It's Love, and It's Worth Fighting For.

Sandy's working on a film, and as always in that industry, her schedule is weird right now. She's staying a little bit across town with AJ, to have some time together and to make it easier to get to set. Thus her lovely little house being open to wayward hobos*, hurray!

We were hoping since we finally got a whole nights' sleep and had a (ahhhhh) relatively easy day today, and don't have to get Q onto the LA Swift Bus until the decadently late hour of 8:00 am tomorrow that maybe we could stay awake long enough to hang out with her after she got off at 10:00. We were both getting a little noddish when AJ called, but knowing we could see them woke us right up. We felt brave enough to adventure out into the surprisingly quiet city streets. Our navigation skills are up to par, we are learning patience, the road names are memorable, and if you DO get lost, it's a treat to see another tiny slice of this strange and gorgeous city.

AJ lives on the corner of St. Charles and 2^nd, not too far from Sandy. When we got there and the doorman automatically buzzed us in, I felt like I was on a tv show. We went up to his floor, watched the last few minutes of the Lakers/Celtics game, and then all went up to the roof.

When the door opened, I was struck like first love. Like a hurricane. Like finding out Santa's not real. Like the best hit of the best drug ever. I was simultaneously elated and devastated the minute I stepped out of the hall onto a wide, wooden deck, nine stories above what is unarguably one of the most beautiful, spectacular, unique, inventive, lush, decadent, delicious, dirty cities on the planet.

A big crescent moon is lording over the entire sky tonight. There are just enough scraps of cloud to make it almost comically picturesque. (It only took me seconds after the initial gasp to think of Miyazaki-San.) We were just a few miles behind the line where the trees of the garden district run into the crescent of the quarter. Close to his building, for miles around it was mostly dark, a forest of glorious oaks**** spread out like a glittering net above the streets with all the beautiful, old buildings showing beneath. We could see into the lit windows and lofts of other late night people, we could hear the near and distant sounds of life. The deck went all the way around the building and so there is a panoramic view of the entire city there, from the Greater New Orleans bridge, brilliant with light, to the dark, smooth shape of the super-dome, like a planet surrounded by the rings of the highways, and all the way back. City entire. From the gleam of the river and the glow of the Quarter, to the silent edges past the levees where the smoke-stacks stand guard, we could see it all.

I was stunned. I still am. I told AJ and Sandy that this was hands down the best thing I'd experienced on this trip. Being able to soak in that view, that way, at my leisure, to look and long and wonder for as long (well, almost. ;) as I wanted, to let my eyes drink in the lights alone, was … well, like I told AJ – some people want to go to a spa, I want to walk around that deck on a night like this.

At first I thought I was being selfish. We've seen and experienced so many amazing things on this journey, how could I be so impressed and comforted by this singular, selfish thing? But then I realized – it's not just the physical beauty, it's this CITY. It's the kind of people, and lifestyle and culture that can create a city like this. It's this weird, funky, colorful, stubborn, gritty, amazing place, like ALL the coastal communities – but this city is their King. I have joked all along this journey that we should start the NCSCC – the National Coalition to Save Coonass Culture - that they were the major endangered species here, but this shouldn't be a joke. When Katrina hit, the rest of the world got their first little concentrated glimpse inside the Spanish Moss Curtain, but sadly then, they saw so much of the dark side. In the recovery effort, they got to see a little of the strength and ingenuity of the people here, but it wasn't until the Super Bowl this year that America got a little more of an idea about the brilliant side of the Gulf Coast. Neither Hurricane Katrina nor the Saints victory happened to just New Orleans. The whole Gulf Coast (and in some cases, some small enclaves of expats in other places) were all affected. The scope of what's happening now (and Texas and the East Coast, beware - you are going to find out) is going to reach from this blazing city down to the tiniest little inlet communities and this time, it could be fatal.

Looking out over the whole city, the feeling I was struck with was love. Harder than I've ever fallen in love with any person (almost as much as Luna ;), I just felt like protecting it. Giving it my all. Cheering it on, cleaning it up, whatever it takes. And not just as New Orleans, but as the Crown of the Coast. I realized that all these wonderful, beautiful communities are all tied together, first, by their unique way of life and now by the unavoidable fallout from this disaster and I knew suddenly, and without a doubt why I came on this journey. From places like Holly Beach and Opelousas and Baton Rouge, all the communities that comprise GNO, and Ponchitoulas, Buras, Bogalusa, Ocean Springs, Kiln, Dedeaux, Pearl River, Pascagoula, Fairhope, Mobile, Magnolia Springs, Daphne, Foley, Spanish Fort, Pensacola, Appalachacola and on – they're all connected by something other than the Gulf, something other than the disasters that have hit this place so hard - the people and lifestyle of the coast. They all share a culture that is not like anything else in the WORLD, much less anything else in this country, and it is possibly the second biggest crime of all that this unnatural disaster may destroy it before the rest of the world had a chance to even know what it's really all about. No one outside the region really knows the passion and generosity of these people, the almost childlike trust. The shades of skin and accent, the ability to turn anything, even nasty swamp bugs into something useful (and tasty!) and trash into something beautiful, the perseverance and even eventual CHEERFULNESS and HUMOUR in the face of things that would keep others from even CONSIDERING trying, no one can understand until the have truly been immersed in Gulf Coastal Culture.

Watching Quincy and Chris B. (who is from New Jersey) learn to quickly adjust and adapt to this way of life and then be consumed by the openness and beauty and abundant generosity of it in these weeks has really opened my eyes to this aspect of what's at risk here. It's love. And it's worth fighting for.

*I'm taking it back.

**This is such an understatement that it is RIDICULOUS – but I DID get some work done, volunteer and domestic.

***I am shocked to find out what a bumpkin I still really am, even at almost 42.

****When Katrina hit, people were worried that the oaks might die from the polluted, standing flood waters. I was worried about that too, and that inspired the beginning of this poem. It was comforting to look down on the summer city and see them all so lush and thriving. 'Life will find a way.'