Reminiscing with tears

      I have been in New Orleans for almost three weeks. From an ethnographic standpoint, things are progressing.  From a personal view, things are at a standstill, if not regressing. I try to remain optimistic and grateful and I truly am grateful for the opportunity, but I cannot fight the sadness that creeps up from my belly and remains stuck in my throat. Usually my blogs have some grand theme, meaning, or purpose, but this blog parallels my thoughts and emotions.  It is a random account of confusion. The title is misleading, I am not reminiscing as much as I am wishfully thinking about the future, not sure the word for that though.  The tears part is accurate, when the sadness finds its way up from my throat it comes out as tears, heavy painful tears. 

     I arrived in New Orleans on June 4th 2010 at approximately 10:00pm with my friend who split the trip with me. That was the longest road trip I took and the most I drove at once. About eleven hours driving between the two of us. It was also the most exciting trip mixed with bridges, bugs, storms, and Perkins.  I am not going to give an account of everything because that would be boring and tedious.  The main obstacles are the streets (full of potholes as big as your car), the bugs (that appear to be from prehistoric times), and loneliness (my friend left after a few days). After several dead end contacts and frustrated days constantly on the verge of tears I got active. I tried to remember every ethnography I ever read and tried to decide what my first steps should be.
    
     Like I said at the beginning of this post, my ethnographic work is going well. After the first few weeks things picked up. Don’t get me wrong, it is still coming slow, but that is not unique.  However, being someone who suffers from chronic pain; pain that is exacerbated by stress and weather changes, fieldwork is painful in more ways than one.  However the chronic pain I experience, parallels the emotional and mental pain of being in a new place constantly looking for companionship and oftentimes coming up empty. 
    
     Thinking back to the title of this blog “Reminiscing with tears,” I am reminiscing.  I miss someone who was very special to me. It’s like crack and the first hit, something I don’t personally know about but have heard.  You can never achieve the same high you got the first time, but you always try.  He and I were wonderful in the beginning, I always wanted to be around him and he always made me smile.  Lately it’s all tears. Being in a new place dealing with pain, you need a familiar face and kind words. He doesn’t supply any of that. This is not a blog to bash him though, I still have so much compassion for him, I just want to get the same feeling I got the first hit. I can’t help but wonder if this is who he is or if how he was in the beginning is who he is? That is too simplistic though, that is buying into the notion that we have a single identity when I know better and understand that we all perform with multiple identities in varying contexts. But is it too much to want consistency?  My heart hurts and it’s hard to work on concentrate with a heavy heart that serves as a catalyst for chronic pain everywhere.  I wonder, will it hurt more to let  him go or to hang on to nothing.  After all, sometimes pain reminds you that you are alive, but how much of it can you take before it kills you?