Word Gatherer: Life in a Time of Saturn Rising

6.24.06, from kundiman, uva …

I do want to do more living
too, not only the writer’s life, shifting in and out. I need to exhume
and excavate everything I’ve intook over the last five years of writing
and instruction, and relearn, revisit.

from today, new orleans …

This
past week, I felt like I really descended into being here, into the
space everyone around me seems to be in, operating at only a small
percentage of what they are capable of, because they’ve lost so much
that I can’t even begin to comprehend. Losing all of your writings,
your work, your pictures, your home. I’m feeling the weight of so much
information, so many stories yet honored that they are being shared
with me. There was a point I felt so overwhelmed by words, and was glad
to go on a walk, feeling contradicted by the warm sun and lush grass
and bright flowers.

It’s felt hard to stay grounded although I’m
tried hard to keep my morning pages practice, and kept my date to
Wiggling to Wellness.

It’s so easy to go back to a space where
you push yourself to the background. I’ve been feeling guilty because I
haven’t been very productive yet still feel overwhelmed. I think Asians
carry around a huge guilt complex.

S’s mom came to stay because
S went to Angola to Herman Wallace (who is part of the Angola 3)’s
hearing. We hung out, ate lentil soup & chopped it up. She couldn’t
stop telling me stories so I finalliy asked her if I could write some
of it down so I could share with you. She’s a poet too, and I felt like
this was the kick in the butt I needed to be reminded to get to my
writing again.

Interview with Irene Griffin

What was it like growing up?

I
was born on August 12, 1943 — 7 am in the morning on a Thursday in
Donaldsonville, Louisiana, a little town where everybody knew somebody.
Growing up in a family of nine (six sisters and three brothers), we
were poor but happy.

I was happy until I was 12, when my mother
died in childbirth. I was close to both parents, but there was a
special bond between my mom and I. When she passed away, there was a
void. My father, when I needed help in school, he would tell me, give
me your book, let me read it. He would say, it’s there, go find it. But
my mother would work with me to find the answer, but not my dad. When
my mother was living, she was my confidante. Whatever happened at
school, I couldn’t wait to get home to tell what was going on. When she
passed away, I could talk, but no one to confide in.

My dad
couldn’t make me cry. He would beat me, and I wouldn’t cry so that made
him whup me longer, and I wouldn’t let him see me cry. I was stubborn.
Because when my mother would spank me, the tears came.

What kind of work did your mother do?

She did domestic work, and she worked in the field cutting sugar cane.

And your father?

My
father did a lot of different types of jobs. Back then, you would say
common laborer, but my daddy was a welder, a carpenter. My father
worked for Andrew Higgins Shipyard in New Orleans during the time when
they built ships that won the War {WWII}. He worked at building
streets. He helped build the first public housing in Donaldsonville. .

What kind of work did your grandparents do?

My
dad’s mom did domestic work. She worked cutting sugarcane and she did
work picking strawberries in the pines. I don’t know my dad’s dad, but
his stepfather worked at cutting sugarcane, grass and rice, and he
worked in the pines picking strawberries. He did gardening plus cutting
grass. I knew my grandmother and grandfather because they helped raise
us.

What was it like going to school then?

Going to school was good. 

When
I was a child, my grandfather didn’t know when he was born and was
trying to find information. And I was 10, 11, and 12 years old writing
to the president of the United States because they were giving him
information. I wrote to Mary Allen Parker in Baton Rouge, she was the
secretary of state. I wrote letters to these people for my grandfather.
What child of that age are writing letters? I wonder if they knew that
the person writing those letters was a little 10, 11 year-old child?
And he would get responses. At school, they didn’t teach you how to
write letters. They didn’t give you formats, but I did.

Before
I started school, I was reading and writing. I could not print.
Everything I did, I did in a cursive form. I used to read a lot until I
pick up a book that my father had on how the world would end, and the
book had people running, they looked like they were naked and there was
fire. That kind of curbed my reading on what to read. It was scary. At
9 and 10 years old.

I read the newspapers, the Times, little
children books, the Ebony and the Jet, the Louisiana Weekly which was a
Black paper about Black people. I used to read schoolbooks that was not
my grade level, the upper level, that had stories in it. I would read
all of that. I remember reading a book about Bombay, how the children
were living.

So I tells my grandchildren, it is very important
for them to read one hour a day, and read to understand what you are
reading. Because that will help you to elevate yourself. I’m trying.

When
I had to switch over from the parochial school to the public school, it
was hard. I was 11. The nuns put us out, my little sister and I,
because my older sister had transferred to a public school.

Did you like going to the parochial school?

That
was love. Because of the way we were taught. At that time, we were like
a grade ahead of the public schools. What I had in 4th grade, I had in
5th grade. You only had two schools for Blacks.

So the schools were segregated?

Yes.

Earlier you said that you always grew up around white kids.

We had neighbors, little white kids and little black kids. 

Did you play together?

To
a certain extent. We knew we had boundaries. We were taught that we
could not go certain places that they were. Back then, the picture
show, the swimming pool, the church. I think the library. The restrooms
in public places. Like a child, on the train. On the Greyhound bus.
Getting a cab, you had to go to the Black cabdriver. A white cabdriver
wouldn’t do it. Waiting for the train to come, you had to go in the
Black section. Waiting for the bus, you had to go in the Black section.
A funny thing — in the grocery stores, it wasn’t like that. Certain
restaurants, if there was a place, it was in the back, or you couldn’t
go in at all. Cemeteries, you had the Black and the white. In other
places, people would pass for white, but not in Donaldsonville because
everyone knew we were Black.

There was a little {white} boy, he
sicced his dog on me walking home from school one day. I was petrified.
Had I not had on a cancan slip on my skirt, he probably would have bit
me because he grabbed onto it. And there was a policeman who had a
sister living in the area with my aunt, and she and her sister had a
habit of picking on petrified black kids and calling her brother. She
would have one of her kids call us names. If you retaliated, she would
call her brother on you because he was a policeman.

Do you think things have changed now, things have become less segregated?:

When
Lyndon Baines Johnson signed that bill in 64, things began to sort of
come together. It wasn’t a big change, but it was some change. There
was still some segregation.

In 68, there were some problems.
Ku Klux Klan did stuff. The Klan were always a part of something and
doing something. When there’s a change, there’s a gradual change. It
didn’t just change overnight.

As I remember, there was an area
{Fountain Blue area} in the city, Blacks couldn’t drive through or walk
through if they didn’t work in that area. And it’s an area now still
Uptown around Tulane or Loyola, there’s a sign identifying No
Walkthrough or Drivethrough. I feel like we all pay taxes, what’s wrong?
There’s
supposed to be a change, but you look back, and you see, there’s no
difference. Because you still have to go to the white man for what you
need, so where’s the change?

What did you think of the civil rights movement back then?

They
had people who were part of the march. At the time, I don’t think 35
principal would have been pleased with us being out on the frontline
because they had their stipulations.

I thought it was wonderful.
Back then when it started, I wasn’t motivated to be a part of it. You
had to have transportation to get places, and a lot of us didn’t have
that kind of transportation. And a lot of us didn’t know who to get in
touch with, or where to go.

When did you move to New Orleans?

Between
15 and 16. You had more opportunities. The school was not just one or
two schools. You had several schools that you could pick to go to or
get accepted to. I came to help my sister with her kids, and I was sick
and I needed medical attention which wouldn’t have cost me anything.
Charity Hospital was the hospital that treated sick people and there
wasn’t a demand on paying hospital bills.

You had buses to
transport you to any part of the city, even though it was still a race
thing where you couldn’t sit in the front of the bus. You had the
Colored side, but you could catch the bus and travel across town. To
me, it seemed like a little more freedom. And you had grocery stores in
your area. They had a lot of barrooms. This was something that was a
little new to me because we didn’t have that many grocery stores and
barrooms.
I transferred myself to McDonough #35 Senior High School
to complete my high school. 35 was like one happy family. When I was a
child, I knew of 35. I pursued my dream. I had a brother-in-law who
graduated from there. 35 school was known as a top school.

What happened after you graduated?

In
62, I was trying to find work and couldn’t. Working in hospitals or
department stores, but they wasn’t hiring. They took your application
and you never heard from them. If you got jobs in the hospitals, it was
somebody that you knew would get you there. I was a very frail person.
I was small. When I told them I was 18 years old, they wouldn’t believe
me. They thought I was younger. When I went to apply, they would say I
wasn’t old enough or you couldn’t handle this. It was a lot of
prejudiced stuff, and you had to know people.

I had jobs around
the house, helping people. Or with their children, helping them do
their hair and stuff. Then, I got pregnant and married. Husband was a
truckdriver. He worked for local companies in Jefferson Parish.

How did you meet your husband?

I
met him {husband} in 11th grade, but I had a boyfriend. By the time I
got to be a senior, he and I had broken up, but we still went to the
prom together. After high school, Robert saw me again, and I would run
from him because I didn’t want to be bothered with him. Every time I
would see him, I would be in a position, I would go Uptown, take the
bus. Until one day, I was in a position where I couldn’t run from him.
The previous boyfriend’s first cousin was a young lady, and we were
still friends, and we was walking from a little restaurant, and who
popped us in front of us but Robert. I couldn’t go run to jump on the
bus. It was early night.

Then he wanted to walk with us, and
my sister said, hey, you like my little sister, and I thought I got her
approval. We started seeing each other. I got pregnant, then I married
him when I was 19.

He became an abusive person later. In the
third year of marriage, but I really found out who he really was due to
his familywise. He was mostly controlled by his sister and his mother
and that was bad. Then he began to use drugs, fooling around with other
women, and his sister, they was helping him. I stayed with him, I don’t
know why, I guess because, I wasn’t going to be running from man to
man. I stayed because I didn’t have the support.

What about your family?

Family, they began to really dislike him, but they were never there for the support.  Everybody was living their life. 

He
was shot in 1975 by a guy. A guy shot him and killed his
ex-brother-in-law over a gambling, playing cards. It missed his heart
by a few inches, but he still had glaucoma.

Committed suicide on
September 27, 1984. He was sick, he had glaucoma. His mind got where he
was going through many different changes. He became schizophrenic. I
had to bring him to a psychiatrist to talk to him to see what he could
do to help him. After he killed himself, I went to his doctor he was
last seeing and he explained to me, he was scarred from a child.

From
my different things that went on in his life with his family. I guess
he couldn’t deal with it, and what he did to me. Because before he
died, he spoke about him going to a dark place, but he didn’t know
where he was going. On a Monday, he was drinking. He had started
drinking liquor, Jack Daniels straight, everyday. He was talking to me,
telling me how he messed up. I would question him and said how did you
mess up? He would say, I was misled. Who misled you? How were you
misled? He said, I have a good wife, a good mother to my children, but
I was misled. I still wanted him to tell me who misled him. He said, I
have eight children. I was just listening to him, you know.

He
went back to his life as a child, some things he did, his parents
thought were funny. And the word was misled. He said he had an icepick,
and he stuck this guy who was around his family on the behind with his
icepick. And they thought it was funny, but it wasn’t funny. That’s
when he was a little boy.
Then he had major issues. At the age of
11 or 12, he was struck by car, and was left for dead in a ditch. He
had a hole in his head, and his leg was broken. They had to put wire in
his ear, and he was in coma for better than a month. When he woke up,
he was in traction. As he grew as a man, he had one leg shorter than
the other one because of the injury. He didn’t complete high school
because he had to stop working to help take care of his mother and me.

How did you feel when he passed?

Can’t
say I was relieved {when he died}, at that time, I was doing all I
could to work with him. Like they were saying, don’t kick a man when
he’s down. I’m a firm believer you don’t kick a person when they’re
down. I wasn’t raised to do you what you did to me. I tried to help him
in every way I could. I was just hurt that he killed himself. He shot
himself in the head with a gun.

Were your kids close to him?

Yes
and no. They loved their father, but the things that he had started
doing. I believe some of them don’t want to talk about it, but if they
could have helped save his life, they would have done it.

Earlier you mentioned that you were going to meetings for your children.

I
was going to the meetings in the 70s, like 70, 71, 72, 73. Parents’
organization when my first five children were going to school. It was a
Title 1 program where parents became involved, discuss school issues
with children, learn about what we could do as a parent. There were
three schools that was involved in the Desire area. The parents would
meet at the individual school, and then the three schools, the parents
would come together and we would get on a bus and do some sightseeing,
go to a restaurant, sit down, eat and conversate, and go back to our
schools and go home. We were the pilot of the Title 1 program.

The
parents was living in public housing, and some were living in own
homes, but they had low-income. I began to be a little more outspoken,
interact with other people.

I moved from that particular area
and my kids were in different schools. When the twins were born, I was
a little stagnated because traveling with babies was a little harder.
But when they were old enough to start school, I begin to conversate
with some different people. Culturally inclined, because my kids were
at McDonough 15.

It was no more Black setting. Black, white,
Hispanic, Vietnamese, Chinese, you know it was multicultural. It was
different because the last three kids didn’t go in a classroom with all
Black kids. They interacted with different nationalities.

I
raised my children when they were young, we would have conference time
every day. After school when they would come home, we would discuss
what happened that day at school either before they went to school,
while they were in school. We would discuss what they saw bad, how they
felt about it.
In Desire, they didn’t see drugs like they saw in
Iberville. They didn’t see people smoking marijuana. They smelled it,
but they didn’t see who did it. They saw it openly. And they saw guys
injecting in needles. And when they saw those things, we talked about
it. When they saw children doing bad things, they talked over that.

I
wasn’t raised in public housing. And the 12-year span with my mother
was a wonderful time. Back then, the people would talk to their
children about things happening in their time growing up. And it wasn’t
no bad things, it was all good. A learning experience is good.

Why did you move from Desire to Iberville?

I
have a daughter at that time, was sick and wound up in the hospital.
Every year around school time, she would get sick. The doctor started
to believe that Desire was built on a dump, and because she had asthma,
it was better for her to live in a better setting. They wrote a letter
to the Housing Authority for a move, and the closest hospital was
Iberville.

When I moved to Iberville in April 74, it was a
little different setting than the Desire area, because they still had
whites living there when I moved there. It was formerly all-white
public housing. In the area I lived, they had whites still living.

Why did you move out of Iberville?

It
became a lot of drugs, lot of murders, changing scenery, different
people moving in with the wrong concept. ‘Cuz when I first moved in, I
used to sit on the top porch, 7th level, just sit and watching people
coming in, watch parties going on in people’s houses, and never had to
duck for shooting. Over a period of years, things changed.

All
my kids were gone, and things had changed tremendously in the
community. A lot of violence. Me being sick, it wasn’t good for my
health.

Where did you go?

The 9th ward.  Lived there until August 27, 2005. 

It was ok because I stayed with myself, had a sister who lived four blocks away on the other street.

I
first moved down there {9th ward, Desire area} when the Black Panthers
were there in 1970. I had no qualms with them because I found out it
was misconception. If you really listen to what a lot of people were
saying about the Black Panthers, some people had put them in the wrong
category. There were a program helping Black children, feeding them
breakfast in the morning so they would be able to comprehend when they
go to school because a lot of Black families were poor and couldn’t
afford to give their children proper nutrition to start the day. The
word was that J Edgar Hoover put them in the category of militant, to
cause destruction.

I met a Black Panther who explained some
stuff to us, who spent some time in prison. It was initially something
good to help their own kids. I knew back then, it was a hard stuggle.

Down
South, you had to buy your food stamps to feed your family. And on your
income, the money that they asked you to pay to buy your food stamps,
that was a disgrace. Where the Northern part of the US, that was free.
You paid $50 to get $35 worth of foodstamps. If you had 5 children,
your welfare was $100 a month. It was rough.

A lot of these guys
who started the program, a lot of them were educators who knew what the
needs were. They didn’t say, uh-huh, uh-huh. They looked at it, and
went out to do the right thing. Some of the policemens, I think they
wanted to make a name for themselves.

So you lived there until Katrina.  Did you think that it was a big deal before it came?

Not
really. We knew we were going to have something, but not to the
severity. We left home in the response of Wednesday, we’ll be headed
back home.
I can’t even talk about it. Katrina was one thing, and
man made something else. It wasn’t an act of God of what happened to
this city. It was an act of man.

On the Ellen DeGeneres show,
they showed this man in the Lower 9th Ward looking at his house every
day, and he couldn’t go in. When I came here, the word was, don’t let
your mama go to New Orleans.

I had to rethink myself, if I
went and saw my old Mount St. Helene in Washington state, it’s ok to
come home and see. Because Mount St. Helene, everything was dead. That
was like New Orleans. You saw nothing. Nothing was living. The grass,
the trees. Houses in the street. Houses off their cinder blocks. Cars
on top of houses. Cars in both connecting some kind of way. Streets no
longer there. Names of places of streets no longer there. Houses were
blown down, bulldozed. It was terrifying. A lot of people don’t want to
come back. What I saw on the television, I tell everybody. What you see
on TV is nothing. The human naked eye tells the tale. You have to see
with your own eyes.

I’m upset with the government because the
government failed all of us. We supposed to be the land of the free,
but it doesn’t seem like it. You cry because it was something you had
never seen before. How could this happen in America? I look at the
government as a whole who supposed to have acted upon immediately to
the needs of the majority of the city of New Orleans. When they showed
those people at the Convention Center, not just at the Superdome, and
all those people on the bridges, who took the bridges for safety, for
the promised land. Those bridges were promised land. Many of them said,
I sat on the bridge for four days. My nephew slept on the concrete by
the Convention Center for four days. My daughter-in-law’s brother said
he slept on the roof for four days. It’s not what’s on TV. These are
people who you have actually spoken to, and have spoken of their
episodes. One friend said, the water was like ice cutting their bodies.
Where was the government? How could they sleep at night?
It hurts,
not just because some of my family members were out there in the water,
but people I never knew that needed help and help wasn’t there. And the
government, they playing games with a lot of the homeowners and a lot
of the renters.

I come back home, and I look at all the things
that I go Uptown, I go downtown, I see some areas water didn’t touch.
They had water and it wasn’t that much. We supposed to be shaped like a
bow and a cup. In that bowl, you had humps and dumps. The humps
survived and the dumps didn’t. And what happened, I was in a dump. I
want to live here, but I feel there’s a need to step away for some
time.

Water {in my house} was four feet. It could have been
higher than four feet because if there was a waterline, water could go
above that. I lost major amounts. I had stuff that was very very
valuable, and I spent good money on things in my house. My linen, the
towels, just before Katrina hit, I had made up my mind to begin to
disperse my towels to my eight children. Isn’t that ironic? I’m not
talking the cheap towels. Expensive towels. My grandson, I was gonna
share some of my utensils, cooking items, with my grandson and some of
my children. Katrina took it.

My diploma, had my name engraved
in gold on the cover. And the inside cover was moria taffeta. So I
really knew that I had something of value. The paper was beautiful, but
the cover. I told my kids, see what I have. Y’all cover doesn’t have
this moria taffeta. My marriage certificate got displaced over 10 years
ago. Pictures of my childhood. My grandparents’ pictures. My dad
pictures. My children pictures. Gone.

All my writings. My son
said, Momma, try to remember. This time, if you can remember some of
it, you might remember better than before. But when you brain gets
messed up, it’s hard.

I wrote a poem about the my first child
Velda about when she was born. I knew I wrote about the day she was
born, how the sun was, but can’t remember the rest of it. With Michael,
he had an accident on the motorbike, and one of the mirrors was by his
head. When he looked, he saw himself in the mirror. And I wrote about
that and named it “Mirror Image.” At that time, when he looked at
himself in the mirror, he was looking at his life flashing before his
eyes. All of that gone. And I really never tried to retrieve it.

6.21.06. NYC to VA
Going off to Kundiman with a dead phone, light
suitcase & a rested body & hope the journey today goes well.
Feel a little unsettled like my spirit hasn’t yet caught up with my
physical body. Maybe the road trip will bring me to where I need to be.

Grandpa
seems calmer & less agitated these days, a quiet man who sits alone
in the dark in what seems like corners. You could walk past him and not
see him.

The myth of flipping the fish. Dad says it’s only
applicable on boats & they sometimes only serve one side so as not
to give you that option of raining down back luck on them if you’re
foolish or don’t know. He said it’s bad luck to step on the door jamb.
In China, they are higher than here in the US, but all those white
ladies at Peabody Essex Museum were stepping on them. Small things
which slip out of your parents which you safekeep. Even watching my
mother in the kitchen & the way she manages everything without a
sweat, like a lifelong rhythm.

Today, from New Orleans:

Things
have really ramped up this week, both having a chance to sit with Seung
& plan out what’s needed for helping to support organizing a local
team for summit in New Orleans next year, and as more things seem to
pile up to be done for the women’s health clinic. It’s been more of a
challenge to keep on my regular writing habit, but I have really pushed
myself to do it & have been glad for it. Definitely feel that I am
unpacked & fully entrenched in the work, but it hasn’t been a bad
thing.

Highlights of the week:

1) We found this free
class called Sistahs Making a Change who are "wiggling their way to
wellness." It’s billed as an inner-city wellness & health projecdt
using culture to promote wellness & healthier lifestyles. We took a
class which was 1/2 African dance & 1/2 yoga/pilates & had a
lot of fun! It was all local women from the community, mostly Black, at
this cultural arts center here.

2) A trip to the farmers’ market
yesterday morning. On the menu: avocado cream popsicle (made w/real
avocado), crab cake (made with real fresh crab), red beans & rice
(as a thank you for buying* Hot & Spicy Seven Peppers" hot sauce
from St. Thomas, made through an urban garden project to benefit the
St. Thomas Housing Development Community), crawfish & pork sausage
& skim milk (fresh, which tasted like whole milk & cream).

3)
5th year anniversary of 9-11. I couldn’t believe 5 years has passed
since I was in California with my Republican roommate who said,
"they’re gonna get it!" & he was right. Realized sitting in
Bennachin (an African place here which everyone goes to) with Katrina
survivors, myself & another volunteer who is Iraqi-American, making
the connections between Katrina & Iraq.

4) Hearing the stories of folks locked up & left to die at the Critical Resistance forum last night.

5)
Connecting with S, a mirror for myself. We are both go-to bottomliners,
struggling to make change in our communities without losing ourselves.
S says she realizes I am all about good food, good movement, good
words:-)

E. Ethelbert Miller asked me, along with Nimah Ismail Nawwab and Jody
Bolz, to contribute a blog piece for his E-Notes. You can check out
E-Notes at http://www.eethelbertmiller1.blogspot.com/

From New Orleans:

Leaving
home a week ago, I packed some summer clothes, bug spray, sunblock, and
a list of books by strong women, spirits to sustain me during my month
in New Orleans.
Suheir Hammad’s Zaatar Diva,Maxine Hong Kingston’s
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, Leah Lakshmi
Piepzna-Samarasinha’s Consensual Genocide,Ishle Yi Park’s The
Temperature of This Water,Ruth Forman’s Renaissance,Joy Harjo’s The
Woman Who Fell From the Sky,Aurora Levins Morales’ Remedios: Stories of
Earth and Iron from the History of Puertorriquenas,Kimiko Hahn’s
Volatile and a copy of This Bridge Called My Back: Writings By Radical
Women of Color& Making Waves: An Anthology of Writings By and About
Asian American Women.

A year ago, an e-mail from Suheir Hammad,
who had arrived in the city weeks after Hurricane Katrina devastated
the city and earlier in the summer encouraged me not to give up my
writing. Her words as witness to the material of people’s personal
lives and stories and disasters. Later, hearing her read that piece as
testimony would make me break apart, in a way that none of the video
footage and photographs could.

On arrival, someone told me
everyone’s a survivor here, the whole city a survivor. In a city where
so much needs to be done, so much left, so much change, so much pain,
so much survival. I wondered what this would bring up for me, healing
and surviving too, in my own way. I was scared to come down and immerse
myself in community work again, but it’s been inspiring and, surprising
to me, healing.

I have been watching Hotel Rwanda and Whale
Rider and seeing how it connects to my daily work here in New Orleans,
writing my freewrites every morning, reading one poem every day to
bless my day with beauty and intention, and bearing witness to those I
meet, writing down stories at night. Yesterday, beautiful words at a
memorial for a woman who had been struck down by a car on the side of
the road one day after Hurricane Katrina.

I brought out my pen,
which brought me to the doorstep of a survivor. I spent an afternoon
out of the sun, remembering and writing and laughing and crying. This
is why I write.

From 6.16.06, North Country, upstate NY:

I’m wondering always
how to be of service, but I can’t live with no boundaries because then
I realize you come to place with yourself where you’ve been erased down
to a tiny nub & you can’t recognize or remember how you got there
in the 1st place. & then how it’s a process of re-acquaintance
& renewal & re-discovery. But also one of culling through old
memories & recasting them in a new gaze, to try to summarize when
people ask you about it, so you are always playing with a twist &
turn of the phrase, of adding on & changing the answer of your
experience. Of change, even if you stayed, deadlocks & roadblocks
& blockages would have lifted, or maybe that would be you. But the
experience of struggle & battle has changed you forever &
changed your communion with the city, that community & the place
where you locate yourself. & it’s also about re-growing up, so that
I have come of age there & have contributed my dues & can go
somewhere else without wondering what if?

From New Orleans today:

Waiting
for the bus at Magazine and Jackson yesterday on the way to the clinic,
I noticed a little green walkway – lush grass, big yellow petals amidst
of overflowing trash can, cigarette butts, discarded Coke containers.
And then a mound of bricks with a beautiful woman’s picture. Underneath
the text read:

Vera Briones Smith, 1939-2005
Died here August 30, 2005

"Vera
was apparently the hit-and-run driver the day after Hurricane Katrina
struck New Orleans. Authorities left her body by the side of the street
for 5 days and threatened to arrest anyone who attempted to touch her
remains and bury her with dignity. Her friends and neighbors finally
buried her on this spot on the 5th day. A few days later, the Coroner’s
office removed her remains. This shrine, composed of the bricks from
her 1st grave, consecrates this place in memory of all those whom
government officials subjected to indignities in life and death during
the storm."

Today, drawn to that spot again for a moment of
reflection. I took out my journal and started writing down those words
when I saw a man crossing the street, waving to me, asking me if I knew
Ms. Vera.

I didn’t, but Eddie Parker – friend and community
member — wanted to take me to see someone who had loved and cherished
her. A few moments and streets later, Max – Vera’s husband – rolled
over to us in wheelchair and let us into the small space where he and
his late wife had called home since 1979.

“Everyone went crazy
after the storm, people stealing cars, even police stealing cars.” Max
had no friendly words for the local city cops who put a gun to his head
and told him not to touch his dead wife’s body. “Worst day of my life.
I had to go down and cover it up. Then, the damn cops pulled up and
said if you mess with this body, you’re gonna get shot.”

Max
hands me a well-worn September 5, 2005 Times-Picayune where the photo
of Vera’s make-shift grave made the front page. The caption says,
“Agents with the U.S. Marshal’s service examine a make-shift grave
Sunday at Jackson Ave. & Magazine.”

He cries when he talks
about that day when his wife went to the store while he was trying to
fix up the awning that Katrina had torn down, blocking their front
door. “I should have been with her.” It was the day before her birthday.

Over
one year later, Max has been in and out of the hospital 18 times. He’s
busted every bone in his shoulder, arm, pelvis, knee, ankle. “If she
were here, none of this would have ever happened.” Vera would have
taken care of him, like she took care of the landlady, Leona, who Max
describes as the Jewish daughter who was in a POW camp for 15 days in
Poland and who saw her mother murdered by the Nazis.

Max’s
post-Katrina days have been difficult. Federal marshals forced him to
evacuate; he had to leave with his doors and windows wide open. $20,000
worth of tools walked off, and the rain got the rest. He describes a
ghost town when he returned a few weeks later – no lights, no gas,
nothing. For three months, he lived off of MRIs, dinners from the
National Guard. Half of the people in the neighborhood haven’t
returned, and he thinks many of them may not come back.

He’s not
the only one with this story. A tree fell on a six year old girl down
on Jackson Street, and her family wasn’t allowed to remove her body.

But
he wants me to know that they had good times while they lasted. The
Vera I write about and wish I got a chance to meet was a woman who left
a trail of costume jewelry, who loved going thrift shopping, who
couldn’t keep her mouth shut – both in laughter and in saying things
like she saw them, like nicknaming her neighbor “Pumpkin seed” – and
who dreamed of being an opera singer. Spoke Spanish, French and English
and loved to dance around her house while frying chicken or making
potato salad. A happy-go-lucky woman who made a good time out of
anything she did, who didn’t worry about the bad, and was only
interested in the good.

“After 40 years together, it’s not easy,” he says.  “But we had some good times in this shack here.”

6.15.06
from North Country, NY:

Whenever I heard these
presentations on publishing, I realize that is not really why I am
doing this writing. It’s good to know the reality, but it’s also
somewhat discouraging, especially if you’re focused on what sells
units, as opposed to what your soul needs to transform yourself &
your life - & that faith in whatever will come. I am rooted in
emotional truth and community story & that’s what’s important to
me. I am soaking up ideas & thoughts & hints of other worlds
& it seems like every industry or "world" can be crazy &
dysfunctional, whether that be nonprofit 5013 land, academia or
publishing.

Today, from New Orleans:
We watched Hotel
Rwanda last night while S twisted her son’s hair. S told me that every
time she sees the scene where the white people get to leave the country
& leave the Rwandans to fend for themselves that she cries every
time. It’s like Katrina all over again, Iraq, Lebanon, every place in
the world that’s been fucked over. & the stories keep coming.
People swimming through the pitch dark of night, hearing cries &
screams from attics, from neighbors & strangers. Women getting
dragged from cars because there are too many men in the city & not
enough women. Fucked-up white volunteers who come down & assume
they know the community better than the local people & who can
control the distribution of resources. Fucked-up white sheriffs from
the surrounding neighborhoods who turned back survivors with bullets.
Having to sneak back into the city by concocting fake media passes when
volunteers are already there & "helping out." Everything is fucked
up — employment situation, health care, services, environment, schools.

But
life goes on here. The coffeehouse down the street is open. People are
still hanging out on the porches on the street that’s being gentrified
& saying hi to everyone who passes by. S & I hijacked her
partner’s big truck & drove it to Whole Foods — my 1st time
driving a large vehicle. It took awhile to figure out how to back up,
but we made it home safely to the pile of grants we are working on to
raise money for the women of color health clinic. Sometimes you need to
take a break from the statistics & head out, even if the sun went
down hours ago. We also needed to free a mouse that was caught in one
of the "humane" traps that I convinced S to use last night. I walked
across the road from Whole Foods, opened the little gate, but the mouse
stayed inside. I had to coax the mouse out of the trap and then it was
gone & free.

A mouse just got trapped on one of the glue
traps. S had just decided not to use them anymore because we convinced
her they were cruel when we heard the squeak from the trap. It takes
days for the mouse to die & it suffocates or starves, sometimes
biting off its hands & leg in panic from trying to get unstuck. 3
had got caught on the glue traps last week & her partner had run
them over with his truck because he didn’t want them to suffer. We had
a panic of indecision, trying to decide what to do. We couldn’t unstick
it from the glue, and it was going to die. Should I run over it with
the huge truck? Should we let it die by glue trap? Should we put it in
a Ziplock bag & let it run out of air? After much discussion, we
finally decided on Ziplock. We were both sad at the irreversibleness
and inevitability of the mouse’s death, even though it was still
struggling & trying to get free. Part of me hoped it would somehow
magically figure out a way to escape the death glue.

6.14.06, from North Country retreat, upstate NY:

Feel like I’ve opened up a channel into a wilder, fiercer version of myself somehow & I’ve woken up a deep, slumbering part of myself. Everything is beauty & shimmer this morning & makes me want to believe in God. Things are awake & alive & waiting to capture the page. I had forgotten about my creatve life & how rich & deep & layered it can be.

There are so many gaps & holes in our history that I forget, being immersed in my community for the last 5 years. It’s hard to see unless you have distance from everything. I feel I am here at Valcour because I am realizing in a deeper way what Suheir was trying to teach us, why it is important I don’t stop writing, how it is an act of resistance to put pen down on paper and write about your mother and all the people in your world. I wouldn’t be here if Maxine Hong Kingston’s book hadn’t grabbed me and said "listen." This story is your story or could have been, I am talking to you so listen. I remember meeting Maxine over 10 years later, looking at her & just crying & crying & crying & how she looked at me in understanding for a brief moment. She was the 1st role model who mattered, who spoke to me, a lifeline.

Today, from New Orleans:
First full day of volunteer work & 1st time back in the Treme community since the INCITE conference last March, one of the oldest free African American communities in the U.S. Feeling connected to our hosts, these strong women who are raising children, holding down their jobs or quitting their jobs to do the work they are really passionate about & committed to & finding other ways to get by, organizing on so many different fronts in their communities (and also nationally for some), trying to get by, cooking yummy food, dispensing thoughts & feedback on how to proceed with your own community work and still opening up their homes to random folk they don’t know. Was worried about my burnout & whether I would struggle with that here, but so far, I’ve been really inspired by seeing the kind of local organizing going on and the love and care that folks have for each other. (& people here generally seem a lot friendlier than the Northeast I’m used to). & the physical work of painting at the clinic was very peaceful & contemplative. I am really learning the joys of un-multi-tasking. & it was a treat at the end of the day to walk out & see a parade come down the street & walk along with the people dancing. Was glad to be back in this community, to see regular everyday folk celebrating and dancing and eating sausage and pork sandwichs and snowballs.

This last 6 months has been full of letting go, leaving spaces, and packing up. What part of yourself - dreams, desires, memories, grudges, fates - do you carry with you in your back pocket, in the corners of your mouth, the tucks of your ears?

It has been re-learning my body, re-navigating the way out the front door to that patch of green I always walked by before. Now taking the time to sit down & breathe.

I’m going to be posting up entries, both from my current travels (& from my recent wanderings & reflections) to document my journeys.

Thanks for listening.

6.13.06, from North Country Institute for Writers of Color, upstate NY next to a lovely lake:
Reconnecting to some of my old dreams in a different way. This time spent away from e-mail & phones & the drudgery of life. I am reaching out for support, guidance, teachings, a place to rest my head & nurture your soul. & it doesn’t always get easier. You just come into another phase of your life with new struggles & challenges. Even here I don’t always feel I can totally be myself, being the only Asian (& like Ethelbert says, cultural ambassador for your people). How I am, yet I am not. But it feels different to be in a room full of people of color even if I’m the only Asian than a room full of whites. But for now, I feel peaceful & calm & I have space to breathe & take in the beauty & tranquility here. A space to pause & listen & soak & smile. Feel the sun warm on your shoulders & relax & pour your hearts & soul on the page. Peel back layers & scabs & let them fall. Speak. Memory. Valued. I will be entering a space where I can devote myself & I hope I can develop that practice of discipline to tell & witness the times, my community and people. When I hear about all the bullshit, I feel like that’s why Kundiman - so full of heart and love - is so magical and beautiful a space & time. It’s like family where we can laugh & joke & tease & read & write. It’s the kind of place I would want to help build & be part of. I also need to ready myself for those spaces where I am going to be the only one in the room & have to fight for my voice & perspective to be heard & listened to & respected.

Today, from New Orleans:
Walking down Magazine today, everything calm, it almost seems like it could be any supertrendy street in a city. Sunburnt white folk roaming in & out of vintage shops. Spacious houses with peaceful green lawns and home security systems. Only small signs of the storm that came before. The house across the street has the dark markings I’ve seen on TV. It says 5 dogs, x/o. The house next to it is a pile of rubble. S, the woman I’m staying with, says that the bit of red brick chimney I can see peeking through used to be slave quarters. This is still slave country. All along Magazine, if you look closely, you see permits for the restaurants to re-open post-Katrina. S says that her street is being gentrified as it’s being rebuilt. Someone from San Francisco bought the house I’m staying in & is charging double the rent it would have been pre-storm. But I know that things are very different from what they seem. Yesterday, someone said to me that this is a city where everyone is a survivor and is dealing with trauma. I’m wondering what old ghosts will surface for me here & how they will interact with the ghosts that are already here, imbedded in the lawns & rubble & faces of those who call this place home.