Wednesday, February 22, 2006

If They Had Listened

On last week's episode of Haze Ablaze: As someone who's lived in numerous American cities and lived through several physical assaults, I've become very astute at reading the signs of violence, a la Gavin De Becker, criminal expert and author of The Gift of Fear. These men exhibit them all.

On Sunday night, I fell asleep to the usual sounds of arguing, screaming, cursing from my lovely downstairs neighbors and the two poster girls for white trash that have moved themselves in, my last cognizant thought being: "Hey, who knows; maybe they'll tear each other to pieces."

I woke from my half-sleep reverie an hour or so later to the sound of calm, assertive male voices under my window.

Wow: They sound like what cops should sound like.

Wow: They are cops.

Seems one of the male lovelies assaulted his aforementioned, underaged girlfriend on the front lawn - this would be the chick who threatened to hang my cat from a tree for "looking" at her.

(The funny thing is my cat now stares and stares at her every time he's out - under my close supervision, of course - he knows, and wants her to know he knows; feline is both astute and tough.)

It's good that other people in my often-lax neighborhood stepped in and called the police - though I'm not the crazy one, I really do feel like the crazy lady neighbor at times because I have to be so vigilant in asserting my presence and ensuring my - and others' - safety. When aforementioned chick threatened my feline, I made it quite clear that she was not to harass us - "clear" like shouting it at her through her screen door, which I suddenly realized I was clutching with fingers coiled into talons around the weak frame, ready to remove it from creaky hinges, and okay! maybe you've made your point now.

These outbursts of anger and indignation are becoming common on the part of those of us who call New Orleans home, not a feeding/dumping ground to vulturize.

With the housing crisis squeezing residents who have already lost homes, things are coming to a head:

Nola Shine.
Vultures: End of the Line.

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