But, it makes me realize more and more how ill-equipped the bus is to attract more middle class professionals.  It’s not just the class diversity, which might put you next to someone who is drunk or high and you fear might vomit on you.  It’s the bus drivers.

I was on my way to a business lunch the other day and realized it was faster to hop on the bus that was pulling up than take the metro across town.  There were only three of us on the bus, including the driver.  I pulled out my briefing to do a bit more prep, but couldn’t concentrate because the bus driver was conducting a LOUD conversation with the other passenger.

One woman driver who I see regularly is a nutty and aggressive driver.  She hits the gas and then breaks every few seconds and yells at the traffic.   Frequently, the drivers want people to exit at the front door, most likely for some traffic safety reason, but they never explain why.  And then bark at the passengers like they are doing something wrong.

I imagine the bus drivers are highly stressed and feel besieged by the traffic, the passengers, and their bosses.  But a little customer service would go a long way.  Sometimes, I avoid taking the bus simply because I don’t want to deal with the hassle.  Over on metro, everyone stands and sits in wonderful silence.

There were better reasons, too. It just felt like an outmoded tactic, marginalized out of any influence by time and money and, maybe somewhere, cynical or even malevolent volition. The march I remember in DC was deeply dispiriting. It was big, and we were very certain we were right, and it was in and out of the papers in a day. Nobody cared except us and possibly Anne Fucking Coulter.

Maybe Occupy Wall Street will vanish, too. It’s cold out there, and momentum is not an easy thing to regain. But already this is very different. NY1 is talking about it right now as I type, and the guy is saying it’s two months already it’s in the news. Fait accompli, as much noted: a substantive, non-negligible redirecting of public discourse, an energizing of some dormant leftist impulse, the wide dissemination of things about class you and I and all our friends knew and considered important, and the grudging attention of the ever centripetal leftish establishment.

Making a demand is a very short process if it’s denied. This is process that resists resolution for the moment, and that’s almost entirely good. Favorite concepts of mine like “negative capability” and “sitting with the question” are in operation here, and that means we’re already off the script, off the chute from gratification to impotence.

I’ve gone a couple of times. I’ve gone to show support for something that my gut says is right despite some misgivings, and to sort out my own feelings about the whole thing. I went with a friend with whom I’d never had a political conversation, and we had one. I’ve talked to strangers, which is easy to do there, and been alienated by a few zealots, and wondered how much I will participate and what I should do.

Your fellow Whatsiteer and I went down on Saturday. We stood near the southeastern corner of Zuccotti Park and watched a charismatic young woman facilitate a basically uninteresting General Assembly that, while we were there, was focused on whether fifteen people marching to DC could and should use the name “Occupy Wall Street.” Two months in, the crowd was orderly, attentive to established process, ruly when prodded to be more attentive, and I think it’s fair to say, alive with purpose and good will.

We participated in the human microphone, the technique I’m told was devised by farm workers, and here used to sidestep the problems of amplification. The speaker’s words are echoed by the crowd, outward in enough waves to reach the edge. It is a speech act not unrelated to the lamentable three-word chant, except it’s engaging and utile. It accomplishes a number of things at once including, I daresay, shunting that need to speak that causes people to tell their life stories in the form of questions into a focusing activity rather than a diffusing one.

Repeating words that have just been thought up sidesteps the numbness that comes from what is more properly termed chanting. It didn’t feel like Yom Kippur is what I’m trying to say.

*My favorite of these is my friend S’s unintended manifesto “The history of me working for other people can be summed up in the question ‘who the hell are you to tell me what to do?’”

1.) This song “A Real Hero” by College (feat. Electric Youth) is from the movie Drive. I could not stop playing this song every day, ten times a day, for a week straight. Especially after experiencing the movie. Go ahead, see the movie and see if you do not play this song obsessively. And if you go, which I strongly recommend, know this: it has some serious violence. I felt a bit traumatized when the movie ended. But also, I felt like I had just watched something amazing. One of my favorite movies of the year. Anyone else feel the same?

Click here to view the embedded video.

2.) Berlin. While visiting that city a couple weeks ago we were struck by a few things. First, it’s a really really fun place to visit right now (ok, for a few years now, but we’re late to the party). It’s cheap. It’s energized. There is a DIY artistic entrepreneurial-ness everywhere. Except for the food–which is terrible (Such a weird defect in a world-class city. But, communism, I imagine, was not a nurturing patron of inventive cuisines. Also, as a guide book pointed out, Germany’s short-lived stint as a World Empire meant that its colonies never got a gastro-foot-hold in Berlin, unlike say, Britain’s Indian cuisine, France’s Moroccan, Dutch’ Indonesian, etc.) Another thing, a lot of people walk their dogs off-leash. And people don’t seem to care. And people walk their dogs right onto the subway. It’s a very permissive city. You can buy beer, wine, liquor at just about any corner store. And throughout the night. And you can carry it on the street. Or onto the subway. Berlin’s treatment of alcohol is fascinating. I’ve never seen people on a subway car at 10:30 in the morning enjoying a large green bottle of beer. People who look like they’re on their way to work. Perhaps other countries in the world are just as permissive, I’ve just never seen it displayed like this before. The other thing about Berlin is how it makes you confront some heavy heavy shit. You don’t get that gut-kick visiting Barcelona or Beijing. The War, the holocaust, the Wall. There are some really moving memorials and museums completed in the last few years, in particular, the holocaust memorial and the Jewish History Museum (by Daniel Libeskind). I won’t describe them here, but by themselves they would make the trip to Berlin worth the trouble.

3.) Amsterdam. Has anyone else been there recently? Is it just me, or is it just a little bit boring? For all the ground-breaking permissiveness of this city (red-lights, coffee houses, legalized outdoor sex in their public park, etc.), it felt really sleepy. Central Amsterdam–outside of the red-light district–is a gorgeous and dreamy world of canals, bridges, and 17th Century houses and is clearly inhabited by very wealthy people. It’s like visiting those tiny brownstone streets in the West Village, except with much greater acreage and more beauty, and everyone rides bikes instead of cabs, but it still feels unwelcoming, like you don’t belong there. And for a city known for its nightlife, it closes down really early. We had a hard time finding a place for dinner after ten. And it was hard to get find a decent place to have a drink after eleven. It felt at times like a movie-set that gets abandoned by night–except for that occasional bike whisking by. Maybe Summer is a lot different than October. And with a pack of friends in the know, it’s probably a lot more fun. Did we miss something? Is there a good reason to visit again soon?

4.) Occupy Wall Street. A couple days ago I came across this link to Adbusters that proposed OWS finally take up a unifying cause: The Robin Hood Tax. Why hadn’t I heard of this until now? The Robin Hood Tax video (feat. Bill Nighy) below is from February. Of 2010. I should really check my facebook more often. Regardless, the video’s pretty clever. Could this idea really work? Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have signed on. And a lot of smart economists too. Could this be the unifying rallying cry that OWS could finally manifest? Maybe. Is this the time? Adbusters proposes October 29th. The Robin Hood Global March. Torches and pitchforks. And our TGW masks. If this is for real, my fellow travelers, let’s make ourselves heard! Anyone in?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Just outside the Quarter, Treme is recovering and looking proud:

But the Ninth Ward, where the levees broke (or were weakened to ensure they broke, say the locals, to spare that same French Quarter that fuels the city’s economy), still looks in most places like this.

The guy who drove me through these streets, who used to live there, said that these were all closely packed blocks of houses, with yards butting up against each other—blocks and blocks of this bustling populated suburb. Now most blocks have two or three houses on them, those that were salvageable or spared, with huge weedy lots in between where their neighbors’ houses used to be. I saw more rabbits than residents.

Some houses have been cleared by their owners (most of whom still own the land but haven’t been able to rebuild)—often all that’s left is a porch:

And sometimes the owners haven’t even had the resources—financial or perhaps emotional?—to clear away what’s left of their homes.

Speaking of spraypaint, many houses still bear the spraypainted instructions from FEMA, and sometimes to FEMA, about what–or who–is salvageable. This garage door was actually in a museum exhibit, which explains the inappropriately pretty backdrop for such a brutal memo:

New homes are beginning to be built on some of the vacant lots—like the houses that still stand, they’re about six or seven lots apart from each other, as if they’re big estates on acres of land instead of lonely islands in the middle of a wiped-out neighborhood. They were funded by some sort of grant that provided modernized dwellings, sustainable and up on stilts in hopes that they’ll withstand the next inevitable flood. I was unable to find out whether these are the ones Brad Pitt commissioned and funded, but they do look much more LA than NOLA.

I’m not gonna be the one to critique how out of place or “inauthentic” these houses look when they’re giving these residents somewhere to be after that trauma, maybe even somewhere nicer. Do they feel “at home” there? How can they, even if they grew up on that street or they love their new digs, when almost all of their former neighbors’ homes–and maybe the neighbors too–are washed away, collapsed, disappeared?

Waterstains were visible on buildings everywhere that hadn’t been repainted–you could see where the color turned dark and bubbled in a line all the way around the buildings. Many businesses had been rebuilt or had painted over those scars, but no one’s ready to pretend they’ve moved on completely, so they had indicators to show how high the water had risen, like this one:

Now look–look UP–at where that little plaque sits on the wall behind my friend.

The waterline plaques are just a hint of the survivors’ pride that infuses so many conversations. They’ve got STORIES. Everywhere we went, the locals would tell us what it was like to run from the storm. Not the hurricane, not Katrina. Just “The Stawm.” They’re not sick of talking about it. “We all piled in the car and it took us fourteen hours to get to Houston.” “My whole family used to live in this neighborhood, but now their houses are all gone.” “We salvaged the bar from the restaurant and built the rest back ourselves.” “Used to be lots more homeless here, but we figure most of’em died.” “My family got the last room at the Best Western and they charged us double. Twenty-one of us crammed into that room–and we stayed there for three weeks.” And those are just the stories tame enough to share with a stranger without crying.

I can’t end with a platitude about the resilience of the city, the way their music uplifts them, that unquenchable NOLA spirit. It’s too sickening. People are living their lives and their lives are changed. I just wanted to show you what I saw.

Click here to view the embedded video.

*Void where prohibited.