I am eating aspirins and soaking in hot salt baths. I am recovering, not from the festivities of the New Orleans Mardi Gras but because, after six months, there has been no restoration of order in this city. Two-thirds of the traffic lights are non-functional, and those that do work are more often than not ignored by a populace now used to stopping perfunctorily, if at all, at corners and then roaring through.
And the carpetbaggers, our saviours, ignore traffic laws completely, knowing that the best the locals can do with their depleted traffic force is to stick a piece of paper on their car window and hope that, sooner or later, justice will somehow find the lawbreakers in Wyoming or Nebraska or New Mexico.
Or in my case, Florida.
I was returning home on my bicycle from a Sunday-afternoon "Nickle-a-Dance" live-music show at Café Brazil, four blocks from my house. I had seen the first half-hour of some 200 people dancing in the street to the twenty-piece New Oriental Leviathan Foxtrot Orchestra, an eclectic and lovable mix of musical oddballs who play obscure tunes from the first few decades of the 20th century.
Jim Gabour is a film producer, writer and director, whose work focuses primarily on music and the diversity of cultures. He lives in New Orleans, where he is artist-in-residence at Loyola University. His website is here.
Also by Jim Gabour in openDemocracy:
"A New Orleans diary" (February 2006)
"New Orleans ode to carnival"
(February 2006)
I was elated by the music, the great showing of locals and the weather, still perfect and sunny, with just enough heat for daytime comfort and just enough cool for night-time sleep. I had seen bees in my garden that day for the first time since Hurricane Katrina, and now had confidence that my wildly blooming avocado tree would be pollinated and furnish yet another crop of delectable fruit. I had finished my video editing for the day, with some progress, and was looking forward to reviewing the work when I returned home. My bicycle was humming along, dodging the potholes of Dauphine Street. I was content.
I approached the six lanes and wide central "neutral ground" (as we in New Orleans call the grassy expanse between opposing traffic lanes) of Elysian Fields Avenue, two blocks from home. The traffic lights at this major intersection had actually been repaired only a few days earlier, only to have a post-carnival driver ram the central light and again render them inoperable, though blinking red. In place of working lights stood nine stop signs, two to a traffic direction on the wide street and a single sign on one-way Dauphine. I came to the single sign, looked out onto the broad avenue and paused, balancing the bike.
Nothing immediately approaching. Pedestrian traffic all around, and a car behind me. I advanced. Third gear. Into the central lane. And then, out of the corner of my left eye, I saw the end of my life.
In the next lane, a small car was barrelling toward me, its owner jabbering into a mobile phone, his eyes unfocused on the centre of the road. Twenty feet away, he showed no sign of stopping, or even noticing the intersection, much less me. And I was pedalling directly into his path. I jerked on the rear brakes, but could tell instantly that there was not enough power there to keep me from the wheels of the car. I pulled the front brakes, and immediately flew over the handlebars, directly into the lane.
As my palms and knees hit the road surface, I could hear car tyres screaming, and just like in the movies, time spread before me. I could see the first day I drove back into town after the hurricane, coming off the Mississippi bridge ramp into downtown New Orleans to immediately be run to the side of the road by trucks coming backwards down a one-way street. I could see vehicles parked across all lanes of traffic on a major thoroughfare while their owners ate lunch on the hoods of their vehicles, heedless of the honks of the stalled traffic behind them. I could see the road rage of a man, asleep at the wheel with his engine running in the heart of the French Quarter, who, when I awoke him with a honk, ran to my window, glassy-eyed, and tried to jerk me from my car. I could see the hundreds, the thousands, of cars parked illegally by people who know that traffic-law enforcement is a low-priority item for the police and elected officials.
And now here, finally, looking at the black asphalt surface with some small degree of calm, I waited for the impact of a metal vehicle with my flesh.
It did not happen.
Pedestrians began screaming at the distracted driver: "Stop sign, you bum!" "Don't they teach you to drive where you came from?" "Somebody call the cops."
I stood up. A 20-ish tanned couple, both sandy blond, in a Nissan with Florida license plates, were looking about them like they had encountered a tribe of semi-humans who were after their valuable moveable goods and not-so-moveable heads. They rolled up their car windows and each, in one motion, raised a single finger and shook it at us.
These ridiculous, ungrateful people from New Orleans.
They drove on, laughing.
I picked up my bike. The very sweet lady in the pickup truck behind me got out to see if I was OK. A young gent with a pitch-black Mohawk and nose chains brought me my bicycle lock from where it had rolled in the middle of the street. I thanked them, and continued on my way.
Last night I dreamed myself back onto my bicycle, pedalling easily across level grassy plains toward a ridge on the far horizon. As I approached, though, a sense of dread overtook me, and I awoke.
I sat up.
"There's no order," I said aloud.
Thinking back now, in daylight, I believe that remains the storm's ultimate legacy.
