A Scottish, short-term volunteer named Kirsten left a note when she left Biloxi.
"Thanks for letting me in so graciously to your wee world even though I was here but for a short time. You guys are The dog's bollocks and I have come to love so many so dearly."
Kirsten's note exemplifies the kind of small, strange transcendence I'm always stumbling upon in Mississippi, like the car with "JUST MARRIED" written in soap on its back windshield parked at a Waffle House.
I'm reminded, too, of Becca the long-termer and her trumpet. Our base's backyard is a mudpit of a parking lot that looks onto dense tents and a ring of trees, which look onto an abandoned golf course beyond. Becca used to walk into the middle of the mud with her trumpet at twilight and play a series of long sad notes, improvised but not jazz, not so much performance as releasing tones into the sky like balloons.
Before they left, Andrew Berry and John Beardsley provided such moments too. With Berry, even getting fast food can elicit an anthem.
"The gleaming light of Taco Bell shines down upon us, beckoning us to eat hundreds of bean and cheese burritos."
Beardsley's best came when he, Josh, Eli and I went to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. Upon arrival, we navigated the sloshing prismatic maw of Bourbon Street sober as birds. It was like being on the floor of some stone-age NYSE, sexual bartering raging all around: beads for boobs, boobs for beads.
One young woman stood beneath a crowded balcony teasingly tugging at the bottom of her shirt until she had the attention of at least a dozen men. When she finally lifted her shirt, the beads were too many and thrown too hard -- pink and green hit her face and mouth. She doubled over in pain.
We walked on. After a minute, Beardsley began staggering and slurring. He stumbled to a stop and we stopped too, confused. Suddenly belligerent, Beardsley turned towards one side of the street and began screaming.
"Yyyyyeahhh! Titties! Bitches, show your titties! Yyyyyeaaah!"
Even in their revelry, people stopped to look. Some joined his yelling.
He grabbed what beads we had and violently pitched them where he was screaming: nowhere. No people, no balcony, not even a building -- just a gray wall. The drunks around us who had stopped and loved him now watched the beads fly over the wall and into darkness, their grins fading in troubled confusion. Beardsley resumed sobriety and we walked on.
Transcendent Biloxi moments can be simple, too.
The power went out at base one evening. Within thirty seconds, some quick-thinking volunteer was blasting Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark" from his stereo. Sure enough, everyone was soon dancing in the dark.
It was a "This is just like a movie" moment, so frequent an experience during DOC Trips: the moments that begin to provide a sense of place.
Biloxi creates a stronger sense of place than anywhere I've ever been. Storm damage reminds us of our purpose, of why we chose to go, everywhere we look. By contrast, home is home by the accident of birth. Purpose is clear at Dartmouth, too, but the Dartmouth population is too turbulent, every incoming class a new reverse diaspora. In Biloxi we are grounded by the generations of residents we came to help.
Biloxi is the dog's bollocks. That much is clear. Now I'm trying to figure out where Biloxi fits: in my life, certainly, but also nationally, historically. These are questions too large for a single book, much less a single column, but I'll give it a shot over the next few weeks; I'm out of Beardsley and Berry anecdotes, anyway.We live in strange times.
Tuesday's New York Times reported on the top hedge fund managers in the United States, the most successful of whom are now earning over $1 billion a year. "The modern gilded age," the Times declared, is "in full swing."
No one we know is fighting but war rages on, hidden in the plain view of constant media and farther from over than when it began.
At Virginia Tech, a senior English major came undone. He lined fellow students against classroom walls like dogs or like you and your friends and me and shot them to death. A wave of sympathy and fear swept west from Blacksburg, the Virginia Tech logo blossoming in Facebook profiles in its wake.
Still we prosper; still we study; still we YouTube and email and tag pictures, our faces and our friends' faces flickering back onto our own. Razrs still glow open, still ring.
I am overwhelmed by the whys and so-whats, just as everyone else seems to be. I just hope I'm able to form a coherent synthesis before I return to Dartmouth this summer (hey '09s!) -- knock on wood. Re-admission is not guaranteed. Speaking of which...
Parkhurst: Have I told you lately ... that I love you?
Email Alex at howeas@gmail.com
