I spent Fall Break in New Orleans, gutting houses and churches that had not been touched since Hurricane Katrina. Largely these places looked decent from the outside, besides weedy lawns and a broken window or two, but inside they were masses of mold and rot. You could see the waterline where the mildew splayed over the drywall. Pictures and possessions were strewn over floors tiled and carpeted. Appliances sat rusted and filled with insect colonies. It looked, felt, and smelled disgusting. In rooms with carpet, we had to shovel off the year-old mud on the surface and remove the carpet before we could dig out the ankle-deep sediment that lay beneath. Everything had to go; everything had been contaminated. Furniture, clothes, appliances, bathtubs, toilets, drywall, paneling, insulation, tiles, linoleum, baseboards, nails-- all of it mingling in a putrid heap by the curb, often sprawling across the entire front lawn.
In the last house I worked on I came across a wallet-sized picture of a couple who, I assume, were the homeowners. The snapshot must have been on the second floor, since it was undamaged and the water had submerged the first story. In the picture they were carefully dressed and smiling.
I was impressed with a sense of the fragility of life. As I shoveled muck I thought about my home, and what it would look like in the same situation. It was hard to realize, but the houses used to be nice, used to smell good, used to be inhabited by more than nuclear albino roaches. It can all go away with one storm.
We met people who even through disaster had such joy. It was apparent that the destruction of the foundations of their homes had not affected the foundations of their faith. maybe they used to be defined by their possessions; maybe the storm shook them more than I could see. I don't know. But a year after Katrina, living in miniscule FEMA trailers, they were cheerful and warm and generous.
I learned a lot from them, and from the Service International staff we worked with. They were all volunteers, people who sacrificed their home lives to come and direct a bunch of hyper college kids with sledgehammers. They stayed when we left. Our Fall Break is over, but their work continues.

I am tired. Fall Break was hard work, but the week since I've been back has been more stressful than any physical labor. God is good, though, and for some reason He still loves me.
Human beings are the crowning glory of the Creation of Omnipotent God, and yet by and large we are a thick, pigheaded lot who can't see what's good for us when it's smacking us upside the head.

Pedestal Appraisal

You may be shocked by this, and I hate to disturb your tranquil beliefs, but the truth must be told. Recently, I grew tired of my pedestal.

I was standing one day when the realization struck that I was not dancing anymore. My feet had quite lost their spring. I had begun to gaze upon the huddled hand-holding masses below, wishing, with wistful sigh, that one might come and extend a gallant hand to assist my descent from my perch. The breeze was no longer refreshing; it was cold. I ceased to take pleasure in conversing with my fellow pedestal dwellers. The expansive view afforded me from my height was bleak and stark. In short, I had listened to far more Michael Buble than is considered healthy for a young unattached person of my disposition.

I had come so far in thought as to nearly wish myself off and away from my pedestal, and, had this ennui remained unchecked, I cannot say where it would have stopped. Perhaps never-- perhaps my mad career would have ended in a general smash-up somewhere along the line-- save for an Unpleasant Experience, which, though grossly offensive and quite perturbing, had the effect of removing the scales from my eyes.

I cannot enumerate, I cannot be explicit, as to the precise details of this Unpleasant Encounter. I can only make vague allusions to tire swings, boxer shorts, and cow patties. Suffice to say that it was enough to send me springing to my feet again on my pedestal, rejoicing in my state.

All of my female readers will acknowledge the existence of Creepy Fellows. The kind that cause a clenching in your throat and a leaden heaviness in your gut; the sort that cannot take a hint and do not understand sarcasm; the ones who are past masters in the Art of Lurkery. It was such a one that was the source, the wellspring, of my Unpleasant Experience. It was weird and awkward and provoking--and yet there has come some good out of it.

Rejoice with me, one and all, for I have discovered the use of the Creepy Fellow. They are of some good, after all. It was the Creeper that led me to appraise my pedestal. I took a good, long, hard look at where I stood and where I wanted to stand. My discoveries were of interest.
Though my pedestal has fallen into some disrepair of late, it is nothing that cannot be handily mended. As for the location, where better? I have a commanding view of humanity in general, excellent company, and a brisk and bracing breeze to spur on my dance.

Presently there is nearly nothing that could tempt me from my pedestal. I had something of a scare, in that instead of a gentlemanly, gracious, great-heart to persuade me from my post, I was beckoned to by a sinister and macabre spectre. This is all new for me, and my reaction is to cling leechlike to my state of single blessedness.

In sum, my pedestal is good enough for me, and will be for a long while yet. I may owe a debt of thanks to the Creeper, but I think that for the frightful discourtesy with which he destroyed a cherished illusion or two of mine, we can all it even.

This is me sharing my poetry.

Even though I hate doing it.
Anyway. I went to write a poem to God one night at home before I came back to school. I had written no more than the first line when a certain perversity took over and I found myself writing, not as a worshipper to the Omnipotent Deity, but as a sharp young lady to a rejected swain. The title comes from that oh-so-wonderful analogy of Kara's and mine. Ask me if explanation is necessary.

Pedestal Dancing
And when Eternity is done, what then?
You will grow sick of me, my too-sharp tongue--
But pause: for were I here to list my faults
'Twould be a list so long to fill
Those ages that you talked of.
Do you recall the foolish things--the sweet, but trite, out-bandied words you said?
'Twas moonlight had you stricken, I'll be bound,
For little else could so have marred your sense.
Good sense, on cloudy nights, you have, I grant
But yestereve you quite had lost your head.
Look not on me thus with such doleful eyes--
You did not mean it-- I will not be swayed.
Protest is useless; I shall not forget
The words you spoke (besotted syllables
That betrayed madness rather than sound mind
As was your wont). You frown most darkly-- good!
For such a scowl at least is solid, and
Can be depended on. Now, if a man would come
At noon, or not at least past three,
And, simply, state his case, he'd better chance--
For that would leave those aeons to be filled
With all the love you crammed into an hour
And naught to show for it but muddy knees.

I liked the rhythm. Thoughts, anyone?
I will be posting more of my scribbles, I think.

Remembering

It was one of those days when the air is warm in the morning and has a bit of a kick to it in the late afternoon. The sky was pale blue and there was a light breeze, just enough to lift the hair around my face as I stared unseeing at the horizon.

I was in Spanish class when we turned on the television to watch. We never did finish those verb drills. I remember people crying; I remember muttered prayers and expressions of anger and shock and fear. I remember thinking that maybe it was the end of the world, and maybe we should all hide somewhere.

It took me until about noon to realize that part of me thought we were watching a movie. I kept waiting for Arnold Schwarznegger, or someone, to walk in front of the television cameras, to walk in between me and those awful thickening ashes of people, and say a few dramatic lines. I kept waiting for a soundtrack to play and the screaming extras to leave the set. That never happened, though. It was there and it wasn't changing or clearing or cutting to the next scene. There was nothing to stop the flames and smoke that profaned the blueness of the sky.

I remember herding the little ones outside to play. They screamed and ran and I flinched, because in their innocent ignorance they seemed to mimic the wounded on the screen inside. It wasn't real, it couldn't be real, this is a Tom Clancy novel come to life.

My sister was in school then on Staten Island. She called and told us of how she and her coworkers watched the Towers fall from their windows. I saw them fall, too, and that was, I think, a bigger shock for me than their getting hit in the first place. They fell. Nothing that big is supposed to be able to fall. But they fell, and I saw it. So did my sister. So did a lot of people.

There was a helplessness that came in the following days-- I wanted to do something, but there was nothing to do save for going to school, as usual. But nothing was usual. I thought for a few days that there would be a war, that this was like Pearl Harbor, that maybe my brothers would be drafted and I would go be a Red Cross nurse somewhere. My head was full of romantic nonsense bred by inactivity and frustration and fear.

And everyone became very tender suddenly-- I remember strangers hugging each other in grocery stores, holding one another and weeping, and comforting, or just sharing tight-lipped watery smiles. It was okay to stop and talk to people you didn't know at all, because we all were afraid, and we all were feverishly preparing for-- we knew not what.

A lot of people kept saying things about God. How this was bringing them back to Him, or how they couldn't find Him in this, or how they had nowhere else to turn. They seemed to be afraid, like kids scurrying back to their kitchens when someone hits a ball that breaks a window. Men and women would smile widely and speak loudly on news shows and talk about what God meant by allowing this, and I wanted them all to shut up and talk to Him instead of talking about Him. Maybe He'd tell you a thing or two if you'd listen, instead of filling silence with your suppositions, I wanted to say.

It's been five years and all the kids are back out in the street again, swinging at the ball. People still talk about God on the news, but now they don't really even bother pretending that they talk to Him often. Those hellish billowing pictures get played on the television screen, and people who see them slow down a little and talk more quietly. Their voices deepen, too. A little spark of anger and disbelief still burns, the sorrow still runs deep, but soon they nod wisely and move along, back to business as usual. Maybe they don't believe it could happen again. Maybe they've moved on.
Maybe they've all forgotten.

In one sense I can understand the desire to forget. We all went through that gauntlet of emotion. Fear and rage mingled with relief as reports from loved ones flowed in. Despair and incredulity combined to create a sort of narcotic effect, a numbness that would be exhausting to try to revisit. But you do not see any strangers hugging in the canned goods aisles now, either.

If we forget, we will become careless. If we forget, we will dishonor the memories of the many gallant dead. If we forget, those who perpetrated this will take note and respond accordingly. But so many people look back on five years ago and see something to be exploited, and if that is what they are after then I say, better to forget it, if that is all it is to you.

I didn't know any of the people who were caught in the flaming waves and twisted rubble that day. But part of me died with them, and I cannot forget who they might have been.

I cannot pretend to understand the how or why or what of that day. Here is what I know.
God is, always. God is good, always.
Those are the answers and someday I may understand them.

Just because my mouth is shut...

When I am not talking people assume something is wrong. This is a bad sign, I think.

This is what I write like after reading Lewis Carrol for a few hours:

How curious the cricket's song
that mingles with the stars
which hum amusedly along
and pass the word to Mars!