Plaquemines Parish : Some Words
Joe MF Wilson
I know there were and are EC types who represent it to me, I could see them after a while there, when they showed up to volunteer “for a couple weeks” but weren’t sure what they were gonna do next, when they kinda listened to and seemed to enjoy the company of the Plaquemines residents more than the company of other volunteers, when one time the first time they look into the fire during a Circle and really fucking put some care into the gimmicky ritualistic “Ohmm”. Yeah, if one cares a little bit about how one does what one does all day, one can package a million corporate paper bundles with love, and it will be better than loveless, every time allways. And an Ohm requires care and love and then becomes beautiful and moving, inside. An EC type enjoyed dishes at 2 in the morning and making breakfast at 7 in the morning, for the first month anyway— until the fatigue sets in. Then they enjoy the fatigue, and try to work with it, and then to fix it. Then the progressive ideas mixed with mild expertise start getting voiced more--- “guys, we can do this better” with this list, with this system, with this My perspective, a simple solution to a big problem, just a Rule, just a change, but everybody’s gotta go with it or it won’t work. Then the choice by an EC type to exercise a bit of power, a bit of harshness, follows: Read this list!, understand this new system, realign your perspective with Mine, be a part of the solution, Follow the rules and changes, OR ELSE you will get “mediated”, “disciplined”, and in extreme cases involving (Gasp!) alcohol, (Gasp!) drugs, (Gasp!) violence, or (Gasp!) sexual harassment, you will be--- what was the word we used?--- I think it was “Removed”. Many times this escalated or caused petty conversations and activities—with yelling, crying, mildly threatening, joking joking joking. An uncountable-in-one-lifetime number of times this was all-important, urgent, necessary, exhausting, and gray. After her or his first month, an EC type goes through facing this infinite grayness stuff all day long and in their dreams for many weeks, the nights around the full moon time being especially challenging. That first month is a near-euphoric mixture of naivete, newness, openness, surprise, challenges, sympathy, awakening, redefinition. An EC type makes choices and choices and choices, including who their accountable to, what they do from the moment the wake up to the moment they pass out, what to ask what to answer what to get what to give, and many other balances and opposites.
To volunteer is one very powerful way to choose choice in this a capitalistic, globalistic, beautiful messy, fatalistic and unending-seeming, small and bigger than any of us, world.
Many EC people felt like they were pretty much free to do what they wanted. And the only thing really worth wanting in this world, I think at this moment—or I think I thought all the time then, I’m forgetting you see it’s horrible and seriously painful sometimes not now though --- the only thing worth wanting is to work with a love, towards something.
news
stories by author