Last Flight Out

Monday night at 6:15 pm I joined about two dozen other people on an Air Trans flight to Atlanta and then on to SFO. By 2:00 am Tuesday, I was at home in Petaluma. The fact that I was one of only two dozen people leaving from Louis Armstrong Airport (as John Fohl says, the only airport named for a reeferhead) at COB on Monday says a lot about the state of business in New Orleans these days, but that's for another blog.

The impetus for this spur of the moment transcontinental flight was the software meltdown of my Mac mini on Sunday afternoon, and my subsequent inability to find a way to fix this relatively simple problem in the reality of post-Katrina New Orleans. Previously, even during the dark days immediately post-Katrina, I used to have two places where I could get my Mac issues addressed, if not fully dealt with, but both of those businesses are gone now. The closest Apple store, as I was told by one person who tried to assist me, is in Houston... and, well you get my drift.

I let myself off the hook after things melted down on me on Sunday. I just shut off the power and went on to other things. Then, on Monday I set to trying to solve my problem. Facing into the hundred degree heat and long walks across town (since I don't drive these days and the public transport scheme in New Orleans is a bit less than dependable) with my computer and various peripherals on my shoulder, I went in search of assistance. Assistance that never materialized.

With limited options, ridiculous heat, and an air conditioner in my apartment acting seriously like it was about to crap out on me (and my hard drive already overheating as it was) I decided to gamble and check the flights west. It was clear to me that this was a problem that would take a week to fix in New Orleans and half a day to fix in San Francisco. So I bit the bullett, packed up my stuff and called a cab for the airport, all in less than two hours. This really might qualify as the clearest, most definitive choice I have ever made in my life, but the choice of the moment, at least for me, was clear.

Back in May I asked myself if I could make it in New Orleans right now and I never was able to gain a good strong answer. This time, in ten short days, the answer was clear... Absolutely not!

So here I am, prematurely back on the west coast with work to do in California, New Orleans, and Florida. What is clear for me this time around is that I remain called to and connected with The Crescent City, but like a hiker venturing into hostile territory, if I can't pack it in, I can't depend on having what I need to get by.

When I return (at some point in the next few weeks to few months, depending on what I can put together) I will return with full support resources for problematic computer issues. I will return with income and sources for income that are not dependent on getting gainful employment in New Orleans in order to survive, and I will have worked out my health issues with my neurologist and the DMV so as to be able to drive my own damn self. I will also bring a car.

This is the reality of New Orleans two years after The Thing. Yes, you can live in New Orleans, but not if you, in any way, depend on the support, assistance, and/or planning of government programs and a viable small business infrastructure for anything. It really is the Wild West right now, a Darwinian reality of haves and have nots. Another way in which New Orleans feels like a microcosm of the way of the world at the beginning of the 21st century.

I'm not even going to start on current weather conditions in The Tropics.

Sometimes I scare myself... seriously

Immediately upon finishing and posting the piece below, and it's related piece on Butting Heads, I opened my browser to discover the above story in my daily Storypeople offering.

Yeah you right!

Coming Around Again...

We are less than three weeks away from the second anniversary of Katrina and the related disaster of the levees and Harry Shearer has an, as usual, excellent piece on the current situation and the soon to be photo op of presidential candidates in The Huffington Post this morning.

I've written some things of my own about that in Butting Heads.

Have a look...

Waiting for a Miracle... Still

It has been one hell of a crazy week! The most extreme aspect being last Thursday and Friday as I shoved my poor aging body and mind through 40 hours without sleep in order to finish up some of the immediately necessary work, get on the plane, get to New Orleans and go hear Donald Harrison (among others) at about hour 38.

Now that I've gotten a bit of sleep, and I'm starting to settle in with the urgent work on this side of the continent I am gradually beginning to feel like my head is coming back to my body.

The weekend was, as any festival - even in 100 degree heat - in New Orleans always is, one unbelievable moment after another. It was another opportunity to remind myself why I was first attracted to this precarious city and why I keep returning. By mid-morning Monday I was already facing full into the basic reality of New Orleans in 2007. Three weeks away from the SECOND anniversary of Katrina and the failure of the Federal Levee System around New Orleans, the city is still clopping along like an old tour horse with bad feet. Sure the Quarter is jumpin' and during the weekend you could be forgiven if, as a visitor, you thought that everything is back to normal.

Well... it's not.... by a long shot.

• Two-thirds of the city remains broken down and largely empty (I spent part of my weekend with the folks from Churches Supporting Churches who are working hard to bring back many of the churches (mostly African-American) in town so that the community can find a center and truly begin to rebuild.

• Eleven people were shot over the weekend.

• I still have to wait 25 minutes on average for a bus to anywhere (on a system that claims to be running buses every 12 minutes) in the city... let's not even talk about "evacuation plans."

• It took me two hours and three trips (including one this morning) to finally get a check cashed at the bank it was drawn on.

• They just pointed out in the Times-Picayune that four local bridges crossing our now famous bodies of water - bridges that must be crossed in order to escape another storm - are below the safety level of the bridge that collapsed in Minnesota last week. My friend Mary emphatically proclaims that there will not be another storm, and I promised not to dispute her, but...

• Oh yeah... Who Dat Say Dey Gonna Beat Dem Saints!? Pittsburgh evidently.

So... I was particularly captured by the Storypeople story (above) that came in my mailbox this morning.

The fact remains... in the midst of everything, that it really is important to keep looking for the miracles. After that story about flight, I will, at least for tomorrow morning, feel differently about the military hellicopters that still fly overhead every morning just as I am getting out of bed.

Even when it just seems like all you're doing is waiting for them, the miracles that sustain you for just that little bit longer seem to pop up just in time.

Falling Up!

I get these little motivational emails in my box every morning; an admittedly lame way of giving myself a little shot of emotional adrenaline to get the day started. Sometimes it provides a nice little reflection... other times it serves the task I have really set for it, namely creating a synchronistic event that might work to shake up my psyche and break loose some sort of creative energy.

This morning was one of the moments when it did the later.

The message this morning went like this: "It's not the dazzling voice that makes a singer, Thom. Nor clever stories that make a writer. And it's not piles of money that make a tycoon.

It's having a dream and wanting to live it so greatly, that one would rather move with it, and "fail," than succeed in another realm."

The thing is... it coincides with a quote from JFK that I heard on the ABC show "Brothers & Sisters" last night. Calista Flockhart's character, Kitty Walker, corrects her boss (played by Rob Lowe) when he misquotes Kennedy.

The quote is: "Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly."

After two years of working on these blogs and the attendant life experience (the good, the bad, and the ugly) they represent, I am standing right now in a place where I feel the most important in my life is to clarify that thing that I am willing to fail at in order to succeed and to take on the task.

There is a poster from the New York School of Art that sits in the entry way of Perry's Restaurant on Union Street in San Francisco that has captured my imagination since the first time I saw it. As I remember it, it's an image of a black and white zebra casting a rainbow colored shadow (sort of the opposite of what I have here, but it was the only one I could track down).

This image (and its accompanying phrase) have haunted me since the first day I saw it, nearly 30 years ago.

To Be Good Is Not Enough When You Dream Of Being Great.

It's taken me that 30 years (and especially the last two). But I think I'm ready now...

Ready to risk failing miserably in order to achieve greatly.