He has risen
Rode my bike this Easter morning to West End – I haven’t been able to get through there since the storm but it’s an area that I have had an affinity for through the years. As you come around the corner of West End Park boats sit on top of boats and restaurants have evaporated into the water. Brunings, Fitzgerald’s, Maggie’s, all gone not necessarily because of Katrina – first it was because of the city trying to get money from the West End visitors and now it’s because a storm took the half dilapidated buildings and the few restaurants that were hanging on and wiped them off the face of the earth. The park has boats in it. Each boathouse is so devastated – one after another – it sends a chill when you think that coming back from California – I had a dream to purchase a boat house as our home, and there was another fantasy with P to reopen Maggies and serve boiled crabs and seafood on the picnic tables outside. Now it is frightening to follow the boathouses out to the point – each one looks like someone threw a bomb inside and the explosion just happened moments ago.
There is a point in your life when you have to say yes to the possibilities and focus your mind on forward movement. So the entire way back along the lakefront I rode with hands outstretched and balanced my bike while listening to “She’s a good hearted woman, in love with a good timing man.”
Then Arlene and I drove to Ponchatoula to the Armenian Easter feast at the camp. We took a boat ride on the Tangipahoa, which the Snake says has been designated a scenic waterway – and that translates to home owners along the water way not being able to remove fallen limbs. We passed the rope swing, which is now crowded by gnarly limbs that have floated and congregated underneath the tree. We cruised towards dead lake, when I caught a flash out of the corner of my eye and we all turned to see Renny running down the banks and swimming towards us – he had followed us all the way from the camp. So Renny came with us to see the alligator, turtles and snakes. He looked like Lassie or something, desperate to catch up to us.
Back at the camp, we drank sangria and ate roasted lamb, tabbouleh, pilaf, asparagus, and home baked bread – everything cooked to perfection. C&K sat next to me – they have not figured out if they are going to raze their house or sell it as is, W&B are trying to buy a house but prices where houses haven’t flooded are up, A&K aren’t buying at all, and R is just back from Amsterdam where she was away on a fellowship and she and M don’t seem to be talking house. I found a little porcelain Jesus for the Snake to wear in his goatee and he had his black dome cap and guayabera on which made his own personal Jesus a fitting accessory. More sangria and some twist later, everyone laid back and enjoyed the bon homme.
Nagin was on tonight talking about decisions he made leading up to the storm and the mandatory evacuation. I was lying on the couch watching him talk and I felt like it was some absurdist play whereby someone was reeling off a moment in my personal life where decisions were made that in hindsight make no sense but yet there did not seem to be any options – the train had already left the station and it wasn’t like you could whistle and call it back in. At that point there was sheer force that kept things spinning out of control. And the spin didn’t stop when the storm did, it’s like I remained in the eye for months afterwards in Texas, and still the long way back to New Orleans, and the gale force was spinning out of control until it culminated in Charleston (a city we might be modelled after if enough people don’t come back) and yet when the spin stopped, the after effects of the storm – the denouement – went on and on and on ad absurdim – I was thinking how funny as I watched Nagin talk about the storm how all my friends and family thought I was out of my mind even in December – because we came back from Charleston and N made his decision that night, that very night somewhere around 2 in the morning, but I kept waiting for him to tell me what that decision was. They say the heart lets go long before the ego. Maybe that was what was holding on beyond its time, I simply don’t know anymore, but no wonder my people almost staged an intervention.
Today I brought N a hostess gift – a large leopard print frame I got half price at Something Different the other day. I replaced the toothy smiling person the manufacturer had put in it with a photo of N and I under a red umbrella, smiling, at Jazz Fest last year. She couldn’t stop laughing. Said she couldn’t wait to burn it.