BROKEN WINDOWS

Monday, October 6, 2003

We found our way on a plane last Friday night bound for Chicago. Here's a view of the river as it snakes around New Orleans and makes its way to the gulf, the view made more spectacular by the falling light of early evening. We followed the water north by air.

From the Atlantic Ocean to the St. Lawrence River, to Lake Michigan and through the canal, to the Illinois River and finally to the mother of rivers, the water wrapped around New Orleans has made its way here from the north just as I have. I see myself in this water.

A picture named causeway.jpg

The causeway is as spectacular from the air as it is from the water. A highway stretched across Lake Ponchartrain for 23 miles, it connects the floating islands of New Orleans and the North Shore. I say floating islands because that's what they seem to be; the land is at the water's mercy.

There are places in the city that are never dry. The corner of Louisiana and Claiborne, wet, just as the stretch of Leake (such an appropriate name) along the natural levee where the river leads to the suburbs, also wet. The water rises up through the pavement, I suppose, or finds its way through cracks and potholes, seeps from grassy lawns or flowerbeds.

A picture named planeread.jpg

Reading Jonathan Lethem's new novel, The Fortress of Solitude, on the plane ride north. It's a brilliant book; he makes you fall in love with Brooklyn, even as he brings you back to those dark junior high days.

It's as if everyone on the plane holds their breath in flight. When we land the cellphones come out, silver plastic imbilical cords. Then the long exhale. The plane rings with conversation. After first a false landing then a proper one in Chicago, the young man sitting next to us called his girlfriend and exclaimed "We almost died!" The plane let out a hearty laugh, the line repeated in cell phones up and down the aisle.

7:18:10 PM |

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