An hour after the encounter, the writer is driving “home” to the mattress on the floor and sees that she is being followed, negotiates a few quick turns to confirm her suspicions, does a quick U turn to gain the advantage of surprise, peels away, douses the lights, and loses the car. Was it the angry young man? No way to know. Driver’s training is courtesy of a cop friend from Chicago and crazy investigative reporter she knew back in the day. It all comes back, along with memories of scaling cyclone fences in the Chicago projects as part of “escape” routes planned by her crazy friend who lives vividly in the vaults of memory.
The mattress on the floor seems awfully inviting and the writer snuggles into her daughter’s patchwork blanket that goes everywhere with her on the road. There is little comfort and even though the humidity is high and the apartment very hot, her body shivers uncontrollably as she drifts off to sleep.
Songs of spring birds relentlessly encourage consciousness and uneasy thoughts about the decision to live in New Orleans for six weeks. But the stories need to be told and the broken writer remembers a column that film-maker Michael Simmons wrote for the Huffington Post about poet Edward Sanders and “investigative poetry.” click here
The writer pulls up Simmons’ column on her laptop. The signal is pirated from the attorney who lives next door, but he says he does not mind. Simmons was particularly taken with a poem in the recoded set called “Unearned Suffering.”
Simmons says, “Edward Sanders' recordings of Poems For New Orleans has been called one of the great American epic poems, on a par with Whitman and Ginsberg.” It turns out that The New York Times' about.com website named the recording The Best Poetry CD Of 2007, saying: ‘Sanders utilizes his Investigative Poetry techniques and aesthetic to give the full backstory to the unbearable tragedy still in progress in New Orleans.”
Yes, the unbearable tragedy is still in progress, and people have been telling the writer that they need journalists to continue writing about what is and is not happening in New Orleans.
“It's a chilling, stark paean to those ‘born with anvils on their souls,’ the collaterally damaged of child labor, dangerous work, and those who make ‘the calm life glow for a few.’ The piece ends with a comparison of Hurricane Katrina to ‘unearned suffering worthy of the days of Poseidon,’” Simmons wrote.
Still feeling guilty, for all of the “unearned suffering” that she is privileged enough to escape, the writer piles her things into the battered Toyota that is home on the road and flees to Acadia.
Along the way, her daughter, who is about to graduate with a degree in documentary filmmaking and a young woman’s sense that she can accomplish anything, calls with worry and a question.
“Mom, when are you coming home?”
The writer laughs at the question coming from the child who four years ago could not wait to distance herself from her mother.
“Did you think I would miss your graduation? Home in six weeks.”
Silence.
The writer tells her daughter that she loves her and that she should begin now to exercise her inherited sword arm so that she is strong enough to hold the camera and focus the lens on the world. She hopes her lovely daughter will be able to find her way, looking up, but careful not to stumble.
The writer rubs her sword arm and the tattoo of the split eagle feather—symbol of the wounded warrior—and says a prayer that her child's sword arm will remain strong.
Georgianne Nienaber is a writer, author, and investigative journalist. She lives in the world. Her articles have appeared in The Huffington Post, SCOOP New Zealand, Glide Magazine, Rwanda's New Times, India's TerraGreen, COA News, ZNET, OpEdNews, The Journal of the International Primate Protection League, Friends of the Congo, Africa Front, The United Nations Publication, A Civil Society Observer, and Zimbabwe's The Daily Mirror. Her fiction exposé of insurance fraud in the horse industry, Horse Sense, was re-released in early 2006. Gorilla Dreams: The Legacy of Dian Fossey was also released in 2006. Nienaber spent much of 2007 doing research in South Africa, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. She was in DRC as a MONUC-accredited journalist, and recently spent six weeks in Southern Louisiana investigating hurricane reconstruction. She is currently developing a documentary on the Gulf of Mexico DEAD ZONE.
If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you But make allowance for their doubting too, If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream--and not make dreams your master, If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breath a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; If all men count with you, but none too much, If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!
R. Kipling
by
Mark Sashine (54 articles, 19 quicklinks, 252 diaries, 3603 comments)
on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 1:30:44 PM
on all fronts. If only momentarily, let the sword arm rest. All sword arms must take time to rejuvenate in order to come back swinging at their strongest. Glad you're back down there with your eyes wide open. As with most tragedies, our attention span and memories are short. Thank you for not allowing us to forget the continued suffering and injustices.
by
Jan Baumgartner (52 articles, 137 quicklinks, 10 diaries, 252 comments)
on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 2:09:39 PM
These thoughts from both of you are inspiring. Am also reminded of Caroline Herring line: "I'm a mother and a lover and a sister and a daughter," and all are one. The sons and daughters of the deep south still have stories to tell.
by
Georgianne Nienaber (145 articles, 46 quicklinks, 13 diaries, 337 comments)
on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 2:18:26 PM
For drinks, go to the Carousel Bar at the Hotel Monteleone. VERY cool spot. Different and unique - not too loud and the tourists haven't found it yet.
Also, The Columns on St. Charles is a classic. Inside is beautiful, but you can sit outside as well and watch the streetcars go by. Perfect for the weather right now.
by
Matthew Griffin (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 35 comments)
on Monday, April 7, 2008 at 3:08:28 PM
6 comments
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