Life in Capital Letters

I finally feel as though I earned Today.
My hands built a place where children can be children. What was an empty lot - an overgrown reminder of neglect, poverty and disaster - is now filled with color and diversion. The air was thick and wind gusted in indecisive spurts from the Mississippi. Little specks of rain threatened to become a storm, and I thought of the way the weather here in the south always keeps us in suspense. I love the intensity of days like this, when all colors contrast with the gray approaching storm. On the new playground, the purple was royal and the green alive, fringed with yellow clarity and a blue the color of fall skies. They dripped like rain down a windowpane - life and hope moving with the growing momentum of young people who believe that change is possible across the background of the monochromatic status quo.

It’s not about atoning for something I did. It’s not about atoning for something I didn’t do. It’s about tearing down a system I did not create nor condone, a cycle whose centrifugal force we add to, simply by the weight of our not standing against it. It’s about doing what I want to do, creating something from nothing, being a primary mover.

It’s about never again having to see a house like the one I saw in the lower 9th ward: a place where the items in the attic were coated in Mississippi River mud; where the doors, ceilings, walls and windows were ripped out by a 20 foot wall of water; where the inherited, antique family organ still sits, untouched, in the front parlor and children’s stuffed toys, virtually unidentifiable from black mold and mud, hang from the rafters where they were left when the roof-high waters receded; where the molded calendar is frozen in time - August 29, 2005.

*******

Yesterday I walked through a neighborhood almost devoid of life, through a house gutted by a flood which was made by the god named Man. I stood by the levee and imagined a wall of water hitting me, imagined the barges from the industrial canal coming through the breach and tearing the houses in their path from the foundations. And I thought to myself, “If man’s intellect is not directed toward respecting life, what’s the point of living?”

Today I got to hang out with a 10 year old girl and a 7 year old boy from a neighborhood which now has a large playground and a renovated sports field. They spoke of nothing but their excitement about having a playground nearby. Having a playground in their neighborhood might not change their lives, but maybe it will: maybe one day they’ll look back and remember what it meant to them, and they’ll decide to volunteer for a similar project.
About 100 people volunteered for the playground project, and in less than 6 hours, all the work was done. If more people volunteered 6 hours of their time a couple of times a year, how much more could we accomplish? If more people respected existence, how much more beautiful would life be?