To hell and back...

So New Orleans is intense - The News wasn't kidding. The difference is that seeing an image or two of total devastation doesn't wreck a person's heart like driving past 17 miles of the image.

Once again, my journal cried itself to a lonely sleep the majority of the week, mostly because my tarp-pulling muscles and pen-pushing muscles evidently live in close proximity. And even with coffee, alertness is fickle after a long week of demo work and communal cot dwelling in a vermin-infested, Ninth Ward warehouse.

On the bus, a friend told me her heart feels like the houses we passed, imploded and floated off their foundations. We talked about the recurring cycles of our hearts and how hard it can be to see restoration on the horizon after so many storms.

It's funny how living in such close proximity with 2,000 other grimy, tired people will scrape away at one's social exterior like a coin on a lottery ticket. You all start out feeling like hopeful and adventurous girl scouts on a bus trip to save the world, and then the friction makes whatever's under the thin silver coating start to peek through. As it turns out, none of your numbers match, and except for your dollar donation to benefit older Pennsylvanians, you're left with little but the gentle reassurance that you're all still losers.

Don't get me wrong, the trip was amazing - in 5 days, our camp accomplished 7 times what the other aid groups had done in half a year. I took part in helping to save 7 apartments, a church, a house, a grocery store, 5 kittens, and a family of mice. And I saw a creepy parade and made some great friends.

Maybe I'm just afraid that with CNN, our egos and all the world smiling and patting our backs, we'll just go back home and keep right on living in our self-seeking, manipulative, water-logged hearts like nothing ever happened.

Man, do I need gutted...


Batter my heart three-personed God, for you
as yet but knock, breathe, shine and seek to mend.
That I may rise and stand o'erthrow me and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn and make me new.

-John Donne