Resilience

Been thinking a lot about this quality lately and what it really means. It's everywhere I look, hiding around every corner, breaking into my thoughts at unexpected times, even woven into the fabric of my manuscript.

Maybe, just maybe, that's what this year has been all about. As anyone that knows me knows, this year has been a train wreck for me, especially on paper. I never managed to find a job, I have less money than perhaps ever and more bills! I am 28, single, unmarried, and about as likely to do anything adult (buy a home, have good credit, date, marry, have sex, kids, etc) as your average 6th grader. Chances of that changing anytime soon? Slim to none. I've managed to finish out the year having re-gained the weight I lost, quit the job I got hired for after a month, attended 3 funerals in another month, traveled to Atlanta 4 times for my grammy, and unwillingly cut off all my hair.

But that's not how I actually feel. And that's the amazing part. Astoundingly there is happiness and joy in my life. Most importantly there is peace. God told me that I would lay aside every weight in 2008 sometime in December of 2007:

Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us...
Hebrews 12:1

I thought it was a joke, a word game, and I prayed that if it wasn't He was talking about weight loss. (Yeah, no.) I was short-sighted and simplistic. (Big surprise.) In lieu of pounds, I've lain aside huge portions of:
1) pride
2) false sense of control
3) dependence on anything but God to provide for me
4) apathy about the political process and my ability to affect change in the world
5) blocks and obstacles to my creativity and motivation for writing
6) materialism, consumer culture, and the technical imperative

Those are some pretty big weights! I still have more things to set down before I can run completely unfettered, but I am happy with this, because with each stone I set down, I get lighter and lighter, and can run faster and faster, fly higher and higher. This direction takes me so much closer to God.

The end of the year finds me still @ a crossroads in life-- that's the running with patience part-- and I am possessed of resilience, joy, peace, and a more unshakeable faith than 12 months ago. It occurs to me that these priceless lessons are taught by the experience of living. There is no class, no preparation for these tests. The test just goes on and on until you pass it. That's about as exciting as a lifelong pop bar exam, but it worketh resilience in me. Maybe this really has been the best year ever. And to God I say: "thank you.

Hurricane Katrina Videogames for Kids?!?!? WTF?!

"Tempest in Crescent City is the second game developed by Global Kids, a not-for-profit that provides after school programs to involve inner city youth in new media. You play a teen in New Orleans during Katrina ut sequelae, trying to find and save your Mom.In each level, the water level rises; in the first, the levees haven't broken yet, in the second you can wade through the water, and by the third you have to swim. Obstacles you must avoid lose you health, and you have a limited number of lives. However, you can gain "hero points" by interacting with characters you encounter -- e.g., by the second level, you have a hammer you can use to break open the roofs of houses where people are trapped. Enough hero points earn you extra lives."

This is so fucked up! At this rate, there'll be an amusement park ride in no time. I don't know what to say, but Richard @ Metroblogging New Orleans says it best.

To quote Rachel Maddow, I'm looking for someone to talk me down on this one. But I'm not you can or should.

Post Theme: Killjoy, by N.E.R.D.

Notes from the Underground

I'm only posting in this blog right now because I feel like I should, but I have no idea what to write or how to log my thoughts down. It's because I have no idea what my thoughts are. I can't even wrap my mind around what's happening. What is happening?!

Tomorrow by noon, Gustave is supposed to hit. Katrinaville is in the critical path, on the strongest side of the storm. I live with my parents in Long Beach, MS since April. Most of my clothes and things are scattered between my aunt's house in New Orleans, my parent's house, and my storage unit around the corner from there. I am poised to lose my things again, just like last time. I don't have a job or car to lose this time, however.

My feelings of failure and inadequacy, that sense of life having come to standstill since Katrina and being stuck in the mire and unable to rebuild, are personified in this eerie repetition of events. What am I do? How am I to make decisions on where to go, what to do? No one can help me; I am a face among many, with no unique thoughts of my own. Oh, my people!

Bottom line: am I stupid for my decision to move back after Katrina? Will my blocks get knocked down like a Jenga tower? As apt as the example is, my life is not a game! As my sister says, this is a new nightmare that starts the same as an old one; as much as you want to believe that things can end differently, you can't avoid the flashbacks and echoes of old pain.

So here I sit, my face a frozen mask. Waiting, waiting.

Post Theme: Tsunami by Res

Notes from Katrinaville

As Gustave stares us down, memories from Katrinaville are inevitable. Today is the third year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and here in the Coastal South, you can cut the tension with a knife. The real question is less what's going to happen than is it going to happen again, and so soon. Can we handle being wiped out again, or will we become an American Pompeii after these storms are through?

What a way of life! We sit at the end of nature's natural lane in the sea; we wait like striped pins for God's bowling balls. Every generation of people who has built a life here has had one storm story, but global warming has given us the dark gift of two or three this generation. Older people from New Orleans will tell you about Hurricane Betsy in 1965, Gulf Coast residents will tell you about Hurricane Camille in 1969, but now those same people have more than one catastrophic storm in their lifetime. How are we to adjust?

As New Orleanians our families are already scattered, our recovery in its infancy. There is no end to the depth of emotional and psychosocial damage we've sustained. We are a resilient and strong people, but there is arduous and unexplored territory ahead. It's like hacking your way through a new jungle with an old machete.

Yesterday the displaced portion of my family was interviewed by a local news station in Atlanta. They spoke on memories of Katrina and the oncoming storm, and possible onslaught of evacuee relatives, of which I am one. I couldn't speak as I was seized with emotion. How strange to see relatives you know and love once in awhile, or on television, living in another place, when just three short years ago, they were seen so often we took it for granted, daily even, living around the corner. That is Katrina's greatest, most merciless theft, and Katrinaville's most haunting legacy: ghosts of memories.

Post Theme: Black Rain by Ben Harper

The Wind Says Soon

Hurricane Fay is just kissing Long Beach, Mississippi today, and I am here. The breeze is blowing every which way, and the rain is so light that the drops swirl into mists like Starry Night. There is no sun, but no angry clouds either. The temperature is just right for a windbreaker, although if I had my druthers I would select a violently patterned, swirling caftan. It's a day for drama; the gulfcoast equivalent of a Cornish moor. It makes me contemplative, and a little sad.

I have opened the all the doors and the windows and the blinds, and I am inviting the weather right in for a chat. It's been whispering secrets all day and night, and I can't help but think that if I were a better listener, a dearer friend, I might learn a powerful secret. It will be a night for spells, I can already tell.

Without a car I must scheme and deal for a ride to the beach. I long to be there today, walking in the sand, my caftan blowing about, the scritchy grains dusting my toes and between. I'll stop to pick up rocks, shells, and other detritus, all while getting the pedicure I can't afford. It's there, at that time, I'll sit and stare and The Story might begin, might take me over. It's become not only a dream of mine to write, but also my salvation, the swift boat rescue after years adrift at sea. When will it come? I must admit, probably not during my fanciful imaginings.

The wind frees the strands of my hair from its queue one at a time, and they blow against my face in time with the breeze, and ghostly fingers skim my cheek. Comfort and hope bloom while patience grows. "Soon", Fay says. "Soon."

Post Theme: Clarity (acoustic) by John Mayer

Come the Storm

Hurricane Fay, come blow your horn!
the boards on the window, the cows in the barn
where are brave citizens on coastal streets?
"under their blue tarps starting to weep."
Will you help them? "No not I;
I'll wash all away, with none left dry."


What is the nature of a storm? Is there an evil sentience, or only the focused energy of a thoughtless minion of higher principalities, of deities? Is it sent, or allowed? Believing either is your choice, and the only thing you can control.

Bring it on.

I Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans

I went to New Orleans yesterday with my mom to return an expensive purchase and visit some of my relatives who remain there. It was a great day, and I returned home with memories of laughter, smiles, and of course beyond delicious food, but my heart was heavy with wistfulness. I miss New Orleans, deeply, in a way that a bi-monthly weekend visit cannot remedy.

It's been two years since catastrophic Katrina, and I am literally still exploring the wreckage. I feel in turns a developed bitterness, a shocked shame that I'm not "over it", especially considering how well I made out compared to so many others, and a frustrated and futile yearning to turn back time, which is a completely hopeless (and therefore pointless?) desire. With every corner that I turn in my struggle to cope, I encounter another part of what has become, quite obviously, a maze. The question is, am I navigating this maze with purpose, or wandering aimlessly, blinded by tears and a mind full of the unhelpful detritus of a full life abruptly destroyed like a fussy toddler's block tower? I must admit that tonight I am the wanderer; purpose is hard to find.

When Katrina hit, there was no thought but of the immediate survival of myself and others. It was in the wake of the storm that damaging epiphanies buffeted the shores of my consciousness like residual storm surges, continually destroying my ability to understand how my life had changed, was changing, and would continue to change. I realized that my career was over, as was my home, my community, my routine, my possessions. In essence, my situation in life, a tangible construct resulting from the execution of plans, realization of dreams, and achievement of goals, was immutably annihilated. This has translated into: not holding a job for more than a year, long bouts of unemployment, loss of health benefits, living in communities to which I do not belong, starting over financially an average of once a year, changing addresses every six months, scattered family members across the country, seeing my grandmother once or twice a year instead of weekly or more frequently, and just plain old missing my hometown like a phantom limb.

I told my mom yesterday that New Orleans fits me like a pair of old pajamas. I've never meant anything more. This is something that I should have known. I've been around the world, and never understood how fundamental that home base was to me until I'd lost it. I left for months, years at a time in pursuit of an education, of cultural immersion, of adventure, but also counted on it to be there when I was ready to return. And it always was there. It still is there, a testimony to the fact that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Something in me aches, and the irony of living an hour and a half away and being forced to move farther away to support myself does not escape me.

Sadly, I am not unique in this. So many people know what it means to miss New Orleans, and so many will not return despite that. I just can't stand the fact that returning is not beyond my reach, and yet it is. I won't waste time trying to articulate what makes New Orleans special, describing the sights, smells, sounds, events, and the like, because greater writers than I have done that for literally hundreds of years. I'll end by saying that I want to go back, and am determined to do so eventually. It's like a piece of myself is missing, and I know precisely where to find it.

Post Theme: Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans by Louis Armstrong

Boredom Christening

What a time for me to decide to start blogging again, eh?

Let me start out how I mean to finish -- honestly. I'm only writing in this freaking blog because I am dreading going back to this novel manuscript that I started last week. I'm officially competing in NaNoWriMo, but this is really an attempt to break the dam on my creativity.

What it's about: it's about me stopping the meandering madness that I've been infected with, just stopping the erratic movements and standing still and saying enough. I've wanted to be a writer for years now, and I know that I can do it -- that I have the talent and the drive. No more moving where ever, doing whatever. From now on, my moves will be filled with purpose. So it's back to New Orleans!

Two years after Katrina and now I realize that I've only just now made a major breakthrough. And after all the agony of indecision, it's this, it's full circle. Don't tell me God doesn't have a sense of humor.

So let me tell you about my novel (the irony of writing about what I am supposed to be writing about does not escape me).... or maybe I'll save that for the next post. Suddenly I am feeling confident again!