Things in New Orleans That I Should Be Writing About Since I've Been Living Here for Six Weeks But Haven't Done So Yet

This story was written by me when I was living in New Orleans and published on Pindeldyboz in March 2004.

1. The Cat Riding on the Back of the Dog. Actually, I did not see this. A man I know who I talked to before I moved here saw this. I want to see it. I want to see a cat riding on the back of a dog, for no reason.

2. The Cab Driver Who Crossed Herself Every Time We Drove by a Church. What the hell? I grew up in Berkeley. I was born and raised to be an atheist. Who is this woman driving my cab and what is she doing? It is sort of romantic, I suppose. What it is designed to prevent or conjure, I have no idea whatsoever. There are churches everywhere in this city. Doesn't her hand ever get tired? I want to know this.

3. The Person Sleeping on My Doorstep. I felt no sympathy for this person, at the time of our encounter. I was drunk. I assumed the Sleeper was, too. I stepped angrily over the Sleeper's head to get in my door. I was not very careful. Every day, I try to find the time to feel bad about what happened. I have not been able to make the time yet.

4. The Mississippi River. This seems a necessary subject. Today, I may ride my bike out towards it. Maybe then, the muse will crawl up my ass as I bounce along the pavement running next to it. Or, I might get hit by a train on the way there. I can't make any promises. Last weekend, some anarchists with no deodorant gave me a sticker for my bike. It reads, "This Bike is a Pipe Bomb." Ol' Miss is not a pipe bomb.

5. The Things Men Call Me. Baby. Darling. Doll. Sweetie. Honey. Precious. Other names. Sometimes all these words in the course of one or two or three sentences. My favorite is Sweet Girl. I am, after all, not a Sweet Girl. I have a sour expression and a rotten attitude. They don't seem to care.

6. The Train. I love the fucking train. The wail of it. What do you call that? Its whistle. The sound is different here, I swear. More bleating, almost. The other day, I saw a big white bird with a giant wingspan and a long beak flying out across the train tracks. It hung out in the grass next to the train. I was on my bike. For a moment, I felt sad, looking at it.

7. The Mardi Gras Beads Hanging From the Trees. They are like a cliché wrapped inside the metaphor in which I now find myself living. They're like this city's answer to the outlying plantations' Spanish Moss. When I first moved to this place, I thought about living in what they call Slave Quarters. But, it didn't seem like a good idea. You know?

8. Ernie K-Doe Mother-in-Law Lounge. Writing about this bar would be pointless. No matter how many rocks I overturned in the corners of my head, I would never be able to find the right words. I could never come up with the correct number for all the paper stars hanging from the ceiling, or the proper adjective for the wooden figure of Poor Dead Ernie propped up in the corner, or the best phrase to guess at what the hell his widow is thinking when she hands me my fucking drink. To say it is an immortal shrine to a no-longer living legend would be like calling Bugs Bunny a rabbit. Or something.

9. The Paint. It's everywhere, chipping and flaking and peeling. If I were to become smaller, and eat some of it, maybe I would die. That has not happened at this time.

10. The Smell of Funk in My Bed in the Morning. God knows what the hell I dream about in this place. When I wake up, I feel so bad, I'm glad I don't remember. I get shitty coffee around the corner. When I come back, it reeks in my bedroom. My pillows are covered with whatever black primordial crap has oozed out of my ears while my brain was allowed to run off its leash. I don't know what it means. I don't want to.

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When Things Fall Apart

My latest newsletter is about “How to Flourish When the World Falls Apart.” The answer is one part constitution, one part nature, and one part lived experience.

Here’s an excerpt:

“What I’d seen in New Orleans—a city decimated, refrigerators standing in the street like tombstones, a boat marooned by the side of the road—was unlike anything I had ever seen in my life. It forced me to face what we all sense but do not want to see: That in an instant, the world as we know it can be utterly transformed, and irrevocably so.”

Read the rest here, and subscribe to my newsletter here.

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After the Storm

This is the place where I was living in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina arrived. This style of house is called a shotgun because you can stand at the front door and shoot a shotgun straight through it. I evacuated the day before the storm made landfall. We fled west, and the traffic was stopped for miles, and the shitty little car in which I'd gotten a ride broke down by the side of the highway, and the first bands were starting to hit, and a sheriff stopped because no one else would, and when he rolled down his window, I said: "Please don't leave me by the side of the road." It was days before we realized we couldn't return. My best friend bought me a plane ticket and told me to come to her, so I did. It was a couple months in Virginia before I got up the nerve to go back. In Louisiana, I rented a car and drove through the city. It looked like a woman that had been raped. There were dead refrigerators on sidewalks like tombstones. The place had been ravaged. I was there to get what was left. The satellite photos made it look like parts of the roof were missing, and that was right. I stood in the living room and stared up through the slats at the blue sky and wondered at the size of a storm that could tear the hundred year old pecan tree in the backyard, at the base of which I'd buried a lucky horseshoe upright so the luck wouldn't run out, from the ground and toss it like a toothpick. Most of my things were lost to black mold crawling across the walls like lace and the asbestos roof shingles. I took what I could and left. On the drive out, there were boats in yards, and at one point across the lake the bridge was there and then it wasn't. This week was my first time back since then. You can't see it so much--the storm--anymore. It's gotten hidden. I remember what I remember, though. I got my heartbroken in this house. I had a nervous breakdown in this house. I almost killed myself in this house. Today, I had the cab driver wait while I took a few photos. "How long will you be?" he said, as I got out of the car. "Not long," I said. And I wasn't. #neworleans #nola #hurricanekatrina

See this Instagram photo by @susannahbreslin * 28 likes

Last week, I went to the Investigative Reporters and Editors conference in New Orleans. It was the first time I'd been back to the city since 2005, when I was pushed out by Hurricane Katrina. I wrote a mini-Instagram essay on it, which I've reposted here.

NOLA, I Miss Ya

Sex workers parading through the streets dressed as baby dolls, smoking cigars, flinging money at men? New Orleans. http://t.co/4Uw5ItJsRy

— Clayton Cubitt (@claytoncubitt) February 5, 2015