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| Prayer to an Unknown
I awoke this morning
to the smell of salt on a curling wind
and stood on the beach
the white foam whipped sand
at the western shoreline of
this continent
an arcing divide between worlds
as if a skull were cracked in two
before one half knew the other
The sun stood at my back
its heat scorching
the earth below my feet
and the earth longed for the night
to overcome the day
I whispered to the waves:
I live as you do
turning the tides inward
weathering a sun-beaten day
to rest a night
turning the tides outward
A question came to me then
whether the waves passing this beach
were the same waves
coming again and again
chained to circle this same shore
or if they were from the other
half of the divide
coming and going between
one reality and one unknown
the common thread of a dissonant tapestry
I wondered if they were bringing me
a sun and wind I had not yet tasted
if they were telling me
that all the young men they had met
lived as they or I did
bearing the cycle
for an aimless respite
This was my wish
so that we would not be alone
I wrote it on my hand and placed it
in the sea
still whispering to the waves:
I'm giving this away
this prayer to an unknown that was
once mine
and now is yours
| | |
| suppose
Life is an old man carrying flowers on his head.
young death sits in a cafe
smiling, a piece of money held between
his thumb and first finger
(i say "will he buy flowers" to you
and "Death is young
life wears velour trousers
life totters, life has a beard" i
say to you who are silent.--"Do you see
Life? he is there and here,
or that, or this
or nothing or an old man 3 thirds
asleep, on his head
flowers, always crying
to nobody something about les
roses les bluets
yes,
will He buy?
Les belles bottes--oh hear
, pas chères")
and my love slowly answered I think so. But
I think I see someone else
there is a lady, whose name is Afterwards
she is sitting beside young death, is slender;
likes flowers.
When I am an old man, I will wonder why I spent so much of my youth waiting to be old.
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| El Dia de los Muertos
In Mexico, I met myself one day
Along the side of someone's private road.
I recognized the longing in my face.
I felt the heavy burden of the load
I carried. Mexico, I thought, was strange
And very dry. The private road belonged
To friends more powerful than I, enraged
But noble people who like me sang songs
In honor of the dead. In Mexico,
Tradition is as heavy as the sun.
I stared into my eyes. Some years ago,
I told myself, I met a handsome man
Who thought that I was Mexican. The weight
Of enormous pain, unspeakable
Yet plain, was in his eyes; his shirt was white,
So white it blinded me. After it all
Became more clear, and we were making love,
Beneath the cool sheet of the moon, I knew
We were alive. The tiny stars above
Seemed strange and very far. A dry wind blew.
I gave myself to him, and then I asked
Respectfully if I might touch his face.
I did not want to die. His love unmasked,
I saw that I had slept not with disgrace
But with desire. Along the desert road,
A cactus bloomed. As water filled my eyes,
I sang a song in honor of the dead.
They came for me. My grief was like a vise,
And in my blood I felt the virus teem.
My noble friends abandoned me beside
The road. The sun, awakened from its dream,
Rose suddenly. I watched it as I died,
And felt the heaviness of all its gold.
I listened for the singing in the distance.
A man walked toward me. The story he told
Seemed so familiar, pained, and so insistent,
I wished I would live long enough to hear
Its end. This man was very kind to me.
He kissed me, gave me water, held me near.
In Mexico, they sing so beautifully.
-Rafael Campo
II (from Twenty-One Love Poems)
I wake up in your bed. I know I have been dreaming.
Much earlier, the alarm broke us from each other,
you've been at your desk for hours. I know what I dreamed:
our friend the poet comes into my room
where I've been writing for days,
drafts, carbons, poems are scattered everywhere,
and I want to show her one poem
which is the poem of my life. But I hesitate,
and wake. You've kissed my hair
to wake me. I dreamed you were a poem,
I say, a poem I wanted to show someone . . .
and I laugh and fall dreaming again
of the desire to show you to everyone I love,
to move openly together
in the pull of gravity, which is not simple,
which carried the feathered grass a long way down the upbreathing air.
-Adrienne Rich
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| Back from my second Alternative Spring Break trip to the happenin'est joint in the south. There are, of course, many gleeful drunken stories to tell, but those aren't anything special. Instead, here's a large chunk of pseudo-insightful vomit:
ASB New Orleans 2008
(photo from ASB 2006)
So Vox also took a group down to volunteer--they actually worked specifically with a group doing hurricane reconstruction work. I didn't go with them because I figured I'd gotten my fill of that sort of work in '06, so I went looking for something new. In fact, I went looking for something that wasn't even in New Orleans, but after a month and a half of scouring the states for an HIV/AIDS organization that hadn't filled up their volunteer sheets for spring break, I found myself led right back into New Orleans--the 9th ward again, of all places. Yeah, I suppose the 9th ward and I were destined for each other. In retrospect, the idea that I'd "gotten my fill" of a certain type of volunteer work had a subtle bit of selfishness behind it--the purposes of volunteering can easily become skewed by a volunteer's personal preferences. Volunteers ought to go where help is needed, and when it becomes a game of pick-and-choose, something's not quite right with the picture. But I suppose in this case, I didn't choose my project so much as my project chose me.
So after countless phone calls throughout January and half of February, I landed a one-week slot with Belle Reve, a non-profit hospice/house of sorts for people who live with HIV/AIDS. From the outside it looks like just another house in the neighborhood. In fact, it pretty much looks that way from the inside too, with the exception of a few social work offices upstairs and a front desk set up next to the entrance.
 
We arrived Saturday night, dropped off our crap in our seedy hotel, and got blasted on Bourbon Street. So much for trying to avoid the typical college spring break, right? The next morning, I had to cook breakfast for a group of 12 and transport everyone to Belle Reve by 11:00 while working off a hangover. That translated into us being an hour late for the resident visit. Luckily for us, Tanice, one of the social work coordinators and the woman who prepped the resident visit for us, was a fairly laid back lady. After her general HIV/AIDS talk, Belle Reve history and Q&A session, the discussion led us to talk of Katrina and its impact on the house. Belle Reve once housed up to 30-some odd people. Katrina forced its closure and the subsequent exodus of its residents to outlying states (Alabama, for example in one case) or other homes. Only recently had some people been able to take up residence in the house again--5 were living there when we went, and 1 other person had apparently died there about a week before our arrival (due to complications with an infection, I think). Tanice was willing to share her personal flood experience with us, and we learned that her house had gotten about 4 inches of water during the flood, the damages from which they are still trying to fix to this day. Meanwhile a neighbor up the block had gotten no water, and another neighbor down the block had gotten 4 feet. Luck, or some twisted act of God? Not sure what the answer to that is. Almost 3 years after Katrina and it still seems that the return of even half the number of people to residential areas seems incredibly unlikely. I heard one statistic stating less than 5% return in some areas. From my own judgment, there didn't seem to be a whole lot of life in the upper 9th ward as compared with '06--a couple of people walking out of convenience stores and what looked like crack-dealers parked on corner curbs here and there. For the most part, the streets were still lined with abandoned houses marked with the number of dead people and animals initially found inside.
 
(No crack selling and no cat selling!)
"New Orleans post-Katrina--it's just different," Tanice told us. And really, what better way could anyone put it? I don't see how non-residents could begin to understand the change that the city has gone through, and I doubt any residents could begin to explain how their lives have changed through the whole ordeal. Even though this was my second trip to New Orleans, the experience was no less extraodinary than the first time. The simplest take-home message I can see is just that New Orleans will never be the same place it once was. The I-10 overpass that intersects Claiborne is situated right above a quarter mile of mattresses and tents that families are currently living in. Tanice told us about it, but nothing could've actually prepared us for the actual sight when we turned the corner and the people came into view. The most humbling thought, though, came from passing by the intersection at night and realizing that a whole community was sleeping there--people with jobs and children, people who still get up on Sunday morning to go to church. Out of respect, no one in my group took pictures.
The residents that we met at Belle Reve were another story. Every one of them that we met was completely amazing. After suffering innumerable hardships (homelessness, abuse, drug problems, etc) and then being diagnosed with HIV, they were still making it through each day and working to get back on their feet. In their shoes, I might have called it quits long ago. The kindredness between the residents and Belle Reve staff said a lot about the strengths of the organization itself as well--and the atmosphere was incredibly infectious. A day into it, and everybody from my team seemed to be toting a bit of Belle Reve's Louisiana-style southern hospitality and developing a taste for sweet tea (and I mean real sweet tea, i.e. half tea, half sugar). Kyle, one of the residents and possibly the sweetest gay man I've ever met, baked us cupcakes in the middle of the week, and Harry, another resident, sang Lionel Richie songs to us during work breaks.
 
(Harry and Tanice)
 
(Kyle in the back)
One thing that everyone noticed about the people of New Orleans was how gracious every single person was when they found out that we had come to volunteer. The same for 2006. And the fact of the matter was, we were really not accomplishing a whole lot. I think a huge problem for volunteers is managing to reconcile the fact that they don't manage to do that much for the people they're helping with the idea that they're working to make a difference in the world. I've spent my whole college career volunteering constantly for things I would later deem worthless, and it's usually left me reeking of bitterness and cynicism regarding when or where a person actually starts to make an impact in even the smallest corner of the world. In the last year or so, I think I've finally been given an answer as to why the hell I keep doing the things I do, and that is that the work itself isn't important. Work will get done simply through manpower and time, but each person will most likely only contribute to a small piece of that. The real importance lies in the people, the families, and the communities being served. The simple of act of showing up to offer whatever bit of help you can give is when some of God's most profound work begins; time after time, I've showed up bringing very little to the table but have left with a helluva lot more. Yes, some people may become the future MLK, Jr.'s, Mother Theresa's, Paul Farmer's, etc, but most of us will not. Giving your heart to others but also letting others give their hearts to you (pardon my lame sentiment)--this is how we change the world.
Kay, the volunteer coordinator for Belle Reve, said this through tears on our last day at Belle Reve:
"I've travelled all over the world in my life and made millions of dollars, but you all will find that one of the greatest things in life you will ever learn is to be part of a community and to give and receive from that community."
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| I went paintballing over the weekend. Here are some of the results, for anyone who hasn't already seen them on facebook.
Here we are, The PT Daredevil Crew, a name I coined because we drove James' PT Cruiser up to Lockhart and made some attempts (very unsuccessful ones) to make some daredevil maneuvers on the road. From left to right: Rujie the ex-fucking-marine, James, Gail, me.
James' headshot on Rujie (if you can see the paint on his mask) earned him bragging rights for the rest of the day, even though Rujie slaughtered us 3v1 later on.
Gail, however, wasn't one to be ignored. This was the last image Rujie saw during one of our later skirmishes before his sight was blocked out by a barrage of orange paint.
We did a lot of posing that day, especially me.
James left his mark on my hand. I later returned the favor by unloading onto his left nipple.
So I actually got shot quite a bit, and a lot of the wounds were pretty gruesome. Here were some of the best ones, but there were a lot more welts underneath my sweatshirt and pants that were equally as gory--clavicle, stomach, knee and upper arms to name a few. I also got shot once in the head by Rujie, and that one made my eyes water a bit. I sent my dad the pictures and he called me up to make sure I didn't get hit in the nuts. Always protect your nuts, he told me. Wise man, my dad.
So that was fun. By the way, if anyone's wondering if girls think flesh wounds are hot--they don't. Not at all.
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