GOOD THINGS STILL HAPPEN
2024 ended on an insane note. I haven’t written about the terrorist attack in New Orleans on New Year’s Eve. Kechi and I had planned to spend the evening swimming at the Country Club and dropping in on the usual parties before returning to our hotel in my old neighborhood of Central City, but I was suddenly called away to Atlanta for a family emergency. I spent the next few days in the ICU at Northside hospital, then flew home for a bare few days before winging off to the Stonecoast residency in Maine.
Of course, the attack bothered me badly—and it still does. Not just the lives lost and the violence visited on people who were either trying to celebrate or eke out a living serving or supporting in the Quarter. It’s not the rage of the attack that bothers me, it’s the way it was directed at some of the smallest, most vulnerable people. And then because the Sugar Bowl was due to start, our city leaders opened the district right back up because tourism is New Orleans’ chief industry.
I used to live right on the bus line that goes from the cemeteries by City Park all the way up to the Walmart on Tchoupitoulas. Having a Walmart so conveniently located was immensely helpful to me since I didn’t have a car. I would often ride the bus up there, shop for two weeks to a month’s worth of food and supplies, and then take the unsanctioned hood taxi home. A man was fatally stabbed outside that Walmart in, I think 2019. He crawled into the store and died at the entrance beside the little McDonald’s kiosk. The Walmart shut down for only a few hours, and the next day, it was as if none of it had happened. I went there to shop because it was the cheapest, most convenient option, and something about the lack of acknowledgement, the fact that everything was going on, business as usual, made my skin crawl. I resolved to stop going.
I’m not going to just stop going to the French Quarter or give up on New Orleans—that’s just not something I’m willing to do—but I’m tired of the constant reminders of how little our lives mean to the ruling class, to the organs of government. I didn’t watch the inauguration, but when I learned that the richest man on Earth—who has not been elected to fucking anything, by the way—gave the Seig Heil not once, but twice, during his speech…. What bothers me most is that it was shocking to me, but not surprising. Even less surprising is the way people and news outlets rushed to caution us against believing the evidence we’re seeing with our lying eyes.
All this will end. This evil will pass from the Earth. I don’t just believe that, I know it in my bones. What I find most frightening in all this is that we, the public, keep getting chances to decide how and when it will end, and we keep turning them down. It looks increasingly like the only way for us to control how these forces, institutions, and practices are dissolved is to reform or dissolve them ourselves—and we’re just not into that.
Believe it or not, I’m happy, though. Nobody close to me died over the winter break. My aged mother is already recovered from her recent bout of Covid. Kechi and I are thriving, thinking of our next move after we put on PERVIRGIN this weekend. Today I’m writing from our bedroom because it’s the warmest room in the house, and outside we’re experiencing a melt after a blizzard the likes of which South Louisiana hasn’t seen in 130 years. Our leaders and our communities were woefully unprepared to face this kind of weather, but even so, we went out to frolic in it and enjoyed the pics and videos of weirdos skiing down levees and on Bourbon Street.
One very positive thing in all this is that the blizzard forced me to stop and get some rest. I was bone-weary before the snow hit, tired in my spirit, but with a few days of great sleep and a ton of cuddle time with Kechi and Karate, I honestly feel like myself again! So good things still happen, love can still warm us, and even now, we need not march downhill into darkness.