Heading West... Again

By this time next week I will have been in San Francisco for nearly 48 hours. Each time I go back it's a different experience from the last. This time I feel very divided and somewhat lost. I've been trying to settle my feet (and my heart and my soul) into the two locations, my two homes... my two lovers. Each one has a different personality, a different heartbeat, a different taste, a different smell. Each one wears different clothes and likes to do (and be) different things.

I love them both... I feel at home in both... but I continue to feel torn. I continue to feel like The Lost Dutchman, never quite home in any port, but never free either.


What I do know about this trip is that it will provide me with much needed rest. It will also give me time to think, and meditate. I will walk the labyrinths at Grace Cathedral and get to visit my daughter. We'll stand together in the Nave of the Cathedral on Easter morning as they slowly open the giant gold doors (which only happens twice a year) and proclaim the Good News to the whole world.

I'll pop in at Dempsey's and have a beer with my California friends.

Somewhere along the way, I hope to find my way back into myself in a way that doesn't happen on a regular basis amidst the ongoing chaos of New Orleans after the storm.

The strange thing this time is that I am not feeling the deep need to go back that I have felt on past occassions. I feel more whole, less needy, and less confused. But I need this trip anyway.

I will, at the very least, rejuvenate my soul at the center of the labyrinth and by the sea, and afterward I'll return from The City to The Crescent City recharged and ready to take on what's next.

Seven Months in the Cone of Uncertainty

The picture at left is not left over from seven months ago. I took it just three days ago where the boat lies underneath the freeway along Claiborne Ave., high and dry and deserted.

It's another anniversary day… Seven Months since Katrina and The Flood. While I was out walking, in search of Indians, on Sunday I picked up some footage of the ghost town that New Orleans continues to be.

But it's not just the absence of people everywhere except in "the sliver by the river" it's also the ongoing reality of the questions about when things are going to get taken care of and how the people who want to take care of things are going to be able to pull it off.
And FEMA… our old friends FEMA are dragging their feet again.

Harry Shearer's column on the HuffPo today points to some interesting articles regarding some of the problems. In particular, the necessary charts for getting people the information they need to rebuild are still rolling around in an administrative void, while FEMA folks (fresh from their recent retreat/conference in Hawaii) are having a hard time "promising" anything.

It seems that now that Mardi Gras has passed us by and most of the people have gone home, the stores are back to closing at odd (and unpredictable) hours, the buses are back to runnning with an irregularity bordering on madness, and the simple reality of getting around and getting things done takes all of one's daily energy, in this third world city at the edge of the first.

Nobody really wants to admit it, it would be too much like declaring defeat, but you can hear it in people's voices in business meetings, at lunch, on the radio and in bars; we're all crossing our fingers and hoping for the best and nobody really wants to admit that we don't have a frigging clue about what we're going to do come summer.

In a week I will be back in Califronia for a fortnight, just enough time to grab myself another segment of sanity before plunging back into a long haul of lots of work and busy activity through French Quarter Fest, Jazz Fest and more. That will be a good time and a lot of people will come in to see how we're making out... But when all of that has blown out... it'll be three weeks to Hurricane Season.

Welcome to the Great Cloud of Unknowing... Take Two.