Haiti it wasn't, not even by a long shot.Growing up on the edge of the Barrio Goldenwest I felt I was living on the edge. No one I knew had such a "hard life" as the one I lived growing up, or so I thought. I had a barber daddy, we lived in an old house and we drove ancient cars. My mom worked McDonalds, I had a simple minded half brother and my clothes came from Sears. Tough life, right? Yeah, right.
I suppose my mindset had a lot to do with the company I was keeping. I had pals who were growing up in seemingly affluent or at least solid middle class neighborhoods in Santa Ana or other cities in Orange County. I attended a Catholic high school that trucked in the the elite of the county, the kids from the beaches and the hills, youngsters who claimed hardship if their daddies didn't buy them the latest of whatever it was they needed in order to make the cut. I was soft, not a fighter. I only ventured down into my own personal barrio when I felt I had to make time, or see friends, or chase the dog. I didn't go down into that part of the world because I really didn't want to make myself an easy target, or "get involved" or become part of the burgeoning drug culture that sucked the last vestiges of life out of the young gang bangers who didn't feel like following their field working father's and housecleaning mother's footsteps.
I knew and hung out with "drug dealers", too. We didn't need or want guns. We were marijanos and lead an easy life. We weren't policitally astute, didn't worry about police or revolution or counter revolutionaires upsetting our bike rides to the beach or our prom dates hairdos. We lived easy lives, so easy that to watch films like Ghosts of Cite Soleil, a documentary filmed in Haiti's Port Au Prince slums, deemed by the UN to be the "most dangerous place on earth", that I have to wonder how far I was off the reality map at the time. My worries were simple, and looking back, fairly naive. I worried about grades, about making the grade, about finding work when all kinds of jobs were easy to find. I worried about my weight or girls or what I was going to do with my life instead of going college. I look back at all my options, about how easy my life was, about how little real fear I truly had to deal with in regards to my own personal barrio and think, man, what an easy life I have had. I wish sometimes that real life would have slapped me across the face earlier on. I suppose that's what crossing the "Shit River Bridge" did for me later on. But that was in the future. The Barrio Goldenwest pretty much left me alone to my silly and largely unfounded fears.
Watch Ghosts of City Soleil if you have a gripe or a grumble about your middle class existence. There are plenty of places in the good ol U S of A that are hardcore and dangerous, but I know now for certain that the corner of Goldenwest and McFadden wasn't one of them.
Action!
Filmmaker Magazine article: Ghosts of Cite Soleil:
http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/fall2006/reports/inner_city.php
Interview with Asger Leth, director, Ghosts of Cite Soleil:
The New York Times: Haiti in the news, the earthquake and beyond
Another kind of horror: film review: Serpent and the Rainbow:
The real Wade Davis, since then:
No comments:
Post a Comment