Monday, July 09, 2007

Coming Back

Oh, my. I’m still recovering from my visit to New Orleans with my girlfriend, my son and his best friend. I went to priestess my sister’s wedding. It was one of those long weekends which seem to stretch for weeks. We left late on a Thursday, coming back on Monday. How could so much have happened?


My girlfriend was able to blog
about it right away, but I’m still processing it. There’s so much to say, and no words seem really right to express it. I loved New Orleans the first time I laid eyes upon her. It was on that trip that I understood how the elements are embodied in our great cities. The four directions and their elemental correspondences play out in our nation’s landscape and our cities serve as great Guardians of the Directions. New York in the east has the power of intellect, with Air holding reign there. Chicago, that mighty meatpacking city in the north, holds the power of Earth. On the west coast, Water rules the city of dreamers that is San Francisco. And in the south, in New Orleans, sex and death are always dancing a hot tango, paying tribute to Fire’s power.

With Hurricane Katrina, I worried that the spark of this great city might be forever dampened. Returning, I was immediately struck by all the signs on restaurants, hotels, and other business’s which stated “WE’RE BACK!” I live in a city that came back too, that rose from similar devastation. New Orleans, city of Fire, was devastated by Water, as a result of levees breaking in the great hurricane. San Francisco, city of Water, was ruined by the Fire as result of the great earthquake of 1906. Both cities are psychic ports, places that people feel compelled to come back to, places that demand to be rebuilt and populated.

We chocked a lot into the few days we were there, including a harrowing ride thru the lower 9th Ward. Seeing the X's painted on the houses reminded me of all the X’s I had seen the last time I was in New Orleans. These were the X’s scratched and painted on Marie Leveau’s tomb, a Vodoun sign of respect for this great priestess. The X’s that now predominate in New Orleans are the X’s done by rescue workers on the ruined homes. In the upper middle quadrant of the X is the date the house was gotten to, most which happened a good week or two after the storm hit. In the bottom section of the X there is a number. This is the number of dead who were found. Too many X’s remain on houses that are not rebuilt. And way too many have numbers in that lower quadrant.

Seeing what we saw, including the poverty that has existed well before Katrina, made this ride difficult, but one I’m glad my son, his friend, and cousins bore witness to. My cousin having a full blown seizure in the midst of it made the ride truly surreal. “Don’t stop here!”, one of the kids implored, and luckily the seizure stopped and we drove on. Don’t stop here. Isn’t that the incantation so many of us utter when storms approach or we are journeying thru dangerous territory?

My sister and her new husband are people who have had storms blow apart their lives, who have had death stop at their door and take people they loved. The epicenter of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake was practically underneath her house in the Santa Cruz mountains. It took her months to rebuild. Like New Orleans, she and her groom come back from disaster and heartbreak full of lust for life, ready to party into the night and wake the next day laughing about it. Officiating at their wedding was some of the best magic I’ve done in years. Minutes before the wedding started, the manager of the hotel told me about her own wedding. It was the night before Katrina hit, when she was focused on nothing but the ceremony and irritated by the photographer and caterers wanting it to end early so they could evacuate. As I officiated, I saw her beaming from the back of the courtyard, her tears being testimony to love’s ability to keep us afloat in dark waters.


I’m back now in my city of dreams, one that the seismologists predict will see another great quake in the next decades to come. This weekend there were house parties and concerts all over the globe to raise awareness about climate change. I know there will be many more catastrophes and disasters of all types in this lifetime, some I may personally experience, and one I may even die in. There will be unkindness, selfishness, and even cruelty. And yet, there also will be resilience, and people reaching a hand out to help. How can we not marvel on how great cities and regular people come back, again and again and again?





10 comments:

Faerose said...

Amazing post.

Beth Owl's Daughter said...

I *love* your insight about the four Guardian cities! It resonates deeply and wildly for me that New Orleans is our very own Finias, and of course SF is Murias. It seems so obvious now that you've revealed it! Wow! Thanks for a truly wonderful post. Welcome home, it is good to have you back.

Anonymous said...

sleepy morning til your post...eye opening, heart awakening, soul stirring....it was good. very very good.

Patty said...

I would love to visit New Orleans someday. It sounds as if you had a wonderful time. Thanks for sharing with us.

Lyra said...

...So which city holds Center?

Hecate said...

You completely rock. I'm going to blog about your post.

Anonymous said...

Absorbing piece, and yes, humanity's ability to bounce back, to rise up from nothing, or next to nothing, time and again, is amazing.

If we could harness that power all the time, and not slip into complacency as we are prone to do, the world itself would be safer for everything living on it. x

Anonymous said...

I lived in New Orleans for four of the best years of my life. Even now I always tell people that I "grew up" in New Orleans, even though I was already 37 when I moved there.

But my city's in ruins. The Potemkin villages of Uptown and the Quarter, and the annual tourism cycles of Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest aren't enough to bring back this place that was once both sleepy and indolent, yet richly seething with life and culture. I've known too many suicides among people who can't cope any longer, and I fear for the welfare of my fellow crones who will need more in the way of services than the city can presently provide.

And it angers and astonishes me to read the various New Orleans magazines that are still filled with the doings of the wealthy uptown folk whose money has apparently insulated them from the realities of post-Katrina life.

My good friend--and former colleague-Mark Folse did something unusual and interesting. A 5th-generation New Orleans native, he moved his family back to the Crescent City from North Dakota AFTER Katrina because he wants with all his heart to help rebuild the city he loves so much. You might enjoy his blog, which is found at http://wetbankguide.blogspot.com/

Baruch said...

New Orleans is an amazing place, and what happened there as a result of Katrina, is hard to really fathom. Oak knows I spent 6 months volunteering at a free clinic in New Orleans post Katrina. http:cghc.org It is amazing to see how, even now, the political will to help the people there simply does not exist. Billions have gone into the pockets of haliburton and other bush cronies. In a place like Louisiana where patronage has ruled for hundreds of years, this isn't unusual, but for it to happen on a national scale to a major city, is quite a statement.

On another hand, I see posts weekly on the clinic listserv about incredible community activism, farmers markets, housing actions, employment actions, race relations projects, stuff for kids...all at a grass roots level. There are tremendous resources, in the form of people, in New Orleans, doing amazing work including permaculture and bioremediation, biodiesel, community gardens.

New Orleans is sort of a prototype post collapse american city, showing the many problems as well as amazing creativity.

iamnasra said...

Amazing how the people recover ..and forget ..Its lovely to hear it here