Berceau du Jazz

communication, lost (not found)

2007-11-11T14:39:00.000-06:00

i lost my phone. and yes, there was copious amounts of booze involved. i have to go back and scour the bars of last night and see what happened. it's kind of a drag. no, it is a drag that i have become so attached to a stupid little expensive device (no land line) and now i am stuck in a deafening silence. which is actually fine. it's a cloudy lonely sunday. it is perfect, really. cinematic, poetic, moody. bob dylan's 'cocaine' just played on the radio and it took me to another place. i think i am still drunk. jackanddiet.

i got lost last night. totally lost. lost my bag, keys, wallet, phone, camera. thank god (or a permutation) that C. lives near by and saved me by not only letting me sleep on her extra bed, but helping to track down my bag and just be generally convivial and understanding about my insane level of intoxication at 5 AM. oh, this is starting to sound like a confession. the good part is, is that i retrieved most of what was lost, except the fucking phone.

what does it mean? do i need to reform? is it a sign? god, my neurosis is really getting the better of me. all will be solved on its own.

it's cool

2007-10-29T17:52:00.000-06:00

i checked the blog today for the first time in a long time. i had forgotten about it, isn't that weird? i had kind of forgot that i set up this little, quotidian system of yelling, complaining or reflecting into the void. i guess it is work. real work now, that made me forget.

the new work is very interesting because i know very little about it. the new work is hard because it requires a certain level of expertise of which i have very little. the work is boring sometimes because it requires a lot of waiting. but it is good and true for the moment. and i like that. i will continue and overcome my itch for something new (already) and try to master something that will serve me well. we will see. it's a crap-shoot with these things.

i have become less reflective, therefore, because i spend my energy thinking about how to make work more interesting and important and pertinent. i have strange dreams where i solve an unsolvable problem (usually through a missed detail or obvious, elegant loophole) and then i wake up and it all dissolves the second i do. i can't recall even the nature of the problem, let alone the solution. i feel like i had a glimpse into a magnificent secret, one that will set the world right and make everyone happy. but it eludes me every time. perhaps it is because it is a dream, that these things remain elusive, or i am too obtuse to grasp them.

in other news, i feel i have mastered the stick-shift. even V., who was terrified to get in the car with my after my fear-full accounts of stalling repeatedly and grinding and lurching to work while people honked at me and i broke into sweat, said that i did a good job. my father was less impressed when he came down to visit, and held on tight to the handle above the door, telling me that in his day, in nebraska, you were considered totally uncool if you made a blunder with the gears or revved the engine while shifting. then he promised me he would teach me how to shift without the clutch, which sounds both totally impossible and totally bad-ass.

the other thing that has been on my mind is missing new york. i keep asking myself why. i figured out that part of the reason is the lack of polish and professionalism (at least that is the way i see it) that i encounter down here. at work it is constant mistakes. small ones, like missed cc's on emails or simple spelling errors that set people back and look foolish. but it is everywhere. the strangest thing to me is a kind of professional cattiness... people are very very protective of their work, even relating to the recovery, about which there is an infinite amount to be done. i find this unproductive and painful in the context of new orleans, especially. i imagine this is true all over the place, i just have noticed it more here.

V. always told me "everyone only cares about themselves". i refused to believe that, because i was raised in a culture, tradition and religion that told me to think of others. however, i had to think long and hard about this. of course people do, and if you can use that approach, not to be angry and think that the world is a selfish place, but to understand each individual's motivation for self preservation, you can weave and negotiate through a lot of things. maybe that is just a good political tactic, i am not sure, and still kind of wary of the blanket statement approach, but there is something to it. it is not sophisticated, but there is something to be learned in the brutality of it all.

new york taught me, among other things, (how to get laid, hustle for a job, get free drinks, look for an apartment and survive on $5 a day) that there can be a high level of achievement and also a high level of personality at the same time. some of the people i met there had power and influence, style and class, money and fabulous apartments, and they were generous, open visionaries who believed in sharing all of that. they believed there was enough to go around, and you could feel it. i miss that, in this small suffering town sometimes. i believe in it, i want to go forward in this small new orleans, but i am amazed at the lack of collective vision, and the bizarre competition for ownership.

it is more like Accra than anywhere else i have been in the first world (if that makes sense). not necessarily in the sense that it looks like Accra (which it does with its banana trees, cottages and horrible roads) but that the scarcity of resources makes people crazy. and desperate and tired. and i think most want the same thing i do, but we can't have a vision and the magic that comes with that unless we actually believe that we aren't just in it for ourselves.

the deadly silence of preoccupation

2007-10-17T20:55:00.000-06:00

i know it has been awhile, but only two weeks. the new job and the fellowship have really been sucking the life out of me. i can't dare a creative thought or the evils of practicality will come swooping in and crush them. i have no time to write. strike that. i don't dare to write because of my preoccupations, my feelings of change and therefore hourly mood-swings. paranoia about inadequacies, yadda yadda. oh change, how can you be the same and so different each time? i know change when i see it, but then it smacks of newness. no it is supposed to be the same change all the time. right?

basically. i don;t know if i am on the right path. with my job, with my love, with my life. then again, the path is the goal, as the buddhists say. what is all of this, this changing and loving and aspiring and frustration?

i bought a new car, a stick-shift. i couldn't drive it when i bought it.... so i had the man who sold it to me park it in front of my house. K. spent two hours with me in city park lurching and stalling until i could actually drive it home. i still don;t feel comfortable, but i can get from a to b. i wish i never heard that driving a stick was hard. i wish no one ever told me that new orleans was scary and dangerous. i wish i never had to hear negative or prohibative messages about things that just have to be done. it takes a lot of energy to forget what the world tells you and to just get on with things.

that is all for now. more to come. ugh. somebody told me to be careful what you put online, since 'someone' can 'google' you and 'ruin' your 'reputation'. please tell me how to make heads or tails of that, gentle readers. but hence the paranoid and circuitousness. i am too shy and afraid to say what i want, sad that i can't be bold and bizarre and paranoid enough to be afraid. there.

herbert muschamp ( i miss artistry)

2007-10-04T22:09:00.000-06:00

Herbert Muschamp died today. Read the article in the NYT if you feel so inclined.

I had the opportunity to have dinner with him once. I wasn't alone, anyway he was gay and wouldn't have had interest in a one on one with me... it was a dinner meeting with the board of my organization and they invited him. he was fabulous. astute, cynical, articulate, sensual, interesting. knew good food, could make a joke. I loved it! I knew how lucky I was to meet him. he talked about the built environment in the way that I experienced it. it was personal and reminiscent. not clinical and power-driven. it was never about who had built what, but about who had to live in it.

After that dinner/board meeting Barbaralee Diamonstien-Speilvogel asked us to buy him a present. An out of print book about Palladio ( I think) from the Strand Bookstore in Manhattan. I called the general line and after dropping BLDS's name, I spoke directly with Fred Bass the owner of the Strand, and had the book put on hold for me to pick up and then messenger to BLDS's house so she could write a personal note and then on to HM. I took the subway across town, was ushered into the rare books section, and a huge tome, out of print, rare, in excellent condition was put in my hands. all i knew was that the book was worth a lot and that it was for a rather miraculous person who would not only appreciate the content, but the ephemeral nature of the object itself.

i am really sad that he was considered brilliant, emotional and abstract, and that that was the exception, rather than the rule. he was my kind of people: gentle, visionary, artistic and never wed to conventions or the pressures of capitalism, even though he worked within them. at least i aspired to that.

have a great re-birth, Mr. Herbert! Love you and miss you.

quippy alternative acronyms for YURP*

2007-09-22T15:40:00.000-06:00

BURP - Branded Urban Rebuilding Professional
MURP - Massively Underpaid Rebuilding Professional
SLURP - Single Literate Urban Rebuilding Professional
TWURP - Totally Wholesome Useless Rebuilding Professional
H-BOTS - Here Because of the Storm

*Young Urban Rebuilding Professional (TM).

Many thanks to BG, who suggested Branded, rather than Boring for the first one.

new

2007-09-06T11:55:00.000-06:00

changing jobs. more work. more cash. more rigor. less bullshit. more sleep. less drinking. no smoking. new car. clean clothes. more meetings. more learning. less wallowing. more bitching. less boredom. more responsibility. more tolerance. less worry. more worry.

i will be utterly perfect soon. as soon as i turn 30. right? what is adulthood?

as my mother refuses to let me forget, my first words were "my do it". i have kind of done it. but we will see if I can sustain. anyway. it is new, and there is something to be said for that.

i like to contemplate the sea, but waves make me uneasy

2007-09-06T11:00:00.000-06:00

when i was in college, i made a wood-block print of some waves. when you make a woodblock print, there is way to do it called a suicide print. the reason for this is that, for example, is that if you have 3 colors that you want to use, you have to carve out whatever you DON'T want to be dark blue. then after you do the first print of that, you take the wood block and carve out everything you WANT to say dark blue, because you will layer another color over it. if you fuck up, by carving out these small and intricate lines, the print is ruined. intense, great, direct and beautiful.

needless to say, I loved doing these prints. i loved carving out the wood, using small Japanese tools that I was very proud of. the waves print (hanging framed in my parent's house now) was really great. you can see the grain of the wood and the small carving mistakes. i printed it on some gorgeous rice paper.

i did the print after a month in a buddhist monastery in Nova Scotia, and named it after a famous song my Milarepa. the sea is the basic state of the mind, and the thoughts are the waves. the song is about meditation and relating to the basic nature of the mind and not getting caught up in the thought processes. they come and go. sometimes they are tumultuous, sometimes they are calm and soothing. they change all the time. but it still the sea, fundamentally.

i like to contemplate the sky, but clouds make me uneasy.

brad!

2007-08-21T14:17:00.000-06:00

so i went to the global green event in the lower 9th ward today and i saw brad pitt! here is the best picture i got. i know it is a little over-exposed, but i had to get my camera quick and didn't have time to change the settings. very cute and seemed extremely patient and nice.

atmosphere

2007-08-13T01:11:00.000-06:00

it's hot. really really hot. with pounding sun. my fragile skin can't take it much. i stay inside. my air conditioners are weak and tired. i draw the blinds. i stop smoking and stare into the void not much knowing what to do or where to go. i watch Chung King Express and feel and imagine their sultry southeast asian heat, and it is sexier and more natural than this is. this is just crippling. there is no small person selling noodles, there are no watch-hawkers, or gleaming hair and luscious, interesting fruits, sudden downpours, cheap, ugly gold, stray dogs, the lure of the ocean, the real ocean, fake perfume, sex, polyester clothes, seafood, taxi drivers from other hemispheres, beer, language as a currency. there is none of that in this exotic town. there is just silence in the heat.

everyone is inside in the air-conditioning like i am. solitary and commiserating. i was inside all day. peering through the blinds and sneezing. eating snacks. i took the garbage down late, about 10 pm. it was so hot, so humid, i couldn't believe it when i went out at night, thinking it would have cooled off. it was like walking into a wall, or maybe walking through a wall into an alternate space, it was so tangible, so tactile. i came back to my pod of air, ahh! cool air. but i wanted to go back into it, like entering back into a bad dream, or a dark love affair. it was so bizarre and alive! it was its own entity! the heat and and the atmosphere has a life of its own. a secret life late at night where it can come into full bloom, it felt like an emergence, and i wanted more of it.more of its secrets and depths. cockroaches scuttled along and the other vermin and other small lives also conducted their particular micro-ecologies with no self-consciousness.

the heat feels bigger than me. more profound and ancient. nothing wise about it. just more of what it has always been. god, i love it. that dark, weird, infected space in the night that makes the swamp real, and makes our tiny lives just that much more. it was here before us and it will gladly swallow us again and again.

...

2007-08-05T19:32:00.000-06:00

i am not going to post for awhile because i am sick of myself, my voice and screaming into the blog-a-void. i will get back into all of this shortly with penetrating, insightful and caustic things to say, don't worry. see ya soon. xoxo

let's play "where's nagin?"

2007-07-31T00:44:00.000-06:00

where is the mayor? where the fuck is he? where is he? blakely is getting more press than him. everyone talks about loss of leadership. but now I know what it means. certainly not the first one to play this game.

was at city hall this morning, which looks lie a bombed-out post-colonial cambodian functionarires' office. they can't get 150K to fix the goddamn sign? is this some kind of testimony to backwardness? what the fuck is this? a joke for the whole world to see? people, you do not inspire confidence when you behave this way. you do not inspire progress when the sign ON City Hall that SAYS CITY HALL is a broken down neon sign replete with cracked red plastic. sick of settling.

okay, I am swearing a lot now, but whatever. where is our mayor?

i will never win the speling bee, bu tmay be some thingelse

2007-07-26T19:57:00.000-06:00

god i am boring. did you all miss me? i know you did or didn't. i don't really care. what i do know is that you all have been wondering what i have been up to.

here is what i have been doing, breaking it down for you alpha-numericaly(huh?( for the ADD brains out there. and yes I am talking to you.

A. Arguing with V. (Zero dollars, free cell to cell minutes). We have terrible, revealing fights that are never boring and always kind of exhausting. Emotional cost: infinite.

B. Arguing with my bosses. (Negative 15, 000 dollars per year - since I am underpaid and have massive student loans.) Fight for what you want. I guess. Have you every argued with people stupider than you? It is so funny! in retrospect. like 30 years from now when i am dying.

C. Arguing/ranting/explaining to parents what I am doing and just. forcing someone who is related to me listen to me. Been doing it for years. (40 cents per minute if you call before 9pm, it can add up).

D. Talking to old friends and new friends about all if the above. Priceless! Not really. We live in the States. Don't you know that time is money? Why are you reading my blog? Let's go get drunk and capitalize on the disaster! Anna Vinokourova is marrying Robin Riddle!

E. ( just like the blankness). Let's take a break. Elephant! Eloquence! Egnorance!

F. Fuck off and get back to work and rebuild the city.

G. Gee I am still looking for my sense of humor.

bye bye benz

2007-07-19T19:53:00.000-06:00

my car is dead. anyone want to buy a barely running cute white benz with a new alternator and shocks with some problems but a lot of personality? wait, that sounds like me. no, it is my car. she has to go. price upon request. wahhhhh!!!

i just finished...

2007-07-16T19:14:00.000-06:00

hi people. i decided to do a new posting of books which i am reading or those that i have just finished.

I will call the posts: "I just finished ..."- or- "I am reading..." depending on the status.

I just finished Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone. It was okay. It was basically about a sexually traumatized fat girl who came to accept herself through a lot of effort, psychotherapy and self-acceptance. it was addictive because you kept expecting a train-wreck, and you got one (satisfying!). i would recommend it as fair to middlin. read better, but good if you are feeling unattractive or your life is too easy. also it was written by a man whose character in the book is a woman growing up. maybe it shouldn't matter, but it kind of bugged me. also, his name is Wally Lamb which just bugs me for no concrete reason.

car trouble as an indicator of things crumbling

2007-07-13T09:43:00.000-06:00

car is broken down again. this time overheated then there was a gurgling noise from the AC, then there was steam and oozing liquid around the oil tank. it's stuck on St. Charles and i have to wait to get it towed or try to move it. FUCK THIS. i already poured about 600 bucks into the thing, and now it just has to sit there. you sorry little car. you cute little thing.

this goes back to the cinematic post. if someone was there to witness the poetry of my car breaking down AND, AND the fact that i fucked up a friend's care all in one week, it would be some kind of epic symbolism (HAHAHHA). but because no-one is there to give a shit, i just feel kind of lowly and desperate, and no-one really cares.

i felt like everything i touched (in terms of cars, well uhhhhh.....) was being destroyed. like the little phenomenal machines around me had to go and die or get injured. i still hate cars, they are very worrisome and expensive and gas guzzling and you have to give a shit about them. i specifically bought a car i did not give a shit about (other than it being my *first one* and there is a certain level of sentimental attachement there. barf.) then all i COULD do was worry about it.

i took the bus today back and forth to a meeting. then i walked home from work and walked to the store after that. i feel civil and self-righteous taking public transportation, and i like it. it is horrible here, but it was fun for a day. i am sure i will be missing my four wheels and a seat soon.

UPDATE ( I started that a few days ago): thanks to a lovely person i have taken said friend's car to see what needed to be done and what the cost would be (don't ask) and also gotten my car towed to the mechanic, whom i have not yet called to find out the damage. whee! but at least the wheels of repair are in motion (horrible pun intended).

the State of Denial

2007-07-11T12:42:00.000-06:00

i'm in denial. i don't think i am living this life, this life in New Orleans. I am so disconnected from my environment. the denial mechanism, the survival mechanism. i think it is the sense of impending doom that surrounds this city all the time. will it come back, and if it does, will it at once be destroyed? NO ONE KNOWS. but it is all anyone can talk about. there is a total irrationality to it all, a hopefulness and a sense that the end is near. that everything could be washed away again and again.

sometimes i wonder what i am doing here, that this is an exercise in futility. a comedy of errors. i had this theory that there are certain kinds of people that like situations like this because the work is endless. that they don't really want the problem to be solved because then they would have nothing to do. there is a sense of all that that plagues this place. there is a darkness.

before i left New York i had an epic night at Employees Only with K. there is this tall old black bartender there named Henry who is from New Orleans. when i told him i was coming down here to help with the recovery and that i am a planner, he said "they don't want planning". and my thought was "well they are going to get it, anyway". but he was right, there is a resistance here to planning. if people really wanted the government to fix things, it would happen. if the government, the city government and the residents really wanted to put things back in an orderly way, it would happen. there is a resistance to all logic. they want the twilight, as I mentioned before, they want the eclecticism of experience, which would be ruined by logic.

it is like the bermuda triangle here. things will just disappear and resurface as they will. there is an element of magic to it all, but it is something dark, something at odds with all the square puritanicalism of our great nation. maybe it is just because it is july and the malaiase of summer makes people want to hide themselves in the air-conditioning and never come out.

i found out yesterday that my ancestors on my mother's side came over here from england in the 1630s. they had immigrated from france in the 13th century, and we can trace the roots back that far. basically there was a woman named Elizabeth Hawkred who, after bearing 3 children to one man and then burying him, two of her children died and she married another man coming to the new British colony. She had two more children with him before he died, then married again and had a couple more. She lived to 71, and this was the 1670s or so. she was one tough bitch. the toddler she brought over with her, John, was the one that we are descended from.

it got me thinking about my own personal drive and survival skills and motivations. maybe it is in my genetic code to come down to these strange places, to sympathize with africa or other frontier situations. to escape the weight of structure and security, but perhaps pay the price for chaos and 'freedom'. on my father's side, they were all democratic ranchers and horse breeders. they got some land in nebraska or iowa and built sod huts and lived there on the land. they came over i think in the mid-1800s. they were survivors too. it is interesting to learn that i come from a long line of crazy people who eschewed comfort for a bigger world. then when they got there that world was raw and brutal but also vast with endless potential. i wonder if they ever got depressed and discouraged. i wonder how they saw their world, i wonder if they knew what to do. i like to think about these people, and wonder what drove them to a strange part of the world that probably didn't want them in the first place. i like to think about their bravery and their follies and their ambitions. what situation made them feel that they had to move and change things for themselves, maybe even to the point that was almost sucidal.

WOW. that was a cheery post.

by the way, has anyone seen my sense of humor? its still MIA.

cinematic life

2007-07-11T12:21:00.000-06:00

it's a coping mechanism to get through life, to romaticize the fuck-ups and awkwardness and other things. to see them as a large and gradiose story. too bad that no-one watches it. the past few days have been bizarre and a roller-coaster of emotion and drive and self-loathing and ambition and loss and just basic human neurosis. it should be a movie, i think to myself, one that no-one ever watches. is it really that interesting? what is the use of flailing in an artistic sense if no one is interested in, or learns from the flailing of others? i can't wait till i am older, like 60 if i make it that far. maybe then i will have the patience and reflection to recount the things that matter. whatev's. it's all about escapism. not that there's anything wrong with that. is there?

i'm tired of myself.

a little culture for all you philistines out there, that being most of you

2007-07-06T15:46:00.000-06:00

a friend sent this to me, and i love it. then my darling brother gave me a book of Rumi's poems and if you ever want to read to most drunk and in love and piercing gorgeous poems that are timeless and hilarious, please look him up. god, i sound like a bloody fucking 1800flowers.com ad. or something. anyway. buckle up babies... this is a good one.

Thirst drove me down to the water
Where I drank the moon's reflection.

Now I am a lion staring up totally
Lost in love with the thing its self.

Dont ask questions about longing
Look in my face.

Soul drunk, body ruined, these two
Sit helpless in a wrecked wagon
Neither knows how to fix it.

And my heart, I'd say it was more
Like a donkey sunk in a mudhole,
Struggling and miring deeper.

But listen to me for a moment
Quit being sad. Hear blessings
Dropping thier blossoms
all around you.

- Rumi, 13th century

how apropo

2007-07-06T11:20:00.000-06:00

my horoscope for this week.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):Here are a few of the fine developments I expect you will have enjoyed by the end of July: growing pains that feel pretty damn good; the dissolution of wishy-washy wishes that have been keeping you distracted from your burning desires; a vivid vision of what you want to be when you grow up; living proof that you're not just an armchair adventurer; the friendliest lust ever; a new plaything; and insight into why fanaticism can be very useful in moderation.

Americana

2007-07-03T10:57:00.000-06:00

I have talked about this before. about texas and my obsession with Americana. when i think of America as a foreign country i can handle it. when i think of myself as a visitor i can handle it. if you force me to identify, i will become depressed, withdrawn, sulky and bitchy. i hate my country for its self-consciousness. i hate it for its consumption. i hate it for its slovenliness. for its style-less largesse. for its sense of entitlement.

i visited the wretched and disgusting town of Houston over the weekend to see V. it was bad. my last night there we went to play pool at a place called the Seabrook Beach Club. horrible place. everything was painted as is if it were bamboo. fake plants. ugly bar furniture. bad lighting. bad music. too many t.v.s. the waitresses wore bikinis and chatted up ugly old men drinking miller lite and caressing their own paunches. a man and his son ordered crawfish that was served in an old plastic drink tray, dirty white. the boiled and salted little beings were ripped apart and sucked at and left with their heads and eyes and miniature claws. viscera and food. i felt like it was the set for a dating reality show. but uglier and without the quips and edits.

the waitress was a fucking bimbo. sorry. we asked her if she had Newcastle beer and she asked what that was. then we asked her what kind of beer she had and she said 'i don't know, i have only been here two weeks'. get your fucking head out of your bikini and figure it out. oh, america. land of the free, home of the fucking dim-witted. where did the message come from that it was good to be stupid? that it is an asset to be slow and spaced out? no wonder the VCTR saw a wealth here. wake-em up, a WAKE EM UP! WAKE EM UP! SCREAM IT! WAKE EM UP! fertile ground. so fertile. the flip side of enlightenment, it is here. the flip side of vision, it is here. the flip side of vigor, it is here. the flip side of elegance, it is here. the flip side of real, genuine unrelenting confidence it is here. my god, what a fertile land. it makes so much sense. what an opportunity.

why do i care about the waitress? why even form an opinion? because i have to pay attention to my world and talk to it, just like it talks to me.

i think V. might secretly admire this kind of obliviousness, thinking there is something profoundly pure and unadulterated about it all. where in reality, that is the complete opposite. there is something dark and really wretched about it all. it is not okay to perpetuate this kind of vague stupidity. why isn't it okay? because it just fucking ISN'T. what are the options otherwise?

i digressed.

drink up with me now and forget all about.............................................

the wretched hangover of life and a snap

2007-07-03T09:49:00.000-06:00

hangovers and hangups. when are we free? how does it happen and how to we actualize these things? basically i want to run, run away from things. but they have caught up with me and now i have to stare them in the face. i thought things would disappear. i thought that moving here would bury all that has happened. perhaps i don't have the strength, new orleans, to drag you out of whatever horrible thing has happened. if i can't even do that for myself, how can i do it for you? i have a hangover, and so do you. but it is time to wake up also. it is time to sober up. it is time to straighten the back and raise the head.

my necklace broke. It had a silhouette of Africa and a couple of Ghanaian symbols on it. I will not elaborate on the circumstances by which is broke, but all i will say is.. well nevermind. i hadn't taken off that necklace in a year and a half. i bought it on the last visit to Ghana before my parents moved. Africa. It represented promise to me, the power of energy and human capital. not AIDS and desperation. of course they are there as well, but when was the last time you heard a goddamn postive thing about Africa? you know what, there are a lot of amazing things there. so that is my i wore Africa, to remind me of the fundamental power of humanity to innovate and survive. that is what was compelling for me.

i like symbolism and believe in it. it was time for this approach and this source of reminder and inspiration to change. it is time for a change in approach to things. the world is telling me so. my little necklace needed to break to show me, in the phenomenal sense, that it is time.

seem abstract? it is. seem vague? that is because i have a secret that i cannot reveal, gentle reader, for it will lose its power.

snap!

alone a lot. or. wtf is going on?

2007-06-21T14:47:00.000-06:00

in general i am finding myself alone a lot. this is due to a couple of things, one of them being that i don't really work with my colleagues. we kind of talk on the phone and email from time to time. it isn't really collaboration. i know i have 'a boss' and 'a colleague' out there somewhere, but i don't know what they do or where they are most of the time. i try to do my work, whatever it is, and get things done and give them little updates on progress. most of the time they are pretty much ignored. so without feedback or collaboration i find my perception of things getting a bit wonky and my motivation wanes and my thought processes stop being pithy, interesting or inventive. i get no feedback, negative or positive. sometimes i wish they would come scream at me for some screw-up that happens.

it is just me in my little office. then i go to meetings with strangers and have a hard time explaining what i do, what my job is, and what my identity is. i have always identified strongly with whatever my work was. when i was a waitress, i was a waitress. that was fine. i wasn't a waitress who was working on something else. now i am doing something that i think is probably okay, but i don't feel like i am really stretching myself, that this situation is stretching me or making any demands on my intelligence or competence. is this my fault? could i be doing more? sure. but how and what and how skillful do i have to be? how aggressive? how patient? it is hard to scratch out a little corner of vocational territory when everyone around you in incommunicado. it is hard. but nobody said it was going to be easy.

what is going on here? am a loser who is missing something, missing the point, or did i just not get the memo? maybe they don't want me to get the memo? do they want me to quit? i don't really know.

i don't hate working. in fact, i enjoy it. i aspire to have an interesing, challenging job where i feel a sense of team work and identity. i would like to believe in what i do. to feel personally gratified every day. to feel like i am flying high in a nightgown above the spires of St. Petersburg on a cool spring night with a full moon.. actually that isn't work, but it would be nice i want to feel like i am charging away in the most elegant and skillful sense. that all my energy and love is well-intentioned and i can use it somehow. i am frustrated i guess.

living for the city

2007-06-21T13:55:00.000-06:00

New Orleans. that bloody dark and charming back-water. oh la la. here i be. your charisma is your achilles heel. you know that, but if you don't say it, it doesn't exist. magic and vibe and luck. think that will get you through? for awhile. but that is all you really need. muck. really, just muck. this setting-sun view is your absolute wealth. you don't want to be like any one else... not really interested in the status-quo or measuring up through demographics or the census or other formal indicators. you like to kill yourself softly. not WAKE-EM UP! let's not have any of that. we can just chll. what's the big deal? you don't want to be a force, you want to be forgotten, so you can live your secret life. you don't want daylight. you want twilight forever.

i decided to volunteer with a very brilliant person and force him to adpot me since i have to substantial or fulfilling work at my bread and butter job. he has given me more work that i know what to do with. he wants me to deliver things on a deadline, for free. and i love it. i had to search out something. i have to do something with my lazy idealistic bag of bones. so i found it. now that my soul is rich, shouldn't i be making more money? the little benz broke down, so repairs are running at nearly 5 bills. ugh... and i realize i can't live without a car now. paralyzed. hopeless. depressed!! where are my four fucking wheels and a seat? i have given up on walking. being outside makes my skin fry (i am very fair). i sweat, it takes a long time.

basically, life is annoying. at the same time, it is rather interesting. perhaps that is the point.. that is how it works. i am living hardly enough for the city. fragile little existences all around me. my fragile existence.. what is the point? let new orleans drown, then. let it drown in its own muck, so that it can bloom again elsewhere in another life. let me go somewhere safe and structured and unimaginative. let me be sterile. let me be careful. let's not fight anymore.

sounds awful.

coming back to america

2007-06-12T18:45:00.000-06:00

ever since i left my high school, edward c. reed high school in sparks, nevada and moved to indonesia to finish 11th and 12th grades at jakarta international school, i have been avoiding america as best i can. i went to a small sequestered liberal-arts college in rural minnesota, a bastion of academia, liberalism, and suffocating, soft-sell tolerance with a monastic bent. i studied in paris and india during my time there, spending summers in nova scotia and winter holidays back in jakarta. from there i moved to new york city, my first apartment after college with a friend in harlem, a massive 2-bedroom for $1400 a month with an insane russian landlord who was a scientologist and liked to fiddle with his rottweiler's asshole when we went down to pay the rent.

i fell in love with a french guy 12 years my senior and did everything i could to move to france to be with him, mildly alienating my family and crawling back to new york a few months later with 2 suitcases, $40 and a place to stay. I stayed in NYC another 4 years. Then I came here. New Orleans. the loveable and hilarious and sincere and volatile third world of america.

we left sparks, nevada 13 years ago. i never missed our subdivision with the modular homes ( i now reel at the smell of the plastic and chemicals used for these houses, the sick, sad process and roads from which they came), the bored rebellion of small-town coffee shops and smoking secretly. the boredom, the admiration of greater horizons that seemed so un-attainable. the kind of low-brow humor, the tenuous social networks that evolve and thrive in these little towns. the angers, the relationships. the embarassment. so long! wanted to be somewhere bigger than that. where people thought bigger and weren't really afraid of it.

and then there was texas.

we got back from an extended weekend in texas with V. landed in houston (horrible place) and then a 2 day trip to austin. austin is nice enough. pretty. it has the fresh water springs and some hills. there are plants and set-backs for the houses... texan architecture and then they embrace some amazing modernism as well. dive bars and haute restaurants. nice. its like boulder meets cowboy. or something.

texas represents america to me.. it is big, it is bored, it is insecure and it is inward looking. americans have no sense of sex appeal, of the secret or of the alluded-to. they want to be bashed over the head with some big tits and then relax with a violent movie. the food portions in texas are huge. the cars are huge. the 80-foot elevated freeways are huge. nobody walks, nobody has a center of town. the pervasive feeling of it being your first night out as a 16 year old is everywhere in social spaces like bars and restaurants. even for adults who think it brave to talk to a stranger and braver to reveal themselves.

our first night in austin we went to 6th street, kind of the bars and restaurant tourist strip. it was full of overly-made up 21 year olds and fat tourists and a few goth/metal types. fine. the scary part was that i think we saw at least 6 separate bachelorette parties that night. like the kind with the matching outfits and blown-up-condoms tied to their faux-one-night-only veils. i thought the condoms were funny.. were they saying hello or good bye to the condoms? they only have a matter of a couple of years before they are ploy-blend shorts wearing heifers. (sorry) so make the most out of that ass before it is twice the size.

it is amrika (thanks Rushdie). the foreign land of consumption where the cultural message is eat fast and big, fuck, but not too much, or at all because if you believe in sex you are going to hell, mega-churches (yes, that is a word), cars, guns, hair bleach, hair spray, gasoline, food, malls, freeway exits, jeans and elastic. bad fats, trans-fats, beef and bread. air-conditioning. it's america. they believe in it, why don't i?

potential titles for my yet-to-be-written memoires -or- self-published self-help books..which is which game!

2007-06-12T17:09:00.001-06:00

Nobody Said It was Going to be Easy, and It Isn't
A Sense of Entitlement
The 'Fuck It' Syndrome and the Overly-Educated
Not Comprimising Myself: Rejecting Corporatism, the Status-Quo, the System and the Price I Paid
Take These Loans and Shove 'Em
International Relations: Dating Outside your Continent
A Gold-Miner's Daughter
Love in the Time of the Internet
Pseudo-Celbrity: Brief Meetings with semi-celebrities that will impress your parents and no-one else
Getting by in New York, and Bitching About It
Ghetto Gourmet
Bad Choices Make You Learn, Smart Choices Make you Boring
Love Don't Pay the Rent (and Neither does a Graduate Degree)
Expensive Taste: How to do it right and do it up on Other People's Money
If Something's Not right, It's Wrong
It's all what you make of it, so if you are lazy, you are going to make very little. But That is Okay.
Ambition is for Poseurs
What's the Point?
Red, Red Wine
Screaming into the Abyss: The Joys of Pointless, Unfinished, Unacknowledged Projects and Blogs
France Does Not Solve Your Problems
Wherever you go, There you are. aka Excuses, Excuses. (Spanish translation title: Manana, Manana)
Being Lonely No Matter What (And Loving It!)
Aspirations To Nunhood for the 21st Century Woman
What You Should be Doing is a Little off to the Right or Left Somewhere
The Trials and Tribulations of Someone Who Can't Tan
A Renter's Life
How Booze was Both Good and Bad for my Career
God Helps Those Who Help Themselves (to your Stuff!): A Liberal White Chick's Guide to Getting Robbed, and Other Advice for moving Through Low-Income Rental Communities as A White Woman in Urban Metropolises
I'm in a Pickle

dealing with the small-town mentality

2007-05-22T13:35:00.000-06:00

there is something impermeable about the small-town mentality. it is like bashing your head against a brick wall. the problem is, i have learned from, and worked with true visionaries. so i got spoiled. now there are people that are so protective of their own little power structures that they end up being either counter-productive, exclusionary, or just downright obstructive to progress. it's a small-town mentality.

i used to love the Furturists. It was all about progress, the machine, and art. It was all about moving forward and embracing the future. shrugging off the socialist sentiments of the 19th century and being radical and spontaneous. they believed in something and that is what created art and manifestoes. that is what created influence. it was partnerships. it was collective vision.

now there are these territorial fuckers here, even in NOLA, that just want glory. maybe that is actually revolutionary. get what you can. yeah! get yours. get yours and get yours. feel better now? want more? go get it. just for you. its special just for you. fancy!

i came down here a bit of an idealist, and i will be a goddamn idealist as long as i want. i also see that people want to get theirs. well i want mine you know what i want? i want to be able to pay my bills. i want to be able to do my fucking job the best way i can. guess what, you greedy bastards. there is enough 'glory' and 'saviour-status' for everyone. can i just do my job without you stomping on my projects because you think a little girl is going to get in your way? there is a lot of space here. a lot. don't worry about me bugging you. just go do your job. there is plenty of work to go around.

generosity is the ornament of the world.

don't you fuckers forget it. oh, i forgot, you don't really care. when you die, there will be a little plaque for you. your dead body will be really proud of itself when it gets that plaque.

i have lost my sense`of humor

2007-05-21T19:30:00.000-06:00

for ever. it is gone. fare thee well. adios. i won't miss you anyway.

love and career in the 21st century (chick view)

2007-05-21T18:30:00.000-06:00

basically it comes down to compromise, is what friends and family have said all this time. we get conditioned, we get messages about how to 'keep' a man and a career going. that if you focus too much on your career you will become a frigid, money-driven, single minded biyatch and if you focus on your relationship, you are a mis-directed, unaccomplished antiquated fool. OR. if you focus on your career you are a driven, smart woman who embraces her self worth, her education and her personal drive, fuck the rest. OR. you are a dedicated mother that understands that there is a sacrifice you have to make for your children, that there is a cost to doing so, and that it is for the betterment of society if you actually take the time to raise them properly.

i subscribe to neither. rather, i am confused by both. i thankfully am not staring motherhood in the face at the moment, but i have just made the move down here to pursue my career. i have a relationship that i enjoy. but he is very interested in his career as well... and in some ways expects me to follow him. this is not a bad thing. he has my best interests in mind and listens to me. but i think at the end of the day he actually thinks i will follow him. and i might. i won't move to Qatar or Bahrain, necessarily, but i may go somewhere else where i never imagined myself. is that wrong? or do i do what i want no matter what? how does it all work?

as my mother said once, that which i will never forget "first you buy the ticket, and then you take the ride". ain't that the truth.

kindness, good intentions and territory

2007-05-17T22:39:00.000-06:00

so i tried to be helpful. i tried to be nice. i though that other people cared about getting something accomplished. i am a delusional liberal-arts educated fool who refuses to believe that rapcious capitalism is the answer to things. "they" are bastards and "we" get the real agenda. or something. well that is fucking the biggest joke i ever heard. god da-yum! the they and we thing will never end. get it people? never and nev-ah. so what do we actually do now?

i grew up in a world that propagated gentleness. awareness. responsibility. self-reflection. reflection in general. contemplative moments. art. poetry. calligraphy. elegance. style. uprightedness. dignity. ceremony. tradition. and now, and as was then, there is littlle to cue one off on how to go about your life. there are few moments where you know exactly what the fuck you are supposed to be doing. so what do we do with all of that? what do i do with a lot of mis-directed drive? is it really a matter of being funny or sexy at the right moment? just to make people glad that you are alive? ha ha ha bless your soul.

so now what? there are a couple of things to do: buy stocks. become a prostitute. sell drugs. work for a corporation and spend drunken nights explaining to well intentioned friends who make more money than you that you are going to the dark side. feel like a hypocrite? what does it cost.

WILLING TO BE A FOOL

2007-05-16T14:22:00.000-06:00

There is lots of room to make mistakes. That's true, absolutely true. But such room for mistakes cannot be created unless there is surrendering, giving, some kind of opening. It cannot take place if there's no basis for it. However, if there is some basis --if we can give away our aggression or attempt to give it away, if we attempt to open up and strip away our territoriality and possessiveness -- then there is lots of room for making mistakes. That doesn't necessarily mean there is room for dramatic mistakes, but lots of little dribbles of mistakes can take place, which usually occur in any case -- we can't avoid it. We have to allow ourselves to realize that we are complete fools; otherwise, we have nowhere to begin. We have to be willing to be a fool and not always try to be a wise guy. We could almost say that being willing to be a fool in one of the first wisdoms.

From "Wise Fool" in DHARMA ART, page 75.

All material by Chogyam Trungpa is copyright Diana J. Mukpo and used by permission.

New Orleans. Don't forget it.

2007-05-15T18:06:00.000-06:00

I posted this bulletin to my myspace page. so for you loyal readers, (hi jon!) you can catch up there as well. i know most of you are obsessed with my life as i am, but i want to look out for your beings and not let you waste your time away.

since i am a lazy i thought i would post something i have already written. god i am boring. well, you are what you eat. i had lunch at a meeting of 3 fried chicken wings, some limp salad, and some white beans with sausage and rice. over-cooked corn. sweet iced tea. yaaaawn. carb overload.

Hi all,

Been down here 4 months and it is very interesting to say the least. Some days I just slog through my job and feel sorry for myself for the adjustments i have to endure. Other days, like today, I turn into a ball of rage at the injustices this city has and is enduring by an incompetent city government and an even more oblivious, incompetent and simply neglectful federal government. I think everyone just needs a little at-a-glance reminder of how UTTERLY FUCKED the city got, and how UTTERLY IGNORED it has been by the powers that be.

For a simple overview for those of you with short attention-spans like me, please check out the Wikipedia entry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_of_New_Orleans

But that is nothing. The politics here on a day to day basis change all the time. The place was kind of a mess before Katrina, kind of barely gettng by as it was. Layer a disaster on top of that, and there are very very few levereging tools right now, economically speaking, infrastructurally speaking, organizationally speaking, humanly speaking. The people here are unbelievably dedicated to the rebuilding, which is moving to say the least. The citizens of New Orleans have effectively had to pick up ALL the slack. They are incredible - organized, articulate, participatory. It is hard to explain. It is inspiring and i have never seen anything like this. however, there are insane obstacles as well.

I started a blog for those of you interested in my take:

www.berceaudujazz.blogspot.com

Berceau du Jazz means The Cradle, or Birthplace of Jazz in French. I was in France when Katrina hit, and listening to the radio, the artistic, sympathetic little frogs kept lamenting the loss on the news. It just stuck in my mind.

Anyway, please stay abreast of what is going on here, because there are a lot of interesting changes and things are by NO MEANS rolling along. Find some links below for more information.

PS and BY the WAY. The City of NOLA government has not recieved a fucking cent from the Federal Government for rebuilding. Cheers, Bush, you violent, ignorant, cowardly short-sighted fuck. Merci.

Links:

Local news:
www.nola.com

Levee politics (noooo, they are not fixed)
www.levees.org

Blogs by New Orleanians
http://neworleans.metblogs.com/

http://thinknola.com/wiki/List_of_New_Orleans_bloggers

Also there are good articles in the NY Times if you do a search for New Orleans, some of which I have linked to on my blog.

The nation and the world have media fatigue about the disaster. please don't forget that while things are coming together bit by bit, that things are not on their way at a good clip, and that we really need continued awareness.

Thanks Y"ALL!!

Love, Olivia

PS. Fuck Bush! (But not mine, because I am in a relationship :) ))

scenes from NOLA

2007-05-13T19:30:00.000-06:00

maybe it is sunday malaise, maybe i was out too late last night. maybe i just got too hot today. maybe its something else. had this overwhelming feeling of not wanting to be here right now. its a little bit missing nyc, a little bit feeling alone, a little bit of just not wanting to deal it all and not really doing what i want to do. and not really knowing what i should do or what i want to do. :) ah, the familiar waves of culture shock and adjustment.

anyway, i looked at these pics of new orleans and that cheered me up a little bit.

a model of new orleans done by the tulane architecture school. look at her curves! rowr!
a mardi gras indian and a neighborhood shorty bow to eachother before they go into their mock battle at the first annual 7th ward festival.

a young brass band performing at a nonprofit block party.

CUPID rhymes with STUPID*

2007-05-12T18:22:00.000-06:00

but actually NO! i saw some annoying college kids dancing to this song called the Cupid Shuffle at a bar and i was like, ugh, bye! but then it crept up on me.. slowly, slowly... like the the Macarena did when I was 18! i am too proud to actually do the moves, but it is catchy and the best part is is that the guy's name is Cupid and he is from Lafayette, LA. i love black thugs calling themselves little sweetie names. baby mama's and shorty's and all mixed up in that shit. daa-Yum. how many kids ya got? anyhoo. LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! to the left to the left to the left...!! blah blah my favorite line is "walk it by yourself, now walk it by yourself". maybe because i am going to walk away from this song in like 3 days. but love ya in the mean time! (i really really mean it!). love is forever and evah!

* that is from Calvin and Hobbes. :)

the mardi gras indians are magnificent

2007-05-12T16:39:00.000-06:00

An Indian in full costume at Jazz Fest. Learn more about them here.

blakely realizes he is actually in new orleans

2007-05-12T08:52:00.000-06:00

there is kind of a depressing article in the T-Picayune today about Dr. Ed's failed attempt at using blight bonds to finance development here. the thing is, is this was one of his cornerstone financing options. now it is falling through. his under-staffed office is also in a hiring freeze right now because there isn't enough money and he goes on to say in so many words that he 'didn't know there was a financial problem'. okay, the feeling i have is like when as you grow up that your parents are people too and they can make mistakes. but where did he think he was, and how, could he not understand or not know that the city is in major financial crisis??

i want to believe in him and his plan isn't working very well. in a meeting with him the other day, we actually said 'i'm a developer on the side so money isn't a problem for me'. why does he say this crap? he kind of reminds me of Paris Hilton when he talks like that.

people don't understand

2007-05-09T22:12:00.000-06:00

had a very hard chat with someone tonight. he doesn't understand why things are so difficult here and why there isn't some panacea for the problems. why doesn't everyone stop bumbling around and fix the fucking city already. i told him it is complicated. i told him there is lack of leadership, i talked about the complex, byzantine and antiquated policy and law structure. i talked about the lack of funding. i talked about the previously crumbling infrastructure. i talked about the lack of human capital.

he said, why don't you fix the fucking city already. the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end with rage for this basic, simple thing. why don't we fix the fucking city? this isn't gluing back a fucking vase. there is no superglue for something like this. have you ever tried to repair a city before? try fixing the bus and transportation, the education system, the sewer, the water, the tax structure, the building code, the evacuation plan, the lack of tax base, blighted properties, poverty, a race schism, historic preservation, dwindling tourism, high sales tax, environmental degradation, federal incompetence and ignorance, dissolving roads, spotty utility service, inflated rents, insurance, lack of housing, nepotism, stinging caterpillars, flooding, broken levees, all located in a delicious little hurricane zone by a population of less than 200 thousand and couple of well-intentioned volunteers from Connecticut.

fix the fucking city already. yeah. i have heard that one. 'why don't you just ____? why don't you just_______?' Why don't you just try to put the Bamiyan Buddhas back together with Elmer's glue and a toothpick with one arm while blinded in a windstorm. we will 'just' do everything in our small-brained, well-intentioned way to make it better. fuck yeah. why don't you just shut the fuck up unless you want to come down here and fix it all, introduce something that no-one has ever thought of. i am sure there is something that no one has ever thought of. and it was probably you that thought of it. duh. people down here really don't get the obvious. they have missed the whole point!! gosh.

i think it can be done, i am a believer. well it's that or nothing. i think it will take longer than we think (doesn't everything?) and it will be harder than we think, and the choices and tradeoffs we have to make will be more painful and poignant than we realized. the personal exertion will have to be more than we want, even in crushing heat and soul-sapping, hair-frizzing, air-conditioning worshiping humidity.

but please, please do not sit in a gated community in texas and say that things could be going better. because we know things could be better. but we aren't going to give up right now, and skepticism and blanket statements and vague suggestions are not necessary. haven't we heard them enough from the national press and every Ivy-League school there is? there is no choice really at this point. getting off the path is a very very bad mistake, so we have to go forward. that is what people do, we figure it out somehow. the process may be painful, but, to quote a long-lost genius somewhere in brooklyn, 'nobody said it was going to be easy'. that's the good part about it.

"the concept of "institution" [is] a sort of virtual, shared myth...

2007-05-08T23:04:00.000-06:00

that would allow us to take things seriously enough to see our own aggression. Nothing more."

A Buddhist practitioner in Halifax said these good words and they made me think a lot. He was talking about the institution of Buddhism as an organized religion as different practice communities grow and organize. It resonated with me because i have fallen away from the Buddhist sangha as i knew it as a child and through my early 20s. i recently connenected with some Buddhists living here in Louisiana and they were wonderful. i am reluctant to post my musings on religion and my 'religious identity' so to speak, but i think it will come out some times. anyway, i think i need to send them this little phrase and make the world seem a like a big expansive, interesting place. which it is from time to time.

As for the aggression part, i realize that i have gotten the message over the past few years that (quotes mine) "if you are not more aggressive, you aren't going to get stuff". hmm. well i want a few hundred grand to pay off my student loans and maybe get some new clothes and take a trip, but that is really all i want. stuff. then i can just do my job and stop worrying. :)

My name is ODS. And I am a Young Urban Rebuilding Professional

2007-05-08T09:00:00.000-06:00

Molly, who works for the aforementioned YURP site that bugs the shit out of me said this:

Molly said...: I like how you criticize our horrible self-importance by using the very medium that promulgated online self-importance to a national pasttime. You've got a blog! And no matter how much you protest it's just for an "imaginary" audience, you know, just to get your super-complex thoughts down and stuff, you still think your poor excuse for social criticism is important enough to warrant an audience, otherwise you would have just started a journal.

Point #2: Why is it that just because YURPs are predominantly college-educated kids from middle-class backgrounds, they have less of a right to organize and maximize the usefulness of their shared experiences? So what, if we were all inner-city youths who graduated from the School of Hard Knocks and decided to start a website to help each other find jobs and share resources, it'd somehow be more genuine or meaningful? Are you one of those white kids who hates the fact you're white, so you just hate on other white kids to prove how sorry you are that you're white? Which leads me to...

Point #3: Whether you like it or not, you are a YURP. You came here after Katrina, you're obviously looking for something meaningful, or else you wouldn't have started your "Hey look I'm living the bohemian life in the Afro-Caribbean Paris of the South" blog, and since you made a reference to the Real World, I'm assuming you're under 35. Face it, honey, you're a YURP. Cheers.

I responded, for the maybe 3 of you out there that care, or who are forced (pretend) to read this by me sending to the link:

hi molly,

thanks for your comments on my blog.

we are all well-intentioned hypocrites who will do well by that in life, so we might as well have fun and laugh at ourselves and each other since we are all mulch in the end. either that or we are oblivious hypocrites, take your pick. it's just a matter of time.

of course i am white, educated, private school. speak french, studied in europe and india, go home for "christmas" (not christian), give change to bums, am a bad driver, have the luxury of worrying about my state of mind or whether or not I can go to whole foods this month (i'm broke, as noted, paying off my expensive education, wahhhh!) or if i am getting enough omega-3 fatty acids. played cello when i was younger and got art books and watercolors for my birthday. my parents are still together and i am very close with my only brother who is a gardener in New York City. he's really cute by the way, are you single?

i'm not looking for something meaningful, i have a lot of meaning in my life. i am looking to direct some really insane energy into something less destructive, or more productive. or maybe just neutral. any tips? or do i just have to be nice to people?

new orleans is totally unapologetic about itself. that is one of the many great things about it.

stay feisty.

ODS

ps. the afro-caribbean paris of america is a jab at Andreas Duany, the new urbanist doing a lot of work down here. can't take credit for that little piece of 'genius'.

pps: and yes, your self-importance is horrible!

em-eye-ess-ess-eye-ess-ess-eye-pee-pee-eye

2007-05-04T16:57:00.000-06:00

guess what? the environment here on the mississippi delta is totally messed up and in major jeopardy. this has been going on for decades. i had never heard about it until i got down here. it is a huge problem. bored at work and want to get depressed?

check out this series from the Times-Pic.

holy cow!

also a new article from the washington post about how the state and federal governments are looking at the problem.

enjoy and remember that policy is where it's at. my new philosophy is, is that basically we are bored so we screw ourselves over so we have something to do later.

maybe i was too mean in that last post

2007-05-04T13:31:00.000-06:00

i used words i don't normally like, but there are other blogs that use them to describe the kind of people i am talking about. since i know that everyone reading this agrees with me 110%, it is fine for me to say awful things about well-intentioned and nice people who just really want to help. i'm sorry!! sorry to have offended you. not really. i am just saying that.

i am having major thoughts (yeah, MAJOR) about what it means to be down here, especially after new york. be careful what you wish for! haha! i wanted independence and agency. i wanted to be able to be creative and express myself... to have 'power'. or something. V. asked me a very interesting question... 'if i gave you all the power you want, what would you do with it?'. that is a really really good question.

taking things personally, taking them seriously, taking them to heart. this is both a blessing and a curse. i want everything i do to be a direct, unapologetic manifestation of my motivations. now, this is dangerous and revealing territory. i could look like an idiot. i could make a faux pas. i could hurt someone with my good intentions (like Bush! he realllllly reallly did want to make sure that all those iraqis had TV and freedom! the road to hell is paved with good intentions. no good deed goes unpunished.) so i can sit here frozen in my own little neurotic ice-cube tray gazing blankly out and wondering what to do next. or i can do something. but what?? where to start?? where does one begin here? in a pacifist way of hanging back and not contributing to the karmic miasma that is life? or making art and never telling anyone about it? or being proactive but staying on the sidelines, not to step on toes? or barrel ahead and promote myself like a self-aggrandizing architect?

i decided to plow ahead and see what i am made of. maybe it is jello. maybe it is steel. maybe it is particle-board. maybe it is bourbon with a cherry. let's see how this all goes. onward. towards death and glory. this is sparta!!

annoying shit. and, along editorial lines, why does it feel like friday when it is only thursday?

2007-05-03T18:42:00.000-06:00

so i posted before about the annoying YURP thing. why does it make me nauseaus, god? because we have to brand every single pittly thing we do? because well-intentioned docuhe-bags white kids do something good in their lives? why why why does there have to be a FUCKING WEBSITE
dedicated to quentessentiallizing what is going on down here. to double the annoying dickwads who actually designed the site, the catchphrase at the beginning is "Fostering the minds behind the post-Katrina brain-gain". Puke and gag. Boring and yawn. Fostering a sense of being special? Fostering a sense of being together? Are we going to get together and steam vegetables and brown rice together and talk about what good people we are? or swap stories about the 'characters' we met today? or how toxic we feel living in a disaster area?

How is this about capturing the experience, i.e. validating my soulless experience:

We had our public (in person) debut tonight at the Neighborhoods Partnership Network's Block Party. When we weren't spreading the YURP love, we were jamming to Hot 8 Brass Band and eating our weight in crawfish.

this isn;t the Real World, New Orleans.

The only smart part of that entire effort is that they made the 'u' in YURP the curve of the Mississippi. Cute! Acutally good graphic. Of course. You all went to good colleges, had a support system for coming out of the closet, and went to your RA's with your pot-smoking problems.

They have a profiles section. Check it out. Ok, ok, most of them are younger than me, but I was much more bitter and caustic at their ages than I am now. Hahahhahaha. No, actually I am super sweet now. Hahahahaha!

broke again

2007-05-01T18:21:00.000-06:00

i noticed that i have a propensity to swear when i get really worked up. so i will attempt to refrain here.

i am broke again. really really broke. paid the rent, paid the car. paid the phone, the student loans and the utilities. did not pay the credit card yet. okay. so those are the bills. all that being done, and i have very little to live on for the next month, and i am having a hard time getting out of debt. i figure i have about $15 a day right now to make it through all of may.

that is $450 dollars for the month. for everything. (i am being matter of fact here, not whining..yet). let's say that i get another half a tank of gas between now and the end of the month.. that is $20. I am out of my shampoo that costs $13 a bottle. out of toothpaste as well, that is about $3.50. i have not actually registered the car, which I need to do by the end of the month, which will be about $80. I do not own a tv, a table, any chairs, a dresser or shelving, so that is not going to happen in the next 30 days. Laundry will be about $20 this month unless I can get J. to let me use her washer and dryer at some point. i cannot get my haircut, highlights, or a pedicure. i cannot take cabs or go out for dinner (well maybe a po'boy, but how is that going to work with my atkins regime? pick the fried shrimp and mayonnaise off of the white bread? mayyybeeee....) oh, and i smoke. not smoking when you have nothing else to feed the oral fixation except some whithered carrot sticks or a mealy apple is pretty hard. but water can be really satisfying. i mean AMAZING.

okay, let's look on the bright side, what i can do for little or no money:

write on this blog! yes, i will get grumpier and my little neurons will be snapping and synapsing away with hunger and boredom. god i am going to be brilliant. just wait and see how much more penetrating and insightful i become over the course of the next month. i bet you are so excited to see what happens.

read! i do thankfully own some books that i haven't read yet that are supposed to be good. just picked up Rising Tide by John Barry at the end of last month when i had money in my account. i also have some other ones lying around from before like She's Come Undone and a Nick Horsby book. i do want to re-read A Bend in the River and i have another Naipaul book as well as Moby Dick. Too bad I don't have War and Peace, or the whole month would basically be taken care of.

Go for walks! Take a stroll along the St. Charles neutral ground and walk through the neighborhoods of my new city at dusk. Admire the magnificent abandoned architecture and acres of rotting infrastructure in the fading light and just feel glad to be alive in this amazing free country. i will just think about the poor Afghanis and Iraqis and think about how lucky they are that they will have all of THIS one day (wait a minute.....)!

Not drink! i really love to have a glass of wine and write in the blog or read or chat on the phone. maybe even go out! you know, with friends or colleagues after work. go to a bar and listen to music with a cocktail. the usual. but i think i will stay home and drink tea, and maybe trying going to a bar and have water. or nothing. the good thing about this may be the clarity of mind, the bad part is the loss of the social outlet that i really like. i must be more creative. knitting circle, anyone?

Talk on the phone but only after 9pm! Clean my apartment! Start refinishing furniture! Meditate! Drive to devastated or beautiful areas and take pictures! Write a manifesto and then execute it without printing anything! Write a book and email it to my favorite writers!
Get in touch with old friends via email! Draw pictures!

Then, once all of this has been accomplished, the next month all will be abandoned and I will gleefully return to my carb-eating, wine-swilling, hard driving, blase self.

the Times-Picayune

2007-05-01T10:00:00.000-06:00

There was a good article in the NYTimes about our dear paper here, the Times-Picayune.
It was quite interesting, and made me proud of what a resource it has become for New Orleans. Notic I have actually talked before about needing validation about what is happening here in the national media, and I guess by having to link to a NYT aticle about the Times-Picayune I am definitely holding on to my own biases. I will try to get over that. Nothing about the Times-Pic! I read it every day.

driving. and driving. and gas. and insurance. and registration. and parking. freedom!

2007-04-28T21:11:00.000-06:00

the car. it is suddenly all about the fucking car. of course i love it right now, it being new and all. the freedom. there was some joke somwhere that my dad told me about... can't remember the context, but he said 'that is the price of freedom', i think he was quoting some chesy corporate pro-american type who really believed it when he said it. now we have laughed our asses off about this whole idea, and the delivery of the phrase. in the american sense of really believing this whole thing (anyway, it was before the iraq war) but that it was so cheesy and american. there is something so quintessentially hokey about that.

but guess what. 'freedom isn't free', as was blazoned across the t-shirt of the underpaid immigrant who washed my car (barely, there is still bird shit on the hood). and guess what, freedom costs $2.79 a gallon here. that means it takes $40 to fill my tank. and i love my little car. i listen to the radio and throw garbage in the back. i open the windows and smoke a cigarette. i bitch at other drivers and they can't hear me. i drift in and out of awareness, realizing i just can't do that. that spacing out could be really deadly. and the freedom i get from my little car is priceless. priceless. I am one of the masses. i am a functional person who doesn't complain about the bus being late, but complains about walking to my car. who we can all identify with. damn that feels good. sorry, al gore, i got the message both too early and too late. i love to drive. it is the american in me. sadly, it doesn't feel like a choice, it feels like a right.

Don't let the bastards get you down

2007-04-27T20:28:00.000-06:00

I needed to post something about this, since my illustrious grandfather passed away on April 4, 2007. I went to the funeral which was held in Norfolk, Nebraska.

My father grew up in the house where my grandfather had spend his final days, a nice big house in a very small town in northeastern Nebraska. Basically a nice little rural town that catered to the local farming community. Full of decedents of German and Irish and some Scandinavian immigrants, mostly Catholics. There is one main street now, and then the larger grocery stores and some strip malls. It reeks of America, of my roots that I have no idea about, about values that I have inherited without knowing about them. Fulfilling patterns that I guess only come genetically, or habitually. I don't identify with Norfolk, but there is something eerily familiar and comforting about the place, its smallness, the walls and street steeped in familial, regular culture, something I have never had, really, having moved so many times growing up, and then moving so many time on my own volition. So that claustrophobic familiarity, that family baggage, that stuff, that family stuff, those staid objects, that reluctant, inevitable change, that was all at the same time so comforting and so alien.

The last time I was in Norfolk was in 1988. My grandmother, my father's mother had died of a stroke. We were living in Duluth, Minnesota at the time and I remember distinctly that it was the fall or early winter. I was staying at the house of a good friend who was wealthier than we were, Alex Zuber. She had a nice house and a Finnish stepmother. Her dad had a moustache. We had had an overnight in her mansion, and my parents called her house in the morning and told me that Grandma Toady had died. I remember immediately crying and then my parents coming to pick me up in their big tan suburban car to drive to Nebraska right away.

My cousins were always closer to my grandmother than me, so I remember a certain ambiguity of feeling. Really not understanding what the loss meant to my dad, and at the same time not mourning as intensely as my cousins. My uncle Joe, the youngest of my dad's four brothers kind of broke down at the funeral and that really made me cry. I think he was about the age I am now, so it is hard to imagine losing a parent right now in my life. That was what really broke me up then. It wasn't so much the death or the loss of the person, but the weight and life that everyone else had to bear in the wake of the loss. Seeing the human pain and the general kind of wonderment that happens when death happens. Even though it is inevitable, I feel like it still takes us by surprise somehow, even in its predictability. Maybe that is the wonder, that something so predictable and inevitable will take us by surprise.

I wasn't particularly close to my grandfather. I liked him well enough. He always laughed when I said "I love Grandpa". A simple little gesture that he seemed to like a lot. A lot of my understanding of him came through the complicated relationship that my dad had with him over the years. My dad became a Buddhist and that I think was alienating to his intensely Catholic parents. There were other issues as well that may or may not have had to do with basic small-town life and superstition and insularity. Who knows. My dad really made an effort to connect with his own father as he aged, and I thought that was pretty brave and just a really decent thing to do, to get over the baggage and problems and past, and just kind of deal with the reality of mortality and impermanence and humanity and foibles and problems and mistakes and addictions.

Guy Stinson was a hard-working hard-ass Nebraskan Irish Catholic, as far as I can tell. A good, probably not very complex person, who liked jokes and lived his life out in a small town. He fought in WWII, driving a tank in Europe. He had a metal plate in his head from getting knocked out by a tank lid. I have no idea how much death he saw or perpetuated. Like many veterans, he rarely talked about it. I know he was in France for a time, so when I was studying in Paris, we talked about it very briefly. I think he started smoking at about age 12 and smoked like a champion till they took them away from him. He had emphysema and that is basically what killed him. He lived part of his life as an alcoholic and had an intervention and got sober for years. I think he may have been a kind of secretive person in his own way. But I project or imagine, since I really didn't know him intimately as a human being.

Ok. So it is 19 years since I have been in Norfolk. My dear friend K. takes me to the airport at 9am to make my 10:30 flight to Atlanta with a connection to Omaha. All flights cancelled. Until 6pm. Whee!! So I take cab into the city, go to a beautiful brunch with the Big Easy Rollergirls, go to the French Quarter for a frozen Irish coffee, catch some beads and candy at the gay Easter parade, then get in a cab and go back to the airport to wait for my flight. In Atlanta I meet my brother, and we fly together to Omaha where my cousin and mom are waiting for us. It was 11:45pm and I had packed and left my house at 8 am. Then there is a 2 hour drive to Norfolk.

We arrive at just before 2am, chat a bit and go to sleep.

The next few days are waves of anxiety and sadness. god, it really is all about the living. at the wake, we went to see my grandfather's body. I am going to be a little crude here. the mortician did a horrible job. my granddad didn't look like himself. he was very thin when he died, and the guy who did the body preparation (who was actually his nephew) plumped him up for the viewing. it was odd. there was no way to connect with him. so see him as familiar, and then to say goodbye. i think funerals are wierd. i am more interested in doing some visualizations and aspirations for what happened to Guy Stinson after he said goodbye to his old body.

It was amazing to see all my relatives, to see where I come from in terms of genes. it was great to see my youngest cousing Evan, who is 5, and the first grandchile, Tapio who is just a few months old (my cousin's son). It was raucous, loud, laughing, drinking, Irish, warm and familial. it was a rare moment. it wasn't magical, it was comforting and ordinary. my friend A. said once.. family are the people you know and everyone else are strangers.

Anyway, there are a couple of thoughts. one is that Catholic ritual is really beautiful. there is frankincense and hand gestures and the host and wine.. it is ancient and ritualized and done in a proper manner. it is really gorgeous and evocative. i liked that a lot. the priest wore beautiful robes and had a nice old Bible. the other thing i found wierd, it was like Gramps was still there. I am not Christian, do not believe in God, so this whole worship the dead body as if it were the person is wierd to me. I don't get it. I find it delusional.

I grew up Buddhist... so we used to sing songs about letting the worms eat our flesh after we are dead because the body was really just a piece of meat in the end. it was about detachment from things (another seemingly simple, but very complicated notion). i love that. anyway, the whole thing about preserving the body and putting in the ground in an expensive box is very alien to me. this may come across as very hard, harsh, wierd or insensitve. but it is how i feel. when i die, i just want to reflect on my life, if i have time, say some good aspirations for all the rest of us bastards who have to struggle through, and just get on with my re-birth. more to do!! ha ha!!

anyway, there was a kitchy plaque hanging in my grandfather's house in latin. can't remember the latin words, but the translation was, 'don't let the bastards get you down'. great saying. i will take that away for the rest of my life. along with my grandmother's brass pineapple that i remember as a child.

the sad part was the loss of a past i never had, of a continuity of life i never experienced in that little town of Norfolk. that was part of my father in such a profound way. he struggled with it and mourned it, and now it is gone. and so it goes.

back in action

2007-04-27T17:08:00.000-06:00

I went to Copenhagen with V. for a week last week. (pretty, socialist, old, large blonds, expensive - more on that later). i brought my computer in a feeble attempt to do work, but alas, the little bugger gave out... wouldn't turn on.. or would turn on and then just turn off. very scary. as soon as i got back i found a computer repair shop on-line and took it over to Barrone Street where some very kind computer nerds fixed everything by basically cleaning out the vent. apparently it is a good little apparatus, because the computer geek said 'that is one mother of a motherboard'.

so! of course I have had a million ideas for little things to write while I have been out of commission, and as soon as I got my computer back I promptly forgot all of them. they'll come to me eventually. or not.

open letter to my mercedes benz

2007-04-24T11:10:00.000-06:00

dear little white mercedes benz 190E with the cracked windshield,

you are a cheap little thing. so cheap, but your german engine makes a lovely purring sound. you are my very first. forgive me for emotionalizing this relationship when i know it is completely functionary. you handle very well. but then again, i have very little experience, so how would I know. you are so patient, with the bumpy roads and you tolerate sand and potholes and other inconsistencies. you even have a sun-roof! wow. and blue vinyl interior in decent shape. even though your power window buttons hang out of their sockets, they still work, well all except the back left window.

you know, i know you are from 1990 and not that elegant (you are more on the cute side than the sexy side) i still feel totally glamorous riding around in you and looking down your little rectangular white hood at the wacky new orleans panorama framed by your windows and little square mirrors. people even said they can spot us blocks away. we are hot couple.

sometimes when i take my foot off the accelerator, you make a strange sound, like a high-pitched whining noise, or sometimes a kind of whispering noise. sometimes it is there and other times it isn't. why don't you just tell me what the problem is? i will understand and do what i can to fix it. i notice that when i put on the air-conditioning the problem seems to go away. is it the crushing heat and humidity that is getting to you? i promise to park you under trees as much as i can. i will run the air-conditioning whenever is necessary. my only request is that you please stay cool and not burn the back of my thighs when i can't find relaxing shade for you.

i know you only cost $1,000, but i expect a lot from you. in fact i think you were under-valued in the past and i want you to know that i think you are amazing. i want you to maximze your potential, and i think that if we work together, we could get a lot done. i mean we could have a really fruitful relationship. then again, i know i am naive, that you are my first one, and that i will never forget you no matter what happens. i feel so vulnerable, but i want you to know that i am really relying on you and i will do what i can to make this work. for the both of us.

looking forward to a beautiful friendship,

olivia

dead cockroaches

2007-04-13T20:50:00.000-06:00

i keep finding HUGE dead cockroaches in my apartment. the fact that they are dead is a good thing, because there must be a lot of poison in the building and roach traps in my place. I also saw a couple of them in the hal. but DA-YUM they are nasty and I hate them. i mean i have a lot of compassion for all sentient being s and all, just not in my space.

editorializing New Orleans

2007-04-13T20:22:00.000-06:00

I was mad at the New York Times and their obnoxious "Select" section, so I decided to write them a letter. YES. I really sent this letter both to the NYT editorial section as well as the Select response section last week. We will see if it gets published or acknowledged, and if/when it does, I am going to feel really special and tell everyone about it.

Dear NYT,

I am a young urban planner who just moved to New Orleans 3 months ago after spending 6 years in NYC working for urban-oriented non-profits to make New York a better place, but felt I was most useful here in terms of my degree and energy, and I love it. I have suffered through high rents in New York, and broken subways, among others obstacles, but enjoyed the city to the utmost, living in Harlem, the LES, Prospect Heights, Park Slope and the West Village. I also finished graduate school at NYU, going into exorbitant debt paying for school full time and also affording a bit of eating and drinking on the side (barely). I have lived in some of the greatest cities in the world including Delhi, Jakarta and Paris, among others. I am no neophyte when it comes to valuing an amazing yet challenging and mutable environment.

ANYWAY. I do not pay for Times Select because first of all that $15 a month meant and means a lot to me right now, and secondly, I generally get what I need from your normal postings.

HOWEVER. There were a couple of things that really made me angry about your little Times Select option. First of all, you seemed to have a very important and interesting article about Martin Luther King, Jr. that came out on his birthday. AND IT WAS ONLY AVAILABLE TO TIMES SELECT READERS. AND IT WAS ON/NEAR HIS BIRTHDAY. Nothing about MLK should ever be in your "Select" option. It should be, as an act of solidarity and vision, open to all on this topic.

Now you have what appears to be an actually optimistic article about New Orleans "Katrina's Scars Still Etch the Face of New Orleans" (WHERE I LIVE) and I CAN'T ACCESS IT BECAUSE IT IS TIMES SELECT. I am particularly angry because I am down here now and love it and believe in it, and don't think that any national media organization should deny ANYONE news about New Orleans. The city is so fundamentally powerful but has gone through a real tragedy and the people here are more resilient than I have seen anywhere in the world. Tell everyone that. I can't tell you how important it is for the national media to say one goddamn good thing about this city while the people here are are working themselves thin.

These two things are just examples of very important issues about race, acknowledgement and awareness that I have always thought the Times would take care to make available to the rest of the world. Instead, some of the more what appear to be 'exclusive' articles on the site, ( i.e. those you have to pay for to see), are not available. Shame on you. I was especially disappointed in the MLK coverage which was "Select". And now, NYC being one of the greatest cities in the world, you should advocate on behalf of another great world port city that has it a lot harder than you, that is New Orleans. You have a lot going for you, be a little generous.

With love.

Olivia Stinson

I love being right about people

2007-04-13T18:17:00.000-06:00

There was this interesting article in the Times (the NY Times) about Ed Blakely. It reiterated much of what I had deducted about his approach, and I felt vindicated. I know it is lame and predictable, but hey. Of course the NYT sums it up very nicely. But you will get the idea. He is kind of an ego-maniacal asshole, but he wants to get the job done. Do you wonder why I read the NYT rather than the T-P (Times-Picayune)? Well I naturally read both, but like to gauge the national interest in the recovery effort. Of course the NYT has to talk about the super-stars, romanticize the poor people, and generally fail to give a generally good overall picture of the situation down here. That is the case with most of the national media, as far as I can tell. It's like my colleague said, everyone wants to touch the storm. Even me, I guess.

caveat

2007-04-07T20:06:00.000-06:00

I realize that some of the readers may or may not understand how nothing on a grand scale has happened here since Katrina in terms of the rebuilding. There have been motions, but no progress in fixing the levees. The major federally funded housing compensation program is stymied at best, they have issued 5% of the grants promised. Public transport is running at about 30% of its pre-Katrina rate. 75% of the city is uninhabited, and uninhabitable at best, although some people have begun rebuilding on their own in flood areas like the Lower 9th Ward, but it is all spotty, and hard to convince the city to provide sewer, water and electricity to the frontier areas with one or two dwellings per block. Insurance rates are through the roof for homeowners anyway, which has become prohibative to rebuilding homes. Also, homeowners who are getting chunks of money from goverment may be required to pay on their mortgages retroactively, so there is no money left for actual reconstruction, or some people may take the money and run, rather than re-invest themselves and their children in the paltry and fragile public health and education systems. There are discrepecies in valuing homes pre- and post- Katrina due to a long standing problem with corruption in tax assessment.

In a small swath of the city, it is easy to live relatively normally, not really understanding that the destruction from Katrina was a Gulf Coast disaster, not just a city disaster for New Orleans. So when I talk about getting around, about going to restaurants (TK) and basically partying and having a nice time squashing caterpillars (by accident! I am a pacifist!) I am doing so in a very narrow and small part of what this city used to be. I will talk more about this later, specifically the geographic realities of the city and what that means for the residents and housing issues here.

new people, take 'em or .. well just take 'em because here we are

2007-04-07T15:30:00.000-06:00

There is a bit of hubbub about the flock of new planner-types, who the Times Picayune, thankfully unsuccessfully, dubbed YURPs - Young Urban Rebuilding Professionals, who have come to New Orleans since the storm. Earnest, bright-eyed, educated, white for the most part and between 26-35 I would guess. Yurp, I'm one of them. Part of the reason for high-lighting this new demographic is to counter 'rumors' (not sure if it is true) of the brain-drain going on here, that there is in fact a 'brain-gain'. Certainly the demographic is changing, not by leaps and bounds, but it is. Most of the African-American population here (75% of the city pre-K) was displaced because they lived in the lower-lying, poorer areas of the city that saw the most destruction. So the storm itself drastically changed the racial and socio-economic makeup of the city, and it continues to change. Anyway, I will talk about the fun race factor at another time. It is very interesting, especially coming from the north.

There are three kinds of people here. Tourists, locals (I fit into this category since I live here now) and natives. Tourists, you get. Locals are people who live here, but aren't necessarily from here, and when I say here I mean New Orleans, not just Louisiana, as there are large cultural distinctions between the areas. Natives are people who definitely grew up here at least for their lifetime, but come from families of several generations of New Orleanians. People have mixed feelings about the new people coming in. One, is that they feel like we are just here to further our careers and therefore perhaps don't really care about the city (I personally think this is a bit short-sighted, but I understand that people here have survived the storm and come back and have a fierce dedication that we will never be able to match, and we can and should respect that). Others thing that it is a good thing for the economy and recovery and the mix of people here in general. The other big issue is the influx of Mexian and South American labor that has started to flood the city for the gutting and rebuiling projects that are going on. Then there is the resilient Vietnamese community as well, that has been really undeterred. Will talk about their amazing story, both pre and post Katrina later. All that being said, it is a mixed bag.

The Preservation Resource Center here is trying to document these influx of new people, so conducted an interview with me via e-mail. Please see responses below. This was my take. I kept it light-hearted, hopefully not too much so, but so it is for all eternity.

Getting into mardi gras 2007 with yellow feathers and a daiquiri.

JOB: Senior Program Coordinator at the Tulane City Center, Tulane School of Architecture

WHAT WERE YOU DOING AND WHERE WERE YOU LIVING BEFORE:
I moved here in January from New York City where I had finished my Master of Urban Planning at NYU the previous May. I lived in both Manhattan and Brooklyn for six years. I worked at the Center for Architecture in New York for a few months after graduation as a glorified (and glorious) receptionist. I met a lot of architects and became friends with the UPS man.

NEIGHBORHOOD:
Uptown. I stayed with a college friend in Carrollton for my first two months here, and now I live in a wonky Victorian mansion on St. Charles that has been divided up into apartments. Nothing is at a right angle and the plumbing is iffy, but I love the floors and get great light.

WHY DID YOU COME TO NEW ORLEANS :
I studied urban planning as my Master's degree and was looking for work in New York, but felt that there were other areas of the country and world that needed more help and energy. I did my thesis on promoting indigenous building methods in West Africa, so I thought that the answer to the housing crisis here might be mud-brick huts. It hasn't quite caught on yet, but Mayor Nagin is thinking about it.

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT LIVING HERE, PARTICULARLY IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD ANY ANECDOTES:
The architecture, the people, the music and the incredible unique cuisine are really unforgettable. Wait, I think Frommer's said that already. I do think that New Orleans is one of the greatest cultural assets this country has, and I want to be an advocate for that. Basically I believe in this city and I wanted to be a part of its return. As a planner I actually felt some responsibility to come here and do my part for the recovery. Since I have been here a short time, everything is still an adventure. I ride the bus daily and love it. I am a jazz freak so that doesn't hurt. My neighborhood is beautiful and safe. That being said it is rather boring. It is close to work, though, and since I don't have a car that works well for me. My biggest culinary regret is eating veal with crab on it (huh?). I am morbidly fascinated by a culture that celebrates eating something called 'mudbugs' – mud+ bug = gross. My new culinary obsession is those spicy pickled string beans. I am also totally bonkers about the trees and the greenery and so on.

Blakely and the One New Orleans Plan

2007-04-07T14:41:00.000-06:00

Earlier I wrote a post about visioning and believing as part of the language used by officials here to maintain (hmm.. ) morale and dedication to the rebuilding. Now Ed Blakely, the new recovery czar who has been here exactly three days longer than I have, so about 3 months, is saying "I will be leaving in a year, because in a year from now most of the work will be done." Damn, Ed, I hope you are right, but YEAH RIGHT.

I like this guy's hard-line and realistic approach for New Orleans, though. He understands the limited budget, understands that there have to be some secular and scientific choices made about the recovery areas to at least kick-start rebuilding here, and that it is impossible to appease everyone at once. He understands that if some rebuilding can happen in short order, it will be easier for the city to get loans by borrowing against those buildings and at least demonstrating some real visible progress. He says he wants to see cranes in the air by September. That's 6 months from now. His proclaimed hard-line financing, target zones and unique trigger projects within those zones the plan make a lot of sense, however, if you layer a totally rational and realistic plan on top of a city that is hardly rational and works on its own time, ALSO a city that has seen absolutely no leadership since the storm, things are going to be a little tricky, to put it nicely.

The lack of leadership here has led to the proliferation of really powerful and effective community groups who have organized themselves to respond to the immediate needs of their communities. These groups have been small, localized and picked up an ENORMOUS amount of slack over the past 19 months. So now we get this hard-headed and centralized leadership that should have been here about 18 months ago... I wonder how that is going to jive. Blakely's team, a newly created mayoral entity called the Office of Recovery Management, and their brainchild, the One New Orleans plan swears they have incorporated the citizens' needs and requests into his plan for the city, including continuing to draw upon and support the roles of the community groups in carrying out the plan. Indeed the city went through and entirely public, rigorous and time consuming proposal called the Unified New Orleans Plan. The document is about 1500 pages long, so enjoy.

However, this is the reason for planning. The communities' on-the-ground experience versus the larger vision for the City, the vision created by seasoned professionals who see sweeping and ripple-effect economic development on a city-wide scale, that represents and incorporates the needs, wants and cultural identities of the communities that will be affected. We will see how that shakes out here... I have never seen a city of neighborhoods and communities more ready to galvanize efforts to get what they want. At the same time, and has been noted time and time again, there has been utterly no leadership here to put an economic and infrastructure plan in place here. These two have to work in tandem, if that is indeed possible (the cynic in me rears its head).

I was at City Hall the morning the plans were announced... and his pretty sharp, imported team were very good about justifying their choices and talking about the hard decisions they had to make to choose some areas while neglecting others "for now" since this is just phase one of Blakely's 15 year recovery plan.

Anyway, back to my point that I started this piece with. Blakely is being over-confident and although he shows to have experience all over the world in 'this kind of thing' he also showing a total lack of understanding of the culture and really the psychological, political and emotional circumstance he has walked into. I think he showed a real naivete in even mentioning he will be gone. Good job putting a plan on paper, but it is up to the incompetent mayor and dubious city council to carry it out, not him. No wonder he's not sweating. In one year? He is just going to fix New Orleans in a year? Good luck, Dr. Blakely, I want to believe you and hope I can be a part of making that happen.

we went to visit this old warehouse that used to be a casino and it was really trippy

2007-04-06T19:13:00.000-06:00

First a view of a noble barge on the Mississippi from the parking long in front of the warehouse.

Half of the building was filled with faux plantation stuff. like fake trees with spanish moss and little 'slave quarter' architecture and plants
there were also some plantation facades with balconies. The whole thing has been deserted for more than a year, so it is dusty and delapidated. There were a few bare bulbs glowing while we toured the space which gave it a really bizarre atmosphere.

The other half was completely empty. They had planned to expand into the other half but never finished it before Katrina hit and closed it down. This scene is outside the warehouse.. a train used to run there apparently, but now there is jus this neglected shelter in the middle of nowhere. I love that big old factory building in the background.

my radio station here

2007-04-06T18:36:00.000-06:00

WWOZ
check it out!

rabbits

2007-04-06T18:19:00.000-06:00

Realized I had a funny series of rabbits in my life lately. First of all, I just finished Updike's Rabbit novels, all four of them. Really good, but disturbing.. Updike is an incredible writer, he captures nuances in human interaction like no-one else. Amazing books. Then V. bought me a little stuffed rabbit at the drugstore which he promptly named Winston Churchill. Finally I am working with a woman here who works for a housing non-profit who goes by the nickname Rabbit. Smart interesting person like many of the people I have met here.

Good Friday

2007-04-06T16:53:00.000-06:00

It's Good Friday, and I miss New York. Not that this Catholic holiday has anything to do with anything in NYC, I guess I was thinking about walking around TriBeCa and how nice that would be. Call my brother for an early drink and a chat. Make some calls and go do something in the evening. Maybe its not New York I miss, but rather I felt the lonliness of being new to a place today that I haven't really felt in awhile, not really since I have been here. I don't know who to call, who to go out with. Not really in the mood for a bar, and the movie theater is far away in the Quarter. Oh there is the little Prytania theater, but they only play one movie at a time, and right now it is Grindhouse, not really something I want to see by myself.

Starting to feel the problem of not having a car, not being able to get around very easily or go very far. It has been alright for the past few months...I've been here almost 3 months now, which isn't too long. Walking is the best way to get to know your city. Also, walked down from the office to Whole Foods on Magazine St. and had to dodge those fucking black caterpillars for dozens of blocks. Of course I bought more than I wanted to, so had to haul it back on foot. Ah, I am buying a little white beater Mercedes Benz from one of K.'s friends. My first car. It's totally beat up but still very cute. I am scared to death actually with these crazy drivers here and the lack of street signs, but hey, that is the price of freedom. Got to get over my fear of driving. WHEELS!

bare bones

2007-04-05T11:37:00.000-06:00

I have always had a hard time talking about the city, any city. Maybe that is why planning school was hard for me, I resisted it. I always experienced cities through intuition and the senses. I never wanted to conceive of them in words or numbers, thinking they would lose their magic. Words don't really do justice to the nuances and shifts in energy that happen. To their flows and pulses and changes in rhythm over the course of the day. And I say all this not thinking of Paris or London or my long lost New York, but rather of Accra and Phnom Penh and Delhi and even modest little Halifax, Nova Scotia. (Yes I am showing off a little bit). Cities that are a bit more fragile and complex. I didn't want their inner-workings and overwhelming series of small choreographed events demystified. I wanted to imagine them as organic entities, that occurred and changed in space and time in a way that was almost mystical and a result of universal forces that are larger than a set of policies and a budget.exercizing

Here, everything has been peeled away. The skeleton remains with a few ligaments and muscle groups... enough to keep it mobile, but hardly robust. No sparkly eyes, no gleaming hair, no pore-less skin or manicured nails here. Just the basics, and they don't all work very well. Don't get my wrong, there is still magic here, but the mechanisms by which a city works and thrives (or doesn't ) are suddenly painfully exposed.

Now I can see what it means, which instruments and components do what.. what the anatomy of the city is, policy and infrastructure wise. But it is so utterly overwhelming... all the aggregate parts that need to work. No wonder they break down, no wonder they are hard to fix when they do. That is because at the end of it all, or perhaps at the root of it all, it comes down to personal motivation and a need to struggle through this world of bills, taxes, rent and cars.

It is amazing to me the way that the leaders and officials here talk about having heart, about believing. Who talks that way? Bloomberg talks about taxes and real estate and transfats. Those are real things. The things that have to happen here boil down to human energy and a state of mind. Those things are intangible and harder to sort out from other instruments of rebuilding. Because of that, people here are very sympathetic to the struggle of the individual, to the motivations and needs of the bus driver, the waitress, the policeman, the bank teller.

It is hard here, because of the constant reminders that something terrible has happened. It never goes away. How many times a day do I have to say 'Katrina' or 'recovery' or 'rebuilding'? That is my new language that always talks about a before and after. Things were a certain way before the storm, and they are different now. And the arbiter of that change was something monumental and brutal and out of everyone's control. And that changes a city's magic, its nuances and its functionality. You see where the magic meets the bare bones of the city and that that those are incredibly linked in a very complex way. People have to believe and have vision to move forward, to make policy changes or go to work. There has to be a starting point, and it comes down to these people here and how much they can or will care to push forward, to vision and realize that their participation is really at the crux of things.

DAMN, I should go into politics.

work

2007-04-05T09:31:00.000-06:00

I am working for Tulane's architecture school, for the outreach center called the Tulane City Center. The TCC got a contract with the Road Home Program, which is THE federal funding for home rebuilding in the state of Louisiana. 7.5 billion dollars plus about another 3 billion held in escrow. It's a very big deal for the economy here, and it is a total disaster. Well I can't really say that... it is has just been a big obstacle to the recovery because of a lot of byzantine policies and other unforeseen problems. Anyway, things tend to change day by day.

I was hired to manage the contract, whereas our task is to provided content for the Professional Rebuilding Registry website. I solicit articles and information from architects relating to home rebuilding and construction and post them to the site with the idea that awardees of grants form the Road Home program will come to the website for information on how to rebuild their homes. Some of the information we provide has to do with gutting historic buildings, the role of the architect in rebuilding and so on and so forth. I also do a lot of outreach to non-profits working on building affordable housing, trying to centralize the efforts and create transparency between the groups so we can minimize redundancy and be more efficient (GOD, I hate planner-speak, but there I went!)

It is a nebulous world I am in, but I am working with a small team and we get along very well. Our priorities are generally in order and we speak the same language, in terms of what we are trying to do here. There is a lot to be said for that. I think we could be braver, but we work for Tulane at the end of the day. I am not bored.

my apartment

2007-04-04T20:37:00.000-06:00

I live at a classic address on St. Charles Avenue. You know, where the street car goes. But alas there is no street car. Just a lumbering bus that is purple yellow and green and never runs on schedule, tho I actually did take the street car on Canal the other day and that motherfucker is S-L-O-W. Like 10 mph and stops every 50 feet. I picked this location because I am between work and downtown and the Quarter, and it was affordable and I have a good amount of space.

Anyway, about my apartment:

One bedroom in old Victorian mansion.
nice light and ventilation (read: drafty)
wood floors
small kitchen with linoleum
just painted the living room white
and the bedroom is now green instead of lavender
i have a couch and a bed and some dishes, and my laptop and two lamps and three plants
looking for furniture
plumbing sucks: kitchen sink and bathroom sink drain into the same wretched plumbing system so i find spaghetti in my bathroom sink after doing dishes, disgusting.
ceiling fans
washer and dryer in the building, but the washer left soap all over my clothes and then the dryer broke and burned my sheets and ate my quarters.
READ: FUNKY!
but it works for me. pictures coming! As soon as I can upload them.

The rents here increased 40% after Katrina because about 75% of the housing stock was destroyed. The stock that is left is basically pretty nice because the wealthier areas were built above sea level so most of it didn't flood. So rent is proportionately high here.. as are utilities. Entergy, the energy company here was going bankrupt before Katrina, and went bankrupt afterwards... so the company is taxing the consumer 40% on gas and electric. The weather so far has been pretty temperate, so I have gotten by with ceiling fans and open windows and my bill was pretty low last month, but I want to see what happens with 90 degree heat and 100% humidity. I hate air conditioning, but I bet I will love it in about a month.

Anyway, there are a lot of other little annoying nuances that I will get into later. The high rents and appalling, debilitating insurance rates make everything more expensive (like food and other basics), so I really don't find it that cheap here. Also, because a lot of the economy is based on tourism, there is a really high consumer tax - 9%. Meanwhile they don't tax properties... oh I could go on and on....

okay, so i started a slob blog.

2007-04-04T20:07:00.000-06:00

Here it is, so you voyeuristic yankees can see how i bumble through life in New Orleans. By the way, this city is amazing and totally screwy at the same time. Some things are really easy, like eating crayfish, finding dead cockroaches in my bathroom, and getting drunk. And other things are really hard, like going to the grocery store, taking the bus, finding an open bank, getting anything done, staying positive, staying cool, maintaining cynicism while chilling out at the same time, and also getting used to the fact that the word 'oil' here is pronounced 'erl'.

caterpillars - and NO not the good kind

2007-04-04T19:37:00.000-06:00

Apparently there is a huge and disgusting caterpillar hatching here in NOLA every spring. They feast on the young tender leaves of the live oaks lining the boulevards. O, those glorious oaks, spawning visceral insect hell. They are hairy, black, ugly and get smashed and pulverized all over the sidewalk and street when they start to fall out of the branches, creating a juicy stained blackberry pulp everywhere you walk. Did I mention that they sting? I haven't been stung yet, but god knows it is inevitable. I live in fear. My friend suggested I carry an umbrella when I walk down St. Charles. Now that is just wrong. I imported a black nylon umbrella from NYC, and THIS is what it is coming to. Raining rancid deadly hairy black caterpillars from the magnificent oaks. O! The irony! -or- O! Laaaw-sy! as the old black ladies on the bus say.

I am petrified and repulsed at the same time. I used to like this kind of fecundity.. it represented everything about decay and life-cycles and mortality, yadda yadda. That was back in high school when i was listening to Bad Religion and reading Henry Rollins before I went to sleep. NOW, I just think that nature is basically brutal and fucked up, and, at the end of the day, totally GROSS. I know I sound uncharacteristically girly right now, but you know what, Y'ALL? You try going through your day with stinging caterpillars raining on your head.