In honor of Mardi Gras 2006, we present Phillip’s return to New Orleans & a fun Mardi Gras quiz.

• What kind of Mardi Gras reveler are you?
• Return and Resurrection: Our Hopes for Our City

  Returning to New Orleans after the twin visits granted our city during the hurricane season of ’05 was quite a daunting task to undertake, though maybe not for the reasons one might suspect. My wife and I had been exiled for well over a month, sleeping on my parent’s futon in Mobile, AL. The first time we heard that the mayor was going to let us return home Rita beat us to the punch and we had to wait once again with bated breath as new stories of flooding and destruction came streaming over the media channels declaring that our abandoned city was once again ravaged.

Returning to New Orleans after the twin visits granted our city during the hurricane season of ’05 was quite a daunting task to undertake, though maybe not for the reasons one might suspect. My wife and I had been exiled for well over a month, sleeping on my parent’s futon in Mobile, AL. The first time we heard that the mayor was going to let us return home Rita beat us to the punch and we had to wait once again with bated breath as new stories of flooding and destruction came streaming over the media channels declaring that our abandoned city was once again ravaged.

We had packed the car to the roof with food and provisions to last us a month as we prepared to return, hoping that this second invitation to return would bloom into a homecoming. We knew our house was structurally fine, we had seen images of it by satellite, and we received no flooding. Luckily we had bought close to the river where, ironically, there was no inundation. We didn’t know if our roof had leaked, or if we had been looted. We live on a fairly commercial street and my selfish hope was that, with free reign, those apt to theft would choose new over used items.

We left before dawn on the first day residents were allowed back into Uptown New Orleans expecting to sit in traffic for hours with all the others who were waiting to come home. The fear of a reverse evacuation scenario was not realized. We drove in with relative ease; we only passed one checkpoint at the parish line, a block from our house. As we drove in from the north the damage we saw was mostly from the wind. The trees had all been stripped of leaves and dramatically thinned. Upon arriving home we open the door not knowing whether to expect mold, a trashed looted house, or the much desired commodity of normalcy, which we have yet to taste in it’s fullest even today. We were met with the latter, except for our refrigerator, that new exo-skeletal beast that had taken up residence in our home after two months of no electricity. Even now the city streets are stroon with taped up fridgedairs, like so many whitewashed tombs.

“Normalcy” when will it be back? The question plagued me as I walked my dog that afternoon. Uptown was largely spared the flooding, and most of the damage was from the wind. The eeriest aspect was the sensation of the city being left, like some sci-fi story where a new technology wiped out all human life and you managed to escape, and now emerged from hiding. All the brown tinged newspapers still read August 28th looking out from their glass displays, over a month old. Garbage, downed power lines and debris littered the streets. That evening ended early because there was no power yet. The sun went down and our neighborhood was enshrouded in darkness, and we were the only people habitating our block. As my wife and I were turning in, I peeked out the front window into the black to see a convoy of National Guard troops roll slowly by the white-hot headlights supplying the only light in the night. The young men were in full body armor, M-16s drawn, it was not comforting at all.

The first weekend came and more people returned, many with U-hauls. It was sad for us that so many of our friends were leaving; our feeling was that our city was going to die. But slowly but surely day after day, one shop then another opened on Oak Street. Life began to come back. The rumor mill churned, “he left . . . She’ll open in November.” On the whole after the first month or so, many parts of Uptown New Orleans almost began to feel like normal, until the National Guard drove by, you tried to go to one of those places you frequented that hadn’t opened yet, or you passed a shanty town set up by some carpetbagger contractor for his underpaid workers. Every day I walked my dog more trash was cleaned up, and more businesses were open. If one keeps to the correct part of town, one could almost believe it was simple a normal Sunday morning, and some places were just not open. But is that New Orleans? Is normalcy in New Orleans, such an abnormal place, merely an infrastructural phenomenon?

It was Halloween night. I was dressed as a robed ghoul with a single horn protruding from my forehead. My wife was garbed as a very convincing witch; her interpretation was much more natural and therefore a bit creepier than the conventional “wicked witch of the west” look. We were on Decatur Street, and surrounded by a crowd of people, most in costume, New Orleans is a city that loves nothing more than to dress in costume. There was a parade, which had just rolled by, and my brother had just shown up. Family, festivity, fermentation, all most all the elements of what makes New Orleans the place to be were there. Then I saw it, and I knew that the city would be okay. A six-foot tall bike ridden by a woman dressed as a clown, followed immediately by another, then a troop of them, all on different bikes, unicycles, double bikes. They dismounted with bravado, and immediately began to destroy any semblance of structure, replacing it with the chaos that only a troop of sideshow anarchist clowns can bring. If you don’t know that chaos, then either you don’t live in New Orleans, or you don’t visit its seedier parts. They blocked traffic with fire juggling, dog tricks, flares, firecrackers, and a host of other accoutremon, jumping on top of traffic jammed cars, and causing an atmosphere of both merriment and grief as they drew all attention to themselves. The organized serendipity of these artists is one essential ingredient of what makes New Orleans both frustrating, and whole.

The next morning many New Orleanians visited the tombs of their relatives to wash, mend, and tend them, as is the custom on All Saints Day. This is done out of respect for the dead, but also so that when these people rise on the judgment day, they will not be embarrassed by their habitations, knowing their families took care of them. All across New Orleans, we are also washing a tomb, from Lakeview, to the Ninth Ward, to New Orleans East, we are replacing sheet rock and washing off water lines, so that when our city is resurrected, physically and culturally, we will not be left wanting.

Phillip G.