There no other way to put it. Materially, emotionally, mentally, and essentially, what happened in the deep south—New Orleans, Biloxi, and surrounding regions—tears at and deflates the entire country. The loss of life and property is excruciating. The potential loss of socio/cultural history is deeply depressing. The ramifications upon American economy will be irritating. The rebuilding efforts beyond daunting. We all ought help out with whatever pennies and dollars we can spare, for the resiliancy of the human spirit is undeniable, but this is a blow felt everywhere in this country, and like the recent tsunami is South Asia, probably felt in most corners of the world.
If New York City is America East, Chicago America North, and San Francisco America West, despite its diminuitive size, New Orleans is clearly America South. Its role as a primary historical machine for the hybridization that is America is fundamental. French meets Haitian meets native tribal meets African meets Spanish meets Latino meets the Mystery. Near the Mississippi Delta (home of the blues), New Orleans is the spiritual home of jazz, America's music, which represents everything. When favorite son Louis Armstrong took a train north from New Orleans to Chicago to play in King Oliver's band, the American landscape was forever invigorated. The gumbo from the Crescent City's melting pot has fed a nation, and shaped our permanent mythology. At the mouth of the Mississippi River, and as the bed of the American amalgamation, New Orleans is the inlet and outlet of our red blood supply (or energetically, it's America's second chakra).
(AP)
When natural monsters such as Hurricane Katrina emerge from the wild of nature's ever-churning dynamic, you understand why every culture has generated allegories. These narratives are for coping and instruction. Our hyper-media saturated culture, where orbiting satellites beam images of events as each happen, creates the flattened imagery known as realism. This form of communication carries the brutal realities of such disasters, but also serves to veil the terrible yet instructive poetry of the larger perspective. Just as reality television suffers from lack of metaphor, reality life almost overwhelms our perspective with a torrent of details that used to be unreachable minutia. But this previously overlooked minutia becomes the primary drama when caught by the satellite's total reach, and the inumerable new dramas deconstruct (for some) the recognition of over-arching narrative. Who needs it when you've lost your house?
But this event is historic and far-reaching, moreso because it is not man-made. It is any wonder our ancestors bequethed us the stories/myths/folklore such as the Old Testament Flood with Noah's arc and the lost city of Atlantis? We deconstruct these are our peril. If anything, the brutal realism of satellite-beamed imagery of this week's tragedies ought remind us that the old myths, seen not as literal history but as metaphorical allegory, seek to counsel the living of how delicate our social institutions are, how easily each can topple, how close we are to anarchy and the conditions of pure survival. At the skin of nature's wild torrents, we are dust blown asway by the wind.
Allegories instruct about our irrefutable smallness in the face of nature. From a recognition of our smallness we gain a resolute human will. We can cope when we can accept. Whether a Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Pagan, atheist, or part of other religion, to seek a reason, purpose, or higher causality for this kind of random destruction is completely understandable, to help us survive in the face of such horror, and tune out what we cannot cognitively handle. For the realism of the destruction is nearly too much to bear even from afar, as I type these sentences this morning in the safe haven of a skyscraper in Chicago.
We are closer due to the total immediacy of satellites and the channels of cyber communication. Only the most cold-hearted could not feel severe pain when faced with the blitz of realism of recent large scale disasters, from 9/11 and other terrorism, to the Bam, Iran earthquake and other natural phenomena. Media realism undoubtedly fosters a planet-centric moral sense. Our ocular capacity fosters both physical disconnect and a new proximity of emotional/mental intimacy. We can't touch all of our brothers and sisters around the world, but though our satellite eyes, we mentally touch their joys and pains, and indeed feel compassion and love in ways we could not previously. On a planet more water than land, it takes electricity and satellites for many of us to realize that we swim and drink the same fluids.
(AP)
Where does the naked brutality of nature through the eyewall to eyewall coverage of satellite media leave us? Where do we find solid ground on which to stand? Where do we begin to take our next steps?
Well, with humilty, and on whatever dirt we can find. Our bodies stand numb, but can activate. Our stomachs ache, but can fuel. Our hearts break, but can open. Our eyes wet, but can see new depth. Our minds question, but can accept the confusion as unsolvable. Our spirit, our will-to-live, is shaken, but can breathe resiliant through this impediment. Our ears drown in cacophony, but find new melodies. We sing, dance, and pray for the bloodletting to clot, cease, then self-repair. We give, we listen, we work, we hug, and we wait.
We know in the cold kosmic abstract that all is as it should be. Yet we must—must—remain attached (not enmeshed) to the suffering. For in a dispassionate abstract we are simultaneously forced to also accept the rightness of our intimacy with deep mourning, grieving, crying, and communal heartache. These hurts, too, are as each should be. To bleed when wounded is to reveal our most realistic human vulnurability. To cry is to reveal our most poetic. Whether or not we humans are actually One, in a spiritual sense, the worst disasters of nature sure make it feel that way. That soulful interconnecteness is the only thread of silver lining born of this otherwise all-terrible catastrophe.
Solace comes in the fact that history tells us that stoic faith and selfless giving are rewarded. New Orleans and the entire region will reincarnate and sing again. The soul, through the body, teaches the mind. Human blood regenerates through the dynamics of bone marrow, the liver, endocrine glands, the kidney, and the gut. America's blood will regenerate through a similar mass-effort—concerted, participatory, improvisational, redemptive, and incremental. Or essentially, it will happen like jazz, where skillfull means and engaged spontaneity are reimbursed with rhythmic orgasm that stubbornly enlightens.
Our task is the foster the conditions for America's blood to flow again through the vital organ of New Orleans. So first things first. Before the rebirth, and before the brass, comes the appalling pain of a long. . .hard. . .slog.
