What does New Orleans feel like right now?

I've had quite a few people ask me what it feels like in New Orleans now. I'm staying with my mom outside New Orleans right now, but I go into the city a good bit. There's a sense of unreality right now. I don't think people have had time to really absorb what's happened here. There's a lot of confusion. At times, we feel hopeful and excited when we see signs of normalcy returning. Then at other times, the sadness and sense of loss and desolation can take hold.

Much of that depends on which parts of the city you go into. If you stay in the French Quarter, Uptown, and the Garden District, it's easier to feel more "normal." But even in those areas, door after door is locked and empty. Homes are dark and unoccupied, and businesses are closed. Some are boarded up still. Others have been cleaned up but aren't reopened.

Many restaurants and shops are only open limited hours. There just isn't the clientele to support them full time, and certainly not the hired help. In the French Quarter, you can still hear music blaring from some doorways. But more of those are sound systems in little dacquiri stores than live bands in the nightclubs. And still...four months later, many of the people on the sidewalks are relief and construction workers.

Driving or walking down the beautiful avenues that used to be shaded by huge majestic live oak trees is also strange. At first, you're not really sure what looks wrong. The homes look pretty...the debris and refrigerators and such have been removed for the most part, and power is on in almost all these areas. Now and then you see signs of damage...the blue roof...the fallen tree trunk that's had most of its branches sawed off. But then you realize that the beautiful old live oak trees that used to reach their arms over the avenues are stripped of so many of their branches. The trees barely meet in the middle anymore...the lovely arches of branches and foliage are thinned out. So then you realize what's wrong. There's more sunshine hitting the streets and homes than there used to be. It's funny how that can make you feel sad.

So the result is surrealistic. You feel like you're in an episode of "Sliders" where you've slipped into an alternate reality.

But it's when you go into other areas that it's harder to feel normal. My home was in Mid City. The flooding and damage there wasn't as severe as the 9th Ward, Lakeview, New Orleans East and other adjacent areas. Some houses are habitable, especially the ones built high enough to escape the water. Others are gutted and may be rebuilt. Still others look as though they simply need to be torn down. But there's a silence in Mid City, and it feels as though this disaster happened 50 years ago and things have just been sitting like a ghost town ever since. On some blocks there are lights on in one or two houses. The people that I've talked to in those areas often feel isolated and lonesome. It's a hard area to be in and not feel depressed. Much of what we see looks as though it may never be restored.

When you go into areas such as the 9th Ward, New Orleans East, and Lakeview however, there's simply no way to feel anything even CLOSE to normal. The devastation is so complete...almost nothing escaped serious damage and almost everything is nearly completely destroyed. The effect is numbing. When I'm in those areas, I'm often just struggling to figure out what I feel. Other times I'm fascinated looking at the pickup truck smashed under a home...both lying destroyed in the middle of the street.

But then, for just a few moments at a time, it hits me and my throat chokes up and I realize that this is all dead. The thousands of people who lived, eat, slept and breathed here every day, have nothing left to come back to. These entire huge areas are a smashed husk that barely indicates the life that used to be here.

We don't know what to think here. There's no way to know what will really happen in the immediate future.

So we're all just waiting to see.

And in the meantime, we've learned something important...and wonderful. "Stuff" is just stuff. That saying "home is where the heart is" takes on such meaning, and we realize that what matters to us the most is each other. Cliches like "the kindness of strangers" can bring tears of gratitude to our eyes.

For me, I've learned that what matters most is what I carry with me. My heart and my love...and my hope and faith. With those things, I can build a life full of meaning and satisfaction...no matter what walls protect me (or don't) and no matter how that life is furnished.

I hope that everyone in this world can learn the value of that, if they haven't already. But I hope we can learn those lessons without the loss and pain that the good people of the Gulf Coast have suffered.