Here and There

By Jill Ensley

Thursday, June 26, 2008

We returned early, early Monday morning, and the truth is, I haven't known where to start, what to say, how to sum it all up. I'm not sure I know even now. Really, how many different ways can I say, "today we worked on drywall" or "today I took a 16-hour bath in my own sweat".

Instead, I'll say, here I am, a week older if not wiser and I haven't a clue what the next step is. MY next step. Or I do, but don't know how to get there. Here I am, with a permanent black and ocher NOLA-shaped heart on my sleeve and all I can think these past few days back home is, "I don't want to be here."

It was the people I met, the people I barely got to know and may never see again, the woman at Mother's getting a good 5-minute kick out of my name being called repeatedly. Always, the city itself and how it gets in your bones and won't let go. It's been taking little bites of me since I was sixteen, roaming Bourbon intoxicated for the first time on much more than cheap booze, confused and eventually deeply hurt by something that started there the next year while trying to recapture the magic of the year before. It took me over ten years to get back, bitter finally diffused, left only with the sweet, sorrow and love.

This happened before, this clinging restlessness, when I moved back home after moving to L.A., the time before it became a more permanent situation. You think you're making the right decision, flight over fight, but your motivation turns out to be merely safety or fear, or both. So you take three months, or one, depending, and you sort this shit out, and get back out there. Yet what seemed merely exciting at 20, is a somewhat more serious issue at 30. But I've never been one to make highly responsible choices or to worry about age (though, lately, maybe I should. ya ha!), especially not when it feels like the Earth is a wet, flea-ridden dog, trying to shake us all off with earthquakes and storms, chewing the pests off with floods and fires. Apparently, we could all die tomorrow from a volcano long past its due date. So what the fuck, y'know.

And if I fully realized anything this past week, it's that I'm not a journalist and I don't fucking want to be. I can drop f-bombs, I can personalize, and I don't give a flying crap about demographics(human oughta just about cover it), angles, and being entirely objective. I can talk about my feelings and say things like, "New Orleans breaks my fucking heart and I love it, every dirty, mucked up, honeyed and hacked up corner of it" or "Today, I just needed to be alone for a few minutes. So I took the car under the guise of getting more bourbon and drove East on Claiborne, just drove and drove and drove with the music blaring and me crying because I couldn't find the fucking end to the destruction and I can't imagine living like this." But it's a lie, because I can.

New Orleans doesn't make sense. It's a city that shouldn't even exist and yet there it is, there it has been for a few hundred years, and there it damn well should be for a few hundred more, at least until the wet, mangy mutt shakes us all off entirely. All I know, is that before that happens, I want to have lived, loved, and helped others without fear or regret. And if that means scrambling at the last minute, giving up on a few things, and the ability to forget the whirling vortex of me-centric thinking to focus on something bigger, all the better. Right now, my only regret is that I took so long to realize how short a week, or a lifetime, really is.

Incidentally, the quote in the teaser is from the book 1 Dead in Attic by Chris Rose. Don't let the title fool you, like most things New Orleans, there are always many dualities, levels, contradictions.

The first batch of photos are here. These are just the digitals, the snapshots, the rest need to be developed.

Music you should check out:

VaVaVoom

Zydepunks

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Posted by DOTDOT (anonymous) on June 26, 2008 at 9:58 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Posted by godjilla (Jill Ensley) on June 26, 2008 at 10:40 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Posted by mitzibel (Misty Nuckolls) on June 26, 2008 at 12:12 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Posted by smerdyakov (anonymous) on June 26, 2008 at 12:25 p.m. (Suggest removal)

))<>((

Posted by godjilla (Jill Ensley) on June 26, 2008 at 1:26 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Oh you, always with the poop.
THAT'S THE LAST TIME I GET ALL PERSONAL FOR YOU ASSHATS!*

*not really.

Posted by mitzibel (Misty Nuckolls) on June 26, 2008 at 5:11 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Heh. No, I really, really liked this blog, I'm just too mentally fried to go into why. But I do like it, and I admire you, and I think you're just the bee's knees, dammit.

Posted by godjilla (Jill Ensley) on June 26, 2008 at 6:45 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Ohhh, I was referring to Mr. Smerdy up there, not you. I just read your blog, by the way. What a shitty situation, to say the least. Thinking of you and the grieving parents...and thank you. Ditto, my friend, ditto.

Now, anyone wanna sub-lease an apartment in East Lawrence?
Heh.

Posted by godjilla (Jill Ensley) on June 26, 2008 at 6:46 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Mr. Smerdypants.
Damn! I'm so slow sometimes.

Posted by smerdyakov (anonymous) on June 27, 2008 at 10:02 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Huh? I thought you got it right away...? Now I'm feeling slow...

While the "back and forth" thing is one of my fav movie moments, it wasn't meant to be commentary on yer blog -- which I sincerely appreciated. I was just trying to come with some punctuation.

For those who missed that movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQoJo81lu...

Posted by DOTDOT (anonymous) on June 27, 2008 at 5:03 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Jeez, it's a good thing I'm too old to be embarrassed. I thought that was a goatsee thing.

I hereby declare myself the winner of the slow race.

Posted by blazcona (anonymous) on June 30, 2008 at 12:05 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Jill,

Thanks for taking me back home, and I enjoyed seeing its poetry through your eyes. You will get tired of those daiquiris, although they can be the perfect drink on a hot summer day. I hope you return and share your thoughts once again. And when you do, I want you to do something for me.

At sunset, go to the levee of the Industrial Canal where it intersects with the Mississippi River on the Lower Ninth side. There is a walkway atop the Canal and Mississippi levees, and it is the finest spot to catch the sunset. The sun falls over the Mississippi River upstream from your position. The French Quarter will be clearly visible, bounded on the horizon by the massive bridge, and both bridge and the Quarter come to life with lights to fill in for the departing sun. Inevitably, you will see ships moving through the River. Those moving away from you chug and chug against the currents. Some of the most powerful engines in the world, inventions of “man” like tugboats, struggle against the River’s power. (In 1998 I met a severely depressed, Cajun tugboat captain in the hospital, whose liver was destroyed from constant inhalation of diesel fumes emitted by the boat fighting the River. He could no longer work on a boat. He explained his situation to me like this: “I got nothing.”). I do not want to resort to some cliché like “you witness nature’s power.” I guess to you just witness general power in its purity. I do not believe that the River is beautiful, but it presents an overwhelming reality that I still do not understand (but I think the Captain did).

2B CONT.

Posted by blazcona (anonymous) on June 30, 2008 at 12:06 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Then, you might catch a massive grain tanker (I am not sure if they are called “tankers,” but they should be) gliding downstream in your direction like an ice skater who magically slides on the surface. Perhaps some brown pelicans have decided to fish along the Ninth today and put on a show for your pleasure. (They do love sunsets.) You stare at the city’s portrait (which includes the River) and realize how the site of this place was no mistake at all. The media would have us believe it that way with simplifications about sea level and what have you. Now, the city does have a way of transforming personal mistakes (i.e. irresponsibility) into a kind of art form. And, a number of egregious mistakes have remade the typography and hydrology of the city as a whole. Mistakes at many levels are everywhere. But this site was right for many, at least, for two centuries—not to mention the Native Americans who used the general location as a port that dates back to pre-Columbian times. I would concede that many things changed in the 20th century with land transformation both inside the city and above the city in the sprawling drainage basin, especially the Midwest. I wonder if the charisma of the place—the personal attractions that somehow fester in its humidity and that you nicely articulate—is possibly a connection to a long history of outstanding decisions, concerning how to live and where to live. I believe one example would be the decision of the neighborhood residents (whose houses will face your back when enjoy this sunset) to demand the walkway beneath your feet as they fought the imperial desires delegated to the Army Corps of Engineers

I am not sure if any of that makes sense, but I have not thought about home that much in a long time.

Thank you,

Brian

Posted by mitzibel (Misty Nuckolls) on July 1, 2008 at 8:19 a.m. (Suggest removal)

That was awesome, Brian.

Jill, you seen this?
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2...

Posted by godjilla (Jill Ensley) on July 1, 2008 at 12:49 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Ahhhh! That would be why I was seeing all those jobs for Tulane and Loyola posted. Hmmm...

Brian, thank you for that. And yes, only one daquiri was consumed. It's not my drink of choice. Bourbon, my friend, bourbon.

Oddly enough, I DID watch the sunset from the levee. Maybe not in that exact spot, but just by the Claiborne bridge. It was stunning and thought-provoking to say the least.

I hope I didn't imply that NOLA is a mistake. I'm catagorically one of those people who gets pissed when I hear others say cavalier things like, "they should just move it" or "just let it sink". Maybe it's because of all those poor decisions, misplaced priorities, and attempts at caging nature that it seems, at times, irreversible. But if the people of New Orleans have taught me anything, it's tenacity and an undercurrent of positivity amongst all the rank and ruin. Sure, it doesn't make sense, but it does. Like most things NOLA, and most things human for that matter, complexity and contradictions seem to reign supreme.

There's a great two(or three)-pager about the river in that Chris Rose book, if you haven't read it already.

Posted by blazcona (anonymous) on July 3, 2008 at 12:21 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Complexity and contradiction do seem to capture the matter.

That was an encouraging article at the USA today.

Here is another positive sign in the St. Louis Dispatch by Carolyn Kousky on Jun. 30 2008

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/
stories.nsf/editorialcommentary/story/
B03F2FBB295EA9CB862574760000C2BF?OpenDocument

It addresses the recent Midwest flooding with a better appreciation of contradiction and complexity.

Brian

Posted by OtherJoel (anonymous) on July 22, 2008 at 7:23 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Beautiful writing; beautiful images. It's clear how much that place inspires you.

So, um. Might be beating dotdot on the slow race, but am I to take this to mean you're gearing up for a permanent relocation? You shouldn't leave without an appropriately boozy send-off with myself, dotdot, Nuckolls, Smerdy (and his elegant tastes in poo humor), and the rest of the Godjilla readers. And we'll all drink bourbon. And I might show man-boob for beads if drunk enough. Hell, we should do that anyway.

I know this isn't the first time I've proposed such a thing, and I couldn't make it when it happened. I do apologize. Don't ever move to Olathe. It's very difficult to break free of the suckage that keeps me here... But I WILL do everything I can to make this one.

Lemme know.

Posted by godjilla (Jill Ensley) on July 26, 2008 at 2:55 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Oh man, I'm sorry OJ...but you'll have to travel a few miles south now to drink some bourbon with me....details to follow shortly.

Here and There

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