Skip to main content

Survivorship.

Yesterday we were walking around New Orleans' neighborhoods, Audobon Park, the French Quarter.  It's odd to be in a place that you know was visited by such devastation only six years ago.  We place such a high premium on survivorship in our society and I'm here in a city seemingly dedicated to revelry,* and everything you see that was here before 2005, people included, is a survivor.  It conjures a kind of awe that is quickly forgotten, gilded over with Mardi Gras beads and drive through daiquiri bars.

But really, is this so unusual?  Aren't we all survivors of something?  Who hasn't lived through a tragedy of some kind, a loss, a misfortune, an event that threatened to tear your world apart?  It's an amazing aspect of the entire human existence that we forget, overlook in the day to day.  It's interesting that the very indicator of survival, the ability to go on with your day-to-day life, means forgetting that there are things to survive in the first place.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Land of Lost Things

I met my new therapist last week.  I test drove a few, and she was the one that stuck.  She seems like she's not going to let me get by with any bullshit, and she said a couple of things that zinged me in our very first meeting.  That was unexpected, delightful, and now, with time to think about it, terrifying. I've been doing so much soul searching lately, so much careful consideration of my life and where I am - you'd think I'd be finding myself, but instead I feel so completely lost.  A few reasons: 1. I sabotage relationships in a really predictable way.  I had always thought of this behavior in one way, but with one sentence, this woman last week made me question everything I thought about that.  It's good to question it; it's what I wanted, but to be confronted so quickly by something that I had never considered is frightening.  I've spent so much time trying to figure this stuff out, and it turns out that I've been so completely wrong about so
6 comments
Read more

Series Finale

Life is not like Sex and the City, or Private Practice, or any other show where people in their late 20's / 30's / 40's are dating for our amusement. It's not fun. It's not glamorous. Relationships do not end with a lesson learned and a glass of wine. Okay, the wine is fairly accurate. The rest of it is crap. We watch those shows because of how inaccurate they are. We'd like to believe that after our latest heartbreak, we will recline in a bubble bath or in front of our computers, marveling at our newfound wisdom and patting ourselves on the back for becoming a more mature person. Let's for a moment apply this entirely artificial paradigm to my life. The basic ingredients are there: single woman in her distressingly late 20s, eligible-ish men, dates, alcohol, occasionally fabulous clothes. Hell, I've even got the klatch of cackling besties to tell me that the latest guy is unworthy of my distress. The basics are here. Things just don't see
6 comments
Read more

2011 Reading Challenges

On the first day of this new year, I am pulling together the reading challenges in which I want to participate.  There are so many that sound interesting that I'm not doing, particularly a bunch of them that are regional authors, which I'm trying to cover with my Global Reading Challenge.  I've chosen a bunch of them, but the problem won't be reading quantity, but more like reading strategy.  I read 3 or 4 books a week and most of these challenges allow crossovers, so I see no problems reading enough books, merely reading the right books and then, perhaps more challenging, writing about them, which some challenges require, and some only suggest.  Either way, it's a neat way to prioritize reading for the coming year. The Challenges in Which I Shall Participate Southern Literature Challenge - I've never read enough Southern Lit, and while some of the newer stuff is truly awful, I'd like to explore some older books. It's any book set in the South by a S
4 comments
Read more