It seems an odd thing to think of saying goodbye to an American city, a major city that was--10 days ago--home to about a million people. Yet I feel more and more certain that New Orleans may never again be what it was, and will take a very long time to be anything close.

I lived there for two years, and all of the things I had loved about it when I visited, became exactly the things I did not enjoy about living there. In short, it just wasn't for me. But it's one of those places that I think everyone should experience at least once, and it is definitely "home" for some people. You know, that elusive place that just sort of fits your soul? We don't all find that place in life, but N'awlins is so distinctive, so entirely unique, that if it is your city, it doesn't take long to realize it. (If it isn't your place, you'll know that pretty quickly too, but you'll always be a welcome guest.)

My thoughts now are not just with the families of the dead and injured, but also with the families who made it out alive...and who now find themselves in far-flung places not of their choosing: Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, St. Louis, Baton Rouge (still Louisiana, but definitely not New Orleans), and so on. I've been lucky enough to live in 10 states, to visit 44 of them, and to even do a tiny bit of foreign travel. No place I've ever been seemed any more distinctive to me than New Orleans; at no time in, say, Belgium, did I ever feel I was in any more of a foreign place than I felt every day I lived in New Orleans. The people are different, the language is different, the architecture is diferent--even the feel of the place is different. (A large city doesn't usually seem so horizontal, or so quaint.) So to imagine a New Orleanian, especially one whose travel outside the area might have been relatively limited, having to suddenly acclimate to life in another place--especially traumatized, and with limited resources--well, it overwhelms me, and I'm not the one who's waking up in a city with no job, no home. If you are a New Orleanian, a "yat," that is a great part of your identity, a huge and important hook on which you can hang your sense of self. To no longer have that would be a much bigger loss than property.