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.

This is the sight that greeted our own DB on his triumphal arrival upon our shores. It was followed by thunder and lightning (an extreme rarity in LA), and then, I kid you not, a hail storm.

The man has power.

So I decided to post a series of views from my various windows so far this year (and two taken in late December). These were taken in different cities across the country, and in two cases, the windows were abroad. I won’t say where each was taken, so you can create your own story if you like.

Late December:

Late December:

Early January (not really “from my window,” but you can see some of the view…):

Early January:

March:

March:

April:

May:

May (this isn’t really from a window, but I like it):

What have you been seeing out your window lately?

The American midwest is the last place I expected to find Buddha. It’s too pragmatic, too meat-and-potatoes for a spiritual practice whose ultimate goal is elimination of the self. The people here are friendly, solid, circumspect, sincere. For nearly twenty years I have lived like an expatriate, shrouded in my New England cynicism and snark. Letting go of that has been like feeling my ego dissolve. I think I belong to the prairie now.

I never could begin to understand the Four Noble Truths until putting down roots here. Nothing teaches that “Life is suffering” like a Wisconsin winter, though, and here’s how I learned it: by walking. During the worst of winter, it was too nasty to take my dog out on the salted sidewalks, so in the mornings we got in the car and went to the dog park, an 11-acre high-prairie expanse a few minutes away. Being outside at all required wool socks, boots, long johns, hat, gloves, muffler⎯the works. Cold like a punch in the face. You could feel the moisture on the surface of your eyeballs freeze within seconds of stepping out the door.

The perimeter of the park had a footpath that took about fifteen minutes to cover, and on a good day we made it three times around. You had to be careful because it was icy, and still dark⎯the sun wouldn’t rise for another hour or more. Step by step, focusing on the path, placing each foot, listening to the crunch of snow underfoot and the wind in the bare trees. Slow going. This is how I discovered walking meditation for myself.

The marvel was that I never asked myself, “Do I want to be here?” Before there was even a chance to think about it⎯before I’d had so much as a cup of coffee!⎯I was out walking. At first, it was only for the sake of the dog, who needed her exercise before being left alone all day. Then it became simply a fact of our lives, even when the temperature was five or ten below.

You can imagine those early-morning meditations, even appreciate their transformative potential in the abstract, but there is no way to learn what the practice of slow walking has to teach without actually doing it, day in and day out. There’s no breakthrough, no high-stakes, lightning-bolt epiphany in the Christian sense. Just a gradual dawning of comprehension somehow gathered from the intense, selfless focus of putting one foot in front of the other, moving in a circle.

It’s difficult to put into words what this comprehension entails, but it has to do with gaining patience and compassion for all living things⎯even yourself. Some of you have studied Buddhism much more extensively than I have, and can doubtless describe the sensation with more ability. Help me out here?

Now that spring has arrived, I find myself working on the second and third of the Four Noble Truths: “Suffering arises from attachment to desires” and “Suffering ceases when attachment to desires ceases.” Midwesterners, farmers in particular, are great at these two. They can labor for weeks and months on a crop that represents their entire livelihood, only to see it wiped out in a ten-minute hailstorm. They can wake up one morning to find their plants annihilated by insects or blight. They watch the approach of a tornado. They rejoice and sorrow with one another, but maintain a philosophical distance and continue with as much resolve as ever.

Even just maintaining my little patch of ground⎯the vegetables and flowers I worry over like a hypochondriac mother⎯exhausts every bit of physical and mental energy I have. Sometimes I get frustrated and walk away. But I come back, because without this cyclical heartbreak gardens give us, civilization would not exist.

‘It’s all a bit overwrought,’ you may be thinking. ‘She walked around and dug in the dirt. Big deal.’ But words like “humility” and “wonder” can be tricky to use without sounding either ironic or pompous. I mean them matter-of-factly. That’s the midwestern way.

Could I build a fire with nothing but sticks and rocks? Could I build a shelter that would withstand wind and rain? Would I know how to catch fish without a fishing pole? Should I read up on all these things, in case I ever find myself in a situation that requires these skills? I’m not really outdoorsy, but I like to think I’m resourceful. However, when RB and I recently had a chance to test our survival skills, we found that even seemingly simple things are harder than they might appear.

On a recent trip to Mexico, we found a coconut on the beach. As if on cue, we both immediately decided that we were stranded, this was the only food on the island, and we had to get into it… or starve. All we could use to open it were whatever tools we could find on the beach.

RB had the first go, trying to dig her fingers into the coconut to wedge it open:

Next, she tried pounding it onto a rock embedded in the ground:

No luck, but then we found a sharp, pointy  rock that we knew would work great as a tool. She started pounding on the coconut again:

Pounding and pounding and pounding. We both were starting to get a little nervous, as if our lives truly depended on getting into this damn coconut. She was whacking the hell out of it, over and over, until I got nervous that she might hit her hand. She didn’t, but here’s what happened:

Hmmm. Now we need a plan B.

Although RB  managed not to hit her hand, she did pound so hard with the rock that she cut herself:

At this point, we’re freaking out. Neither of us can believe that we can’t get into the coconut. We can hear the precious coconut juice, elixir of life, sloshing around inside, and we can imagine the sweet, nutty goodness of the flesh. We start making morbid jokes about how the eventual rescuers will find us huddled beside the coconut, unconscious, and then bust it open with a single well-aimed shot. We can’t believe how helpless we are.

I pound on the cursed coconut for another 10 minutes before we finally decide to give up. We slink back to civilization (a few hundred yards away) humbled and hungry. And relieved that instead of stupid coconut juice, we can just have some of this:

Yep, we’re survivors, all right.