My life as a refugee

I've been a refugee for two weeks. I want to go home, and it's a little shock every time I re-realize I don't have a home to go home to.

My psyche is split in two--part of me gets up every morning and functions. I'm coping at a fairly high level. But the other part of me is deeply, cripplingly depressed.

I have some residual affection for St. Louis proper. It's where I was first exposed to the urban boho life. When my high school classmates were sneaking out to parties, I was sneaking out to drive into the city to see art movies at the Tivoli and Varsity Theatres and shop at Vintage Vinyl (which is now in the former site of the Varisty.) Once I hooked up with my first real boyfriend, I spent even more time in the city. There are certainly places within the 170 loop where you could make a pleasant life for yourself. This a.m. I had to stop by the Princeton Review office, and after I had coffee on Delmar Avenue, where people were sitting out on the sidewalk and there were even some bicycle commuters--and unlike in New Orleans, they didn't feel the need to put their bikes in triple lockdown when they parked them on the sidewalk.

Also I have to give props to Lion's Choice roast beef sandwiches and 24-hour Steak n Shakes.

But in general this place is way too Jesus-infested. (I thought the south was supposed to be the Bible belt, but Midwest seems much more overtly evangelical--and also much more frankly racist. Not that the two are related...) There are two many highways, traffic jams, strip malls, and billboards.

On Friday night I drove 25 miles and sat in two traffic jams in order to see the Knitters (X re-imagined as a hillbilly band, with Dave Alvin on guitar) at a club downtown. They played in New Orleans in the week before the flood, but I couldn't go see them because I was way too overwhelmed by my law school workload.

They were good. Dave Alvin sure plays a Fender like it oughta be played. But jeez, they're old. Exene is stout and looks like a grandma--the world's rockin'ist granny, but still. And the show was over by 11:30--in New Orleans you wouldn't even leave the house that early.

I realize what a charmed life I led. New Orleans was always a disaster in progress, but it was like a disaster sparkled with pixie dust, at least for some of us. I don't want to minimize how much it was a shithole for many of the poor people who lived there.

Still..

The need to buy a car is bothersome. There's a lot of deep irony in that so many people in New Orleans didn't have cars, largely because they couldn't afford one, but also because it was fairly easy to get along without one. Yet the oil and gas industry, and our whole petroleum-dependent American lifestyle, was an accomplice in the destruction of the city. Now I need to get a car so that I can function here. And honestly, I wouldn't live in New Orleans again without one. I don't ever want to be dependent on other people for a way out when a hurricane is on the way.

I think I'll be going back to finish school. Beyond that, I don't know. I understand the argument for not rebuilding, and I don't think it will ever be even close to what it used to be.

But there's just nowhere else I can think of that I would like to live. Not in America, anyway.

Someone sent me a copy of a Ramone's compilation and I've been listening to it when I'm riding around in my dad's big truck. Miss S would laugh if she could see me rocking out to "Teenage Lobotomy." Since I was never a punk-rock person, it's all pretty fresh to me. In the liner notes, Johnny Ramone says he wanted to make pure white rock without any blues influence. In a way, he's full of shit--there's no such thing as rock without blues influence. But I know what he means. It is white people music--that's probably why I was never into it before. But it seems like the right music for coping with this landscape. Plus, having had my heart stomped by the black, black city of New Orleans, I kind of feel like embracing my honkiness.