LivingUndaunted

The Movie is Ready for Viewing!

YAY!  So thrilled to announce that my webmovie is finally done.  A minute of inspiration from Lotus and Stilettos (my upcoming book)... I love it and i hope you will too!  Watch it here: http://www.lotusandstilettos.com/inspiration/inspireme.html

After Katrina

My baby was 6 weeks old as I absentmindedly turned on the news for a little company while I got us dressed and out of the house.  It was a resplendent day, as only September can be in my part of the world, impossibly blue sky, air so clear it makes your lungs feel bigger.  And so it was I watched live as a plane drove into the big blocky building I’d been in so many times.  Close enough to see from the bridge near my house, nonetheless I watched in horror on the television, thinking, “Poor people, what an awful accident,” only to have the grim realization sink in over the next several hours that this was much, much worse than I could have ever imagined at first and certainly no accident.  After a few days, when the wind shifted, you could smell the burning pit from my house.  After a week in horror and grief, and much more CNN than is good for the heart, I gave up watching television news since that week after September 11th.

And so I was slow on the uptake when Hurricane Katrina hit.  I saw the newspaper headlines… New Orleans dodges the bullet.  Only through glimpses upon Instant Messenger log-in and passing comments did that sickening and somewhat familiar realization begin to sink in… this is so much worse than I imagined.  Ironically, the air in my New York City suburb is crisp and clean again (it being that same time of year), making it easy to remember that awful September day and what it feels like to know that, incongruous to the beauty and crispness, people are dying by the thousands and grieving by the millions. 

New York has been the object of my affection all of my life.  It was the scene of my first forays into independence as I snuck in to the Village on the Path train to look at wacky shoes and smell life, pungent, intense and sweet, all around me.  While not a hometown haunt, New Orleans was always on my list of “places I most want to visit” until this spring when the CV conference finally took me there.  It captivated my imagination immediately, its meandering streets, the shamelessly touristy quality of the French Quarter, the vast river reminding me of my own beloved Hudson, its magic shops where a jar of bath salts could cure a lovesick heart, its laid back and friendly people. 

My work kept me in the hotel for the most part.  Much like I’d done with Windows on the World (the World Trade Center restaurant) years before, I made a mental note that “one day” I’d return and tour the city properly.  Just 3 weeks ago I priced the airfare.  But the timing was off.  And now, of course, hesitation has bred impossibility – New Orleans as I wanted to enjoy it will never exist again.

What rises in its place is largely in ours to create.  Just as a nation came together to throw arms around my beleaguered city when those buildings crumbled to dust and flesh and toxic fire, so it is ours now to drain the killing waters and build again… smarter perhaps, with more sound engineering and better urban planning, but build again. 

And we are banding together.  Every newsletter I get, every website I visit invites me to donate to the victims of Hurricane Katrina and her aftermath.  I know many brave and wonderful people, some coaches, some not, are doing what they can to send diapers and sanitary pads, blankets, food and money.  In every great adversity there is an opportunity to shine, to rise stronger, to show our mettle and our capacity for compassion and love. 

So I could exhort you to donate (you should) and pray (you must) but mostly I want to leave you with this thought.  We are one.  These are our children living on overpasses and having stale food when they’re lucky enough to have any at all. 

This is not about us at all, not a commentary about CoachVille or coaching, not an opportunity for hand-wringing about whether “coaches” are doing the right thing (can you even paint us all with one brush anyway?).  It’s about one person – you – reaching in your heart and finding what is there.  I'm not a fan of school-marmish guilt-trips that bully people into perfunctory donations to allay their consciences.  It's not about doing what looks good, or even what's required.  It harkens back to a rule much older than most... treat the victims of Katrina as you would have others treat you.

We talk a lot about the coaching profession changing the world, and that’s an easy conversation sitting around hotel lounges with a hip drink and a conference hand-out on our laps.  Never mind about the world watching... these are the moments that define who we are, not just as coaches but as human beings. 

So… who are we?

Alexander of New Orleans

In May I organized the CoachVille 4th Annual conference and MC'ed the gala dinner.  If you were there, you heard me tell the story of Alexander, a street musician who delivered a pretty nifty message from God to me one Thursday afternoon. 

My thoughts have turned to him as I try to wrap my mind around   the horror and loss in this beautiful city which this past May gave me a fresh perspective and a rollicking good time.  I wonder if he made it out okay, although he was playing his trumpet by the riverwalk on the day I met him and that makes me worry for his safety.  He seemed not a man of means at all, just full of life and having lived, quick to the story, sharp for getting an extra dollar, cunning and guileless at the same time.  In this picture, taken by a young boy of about 11 who had never before seen a digital camera, he is playing a slightly out-of-tune song.  He is also getting comically close to my breast.  I laughed about it at the time and do still now.    You gotta give the old toothless street musician points for trying.

Our conversation was perfectly ordinary yet sprinkled with the divine.  As I shared with gala attendees a day after meeting Alexander, on a long walk through the beautiful streets of the residential part of New Orleans, past the rocking tourist bars and t-shirt shops, I had fallen in love with the charm of the place.  As I walked past the small enchanting homes, I saw several for sale or for rent with big French windows I could peek through to see fireplaces and old mouldings.  "I could come here and live half the year and just paint, write and play the piano."  I imagined a life near these relaxed and friendly people, near so much joie de vivre, near the fabled Mississippi and I let myself love the idea for a time on my walk.

Meandering back, I missed the hotel shuttle and so decided to make lemonade out of lemons by walking the long way around on the Riverwalk.  It was here Alexander singled me out and said, "Ah pretty song for a pretty lady," and started playing "Isn't She Lovely."  I recognized it for the ploy for donations it was, yet sat down to listen anyway.  Soon I was on the bench next to him and we were in conversation, he telling me about his travels to Russia and New York ("Hated the place.  Nowhere to relax," he told me of my favorite town).  He had a startlingly profound view of life, asking me what would be the point of doing things you don't love to do.  In my usual idealizing way, I ventured that, "Earning your living by playing your music in such a beautiful place must be close to heaven."  He responded, "It's not heaven and it's not hell.  Life always has a bit of both.  You just have to look at the good more than the bad and try and find a place where you see the heaven more than the hell."

The truly startling thing came after that.  He looked at my hands and said, "You're a piano player," out of nowhere.  I had not made a single reference to my piano-playing youth.  I was taken aback, having just spent my hours walking and thinking about my long-abandoned piano-playing, imagining how being in New Orleans could bring it all back, fill my life with music again.

"I haven't played in years."

He said, "You should start again.  You've got the music in you.  It's in your hands." 

That's about as close to a response to a prayer as I've ever had.

Where is Alexander now?  Where are those boys who didn't know what an e-mail address was when I so blindly and thoughtlessly offered to e-mail them the pictures we'd just taken together?  I remember Alexander's look when I said that, a mix of pity for me and for them, me for not knowing, them for what they did not know.  "Those boys don't know nothing about that."  he said to me.  For a few seconds I thought he might be kidding or might not know what he was saying.  Their bright and beautiful eyes showed me he was right, though.  No clue what "e-mail address" meant.  How insular, how ignorant of me not to realize, though still I ask myself, how would I have known?  Poverty and lack of access is not something you wear tattooed on yourself.  It is just a thing that eats at your future a bit and makes you helpless in the face of a killer rush of water and wind. 

It's highly probable I will never know what happened to them.  I pray for their safety and for the thousands of victims, alive, dead, injured, displaced, forgotten in Hurricane Katrina's wake.