While writing an English Paper

In the midst of writing an English paper I got a call from my dad telling me that my Grandma is really sick and coming to the end. He wasn't that abrupt, but I had a feeling he had something bad to say. He asked me what i was doing (homework), was i in my room or in the library (in my room), do i normally do homework in my room (yes), unimportant questions with an intensity behind them that implied he wasn't interested in the answers, and eventually he told me that Ro really wasn't doing to well, that she's really very sick, and that i should give her a call. He asked me to get a pen and paper, and I did. And he asked me to write down her number, which I also did. I was starting to feel really sleepy as i was writing, but I got it down and added a little note to call her first thing in the morning, because by the afternoon she's asleep.

Then he asked me what was new. "Not much," I said. I didn't really feel like talking anymore, but i humored him. I told him a little bit about my weekend, a midnight move i went to with Zombies and costumes and music, but I felt like getting off the phone. Then he asked me how easy is it to get to Providence Airport, because if Ro did die soon, Southwest flies out of Providence directly to Philly, and that'd be the easiest way to go to her funeral. I told him that I didn't know, but that I'd look in to it, and as soon as I could I got off the phone. I felt tired. I was too tired to carry on the conversation, almost too tired to say goodbye, too tired to tell my dad I loved him.

And as i'm writing there's a car alarm going off down on the street, and the sounds of the ROTC drill practice are flying through my window, and all i want is a little bit of silence, a symbol that something big is happening, and that the world is slowing down, fatiguing with me. But the world isn't slowing down, isn't tiring, won't slow down or stop because of my mood. Ro's death is something all of us have been expecting, actually something we expected to happen a long time ago. There've been countless times when my dad has told me that Ro's health isn't doing too well, and that this saturday we should probably go up to the hospital and see her. The subtext of these conversations was always that we should see her because it might be the last time. And as a family we would visit her in the hospital and have our 30 to 40 minutes of pretty superficial conversation with her, really meaningless stuff, conversation that, while we were having it, I would think "i'll kick myself if these really are the last words I say to my grandmother." I would always make sure, then, that I said "i love you," to her as I was leaving, as a way to counter the banal conversation before it.

But Ro would always get better, and she would bounce back. And then she would get sick again, and then we would have another visit, with more meaningless conversation, and I would always say I love you, and then she would get out of the hospital, and the whole series would start over again. I started getting annoyed at my dad when he would tell me on some particular day that Ro's health was declining, and that we should probably go visit her. I was annoyed because by repeatedly preparing myself for my Grandmother's death, I had over prepared for it. These announcements and the planned visits turned something that I always assumed would be spiritual and mysterious into something that was routine. These visits, though, there was a comfort in these visits, because I knew it wouldn't be the last one. We would go and talk and kiss goodbye and then she'd get better, and then there'd be another one later.

Now we're at the end of the road, and she's not going to get better. She sleeps a lot, my dad tells me. She's been put into hospice care, and when I went home last weekend I saw the my parents had taken a bunch of Ro's artwork that had originally been hanging in her house. And, like I said, my dad wants me to call her. He said "it only has to be for a few minutes, and you don't have to talk about anything really serious. Just let her know that you love her." But is that enough? Is five minutes really enough? How can I expect to say all that I want to say in a phone call that both of us know is for the sole purpose of talking to each other before she dies? I don't call my Grandmother. I don't think I've ever talked to her on the phone when I was the one who dialed her number. Isn't that obvious, this call, this out of the blue call to talk about nothing really serious, but to tell her i love her? I don't know what i want to say. In five minutes or an hour, I don't think my language has the capacity to capture the nuances of what I feel for someone I love who is about to die, the nervousness about talking too seriously, the guilt over talking too trivially, how you're feeling, what you're trying not to feel, and the ability to focus down exactly what you want to express about them, who they are, why you love them.

Maybe I can't say why, but I will tell her I love her. It's the one thing I've been able to tell her through all of this, the only thing I know I'm capable of saying. I love you Ro. But I can't call her today, though. I have an English paper to write, and a science lab. A million little pieces of things that won't disappear because you feel a certain way.

College Blog

I suppose it's now incorrect to call this the Gap Year of Power Blog. The first year of power? The Freshman Year of Power Blog? I've been at Boston University for two weeks now as a freshman, just another teenager at school. Having taken a year off has taught me a few things.

But first, what i did with the rest of my time.

I got back from New Orleans the 26th of May. The 27th of May was Lawrenceville's graduation. So my friends a year below me in high school graduate, who would become my same year in college in September. Realization number one. You're going to be old for your grade.

The beginnings of summer were spent soaking up a lazy homelife and seeing friends. I recall my first few days doing very little apart from watching movies and lying around. On June 6th i had to head up to Boston for a three day orientation. That may have been relevent a month ago, but now that i've been in college for two weeks, what would be the point of discussing orietnation? Then i went to north carolina for 10 days, and then i worked odd jobs for a while, but you know what, things didn't get really interesting until mid-july, when i went to England and Italy.

And some point during the end of New Orleans, or maybe even the beginning of my return, i decided i needed one more adventure before school. While in North Carolina i was randomly at a bar with my cousin, randomly talking to a friend of his, and randomly mentioned i wanted to go to italy this summer. Turns out the friend had just come back from a four month work exchange in italy, and she recommended a pretty killer site for me, called www.helpx.net. It's an online forum for work exchange opportunities. You pay a small (very small, like 10 dollars for two years of service) fee, and you get to browse, by country, available work exchange opportunities. It's extremely rare that you'll find something to pay you, but they will feed and shelter you for free. I found place to stay in italy, worked enough in the summer to have some spending money, and then headed for england july 19th. Flying to england from the states is the cheapest way to get in to Europe, and domestic flights out of england to other european countries are pretty inexpensive as well.

this was a letter i wrote to a friend on July 31st, after i left england and had been in italy for a few days. It talks about both places:




...but i do have five minutes now. right now i'm in Sinalunga, a small rural town in Tuscany. I'm working on a farmhouse there thats about 20 minutes from the city. its incredibly beautiful here, if not a ltitle primitive. but its exactly what you imagine a tuscan house to look like. spacious, high ceilings, terra cotta floors, a vineyard and olive grove, very rustic and nice. i went for a hike with my friend yesterday evening and we watched the sunset on a hilltop overlooking rolling hills and vineyears; it was the cliche Tuscan experience, but it was wonderful.

before this i was in England for a little over a week seeing friends and a lot of extended family. england, if you don't know, is unbelievably expensive. everything costs twice as much as it does in the us, because the pound is twice as much as the dollar, but the prices in England are all the same. So i burned a lot of my savings from my three days in London. But after that i went to the countryside and stayed with generous family who really didn't let me buy a thing with my own money. One person i saw was a guy named Julian, technically my second cousin, but i ignore the . he used to be in a pretty successful rock group in the UK called Toploader, so he has this keen music sensibility. The older i get the more fun it is to see him because we can relate more on artists and genres and the like. but hes gotten into music management now, and hes managing a few artists and trying to get them signed and booking tours, and its been a great experience to tag along with. one of the artists is really brilliant, his name is Paul Steel. its sort of psychadelic influenced british power pop, and if that's something you'd be interested in, i highly encourage you to check out his my space. hes only 20, but he's a very talented arranger, and extremely nice, and i hope he becomes famous.

a few interesting british facts:

the brits like to drink something they call "bitter beer," which is warm, flat, and bitter...beer. its gross. don't order it.

hard cider is extremely popular here, refreshing and alcoholic and carbonated, but you too can get this warm and flat. and its a little gross, but sort of like luke-warm apple juice, and considerably more alcohol than the carbonated version

when people smoke pot they mix it with tobacco, but noone really knows why. because "its the way weve always done it." right. anyway,

after that it was off to british countryside with the greenest grass ever and cows and lamb grazing around freely. i went to a traditional english pub and drank british beer and ate british bar food and had an amazing time, and the 27th i headed off to london to catch a plane to italy, and a day later i got here, and that's where i am now.

i met up with a friend in florence and we headed to Sinalunga and got picked up at the train station by Ugo, one of our hosts. Life has been really easy going here. we only work 4 or 5 hours a day for five days a week, and we take long siestas in the afternoon, get great food that barbara, ugos wife cooks, and drink plenty of wine that they make themselves on the vineyard. there are two other workers staying at the house right now, a couple from australia. She came to italy to visit him, but he's been traveling through europe for five months. after dinner we usually sit outside on the porch with a pitcher of wine and talk and drink till we're too tired to do either. the moons have been full and incredibly bright the past few days, which is pretty incredible because of how much light it generates, but frustrating because it washes out the stars, which apparently are pretty incredible in such a reclusive setting. but it's fine. last night i took an outdoor shower outside and the moon made it light enough to see relatively well. its a little unnerving at first to be bathing naked on a hilltop, but again, its one of those things that just really fits in with the tuscan image, bathing outside under the moonlight.

i know im being a bit obnoxious talking in such detail about the almost nauseatingly romantic details of this trip, but we dont have internet access there, and i havent been able to use a computer, or talk about this to anyone yet. so it had to be you, but it wont happen again.

life is going to be crazy when i get back home on the 22nd. im trying to plan a little trip back down to new orleans, but im really only giving myself a few days to completely prepare for college. dont we have to be there to move in on september 1st?

right. well. that's that. pllleeeease tell me what youve been up to, and also give me your home address so i can shoot you a post card.

mathias!


that was italy. i have all my pictures at home from the trip, and i'll be going home the weekend after next. so expect those.

and, now i'im in college. i got here september 1st. It was an interesting experience, at first, being in school after my year off. I was telling someone on the phone about a week ago that i think i'm in the extreme minority of college freshman by asserting that college is actually a more restricting lifestyle than life before college. I'm surrounded by kids who are awed by the freedoms that college presents them, and so most weekends are spent staying up way past what i'm sure was their bedtime, and going to frat parties to drink themselves silly. i'm not claiming to be straight-edge. i like to have a good time, but new orleans offered the wonderful pair of being able to go out and drink and see incredible music simultaneously.

More later. Things are good though. I'll talk about classes and friends in a future post.

ciao!

oh, and i'm taking italian.

oh god, it's been too long.

i have too little time to say anything else. but...

i've had an amazing time being home since new orleans.

and i'm going to italy the day after tomorrow. well, it's wednesday, so technically tomorrow, and i'll be there for a month.

i guarantee you that italy will be the return of the Mathias blog. a new location, a new chapter.

Road Tripping, Post III

I got into Chicago tonight, I'll talk about that in a little bit, but I need to, as promised, continue on with my Milwaukee trip. I don't know if anyone has picked up on this, but in this blog I am awful at continuing any topic I say I'll pick up in a later post. It never happens. I remember one of the first, the trend setter if you will, was this story I said I didn't have time to tell, but I'd tell it soon. Then, in a post about a month later, I said something along the lines of "I want to write more in this post, but I'm exhausted now. And I still haven't told my great story." TWICE! I've referenced this story twice, and still haven't told it. Well, six months later, I'm going to tell it now, although the thrill of the moment is gone. Nonetheless,
I
Beatboxed
With
CHARLES BARKLEY!
Who's afraid? Not me, that's for damn sure. My second or so week at Hands-On, Timerbland Clothing Company was hosting a large scale volunteer event with multiple organizations from all over the city helping to clean up a large section of a street in Central City. One of the supports of the event was TNT, who had their basketball analysts (CB being one of them) down there to broadcast the New Orleans Hornets game, but also to do a special on Katrina and the relief effort, on the CB hosted show Inside the NBA.

Lunch is being served in the ground level parking lot of a police station. It's technically underneath the police station, and it's dirty, there are too many echoes, and it's dark. Most people are sitting outside on the grass, eating their hot plates. We had heard that Charles Barkley was coming, but we weren't sure when. We had heard some time during lunch. Sure enough, as I'm getting up to throw out my plate, this hulking black man, followed by a camera, followed by a trail of eager eyed volunteers, walks across the grass and in to the parking lot. I quickly become one of those eager eyed volunteers. He walks with an elderly black woman, who I'm assuming was a homeowner, and interviewed her for a bit. Then, she left, he stood, made no introduction, just waited, knowing throngs of people would want to speak with him. People went up, said hi, said they were a fan, said it was nice to meet him. But no, Mathias Goldstein doesn't get down like that. Mathias Goldstein likes to make a bigger impression. I joked with a friend that I should beatbox for him. She said maybe you should, I said why not. But as I stood in the small line of people to speak with him, I was considering how we generally like to make good impressions with people we respect, how we like to make them like us, how we try to be "cool," and how I was doing everything to go against that. He finished speaking to the person in front of me, turned and looked at me, but also looked through me, like "next. your turn. say your peace so I can move to the next one." I was nervous, and he was large, so I could only refer to him by his full name. However, I said this:

"Charles Barkley? Can I beatbox while you freestyle?"
He paused. "Uh, well, I don't know bout that." This was not a dismissive comment, this was an unconfident comment. Was this DOUBT?! The fact that I suddenly had more ego than a Hall of Fame basket ball player gave me the smooth talking abilities of a used car salesman.
"Oh, no, my man, it's real easy. But if you can't do it, I'll teach you something. Let's do Ladi Dadi. You know Ladi Dadi."
"Ooooh man. I can't remember those words."
"What? You don't know Ladi Dadi? Everyone knows Ladi Dadi!"

And so I coaxed him the first line of the song. It took him a couple of minutes to get the words, especially to get the rhythm. When it was finally showtime, he stumbled and mumbled and sputtered the lyrics, but he got through them. At the end of it he laughed, although it's not unimaginable that he was thinking about how he'd like to whoop me, but we hugged. And that was it. My 5 minutes of fame with CB.


Anyway. I digress. Milwaukee. Great place. I left La Crosse in the morning, said my goodbye's with Shelby, and headed off. I drove past a few bars, a few chain stores. This was really the only bit of La Crosse I got to see, although the drive towards Milwaukee steers you along these beautiful bluffs that are, apparently, amazing for hiking, and made the drive as pleasant as driving on the interstate could ever be.

I was driving to meet Danielle Maltby. I met her at Hands-On, and she was from the same school group as Shelby, though they really couldn't be more different (except that they're both good people). Shelby graduated High School in 2000, waited six years before going to college, working in between, getting her own place. She's the self-proclaimed atheist at a Christian University. She has multiple piercings. She's bad ass. She's a brunette. Danielle is blond, she's 21, she just got her ears pierced (er, re-pierced, but that means she wore earrings so infrequently the wholes closed up. You get my point). She was the youngest one from her class to graduate. She was a nursing major and is now working for a Milwaukee hospital in the Neonatal unit. She's incredibly sweet and warm and extremely charming in a very Midwestern way.

But I learned all these things since my time staying with her. At Hands-On, I barely knew her. I gave my first orientation to her group. She was tall and very pretty and, therefore, noticeable, and she was one of the first people from her group I talked to, but she didn't seem to be particularly interested in any of the questions I had for her, and that was that. Hands-On is a busy place. But we kept in touch a bit after she left, first online, then on the phone, and as my road trip plans started to materialize, I asked if I could stay with her in Milwaukee en route to Chicago. She said of course.

Now here's where having a public journal gets tricky. My emotions are my emotions, faithful reader, and I'll leave it at that. But we care about each other, a lot, and it's fun to experience all that summer romance at such a quick pace. Hands-On is a terrible place for organic relationship development. It's very crowded and very public and very gossipy. This was the first time in about six months where I'd been able to have something like that. We reunited. I met the dog, the brother, got a tour of the house. We went to Madison, an awesome little northeastern college town dropped in the middle of Wisconsin. We had a fun lunch at a Sushi restaurant, we found a little park and lounged for a bit. But all of it, the introductions, the small talk, the first date, the being flirtatious and charming, the romantic spot, and the first kiss, these were all things, wonderful and positive things, that simply aren't possible at HONO.

But anyway, I can't talk this stuff on Blogger. Jeez. It's already inappropriate. But, well, I just gotta add this. Danielle, I'm sorry. But don't worry, my grandparents are my most consistent readers, and I don't think they'd care. I'm starting to laugh, by the way. I'm not chewing, or something.


Anyway, I left Milwaukee this morning. Wasn't particularly happy to be going, but hey, I said I'd be back home by the 26th. I'm getting home by the 26th. I had an uneventful drive into Chicago tonight, and that's where I am now. I had a terrific conversation with my family. This is my first and only stop where I'm not staying with fellow volunteers, but my cousin, Debby, her husband, David, and their two adorable children, Sophie and Jacob. I'll get on to that in a later post, but for now, I depart.

Whoever you are, thanks for reading.

Road Tripping, Post II

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Wisconsin has been wonderful.

A few of the places on the road trip have been fun mainly because, had it not been for this trip, I don't know if I ever would have made them destinations. I've never told myself that one day maybe I'd want to vacation out to St. Louis, Missouri, or La Crosse, Wisconsin, or Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but these are all places I've seen on my road trip so far. Everyone knows that when they go to Chicago or Los Angeles or New York they will be impressed. Those are cities with clout, with reputations, with expectations. But it's been exhilarating to enjoy a place you weren't expecting much from. I had a wonderful time in St. Louis, even though my stay there was brief. The weather was beautiful, the arch was impressive, and the people were friendly. After Shelby and I finally woke up, we lazily exited our car in search for a coffee shop. We both looked grungy, but I particularly so, having not showered in a couple of days wearing a stretched out wife beater and jeans I had basically worn for the past week and a half straight. But we found a Starbucks, and despite our appearances, I was greeted at the door.

"Hey, my man, how you doin? Look, can you help me out for a sec?" There was a very friendly employee at the door with a propped up cardboard display for a new drink. He seemed to be placing it.
"Yeah, what's up?"
"This ad, can you see it as you walk in?"
I thought for a minute. "Yeah, it looks pretty good there, but, I mean, the window frames here blocks it a bit." When you approached the Starbucks you actually walked through a glass vestibule, and the framing prevented seeing the ad until you walked through the door.
"So I should move it to the right a bit, right?"
"I would say it wouldn't hurt."
"Hey, thanks my man. Hey, you ordering something?"
"I was planning on it."
"Yo, Frankie. Frankie! Whatever this guy wants, it's on me. Thanks a lot my man."
All I had was the cliche, "No. Thank you."

I help place a sign, I get a free drink. Things like that don't happen very often, and it made me feel like I was somewhere different. The rest of the day was essentially the arch. We lounged around the grassy park around it, beat the heat in the shadow under it, and then went in it for a ride to the top. The lifts inside are very small and metal and white, but managed to sit five people, and look like some sort of ejection pods from a 60s sci-fi flick. These stupid things were shaped like those ridiculous egg shaped chairs. Any chair that makes you sit forward is not a chair; it's a torture device, and that's a bit how I felt in this. After that, though? What can I say? We got up, we got down, and I took a couple pictures in between.

We left St. Louis around 5: 30, which towards the end of the drive turned out to be a mistake. The problem with getting in late is that you want to spend most of the next day in the city, since you hadn't had the time the night before. But, friends, it's easy to see the problem in this logic. The few hours of light we had showed more of the beautiful farmland that I'm so unused to seeing, but after about three hours it was dark, and I saw nothing, and I knew I had a long drive ahead. My directions, I knew, were somewhat incorrect. Around midnight I was driving through Illinois, approaching the Wisconsin boarder, my directions told me that once I crossed the boarder, I got onto I-90 and only had forty miles to go. I knew this had to be wrong, but stopped at a gas station to fuel up and see what the clerk in the convenience store had to say.
"Five hours"

"Excuse me?" I told him I didn't think this was possible. He was a big man, older, with a kind face and a Greek accent. He walked over to the selection of maps and pulled one out, then opened it.
"I drive from Arlinton, this is near us, to Rochester, to Hospital, across the river, in Minnesota. This take me six (seex) hours."

I told him that, though I don't think he's lying, the mileage looks less.
"Yes, well, maybe it will take you three or four, but either way, you will be burning the night." He smiled at me. I smiled back, then headed over to the Energy Drink isle of the refrigerated section and got the 24 oz "triple strength!" Rockstar energy drink.
"Guess I'll need it," I said.
"Drive carefully, my friend."
Shelby had driven about an hour today, but I had wanted to do almost all of the driving. I was at the end of a six month stint at Hands-On, and had curved my partying considerably at the end of the trip. She was there for a week, and tried to make the most of it; when I went home at two in the morning, she went home at five. She had carried on this pattern the entire week, and I didn't want someone with that little rest driving on what are basically completely straight roads for a couple hours at a time. She was sleeping when we pulled in to the gas station, and she continued to sleep most of the way to La Crosse, Wisconsin, which is where she lives. I found, however, that her being asleep kept me alert; I felt like a responsible father driving his sleeping daughter through the night.

The gas station clerk estimated five hours, we got there in three and a half. At three thirty I unloaded her stuff and we headed inside. I was on a caffeine overdose, exhausted but completely jittery. I was trembling a little bit, had a bit of a headache, but a bit of water at hitting the sheets and I was out. This was really all I would see of La Crosse, Wisconsin, the view of the pavement in the headlights and a single, two bedroom house.

I'm writing from Milwaukee right now. It's close to five in the morning, and I'm exhausted. I have so much more to talk about in my Wisconsin trek, but it will have to be for later. All I'll say is it's been a wonderful part of the trip, and I'll get in to it. I left in the morning, said my goodbye's to Shelby, and headed to Milwaukee to see another friend, Danielle. She is marvelous, she will be the majority of the next post, and she deserves it.

Farewell

Road Tripping, Post I

It's Monday afternoon right now. I'm sitting in a Panera Bread in St. Louis using their wonderfully free wireless Internet, trying to update all of you on my road trip as I leave New Orleans. This is my first post outside of the city since November, when I hadn't arrived yet.

The beginning of the road trip has been going well. It was rough leaving New Orleans yesterday, and particularly the first hour of the road trip was uncomfortable. I feel sorry for my fellow road tripper Shelby, who probably got a short and sullen answer to any question she asked in that time. It just felt weird to be driving through the city knowing it was going to be the last time I would see it for a while, and the last time I would interact with it extensively for a long, long while. After a couple of hours though, the terrain changes from Louisiana Bayou to the rural south of Mississippi to the fertile fields of Tennessee and Missouri. The change of scenery made a real difference in my mood.

I've never been through the Midwest, and barely through the south. With the exception of Mississippi, where I did work last March, every state on this road trip will be a new one for me. I imagine this was a good thing for me, because even though I was told constantly before I left that driving through hundreds of miles of flat farmland is mind numbing, I found it rather beautiful. We didn't really hit much of it until Tennessee (which we really just clipped) and Missouri, but green field after green field and farm after farm did a lot to lift my spirits. It was the time and place to roll down our windows, stick out our arms, and let the wind blow through our fingers. Shelby and I talked a bit the first couple hours of the drive, but it seemed that when we got to all that farmland we became quiet, save the sound of the air around our car and the cassette in the stereo.

We were heading for St. Louis. We had planned on leaving around 12:30 to git in by 10, but (unsurprisingly) the final goodbyes and a little last minute packing shipped us off just after 3 30. I got lunch with Abby Sartor, a girl who went to school with me for the first school year after Katrina before heading back to NOLA. This girl is funny and charismatic, and she was often a life raft when the Hands-On atmosphere was, if i may continue this metaphor, drowning me. We got lunch, talked about the future, said our "see you later"s, and I headed back in to Central City to make one last goodbye, this time to Ty Shon.

Ty Shon didn't want me to go. Of course, he didn't tell me this, but it's always been that body language is more telling than his words are. Ty Shon has always put on a front of apathy and a small front of toughness, even if sometimes when you look in his eyes you can see a twinkle of irony. When I knocked on his door and told him I was leaving and that I'd miss him, he didn't say it back. He didn't say he'd call me once a week, or that I was a good friend, or that he was glad to have met me. But the ultra confident, charismatic showboat was unusually quiet. He was fidgety and he was pacing and his eyes were darting, and that was good enough for me. I knew then that he would miss me. Even if this borderlines on the vaguely sadistic, it feels good to know that he will miss me. It feels good to know that I will be missed.

I dapped him off (which, for all you non slang speaking sophisticates, would be the arm-wrestling-position handshake that frequently leads into a hug), and he said alright, and I told him I would see him later. Then I decided to give him a hug so I said "come here, man." And wrapped my arms around him. "Alright, bruh!" "ALRIGHT, BRUH!" he said and pushed me off with a big smile. I'm glad my last memory of Ty Shon was the confident, smooth talker that he normally is.

And then, not long after that, I headed off. I went over most of the action earlier in this post. We got in around one in the morning, a consequence of embarking on a 10 hour drive in the late afternoon. Our lodging accommodation, a friend of a friend, fell through when we called him and told him how late we were coming in, so we ended up parking in a downtown residential neighborhood and sleeping in our car. We slept in (which feels strange to say when your bed is a car seat) and then headed off to the only tourist attraction immediately noticeable, the arch. I have pictures of all of that, and those tell a better story than my words. But we're heading off to La Crosse, Wisconsin this afternoon, and since we probably won't be leaving till about 5 PM, it looks to be another late night. But I'll keep you posted!

Mathias

The Last Moments of the Last Night

Ladies and gentlemen, my time at Hands-On, my time in New Orleans is coming to a close. The past couple of weeks have been a love affair with New Orleans, filled with great music, and spending time with my close friends. In the past three weeks, Hands On has changed a lot. My three best friends here, Aaron Carlson, Allan Rey, and Jon Edwards, have all left. Multiple staff members have left. This place is changing, and I'm leaving at the end of an era.

All day has been a pensive day. I didn't work today. I did morning wake up, lounged around base for a little bit, and then headed off to meet my Rabbi's wife, who's down here interviewing New Orleanians compiling information to a play about post-Katrina New Orleans she's writing. I introduced her to Miss Antoinette K Doe, widow of late, great Ernie K Doe, social figure of New Orleans, and patron of Hands On. I set them up for the interview at Antoinette's bar, the Mother in Law lounge, and was curious to here her story, cause it's an interesting one. But rather than sit and listen, I opted to sit in a side room and think about what I was going to say tonight at community meeting, when all leaving volunteers are given the option to stand and speak about their experience. I'd been thinking about this, in bits, since I first saw someone give the speech, but the past few days, naturally, I've been thinking about it more.

It's been difficult to balance the ways in which I want to spend my last time in New Orleans. My New Orleans expereince has been broken up into three circles: my friends at Hands-On, my friends in New Orleans, and the city of New Orleans itself. I haven't found that balance very easily. A friend from Wisconsin bought a one way ticket down to New Orleans as a returning volunteer, but in a large part to see me in my last week. To be fair, I've been a pretty lousy host. All of my closest friends at Hands On have left already, so the people I'm most interested in seeing are my New Orleans friends. I don't think they realize their importance to me, but it's been appreciated beyond words to have friends to go to when the claustrophobia of Hands-On became overwhelming. It was harder to say goodbye to these folks than Hands-On friends. Having friends come and go at HONO is the nature of the beast, and you take it as a given that you won't really be seeing them again. But these weren't my Hands-On friends, these were my New Orleans friends, and so it's no longer saying goodbye to friends as I leave my volunteer organization, but more like I'm moving, and saying goodbye to my next door neighbors.

Of course, on top of all this, a topic on my mind the entire day was what I was going to say at my last night speech. This is a tradition at Hands-On, where at the end of community meeting, all leaving volunteers are asked to stand and, if they wish, say some parting words. Hands-On offers this to any volunteer, but people expect long termers to say something longer and, usually, more poignant. I had a few ideas rattling in my head but nothing really profound, nothing to connect to the greater picture of the big world. All I felt I could do well, and all I really wanted to do, was talk about my Hands-On experience.

I had spent the day with my Rabbi's wife and got to Hands-On late, right as dinner was being served. I had been stuck in obnoxious French Quarter traffic, and though the stress of potentially missing my last community meeting caused to yell "fuck" more than Scarface, at the end of it i was so drained that it mellowed me out when my time for the speech actually came.

It came quicker than I anticapted. I think TV and film have warped me in to believing that all goodbye speeches should have a quiet, tense build up, a powerful delivery, and a climactic burst of applause and tears. The build up was quiet, but really because I think everyone was tired from a hard day of gutting. But it did finally get to me, and the host of the meeting asked if it was my last night and I stood and started speaking. I realized that I still hadn't thought of how I was going to start or connect the loosely connected thoughts I had on Hands-On, so I decided to start by saying how I felt.

I told the volunteers that as I was waiting for my chance to speak I was feeling nervous, and I was curious as to why that was. I've spoken in front of large crowds there before, and generally public speaking is something I can do rather comfortably. So why nervousness, and not just sadness? I told them that I think it was because my body was telling me I was making a mistake. Not that I think I am making a mistake leaving Hands-On (I've been there long enough), but I could understand why my body would think that, because Hands-On is a beautiful place with amazing people and, more importantly, is in a city that is, at this time, incredibly dynamic. It's a beautiful to be in a place that is changing so quickly, in a city that will be completely different two years from now, even different two months from now. I told the volunteers that what attracted me to the organization so strongly was the fact that it was this small, intensified microcosm of all experiences. I have lived at Hands-On, obviously, but I have lived here, loved here, fought here, succeeded here, failed here, been happy, sad, frustrated, energized, burnt out, overwhelmed, and overjoyed. You feel it all at Hands-On, and you feel it strongly, and you feel it quickly, and it's an amazing thing to be thinking about and feeling so much in such a short period of time. And finally, I ended by telling them the things that I would miss. Before my part of community meeting, announcements were being made about frisbee in the park on sunday, a crawfish boil later that week, all things that I would miss. And I told them that it was really the first time in almost six months that I would be missing out on Hands-On experiences. For the first time in six months, volunteers at Hands-On would be experiencing New Orleans without my influence. I told them that I knew this was the nature of the organization, people coming and going, experiences constantly rotating, the feel of the organization constantly changing, but being there for so long, you being to fee like Hands-On doesn't just evolve with you, but it evolves around you (this is a point I made in a previous point), and that when you leave, that spot where you were is empty, and the whole organization is a little less effective, slightly incomplete. And I said I knew that this wasn't the way it worked, but that that's fine, even exciting, because it means Hands-On is so dynamic. And I finished by saying how much I would miss my friends here, how my best friends at Hands-On are my best friends everywhere, how proud I was of any volunteer who walks through the keypad guarded door of Hands-On, and how very, very much I will miss this place.

And I sat down feeling a little exhausted, a little embarrased, until Emma came over and presented me with my shirt, a customized, drawn-on T-Shirt that's hung on the long term volunteers "wall of fame." The shirt read "Mathias Goldstein: Classying up HONO since December 06'. Emma presented it and started tearing up, not looking at me and telling everybody if she did she would start crying harder. She said wonderful things about me, things that make anyone feel like a million bucks while hearing them, but finally she did look at me and really did start crying, and gave me a big kiss and a long hug. And witht that everybody started clapping and aww-ing.

I think that large scale public displays of affection can feel staged. But this was so genuine I didn't care I was hugging with 80 pairs of eyes on me.
And I knew that I'd be missed.