From the Salmon

Richard Ford wrote a lyrical piece for the New York Times today about New Orleans. You can tell by reading it that Ford doesn’t feel quite ready to write about this yet, is not sure that he’s the right person to do so, and is well aware of the inadequacies of his piece to address what has happened in our country over the last week.

Ford is a Pulitzer-prize-winning author who has spent quite a bit of time in New Orleans. I’m just a guy with a URL who’s never even been to Louisiana and Mississippi, much less walked streets that are now underwater. And as I’ve struggled to find the words to deal with Katrina and her aftermath, I find his honesty comforting. Ford writes:

For those away from New Orleans — most all of us — in this week of tears and wrenching, words fail. Somehow our hearts’ reach comes short and we’ve been left with an aching, pointless inwardness. “All memory resolves itself in gaze,” the poet Richard Hugo wrote once about another town that died.

Empathy is what we long for — not sadness for a house we own, or owned once — now swept away. Not even for the felt miracle of two wide-eyed children whirled upward into a helicopter as if into clouds. And we want more than that, even at this painful long distance: we want to project our sympathies straight into the life of a woman standing waist-deep in a glistening toxic current with a whole city’s possessions all floating about, her own belongings in a white plastic bag, and who has no particular reason for hope, and so is just staring up. We would all give her hope. Comfort. A part of ourselves. Perform an act of renewal. It’s hard to make sense of this, we say. But it makes sense. Making sense just doesn’t help.

I make no special claims when I say that the tragedies of this week have been difficult to watch and process. But they have been. And right now, I’m left with Ford’s aching, pointless inwardness. I’m heartbroken, I’m frustrated, I’m ashamed.

I’m tired.

I’m quiet.

All week, people have tried to get me to participate in their anger. And I try, but find that I can’t even finish my own sentences. I’m plenty angry, but I don’t have the energy to enter any of the numerous debates raging around me. And I’m certainly not ready to start any of my own.

In church today, we kept singing hymns and songs that had storms in them. It was clearly intentional, but I don’t think it was anyone being clever. Our pastor, who is from the Gulf coast area, wouldn’t have allowed anything inappropriate or manipulative. Yet while these hymns were written to be great comfort to those who were suffering life’s storms, I found them hard to sing.

When darkness veils His lovely face
I rest on His unchanging grace;
in ev’ry high and stormy gale,
my anchor holds within the veil.

His oath, His covenant, His blood,
support me in the ‘whelming flood;
when all around my soul gives way,
He then is all my hope and stay

I know what the author meant, and I think I believe it. But as much as I love to sing, I could only stumble over these verses.

That’s pretty audacious from someone who hasn’t lost a damn thing.

While I haven’t written much, I’ve been talking all of this through with my wife. And as I walked her though my litany of emotions, she stopped me when I said that I felt ashamed. She wanted me to unpack that for her, and I guess this is what I mean....

I’m ashamed that this happened in our country. I’m ashamed that a nation as wealthy, as innovative, and as well-intentioned as the United States couldn’t get help to its citizens sooner. When it has been widely known for decades just how destructive this particular situation would be, I’m astounded that there wasn’t a better emergency plan in place that detailed the necessary coordination between state, local, and federal resources. And if there were a plan in place, I’m deeply ashamed that there was such a horrific meltown of authority and coordination after it was clear days in advance that this disaster was possible, if not likely.

I’m ashamed that poverty exists in our country to the extent that people had neither the resources nor the hope to seek safety elsewhere. I’m particularly outraged that we didn’t have the logistical foresight or leadership to help provide those resouces and that hope.

But you know what? It’s easy to sit in the comfort of my own apartment in front of a multi-thousand-dollar computer and decry the institutional poverty in our country and how heartbreakingly clear it became in the aftermath of Katrina.

It’s shamefully easy.

The truth is, I walk by poverty like this every day, and I don’t do a fuckin’ thing. Oh, sure… maybe a quarter, maybe a smile. Maybe a check to this group or that group. Or a night here or there serving dinner at a shelter. But on the whole, I still just walk on by.

As Ani sings, “I learned by example / to just keep moving my feet / It’s amazing the things that we all learn to do.”

So, yeah. I’m ashamed.

We’re all dealing with this differently, but this is where I am right now. Where do we go from here? I don’t know. I think Zossima had it right: grieve, give, seek truth and ask tough questions. I don’t quite have the focus or the words or the energy to do the last two yet.

But I’ll get there.