HOME!!
Going back home for the 1st time in 37 days – 5:44 am - I wake after sleeping for 90 minutes due to Dr. Jeff’s party…the cab is scheduled for 5:45 so I don’t get my last real shower before going to NO…the cab driver is very nice and concerned about my comfort – the music that’s playing is the Cure, then a song by a smooth voiced man singing the chorus over and over “still looking for the summer”...“just looking for the summer” – if this were a movie he unknowingly picked the perfect soundtrack. It was so sad to leave JC’s- my home for 5 weeks.

Sitting here at the Dallas airport with all of the other NO folks going home, I've never seen so many people looking so tired and anxious. No one speaks – everyone’s in their own little world of thought - probably most people’s 1st time home. There are 2 guys from an Oklahoma Disaster relief agency…one guy has a baseball cap with his agency’s insignia and a bunch of pins relating to various disasters he’s helped out on – he’s old and he’s got lots of pins. I scan the crowd to see if ther’s anyone I recognize. I assume most people have homes to go to because the only people who are allegedly allowed back in now are people from the dry areas.

The car started right up – I was so happy to see that it had not been physically damaged either. After going to 3 gas stations and eventually getting some gas on the way to NO, I began to see the damage – signs everywhere blown down – office windows in high rises blown out… then there were the police positioned at exits on the highway – exits to flooded areas were still off limits. I was so anxious to see my place. As I got off at the St. Charles St. exit, I was very pleased to see that the ancient oak trees that line St. Charles still stood – a bit more bare, but still there. I turned onto the street running parallel to mine and noticed that the home that was being rehabbed was now rubble – completely caved in on itself. As I parked in front of my home, I noticed the blue tarps on the roof and the caved-in overhang above the upstairs balcony – I figured it has survived since 1860, so a big branch of a tree mashing its roof a bit wasn’t the end of the world for this house. I walked in and stepped on broken glass from one of the side windows - a piece of roof tile lay on the floor staring at me with guilt as the culprit of the break.
My bikes were there – the sofa I just got 1 week before the hurricane hit was there. A large piece of the ceiling in the second living room was on the floor – wet drywall (an oxymoron) covered a good section of the floor, but was a relatively easy cleanup. 3 prints from Imja Tse in Nepal were waterlogged, but they were inkjet prints and easily replaceable. The beautiful painting that I commissioned JC to create for me was in perfect shape (luckily as he hadn’t taken a picture of it before I received it so if it was lost, there was no record of it) Upstairs, a window in the studio had broken and in the guest bedroom, half of the ceiling was covered in mold as a result of the water that was invited in by the tree crashing through the overhang and roof. My (cheap, self manufactured) bookshelf had fallen apart and all of its contents were strewn across the floor – I assume this was from the house shaking. A few prints from Nepal and Argentina that had made it through the fire were now creased and folded…seems they were determined to to die in some sort of disaster…every 10 seconds there is a loud beep from the alarm system – presumably the backup battery is dead. I have no idea how to fix that, so I just try not to let it drive me insane. I heard heavy machinery outside my door and saw big yellow backhoes lifting random tree debris into dumpsters right outisde my houseThe huge tree that provided such amazing shade in my backyard chose to fall inthe only direction that it could in order to avoid hitting a house. Of the 4 directions it essentially could have fallen, it took direction #3, which placed it lovingly across 3 separate backyards, crushing the fences between all of them, but not even scraping any of the house that stood all around it
I drove to Mimi’s neighborhood to check on her house. On the way, I noticed things looking more and more warzone-like.
All of the cars that were floating around on Orleans Street had been placed on the neutral ground (median or grassy divider) and they all had water marks near the roof of the car.

I began seeing obvious waterline marks on all of the buildings. This area was flooded, but not nearly as badly as the 9th Ward. The watermarks were about 4 feet above the ground on the houses. The American Can Company, home of my favorite wine shop, Cork and Bottle, had plenty of flooding, as well. Random boats and furniture looked so out of place on major thoroughfares.
On Monday, I toured the area more extensively, driving down historic St. Charles Ave. to Audubon Park. The majority of the stately mansions on St. Charles had only minor damage (yes, those with money and insurance have little damage while those with very little lose everything). Drving donw Magazine Street, things were in some serious disarray.
I had dinner again at the only restaurant in my neighborhood. A group of older, interesting looking gentlemen sat at the table next to me. One had a full beard, great glasses and a suit and bowtie, looking ever the Southern Gentleman. As a group of National Guardsmen entered the restaurant and stood at the doorway, one of the men at the table next to me said “Oh, the Military has arrived”, and the man with the bowtie said “Of course they have….a big hurricane hit 5 weeks ago….” There was uproarious laughter. I smiled to myself.
I nervously drove to the French Quarter at 7 pm, an hour after the curfew began. Curfew. Not a word that is of any significance to the multitude of relief workers getting some relief of their own at the bars and clubs of the French Quarter. Although about 50 times less populated than it would be on any other Monday night, the Quarter was hopping. Live music, live booze, live eating. The bars were mostly populated with male disaster relief workers.
I drove back towards my house and was escorted by two huge HUMVEES full of National Guard troops. They drove exactly my speed, didn’t pull me over to ask where I was going and flanked me on either side. Very surreal.
I went back to the restaurant where I had dinner and met many folks who like me had just returned and had stories to tell. It was interesting that instead of soap in the bathroom, there was a huge bottle of the water-free hand sanitizer - drinking or even washing your hands in this water is a no-no. I met the owner of the Kingpin, a bar that I had been to the weekend before Katrina hit for Elvis Appreciation Night – A Clockwork Elvis was playing that night and there were tons of “E” impersonators. He is opening the bar on Wednesday and told me of the nearby butcher who decided to put all of his rotting meat out on the grass lot nearby the bar instead of in a dumpster. The smell is so bad that the owner of the Kingpin ordered 500 pounds of lyme and is having a ceremony tomorrow, which I will be shooting, in which he will cover all of the rotting pigs, turkeys, and chickens with lyme while several protesters march and the folks who have mustered up a class action lawsuit cheer nearby while sipping Mint Juleps. Should be fun. I’m not making this shit up. Only in New Orleans. On the way home I was (finally) stopped by the Guard. 3 HUMVEES blocking the road. A boy who could not have been more than 18 flagged me down. I told him I was at the restaurant down the street and was going home. He smiled and said "Drive safely, sir". My street was eerily quiet and deserted...