lately i’ve been watching some of my friends don obama buttons and send out forwards for his campaign, and i see people debating the news of who voted black or who voted female. overall, i do think this is an important election in our country’s history. i also think a lot of people are just burned out on politics and big government, despite the opportunity for a woman or an african american to be in the white house. some people might see past the hype and still feel like neither republicans nor democrats can represent their interests or their ideologies. i’ve heard a fifty year-old, working-class black man living in new orleans tell me he is not going to vote. and i’ve heard a young, professional woman living in new york city tell me she is not going to vote. and i’m sure there’s a million more stories out there…
 
here’s one from howard zinn, although i can’t tell if he’s going to vote this election or not:

Ziga Vodovnik: One personal question. Do you go to the polls? Do you vote?

Howard Zinn: I do. Sometimes, not always. It depends. But I believe that it is preferable sometimes to have one candidate rather another candidate, while you understand that that is not the solution. Sometimes the lesser evil is not so lesser, so you want to ignore that, and you either do not vote or vote for third party as a protest against the party system. Sometimes the difference between two candidates is an important one in the immediate sense, and then I believe trying to get somebody into office, who is a little better, who is less dangerous, is understandable. But never forgetting that no matter who gets into office, the crucial question is not who is in office, but what kind of social movement do you have. Because we have seen historically that if you have a powerful social movement, it doesn’t matter who is in office. Whoever is in office, they could be Republican or Democrat, if you have a powerful social movement, the person in office will have to yield, will have to in some ways respect the power of social movements.

We saw this in the 1960s. Richard Nixon was not the lesser evil, he was the greater evil, but in his administration the war was finally brought to an end, because he had to deal with the power of the anti-war movement as well as the power of the Vietnamese movement. I will vote, but always with a caution that voting is not crucial, and organizing is the important thing.

When some people ask me about voting, they would say will you support this candidate or that candidate? I say: ‘I will support this candidate for one minute that I am in the voting booth. At that moment I will support A versus B, but before I am going to the voting booth, and after I leave the voting booth, I am going to concentrate on organizing people and not organizing electoral campaign.’

dear ——,
i just read your letter and i keep going over words and sentences in my head of what i would write back to you, so i’ll just get it all down now. i think letter writing is the only thing i don’t procrastinate on…

and i’ll write on a computer despite it’s nerdiness and not because i like to write letters on computers–i don’t–but because traveling east has worn me out with the time change and then to spend four days in the city that never sleeps…well, i followed along and didn’t sleep much. i think what wears me out the most is airplanes. when i hitchhike and ride buses or trains, i get don’t seem to get so worn out so quickly. i guess the slow travel lets your body adjust as you move, as opposed to the crash that happens after a six-hour airplane trip.

[regarding violence and bike accidents and deaths happening in new orleans lately:] i heard about l. right before i left town, and the story was super confusing from m., and then s. spent a day at our house to chill out and we talked. but of course the whole incident has been confusing for everyone. the incident makes me angry, but it’s that anger that i can’t aim anywhere and so i just feel upset and confused. sometime a week or so ago i got a call from tony about p. and j.’s bike accident while i was planting lettuce in a garden in portland. it was another pileup on my anger at this…whatever this is that is causing harm to our friends. it is faceless and mysterious, like a spirit of hate and violence or just plain carelessness or recklessness that does so much harm to innocent people. it’s uncontrollable, and so we feel helpless when our friends fall at the hands of it. and even when i am doing something to relax my mind, like planting lettuce, this spirit haunts me and all my friends.
i had not heard about b….and i don’t know if i knew him, or at least i can’t picture his face. did you know him well? i hope you are doing well with all this. i know you have had so much death in your life lately. like so many folks in violet, too…they all say it’s been that way ever since the storm. or maybe it just feels like it. but i don’t know.

i think all this news has been causing me to emphasize the unhealthiness of new orleans in my conversations with outsiders. people usually want to talk about new orleans: oh, how’s it going down there? what do you do? do you think you will stay? i feel obligated to talk about it, mostly just for myself because i think about these questions all the time and i never really have a concrete answer. new orleans is always changing, i never really do the same thing and when i finally decide to stay, i think about leaving…and when finally get away from the city and travel, i get to thinking new orleans is the only place for me. it makes sense because nothing makes sense in new orleans. you know?

i think some of my anxiety and indecisiveness comes from my personality and not just the insanity of that city. i want a steady, stable place to call home, including a house with my tools and music and instruments, but i constantly change my perception of “home” and sometimes think i will only be happy if i surrender myself to the movement of travel. i think i am a nomad, an itinerant. well, no…not an itinerant, because i have many homes in many places. i just can’t ever settle down in one. new orleans suits me well now, and i want to make art, play music, help rebuild houses, and have dance parties in a place i call my home. but inevitably, i realize that new places bring me new inspiration and again, i have homes with other best friends in all the far corners of this country. i’d like to think of my home as between two oceans. think of my home as east and west of the mississippi.

i’m reading into the wild because my sister gave it to me. i have been hesitating reading it because of the fact that the movie made the story very popular in mainstream america and, in my opinion, devaluing the meaning of what it means to detach yourself in wandering. yet despite the cliche nature of the whole thing–the movie, the popularity, etc–i think our culture is ripe to receive some of the messages held in into the wild. the story of alex (the man who the story is about) is helping me understand myself as a restless traveler, not to mention my constant questioning of everything. wayne westerberg, a south dakota friend of alex’s, recalled:

“i think maybe part of what got him into trouble was that he did too much thinking. somtimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why people were bad to each other so often. a couple of times i tried to tell him it was a mistake to get too deep into that kind of stuff, but alex got stuck on things. he always had to know the absolute right answere before he could go on to the next thing.”

still, i am empty handed. there are no answers, but, like some abusive human instinctual response, i keep searching for them.

word-of-mouth, i’ve told many friends about a radio show i heard while laying on the floor of my apartment in chicago last summer. i don’t listen to radio stories as much as i’d like (unlike one friend). it was one of those moments where i was completely engrossed in nothing, maybe drawing on my wall or washing dishes. and then this radio program came on wbez:
Memory and Forgetting
Show #304 - Radio Lab, WNYC
Friday, June 08, 2007
 
:: site
:: mp3 stream
:: download mp3
 
“According to the latest research, remembering is an unstable and profoundly unreliable process. It’s easy come, easy go as we learn how true memories can be obliterated and false ones added. And Oliver Sacks joins us to tell the story of an amnesiac whose love for his wife and music transcend his 7 second memory.”

i am wondering how to get where i am going. i would like to think that something leads to something else.
maybe that’s our folly as humans: we can’t allow ourselves to admit that this is all choas decorated to look like order.

i’d like to see myself in this place (violet/new orleans) as a maintainer and as a resource to those who work selflessly in supporting the communities here (i.e. keep-hope.org). i would also like to absorb the spirit and wisdom of this place and learn from my neighbors. it was not entirely a conscious choice to come south, but it is a conscious choice to stay.

i’d like to grow with this soul i’ve come to fall in love with via memories and through letters. in life, i’ve come to worry that desire for a person–desire that takes you over rivers and mountains to see them–only leads to an anxiety over the separation of person/place. what i mean is that i find myself in this not-so-new home of new orleans with a new appreciation of “place”, yet falling for a person in a different location seems to fracture my connection with that home-place. in the instance of new orleans/violet, i have continually been at odds with it’s state of “home,” even though it has rightly become one. now that i have fallen in love with someone in another place and begin daydreaming of moving to that place (even a place i thought i would never live), i suddenly start reinforcing my beliefs of why new orleans/violet shouldn’t be my home. what i’ve failed to admit is that it already is.

really, i think it is important for me to wholly admit this is home, and then to visit with this love and ponder together the prospect of making a new home. all the little details i worry so much about–material possesions: tools, vehicles, stuff…ownership, responsibility, accountability–these things will work themselves out once a reason for home is established, where ever that may be. here. or there.

It seemed so fast to think of it now breaks my heart. But in the long days of home the world went on forever. Every day was a thousand years. Electric lines hummed over quiet roads; trees whispered secrets and spoke of signs and wonders. The light of afternoon filtered through my fingers laced before my eyes to reveal the sweetness of the world below and of the world above my head. My hidden heart made words and symbols and created a sense of place that made the days stretch into a memory that long may as well be a lifetime. And the silence of the day would bear down and then the sun would sink low and my heart would be cast up into the language of evening; into the mystery of home.

out of all things, all places, i wonder where am i?
i made a mistake: i told my friends i’m leaving. i was excited, not thinking like my usual self. really, i needed to keep my thoughts to myself, take a trip, soak up my secret desire to go someplace far away between mountains and sea. i am alone, dreaming of this face. i am wondering where am i? where am i? i am here, with you.

i day dream often. i don’t take enough time to look into the river. i sleep in. i work on too many projects at once. i live carefully yet recklessly. i wander. i have trouble relating to most people. i am scared of being alone. i can’t find enough time to be alone, sometimes.
i miss home. it is right here. right there.

(first paragraph from jaci)

Friday, April 11 @ 8 pm
New Orleans, LA
Co-presented with WWOZ

Tapping into the city’s vibrant radio scene and joining forces with New Orleans’ Jazz and Heritage Station, WWOZ, the Third Coast Festival presents an evening of lively, sound-rich and NOLA-relevant radio stories—you’ll hear about jazz (duh), ghosts, mousetrap sadists…

After a couple hours of hot radio, Delfeayo Marsalis’ New Orleans Jazz Show will continue the evening’s sonic celebration, taking the stage at 10 pm.

Where: Donna’s Bar and Grill - 800 N. Rampart St, French Quarter

Tickets: Admission is free all night!

[ PDF flyer! ]

VIOLET, LA. 05 may 2006 - i wrote this on a scrap piece of paper in march in the back of a car heading south to the beach on the gulf coast. i found it again folded up in my wallet, and i’ll copy it down here as a record of my emotions, another piece of the timeline doing relief work here in louisiana.

when i arrived in new orleans, the sinking, horrible feeling came conciously and on the surface. now that feeling is rooting itself deeper in my subconscious. i don’t think much about the devastation now, but i am much more sad. it’s a drowning feeling coming sporadically and often causing near immobilization. i can’t feel much of anything but emptiness and despair, almost as if i’m coming to empathize with the people who survived the storm and today tell their story to those who listen…

she stepped out of her house onto the front step. the hurricane winds had calmed and she thought to herself how mild a storm that was. a few trees down, some telephone poles knocked over. something they could handle. looking out from her front step, she felt rain fall on her forehead and watched the dark sky above. she looked to her left. off in the distance, a wall of water came surging down the street, and unstoppable force of nature coming to tear down houses and drown anything in it’s path. i can’t fathom the feeling of impending death, the fear. but i’ve heard a dozen stories yet of those who felt the fear and immediatly fought back, holding onto the possibility of life, however small that chance may have been. climbing furniture as the water rose within minutes. punching through ceilings to climb onto roof tops. sitting on chimneys waiting for help and maybe rescue. swimming on driftwood to hold themselves up. having guns pointed to their faces by cops and property owners hunting for “looters.”

in february, i heard these stories with a strong interest and felt sympathetic. i could almost say i had a hunger for the oral history being told by so many survivors and those who came to help. but now, at the end of march, i’m sick to my stomach and depressed. i hear these stories and have to put my head down or look away, off into another world where i try to imagine the fear of facing either death or devastation. death means letting go; surviving means dealing with the aftermath and attempting to cope. my spirits are lifted by the survivers, those coming home, the relief volunteers, all the people working in solidarity together. but right now i’m tired and lonely, working hard amongst destructive, corrupt, oppressive systems, trying to figure out a better way.

i am home on a friday night. it’s cold outside, 39 degrees. the temperature might hit freezing tonight. niobo went home to violet to put the seedlings inside the house to save them from the cold.

if this part of the south were ever “home,” it is now. if you know me you know i have little roots and identifying the place where i am from is a long answer. thinking about new orleans as home will stress me out. wondering where i belong can cause me anxiety. but i am learning patience and how to be in the present, to be here now. and not question tomorrow.

just a little over a year ago i left this place. i didn’t decide to leave, i seemed to follow the decision made by others. we were volunteers. and outsiders. and we were supposedly burnt out. or at least ready to complete this voyage in our unchartered adventure. none of us had planned this: one week into one year; one month into a new love. still, i believe that in the depths of my gut back in february of last year i wanted to stay. but memories are always foggy and there are so many details i am forgetting to mention…. all in all, my time ended in violet for good, and chicago–for lack of any other home–was where i could find myself again. or this is what i presumed.

but i’m getting off topic. no, wait, i don’t really have a topic here. new orleans? chicago? home? hope?

if you read this journal back a few months, you know i have family here now. and if you check hope you know it’s still around, tribal as ever (don’t let the professional look fool you). and this life is about joy and tolerance and believing in each other so we can be strong for those who lose strength sometimes. or all the time.

a single new orleans day is an entire lifetime. we don’t let it slip away, no matter who, no matter how. live…

i wake.
standing in the kitchen, steam rising from a mason jar half full of tea, i think. the house is empty. it is christmas day. 54 degrees. this weather would be warm for chicago, but it is really cold for new orleans.

the saints lost their game two days ago and every new orleanian i know was in a somber mood, but today offers cheer. hope, maybe. it is yet another reason to gather and cram large families into small houses, tall pots steaming of greens and jambalaya. boxes and boxes of wrapped gifts piled high in the corner.

when i speak of new orleans right now, i speak of violet, too. the difference can be a sensitive subject depending on the topic. the weather: well it’s all the same in the gulf, from houston to florida. wet. wet-cold, wet-hot. i think most folks ten miles down river in violet would consider themselves “new orleans” in most situations. but then it’s true that many people have moved away or stayed away from the streets of new orleans because of just that: the streets. before the storm, violet could be rough, but new orleans was always rougher. violet is country, really. quiet. that’s what people like about it. but then the storm winds blew in. and the water rose up and up and up. people in violet tell of a “wall of water” that came through the marshland to the north-east, over the dirt levees, and on top of the houses. 25,000 homes: destroyed.

when the lights camera action lit up the crecent city, only half devastated, violet was lost in the shadows. a whole parish wiped out and the only attention violet got a woman serving rice and beans and hot dogs in a red cross truck. then the difference between “new orleans” and violet meant much more because what the city got, violet didn’t.

in february 2006, i drove down the road. i needed a place to sleep and common ground was all filled up. someone named isabelle and suncere had set up cots in a empty church they cleaned out. the steeple lay in the dirt next to the building. piles of wood were organized in the parking lot. a white tent was set up housing canned food and clothing. i turned off the ignition to my truck and the door opened up. “hey, we security. you guys volunteer?” he was already taking our bags out of the truck. he spoke with a thick vietnemese accent a carried a huge mag light, the kind with like fifteen D batteries. in the dark, he sounded really tough, but as he walked away his silouette from a outdoor light revealed a scrawny little body in boxer shorts and a winter coat. phong was his name, i learned.

this was HOPE, the first relief operation this far down the road that i know of. a little crew came down with a pickup truck one day and found a few residents living in tents behind their houses, gutting their own muddy, moldy houses day by day. by the time i arrived a month later, HOPE had wheelbarrows, shovels, boots, gloves, tyvek suits, respirators, and duct tape. volunteers were going out daily to clean out houses and residents were showing up equally as fast to sign up and take food and supplies. families lived in tents, vehicles, trailers. coordination couldn’t happen fast enough. there was so much to do.

(to be continued…)