modern art

I was really looking forward to going to the SFMOMA again. Until I got there. Wandering through the Face of Our Time photography exhibit, I came into a room of framed photos of "New Orleans" and Hurricane Katrina. I've seen these photos a million times, I've seen the real things, but something about the way they were hung and framed in the art museum really broke me down. This is not talent, this is not art. This is definitely not original, I've seen these exact photos taken by multiple others, and there was nothing high-quality or original about the way they were photographed. This is not speaking for people that have no voice, this is not showing the world injustices to incite change. This is capitalization off of personal tragedy, tragedy experienced by people with digital cameras and flickr accounts who could have shared these exact images if they wanted to. This is not even New Orleans in most of the photos, it's St. Bernard Parish, but I guess that doesn't conjure the same effect.

(Here's my dad, the actual face of that time. He is typical of the majority of homeowners in St. Bernard Parish. Not what you were expecting? Let's focus on the graffiti instead, that's more New Orleans-y.)

I remember my brother telling me a story about when he was helping my dad clean out his house after the storm. They worked on it for hours after work every day, in a mostly deserted town. He told me about how people would drive down the street and get so excited when they saw him and my dad working, wheelbarrowing piles of ruined possessions and dumping them on the front lawn. They would pull up the car and roll down the windows and take pictures and talk to each other about how great it was to find something so great to photograph - that something being my family's destroyed lives.

(Photography taken from the car on the way home. Think I should donate it to SFMOMA? Oh, wait, they already have one...)

I thought a lot about why these photographs bothered me so much. I didn't have the same reaction to Jim Goldberg's photographs of the refugees in the Democratic Repulic of Congo, considerably more tragic. Was it just personal? But I came to the conclusion that the major difference is that even if other people were covering the exact same subject at the exact same time, they could not have taken the same photograph as he did. And that is the difference.

Labor Day weekend

Spent a nice long labor day weekend in New Orleans, full of family and parties and (possibly) the last swimming of the summer...

4th of July Weekend recap

Independence Day came and went and brought lots of stuff with it.

Stuff like eating way too much:

and sunbathing in my new white bikini:

in the backyard that I grew up in:

And watching hubby playing sharks and monsters:

with the boys:

and nieces and nephews:

And then eating some more, like (farm-fresh egg) flag cakes and yellow watermelons:

Then on the way home, we wound up stuck on the side of interstate in the rain:

It was a scary two hours.

But then finally the tow truck came:

and the boys and I got to eat (the surprise best) Mexican food while hubby went to rent a car for us to finish our journey.

snowballs

Here is one of my absolute favorite things about south Louisiana: Snowballs! I'm sorry, but there is no way to imagine the greatness if you haven't had one, nothing to compare it to.

I miss these like crazy in the summer. There's at least one snowball stand every few miles in New Orleans, but in I haven't seen one anywhere else in the country (except one in Bourne, Texas that is now closed down).

Snowball stands are essentially little shacks that open in summer and close down in winter:

A snowball is not a sno-cone or shaved ice or anything like that. It is completely it's own thing. Their are tons of flavors and endless combinations, and choosing one is always the hardest although I usually end up getting strawberry cheesecake flavor topped in condensed milk and whipped cream (they were out of whipped cream yesterday). The next best flavor for snowballs is cotton candy, or ice cream, or amaretto, or wild strawberry, or wedding cake. Or even chocolate.

portraits of loss, my own

a plastic heart-charm from an '80s childhood, fallen through the missing ceiling and onto the missing hallway floor.

i went back the first real time yesterday. i walked through the house -- the house my dad has spent every spare second for a year clawing through, cleaning, and trying to preserve. hardly anything is worth preseving, but when this is your life molding and rotting away, you do what you can.



the keys, rusty but still hanging in the keep-safe spot on the wrought-iron entryway to the living room. how did they survive when the doors they opened are gone?

the house was so strange. i lived for twenty-one years in this house, and yet, i couldn't place myself in it. i couldn't get oriented. i had difficulty telling where i was. this is the kitchen? this is the living room? this was my bedroom? my mind still sees it like it was and i couldn't put that together with what is there. i could see straight through the house, through beams and joints and joists.

i could see into the attic, through all of the rooms. everything looked so tiny. tiny, tiny, dwarfed even by the tiny fema trailor on the lawn. i don't know how or why, but the roof felt like it was right on top of my head. the backyard -- birthday and fourth of july parties, and endless summer nights in high school -- and i couldn't imagine all those people fitting there even though i knew they did.



and currently in the trash pile in front of the house: my childhood. preserved in the attic for twenty-five years for future grandkids, i suppose. now waiting for garbage pickup under the styrofoam container from someone's lunch. and i see it all around, but i still can't imagine a whole city collectively sorting through and burying their lives.



for a year, i've been saying my dad should let it go, to start over. why try to save a toolbox or refinish a coffee table that's been through this mess? why waste time going back home, when it will never be home again? but i think i understand: right before i left, i pulled my old kimberly clark doll out of that trash pile and took her with me.

loss

i spent a few hours in borders the other day and came across this book in the photography section. anything like this--books, blog posts, t-shirts--makes me cry. still. in borders, standing in front of the bookshelf flipping through the book in my hand and my chest closes up and i cry. it has been so long already. will it be like this forever?

the book is a lie. you can't find beauty in so much loss. everyone i know has pictures like this, but in real life they are not romantic, or beautiful, or nostalgic, or gently faded. they are harsh and hateful. they are shattered dreams and hopes and lives.

the cover photo is a foyer in a house in chalmette. chalmette, where i spent the first 25 years of my life. where my family and friends lived, until katrina. the only place that i really know. i mean know everything about. not that i liked it, but it was... well... still home. like my sister said the other day, a place where your body feels at peace, because you know exactly where you are.

i feel a little like tom hanks in the terminal (which was not good at all). but he got on the plane and before he could go home his country had disolved and so he was trapped. i want to go home, but home is gone. now i don't even know what i want. i am tired and i have no place to rest. when do i get over this?