Why write?

I read today article on Nola.com about a man who didn’t leave New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, choosing to stay in a public housing complex instead.  He kept a sort-of diary on the walls of the apartment in the two months that he stayed after the storm.  You read that correctly, two months — no water, no electricity.  Here’s the first few paragraphs:

Elton Mabry offers a guileless explanation as to why he picked up a black Sharpie pen and started writing on the walls: “I had run out of beer,” he says, “and I thought writing might relax me in a way.”

But this is only one of many reasons he offers for the diary he kept on the walls of an apartment in the B.W. Cooper public housing development after Katrina. Looking back nearly three years later, his explanations vary, depending on his state of mind, his train of thought and his ability to focus.

“I was feeling lonely,” he said on one occasion.  “Expressing yourself is kind of like a breath of fresh air,” he said on another.  It gave me something to kill the time,” he said on a third.

Chances are, there is truth in all these explanations — and many more. He was afraid, he was alone, he was hungry, he was worried, he was bored, he was uncertain, he was uncomfortable, he was unhappy. He was also evading the Housing Authority, dodging the National Guard and hiding out from a Trenton, N.J., police unit. And most important, he was trying to stay put in a place that somehow, in spite of the 2 feet of water inside and the utter silence outside, felt secure and comforting to him.

He got the urge to write when he ran out of beer.  Isn’t that true of all great writers?  Well, maybe Hemingway.  Anyway, the guy ran out of beer and started writing a line or two on his walls everyday for two months.  The article goes on to say he’s had run-ins with the law and spent time in prison, was an alcoholic, crack addict, and homeless before the storm.  The apartment he was in was an elderly woman’s he was staying with.  There are several pictures in the article and a well put together video featuring the Sharpie marked walls.  I looked at all the photos.  I paused the video to read the writings of Mabry.  Sadly, many of the entries recall Mabry’s drinking and hangovers.   It’s a mash-up of his writing about the heat, who he’d seen, and drinking.

Conservators from the Louisiana State Museum  actually removed the paint from the walls of the apartment (before its demolition) to recreate in a permanant Katrina exhibit in Jackson Square.

I’m dumbfounded by this.  I’m not a heartless person.  I understand that there are circumstances that leave people homeless, but it should not turn into a lifestyle.  Mabry is originally from Jackson, MS, where he learned to work with sheet metal at Hinds Community College.  At one time he was in the working middle-class.  The article talks about how Mabry shoplifted over the counter drugs and sold them on the street, but had to stop shoplifting because of foot and leg problems.  He then started collecting cans and sold them for recycling.  It goes on to say Mabry hasn’t had an income since 1984 when he lost his job and went on unemployment.  1984.  Katrina hit in 2005.  Mabry says he’s been sober for 8 or 9 months, but the article doesn’t say what he’s doing presently.  He lives on $132 a month in food stamps.  Okay, but it says he had backup plan (it actually says that):  “So occasionally I try to pick three in the Powerball. On Wednesday and Saturday, I get my little lottery tickets. It’s a morale booster because you keep thinking today could be your day.”

Times-Picayune writer Elizabeth Mullener, now you’re just messing with me, right?  No one else kept a diary during Katrina?  In a culture-filled city of artists, no one kept a diary worth putting on display in Jackson Square?  Maybe even a police officer or fire fighter?  Nobody?  Okay.  Not one of the politicians in the area?  They were all there.  A city employee?

Certainly Mabry was lonely and needed an outlet, the walls.  I sympathize with him.  I just wonder how much the Louisiana State Museum is spending on this project.  I only know about preservation from the History channel, but I know it’s not not cheap to preserve and restore things, so I wonder if it would have been better to help Mabry find a place to live and a job.  Help him learn a skill so he can support himself.  Get him off food stamps.  Maybe I’m crazy.

We do need to remember Katrina, but we need to get the people of New Orleans back on their feet first.  I live on the Northshore across the lake from New Orleans and the area my family lives had little damage from the storm, mostly tree damage.  My husband’s grandparents lost the home in New Orleans where they had lived for 50 years; we know many other people who lost their homes as well.  Like I said, I sympathize with Mabry, but Louisiana can do better than putting his walls on display.  With this kind of thinking we’ll never do better than we were pre-Katrina.