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.