…embedded journalism from the grassroots. If you have any good ideas please let us know. We are also looking for a new name, something that is wider than Vashon Island or New Orleans and speaks to what we are doing as a voice from the front lines. I have a feeling that this is the beginning of many adventures.

As for you dear reader: Thanks for all the support, and care packages, and good comments and emails! We love hearing from home; It feels like we have been here for at least a year already. Keep in touch!

– Logan