August 29, 2009
I set out this morning to build a new blog, but my caffeine high is getting in the way and I lack the proper focus. So, lucky youse, this will reside here. And it could very well be the last one. How many times can I talk about this and how can I not talk about it. I don't live there anymore. I've made my choice. Much love to you, Lawrence. Always a bridesmaid. You were good to me, and who knows, maybe in the future we will get back together.
Right now, I should be on Grand Isle planting little seeds of hope (if that word hadn't been cheapened by now it would mean more) but I cannot afford the gas to get there and isn't that fitting, in some doomed and circular way. Yes, today is the day. Eight/Twenty-nine, Two-thousand and Five. I wasn't here, so what the hell do I know?
I know that sometimes I love this city so much I want to kiss the moldy concrete that makes up its failing infrastructure, quite literally get out on the sand-sunk ramps, amid the buzzing, the whooshing, the honking of the World's Worst Drivers and wrap my arms wide around broken intersections and hold it all together. And I know I'm not the only one, outsider, insider, in-betweener.
I don't care for the commemorations, or the "where are we now" specials. But where are we going? All of us.
Yesterday I had a small camera shoved down my gullet and as I waited, propped on my side, with tubes, monitors, and needles going in and out, I passed the time listening to a terrible 70's compilation until my RN started up a conversation. He was from a little bayou town south of Houma and we began talking about the rapidly disappearing land, the marsh, the dying surge-blocking cypress trees. We talked about how we all know it's happening, those closer to the action fully aware as their livelihood sinks into the Gulf, and yet, and yet...
People, we can treat, throw everything we've got at them to save their lives, to diminish their discomfort, prolong the inevitable, but on a grander scale we falter. (I'll save the health care debate for another time.) It reminds me of the Vonnegut quote, "We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap." And yes, some would argue that the Earth doesn't need saving, that she (like a ship) will shake us off if we get too heavy a burden. It is we that need saving, from ourselves. But what about the earth we depend on, what about those places in-between the earth and sea, places where life forms, the murky, slimy, sludge from whence we came but have lost all connection and respect for? Why make things harder on everyone?
I'm not participating in the "festivities" today, the one-day rebuild-a-thon, not because I don't want to, and not only because to take one day out of the 1460 that have passed since is a valiant, but somewhat misguided effort, but mainly, and honestly, because I spend my days fighting to keep my own head above water. Like so many these days, life gets in the way. The fight resumes tomorrow and continues on, but for today, as I look out my 6th floor window on the waterlines across and below, today is mine. To plan and reflect, to finish and start.
Instead, instead I will force upon the world, once more, one of my absolute favorites to stupidly mark this day, four years ago, when every day since then has been an anniversary.
"Local Heroes"
by Thomas Lynch
Some days the worst that can happen happens.
The sky falls or weather overwhelms or
The world as we have come to know it turns
Towards the eventual apocalypse
Long prefigured in all the holy books --
The end times of floods and conflagrations
That bring us to the edge of our oblivions.
Still, maybe this is not the end at all,
Nor even the beginning of the end.
Rather, one more in a long list of sorrows,
To be added to the ones thus far endured,
Through what we have come to call our history:
Another in that bitter litany
That we will, if we survive it, have survived.
Lord, send us in our peril, local heroes,
Someone to listen, someone to watch,
Some one to search and wait and keep the careful count
Of the dead and missing, the dead and gone
But not forgotten. Sometimes all that can be done
Is to salvage one sadness from the mass of sadnesses,
To bear one body home, to lay the dead out
Among their people, organize the flowers
And casseroles, write the obits, meet the mourners at the door,
Drive the dark procession down through town
Toll the bell, dig the hole, tend the pyre.
It's what we do. The daylong news is dire --
Full of true believers and politicos
Old talk of race and blame and photo ops.
But here brave men and women pick the pieces up.
They serve the living tending to the dead.
They bring them home, the missing and adrift,
They give them back to let them go again.
Like politics, all funerals are local.
Comments
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DOTDOT (anonymous) says...
"Like so many these days, life gets in the way."
I've got a wisdom nugget partially formed around the idea that life is not a distraction that gets in the way, rather it IS the way, and accepting that is the key to said, but I wouldn't want to come off as a condescending asshole, because nothing is easier than picayune critique of someone else's point on someone else's blog, and that that is all some of us have is central to counterbalancing the validity of any argument involved, even if it is a fundamental like "these days" (an argument would suggest that the troubles have existed for all of time for some, for some reason, though they be or not be within our circle of awareness or concern); what I'm saying is that the saying itself undermines the content, giving truth to a corollary to McKluen's "the media is the message," so the best course of action is just to be silent, or maybe just send well wishes (pagan flair intentional - I'm in a good mood) and thanks for the blogging over the past few years as I have valued the opportunity to make a fool of myself.
..
August 30, 2009 at 6:03 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
godjilla (Jill Ensley) says...
I commend your fine word choice: "picayune" and counter that being a condescending asshole and critiquing someone else's point is entirely the point, or at least a large chunk of, what the internet is for. It may be life itself.
Life, life's bullshit, which has exponentially increased in recent years, has most certainly gotten in the way. Maybe I'm confusing technology with Life, but they seem to be one in the same lately. Dull, soulless darling. Beep beep beep, bop bop bop. <----pop (sub)culture, it fills my brain. And yes, it's a cheap exit and a cheap, tawdry line, but dammit if it isn't true sometimes. I should stick more to the straightforward, the irksome, the comedic bitchiness that my moniker implies, but I can't help the prosey arrrogance that seeps out when I talk about New Orleans or "the future". What the fuck am I saying? Who knows. Once again, internet.
Nothing said, I will be starting up again somewhere else and if anything, I hope you'll pop in occasionally to remind me how much we suck as a species. Who knows, maybe I'll think of something relevant to the good people of Lawrence and write here again, if Phil doesn't retire my jersey. Blessed be, Dots, Blessed Be.
August 30, 2009 at 6:31 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
OtherJoel (anonymous) says...
I really enjoyed reading this blog, and am sad to see you leave, but I certainly understand your reasoning. Let me/us know where you decide to relocate on these here Interwebs. I'll make sure to swing by and undermine any serious discussion with a well-placed poop joke, as that's what I do best.
Take care J - OJ
August 31, 2009 at 6:57 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
DOTDOT (anonymous) says...
Yikes.
September 1, 2009 at 12:40 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
tao7 (anonymous) says...
Now it's time to save yourself. "you're a pretty girl, you'll land on your feet" Don't remember where this quote comes from
September 1, 2009 at 1:43 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
godjilla (Jill Ensley) says...
Yeah, I suggested removal of the spam comment, but no dice apparently.
September 2, 2009 at 8:50 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
DOTDOT (anonymous) says...
I shoulda knew that would happen. The yikes was for the removed spam content, not OJ, who I love very much.
September 21, 2009 at 11:15 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )