Chicago: Race and Rain and Russians

Part I: Prairie Street

It rained, after I passed Soldier Field and settled at a window table in a Prairie Street Historic District coffee house. The rain. And all those manning the kitchen and espresso machines were clearly low wage Latino workers. This is not something I’ve seen in the St. Louis area – yet. I mean, maybe most U.S. baristinos are underpaid (I made $6 an hour in 2000 as a barista), but I hope those Chicago guys were at least making minimum wage. These details make something happen, inside the box of me. Other things, too, but the rain and the poor are enough, this late summer 2005.

Outside the window, the street that leads to such beautiful houses, huge and stone, the oldest in the city. And the Hillary Rodham Clinton Women’s Garden, with its idealized little play house in sitting sadly hollow (why would such a cool playhouse be empty on a Saturday, even before the rain?). I went into the playhouse and thought, “If I were any kind of a mother I would have managed a playhouse like this for my kids.” There are so many sad mother-thoughts. Too many to count. Too many ways that I know I could have done better, tried harder. How many days would it have taken me, if I had just decided to build them a lovely play house like this, one with windows that go all the way from floor to ceiling, peaked roof, flat, yellow painted wooden porch? I could have done it, surely. OK, maybe it wouldn't this perfect -- but it may have held together through a few thunderstorms.

A Poet Writes Technical Manuals for Jets

Some days are just socked in
I sit at this desk, my life suspended
In the air around me, like particles
Of fog, each grey icy stubborn
Piece of it clenching a painting, budding
Flower, trip South, a memoir
holding on but not falling -- baiting the light,
come here Light resists gravity
I sit in the middle of all this and feel
The hoarfrost pricking my skin, harsh
But it’s only art, unreleased

I am more kin to special relativity
Than the linear processes popular around here
But I balance along them, blondly, teetering,
Because these paths
Are my job, and I have to eat
But it makes me feel even more alone
To watch my neural gardens reconfigure
This way.

See, I just can’t make this work feel important.
I could be in a boat, saving.
I could be delivering a baby.
I could be writing a poem, right now.
Things fall where they’re meant
To fall. I float.

Conspiracy to Evolve

I'm getting a lot of conspiracy theory calls from friends. And it's not that I think these stories and their related theories sound far-fetched -- they don't. I can believe that a classist/racist world would feel less anxious about a stadium full of poor black people than it would about a stadium full of rich white people. That's almost a Duh. But do I think that the Bush administration intentionally withheld funding to fix the New Orleans levee system because they knew the big storm was coming and wanted to commandeer the city for oil shipping and receiving purposes? Not really. For one thing, I didn't see Clinton (ya, I know, Republican Congress -- point granted) fixing it, either.

I really think Bushness is like most other evil: banal. What we're seeing now is the semi-accidental, mundane convergence of short sighted, callous, greedy, (yes, classist/racist) decisions. I think the Bushettes hoped the Big Storm just wouldn't happen on their watch, wanted to use the money for Iraq, wanted to cut taxes for the wealthy. What we're seeing now is the natural result of those short sighted, callous, greedy, classist/racist decisions. This result highlights some pretty uncomfortable truths:

We have no real leadership.

In spite of Bushite reassurances to the contrary, we have no efficient, coordinated emergency response system.

There are actually poor people in America.

And there appears to be (gee wiz) some correlation between race and poverty.
Poverty makes it hard to get out of town when danger approaches (i.e., ya can't get out of town if you don't have a car/gas/money).

In a way, deep conspiracy would be easier to deal with. It's something concrete to point to, easy to separate oneself from. But in the end, it's easier to create an us/them dichotomy in that instance as well. Easier to demonize, dehumanize. While it might be rather difficult for most of us to sympathize with or even relate to poor planning, inefficiency, hopeful thinking, bureaucratic ineptitude, and lust for money, at least we have to admit that those are basic human behaviors that we're all guilty of to some degree or another.

Then again, when September 11 happened I said to my students, "No one could possibly predict planes flying into towers, for heavens sake!"

On the positive side:

Human nature in these two major disasters has shown itself as something far more heartful and generous than, surely, most of us knew. People offering their homes to hurricane refugees is in the hundreds of thousands. Offering them free. No questions about race or religion or previous employment. Just offering their houses. People are crawling out of the woodwork to send money and water and food. Apparently what the opinions of crowd psychologists (prior to Sept. 11) was wrong: we don't think of #1 when the shit hits the fan. We think of one another.

And maybe this is really what we need to know about ourselves right now. Maybe knowing this about ourselves will help us break our addiction to the so-called leaders who want so badly to convince us that we need their protection, or the Russians, Arabs, hurricanes will get us.

The truth is, there is no safe place, no all-knowing and protective big daddy. We have to grow up now and realize this. We have to. It's the next jump in evolution, and if we don't take it and therefore start taking care of ourselves, well, we just aren't going to last all that much longer.

There is no big daddy. There will always be danger. Those are hard things to know. But we have each other. We really do -- as long as our hearts are open. Imagine if we could keep our hearts always as open to one another as they are right now. Just imagine for a second.

Selfish Me

Such a sad day. So much array. So much sorrow. I feel guilty telling the truth: I’m so lonely.

Hurricanes Effect Love, I'm Telling You

Sorry, this is a rant.

Yes, reactions differ. I have a loved one, male, whom I often admire for his kindness and generosity. On the other hand, often enough his reactions to things leave me open mouthed and reeling. Last night I told him about my friend’s relative, displaced by Katrina.

“Well, surely he has insurance,” was about as far as his heart/mind would take him. It’s just stupid. If he does have flood insurance, how fast are those checks going to get cut, anyway? And what about the stress, the emotional toll, the being away from work? The loss of income? How about not being about to find out news about any of your friends? Wondering if they’re lost, trapped, dead? Maybe my guy has the attitude that if someone is dumb enough to live in New Orleans without flood insurance, dumb enough to not have plenty of savings put by for disasters, etc., that s/he deserves whatever hardship s/he suffers? This is the height of Puritan arrogance, for Christ sakes. The ‘ole Blessed Be the Hard Workers and Everyone Else Is Going To Hell doctrine. Total Morals a la Americana. The thing is, my guy believes himself to be as far from Puritan as possible. Funny.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s related to his alcoholism (not active), like it’s some form of denial. Everyone is ok. Everything will be ok as long as I don’t watch/listen/think too much. Or feel.

Times like this, I wonder: what am I doing? Why do I spend so much time wishing he would marry me? What in the world am I looking for in a mate, anyway? Isn’t compassion right up there at the top of the list, with honesty and kindness? Isn’t compassion under fire, compassion before the facts are in, compassion when disdain or dismissal would be far easier more virtuous or full of heart or whatever than compassion only for those whose Deep Correctness is obvious?

People aren’t perfect, I know. But at times like these we should all of us who are warm and dry and fed try, really, to be as perfect (to one another) as possible.

New Orleans

One time, in the early '90s, my best friend went crazy there, from love. It was the voodoo of the air, she said, and her memory. Late one night in the Quarter she just took off walking, alone, and wouldn't even let me speak to her. I followed from a distance, hoping to keep her unmolested.

We stayed at a place called The Hummingbird, on the wrong side of Canal Street. It was a shabby little room above an all night cafe, but cost us only $27.50 a night (total). This left all the rest of our money for food and shopping.

Now these places, where she wandered crazily, where we ate in bliss, where we stayed -- crazily -- are all under water. And I know there are faces I saw there -- like maybe the junky woman who needed money for the night, or the guy in the costume shop, or jazz players, or the waiter, or the cute fireman who gave us a ride to keep us from walking to the cemetery alone, or a child on the street, anyone that I saw on any of my trips to this most magical of U.S. cities -- who could be unspeakably sad, or hungry, or underwater.