New Orleans

Jenna Barufka

I have landed myself amongst the doers. The thinkers. The Creators. Past Press Street, a room of color sits beneath a gallery of grays, blacks and whites. From the ceiling hang books, stories and words, a brightly colored box and newspaper clippings. On display, strewn over desks, hidden behind stacks of books or in the cracks of the wall, dripping through ceiling tiles and in everyone’s eyes: art. Outside these walls the streets are duller, emptier, but he tells us that, “these people are doers. They get stuff done.” Sitting down I find myself eye-level with a masterpiece, a picture drawn with one blue marker on a sheet of long, thin, paper. A man sails a boat, balancing precariously upon the crest of a monstrous wave undulating beneath him, and he looks out to an even larger wave, waiting for him, behind him. He just looks at it, he doesn’t show a crumb of fear. Neither does anybody else. A kid and I sit beside one another on plastic gray chairs, a journal in my hand, a clipboard with blank sheets of paper on it in his. I prompt him, and a story spews from his lips like water from a geyser. He takes no time to doubt himself, to shrug his shoulders or even mutter out an, “uh…” By the end of it my hand is cramping and the page is full.  The room is filled with personalities. Children and adults alike talk big, walk big. I have to work to make myself just as big as everyone else. I ask the questions that everyone else already knows the answers to.

I’ve been shoved in here amongst the movers. I met two of them. One seemed he could say everything about anything for as long as he needed to, the other couldn’t. Instead he tells me that, “sometimes you need to feel it.” They take me and the others out on the Mississippi. The day we go out she’s standing taller than most; she reaches out and engulfs the forests and wood, combs her fingers through their branches, their trunks and leaves. Nature, the trees and the sky and the sun, they pick themselves up and dust themselves off to match her style. Trees hunch over and their branches curve into the water like the arms of a wilting willow. We drift through them, under them, light breaking through the canopy of leaves above us in crooked patches. Butterflies and moths flutter past my eyes, land on my fingers, and the insects hidden in the undergrowth coo in my ears. The water looks a deep blue, looks soft to the touch. This is the place mermaids live, the place fairytales take place, a place so marvelous the movers have me put down my paddles, tell me, “drift.”

Back from the river they keep talking, giving, and showing, the movers. They take us to “the cave,” and we find ourselves drowning in the waste of the Mississippi: animal skins hanging from a clothesline, a magnificent sloth bone placed upon a table, a dead hummingbird in a petri dish. Rocks, skulls. At least fifty copies of “American Heritage” line their shelves. Stacks of books and magazines make the infrastructure of a personal library. They’re busy folk, with places to be, things to do, to be a part of, start up. Still they stay calm, and they tell us as we go, “wherever life’s journey takes you, may the river be with you.”

I’m becoming overwhelmed by the makers and sustainers. I found myself in a house of many things, many people. A man sits in the corner of the room, talks to me. He tells me his house is a people’s place, so I nod and tell him, “That’s nice.” His tables overflow with photo albums, books of pictures organized by “Before” and “After” Katrina. One desk is invisible under a pile of Wizard of Oz – type sparkling slippers, in different sizes and designs. It’s a special collection, he tells us, donated to him by craft workers for the Mardi Gras Parade. A corner in the back is dedicated to his involvement in the Jewish community, and a pink tzedakah box sits at his feet. Each showcase lining the walls is a different story. The first is of Louisiana Cajun Culture, stuffed with pillows and accordions and washboards designed by Cajun craftsmen. The second is of African heritage, fragile wooden models of slave ships piled on top, giraffe and elephant statues behind the protective glass screen. He has them there because the stories need to be continued to be told, he says. We ask him if he has ever encountered a story that doesn’t deserve to be told. “No,” he tells us. “Because some way along the way, the dots do connect.” All of New Orleans, from hundreds of years past to last week, lives under his roof, is preserved under his roof. He tells me his house is a people’s house, and I believe him. I ask him every question, and he has every answer.

I have been stranded here with the believers. I pass a man sitting in a fold-up chair on the corner of the street. He wears a reggae colored umbrella hat on his head and moves to his own music, his eyes closed, a smile tugging at his lips. He moves like his heart beat is the drum, like his fingers wrap out the melody. I wonder what he is listening to.

Days come, days go, and I pass him again. He sits in the same chair, on the same corner. He has a mega phone to his lips. Both hands around the rusted white handle he preaches, tilts his head back and reminds everyone to thank Jesus for, “the food on your table, the money in your pocket.” He asks questions he already knows the answer to. He keeps his eyes closed, isn’t expectant, doesn’t search faces for a response, a reason to do. He just does. I think about what he had been listening to, about wondering if the music was in his heart and fingers rather than his ears. I decide it probably was.

I wish I were like them, the doers, the movers, the makers and sustainers and believers. Perhaps they only do more because there is so much left undone, but it seems like people start acting like water; the hotter it gets, the more they move, the more they do. They move, bend, move, break, rise and rise and pop, over and over till the water runs dry.

It’s not just the people. Everything moves. Pavement crawls with cockroaches and beads swings from strings swing from telephone poles. Heat bends buildings and trees, makes their roots slither. Under the streets tension runs like a pipeline of flammable gas, dripping through wrecked pavement from wrecked houses, and fueling an ever-growing pocket of heat that is one spark away from eruption. People keep moving.

I will be much safer when I am gone (safety, though, also expressing complacency, expressing dissatisfaction, expressing regret). I will be much safer when I am back, when I am where the people are colder and the air is still and the movements are jagged, calculated, bend, extend, turn, smile, nod, smile, nod, smile…