A Settled State of Disarray
My body and mind are in a settled state of disarray. I
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I’m feeling the same way that you are just by the act of anticipating our return home in January. I know what I’m returning to and the same questions and concerns you express churn in my head until I think it will explode. If I were back now, I’d have coffee with you. In the meantime, let me know if you find the manual.
To Dan, by the very fact that you can write these thoughts and have someone in another state read them and respond proves you are not alone. We have to rethink our perceptions of what being alone is. Before the Internet people were really alone. That’s the purpose of these blogs. I am applying for a metro blog for my area the Santa Ynez Valley, Santa Barbara County, California. We live with vineyards and horses and we have been coming down your way to help out. I would love to talk to people and come down there and stay for a long time and help out. My mother died and my business was shut down and I have not worked really in 4 months either. I ran a computer school and made websites. I just got a job as a teachers assistant in a private school here. Start next week. Finally! I want to come to Mardi Gras. Never been. We have fires and mudslides and I was relocated in an earthquake by FEMA one year. Los Angeles was leveled in places back in 1992 or 1991. I forgot. We had no power or water. But nothing like you. Every day I think of the South. Nothing that happens to me is as bad as what you have gone through. I always remember you and that is multiplied a thousand fold by other people all over. Just keep writing and sending out your blog accounts. You are doing more than you realize to rebuild. Merry Christmas NOLA’S children.
I’m leaving on Monday, December 26th, to volunteer in the clean-up with the Common Ground Collective, though I first have to fly to Vermont to pick up my VW Beetle and bike and drive them to Charlotte, S.C., where I’ll be assisting in the conversion of the beetle to a Grease-eater, running on waste vegetable oil.
I’d like to have some coffee and hear your story and take on things there now, if it’s not too hard to connect. Katrina seemed like a really important turning point for many people I know, certainly for me, though I’ve only experienced the hurricane and its aftermath through the media, online, and at some San Francisco benefits for Common Ground.
I’ve listened many times to Malik Rahim’s take on the history of New Orleans, available on the Common Ground website, by clicking Radio Algiers, the station that was up, briefly, till the FCC busted it for having no license while FEMA was still MIA, at least in Algiers and the Ninth Ward.
Best–AnnieGetYourGang
Dear, dear, Dan, you speak your frustrated heart and I hear it loud and clear. I wonder the same things everyday … but I look forward to meeting the friends I have made through the internet (blogging and email) after Katrina. To build on something Marta said, we have now established at least a few people who love New Orleans and are willing to support it through working and writing for it. We should get together for coffees, meals, parties and more than that … be friends and support one another in the months ahead. Adrenaline is temporary, the bonds formed from such a time last a long while. This is when we selectively let our guard down and let people in.
I’ll be back right before Krewe du Vieux rolls on Feb 11th as I am in the parade and our subkrewe is full! The reason I mention this is that this subkrewe is going to be a large part of my NO family once I get back into the swing of things.
I’m coming back because I love New Orleans (it’s not just a place, it’s a state of mind) and because I choose not to leave my home like this. Dan, I’m with ya.
I’m not in New Orleans but I feel the same way. We moved after the hurricane and since then, I feel as if I’ve been asleep. I wake suddenly, normally when I’m talking to someone, and it’s like I don’t know where I am. Or why I’m not in Slidell, working at Lonestar and wondering if there will be another weather fluke and it’ll snow like it did last year. I can’t seem to find my place anymore.