nola 2

It seems that the more I learn, the more questions I have, and the harder these questions are to be answered. Simple questions like ‘what do I want,’ or ‘what should I do today,’ or ‘why should I even get out of bed,’ are now the larger unanswerable, paralyzing questions. I seem paralyzed by trying to figure out the best way to approach solving these problems. The problems here seem endless – or are arranged in such a cycle that self-perpetuates.

In attempt to solve these problems in a lasting way, we have brought to life a concept we call “sustainability.” This verbalizes an idea: we need to consider the future of our actions while we are acting – it promotes a worldview that incorporates the well-being of future generations as well as those of the current society. To use the term sustainability is to reach for something perfect, unattainable, and this can be done in such a way as to promote inaction rather than positive action toward smaller goals. We need a bigger plan, we need to understand the bigger picture and do so in such a way that this picture is able to provide us the answers we need to the nagging yet unavoidable questions.

Every small task now is hard to complete. Rather difficult to do in an acceptable way because I’m too paranoid about things getting done perfectly, sustainably, etc. It seems now that holding these criteria that entertain ideals of perfection as means to act is much more detrimental than motivating. How does the idea of sustainability evade me for encouraging practical change? Why has this become a barrier rather than a motivator? What has changed to make that such? Is it because I’m somehow depressed? I am definitely feeling symptoms of depression – the inability to find reason to get out of bed in the morning, lack of concern for food, for my body and well-being, decreased motivation, decreased spontaneity and creativity.

I lack passion and I don’t know why. I feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of problems. Digging deeper into the roots and learning the extent of problems in this city, in this country, in our world, easily leads me to feel brought down, weighted, burdened, and unable to move because of it. I know that I can get past that, and that I need to for my self and my ability to be compassionate. It seems now that I’ve somehow forgotten how to see those problems as apart from my self, and begin to take baby steps in the right direction. It seems that I’ve lost direction; I’ve lost that illumination of the path ahead.

I’ll write a little on what I’ve been doing the past few days:
Friday night Noah and I went downtown to get away from Iberville and get some work done. We were in the midst of human spectacle: tourism. Tourists, mostly well-dressed white people, were covering the streets and restaurants that we normally find rather inviting. These people were the swarm of flies around a rotting piece of food, only they don’t move when you wave your hand. Noah and I wondered how we could avoid being part of this crowd. He suggested unbuttoning his shirt, though I found no way to alleviate my “white guilt” through superficial appearance. I paid four dollars for a frozen coffee at Café du Monde, and realized I don’t even know what “worth it” means any more. The coffee was good tasting and cold, but I didn’t find it to actualize its monetary potential.

We sat down in front of the cat park, Jackson Square, which lies in front of St. Louis Cathedral. We call it the cat park because at night the square is locked up and a slew of stray cats serve as its nocturnal guardians. Many nights tourists stop to feed the cats; on Friday night we saw a family bring bags from Whole Foods and feed the cats. At this point, we were disgusted that people could waste so much money to feed cats but at the same time turn a blind eye to the hungry and homeless people with whom we were talking. Noah said this to Chicago who responded that we need to treat all creatures with compassion, because ‘we’re all one.’ To this I agree.

We sat down on a bench looking toward the cats and started writing. Noah was working on the press release for July 8th, and I was thinking about some of the questions regarding Common Ground that we can’t find answers to. Then a homeless woman came up and sat with her back to us on the same double-sided bench. She hadn’t said anything and looked like she was trying to sleep. After a number of minutes she started talking to us, asking us where we were from and we told her we were from the Midwest, working with Common Ground and trying to gut schools. We told her about the press release. Eventually she told us that she has a Masters in Media Communications. Her name is Danielle.

It’s hard, though, to access truth. I wish people didn’t feel motivated to lie. I wish people wouldn’t have to feel pushed to tell anyone anything except truth. But for these reasons and so many forces that push us to conceal what we know as real, there exists so many different levels of reality throughout society. There’s the level of the federal government, whose true motives are so wrapped up in lie that many people believe we are actually in a war against terror. This government pledges to ‘leave no child behind,’ but I see only disconnect when it comes to that actually happening. There is this city government, the structure of which is extremely convoluted and unintelligible. To work with NORD (the New Orleans Recreation Department), Eric and Jeremiah worked for months (3-4) to receive word from someone who actually had a meaningful and weighty opinion. At the ground level there are so many different opinions that it’s hard to even understand one, my own, completely. There are so many different interactions between opinion that occur daily, these are so dynamic and subject to radical, and sometimes, violent change, that many times I feel lost in confusion. Many times I wish that I could understand the truth, that I could answer my questions, or even that I knew who to ask.

Later

I feel that insatiable hunger. I want to talk to someone I love. I wish I could just go eat for a while. And drink water. I’m always sweating, even when I’m just laying in bed. I’m tired of being beat down by this heat. I’m tired of feeling unutilized. I should be doing something. I could be doing something. I want to do something. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what I could do that is constructive. Sometimes I feel like I need to be lead, but that would just provide another – external - thing to doubt. I can do that with my self already. It just seems like that’s not leading me anywhere, it’s not showing me any clear path of action any more. I can’t figure out why in a constructive way. I don’t know what I want with my self down here. I don’t know what I want with my life right now. It feels pointless, aimless, directionless, motionless in a way. I feel like I’m treading water. I’m moving but not going anywhere because I don’t know which way to go. Treading water for long periods of time is not healthy.

I miss comfort. I miss feeling comforted, by food, by a person, in my surroundings.

I want to be sought out. I want someone to need me, to want me, to desire my work my attention, my actualization. I want someone to want to see me dance, to dance with me. I want to build something together. I want to live together and do so happily, and in a way that makes others happy.

nola 1

So imagine walking into an elementary school. The classrooms are full of desks, chairs, posters, colorful shapes and words. Hallways are lined with motivational statements: “leave no child behind,” “creativity needs no direction,” and the school’s mission statement. The cafeteria is filled with tables and benches to accommodate at least 200 kids. There’s a stage, piano, and chairs for a sizable audience.

Now imagine that sitting in toxic floodwater – water from industrial New Orleans, a prominent port city, water soaking in garbage dumps, sewage water – for up to two weeks. Imagine after the city was drained, the school doors chained up, all contents inside left to rot. For nine months.

One volunteer site of Common Ground consisting of about twenty volunteers is the only group of people in the entire city of New Orleans that’s responsible for cleaning up these schools. We “gut” the schools (remove all the rubble and place it outside so FEMA trucks can drive it away) and then the remaining labor is contracted out. The things we discard are usually usable – undamaged by the floodwater: hundreds of unopened textbooks in storage rooms, thousands of clean, unwrinkled pieces of paper, sharp-tipped crayons, markers, colored pencils. The garbage piles we create look like an exploded Office Max TM.

By the end of the work day, most of us are so frustrated from being the only people who seem to care about the future of the children of New Orleans, and that we’re throwing out so much usable material, and that we aren’t being assisted by residents who do care about this, and that neither FEMA, nor the city, nor the school district seem to know we exist. The only insurance we have (the forms we sign to cover medical care in case of emergency) is provided by the Recovery School District (a 7 month old organization) and a firm out of Boston.

It seems in a lot of ways that the corruption is so bad here that the government is actually harming the people rather than helping them. To see a sign stating “no child left behind” as I walk into a trashed school was humorous – upper-middle class Caucasian college student volunteers from out of state are the ones who are responsible for these children not being left behind.

A few words about the state of the upper-middle class college students that seemed to appall the teacher I talked to at a school yesterday: we have no air conditioning, we have running water only sporadically, we sleep in the same neighborhood as drug dealers, and talk to them daily, we don’t have fresh food and have been eating rice and canned beans for longer than any of our tastes allow satisfaction, we sleep with cockroaches.

Where, we want to know, is FEMA? Where is the administration of the city of New Orleans? Where is the school district? Why do these disconnects exist: that between the federal government and it’s policies (“no child left behind”), that between the city of New Orleans and the school district? Where is the $95 billion (yes, billion) that the federal government included in its yearly budget for 2006? Why is the disconnect between the citizens whose children are forced to deal drugs on the street for lack of school, for lack of attention, for lack of resources, and their lack of ability to take the educations of their own children into their own hands? Where does this disconnect originate? How are citizens rendered so powerless?

These questions assault us daily, and still remain unanswered.