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Bolted out of bed this morning after having a rambling dream that included Vince Vaughn. When I got outside the dawn was like a blazing fire in the sky and I said thanks to the sky as Arlene and I rushed to catch up with friends for our daily constitution. N was in a funk because of uncertainty at UNO and the Snake is sick and a general malaise that surrounds all of us here post Katrina. As we circled the bayou there were flowers floating along the edges from the memorial for the guy who drowned last week.

Nice visit with mom last night but later learned she was having trouble and worry that she was supposed to be released this morning but now might be held back another day. Nice conversation with Tia L afterwards who is recovering from her operation and as always full of advice on how to proceed with my life. Both of them are strong and braving illness in the late years of their life and their thoughts are not on the same plane as mine or those I’m close to at this moment of my life. The evening dinner conversation centered around opening the mind to possibilities and some dangers that lurk from satisfying feral desires in lieu of common sense.

L and I talked about P and when she was thinking of leaving and he told her she should be 100% sure before she made a decision and she said, I don’t think I’ll ever be 100%. But what I do know is that I can’t give you what you need. It reminded me of a conversation I had had about living with uncertainty and letting it coexist with your clarity. And this morning I explained to L about how we operate at my work. We have to make our clients money and if we are right 60% of the time, they make money. So we are faced most of the time with going out with a story when we have only 70% conviction – it’s the risk that we operate under all of the time – and C has always pushed us editors to go out on the limb at 70% conviction, which means sometimes you are going to be wrong. But what separates the girls from the women in this job is having the guts to do that and taking the risk that you may be wrong.

I think of the adrenaline that has fueled the last eight months of my life and how many decisions have been made at the gut level, at the 70% quotient, and how I’m still not certain that all of those decisions will not come back to haunt me, but at the same time, it propels me forward and I feel on a gut level that they have been the right decisions even though at times these very same decisions seem irrational or half cocked.

Yesterday I spoke to one of my long-term sources who has reached a position of power within the movie industry and she said she operates on this gut level and it is akin to walking a tight rope sometimes but that is life and she wouldn’t live any other way.

Then L called this morning after our walk to get a song out of his head from Fountains of Wayne – Prom Theme – “Here we are at last…the moment soon will pass…we’ll forget each other’s names….but reach for the stars….play our air guitars.”

When I woke Wednesday with the dread that soon became the reality that colored the last 48 hours I didn’t know how things had come to this point because going back and connecting the dots didn’t seem to add up to anything other than a cliche of sorts and people who I expected would not fall into any pattern of obvious were operating in the obvious but one thing became clear and that is when the going gets tough, some of us shut down and some of us step off the cliff. It’s what makes us who we are and at the end of the day – that’s more important than the circumstances that are pushing and pulling against us – know thyself – being comfortable in your own misery is no way to live, it’s a cop out – but as well as knowing thyself is surrounding yourself with people who celebrate life in the same manner and take risks in more or less the same playing field, and who love life even when it is thick with uncertainty and wretchedness.

There is a relief that comes with the denouement – well hard to call it a denouement literally at this moment in time – but the telling of the whole story to everyone involved finally happened and knowing this was not a Katrina moment between us, not a moment of insanity, but a long term struggle against what is and what could be and years of letting someone into your life whether that be to learn to love them or as a distraction from the darkness – but a worn path was laid – no matter what the reasons that led us down it, the path was cut and became indelible and no amount of turning away takes it away.

Don’t feel sorry for yourself is all I ask of you, my Tia said. You are strong mi amor, and through the darkness comes the light. The blazing fire ball of light.

Slept for the first time in weeks but with the usual up at 1, 3 and 5 – L says that’s his pattern too – the old 1, 3, and 5. But dreamt all night long – dreams that had no end and all centering around frustration. And woke wakeful but with a sense of dread with no clear direction as to where it was going to come.

When the Bean and I walked out to the bayou this morning L started yelling at me frantically from the other side so I ran across the foot bridge and discovered a drowing dog trying to get out. I took Arlene’s leash and tried to leash him and hoist him up but he was a big ole dog and I was on my knees and still couldn’t lift him – not to mention he was freezing and scared to death – so then L got on the other side and scruffed him by the collar and hoisted him up with me pulling the leash. When he got out he was still scared and let me pet him but snarled at L. He had no ID so I let him off the leash and he went off in the opposite direction – hopefully to his home.

I got home to a day jammed with things to do and no time to do any of them to any satisfactory degree – meet contractor, back to back work conf calls, mom @ hospital, lists for LaLa, and so on.

S emailed to say he had rented a place in SF near where we used to live in North Beach. He also said that a friend of ours is not doing so well healthwise and that was sad. We are in a good place of being able to connect even though we are not connecting. His days are stacked up with lunch and dinners with friends and he feels happy to be in SF. I told him wild boars couldn’t drag me back there.

Then an afternoon with W – bribery to get him to run an errand with me – bring mom lotion and make up – the essentials – and W was such a sweetie in the hospital room, not weirded out to see a woman laying there with a tube up her nose – mom told him she loved him. Then off to Toys R Us to make good on the bribe and couldn’t say no to everything he had eyes for – came home and built a fort and made dinner and put together an impossible lego contraption. Then it seemed a short time before it was time to take him home.

Saw N and the Snake and word up is that UNO is cutting back degrees and tenured positions – everyone wondering who will get the first pink slip. Another post Katrina anxiety moment. We watched some of the Grammys and made fun of the usual suspects – Paul, Mariah, and the rest. Just trying to hang and be normal.

Today was a sunny beautiful day but it started with dread that kind of wrapped itself around the rest of the day even though there were hours where it seemed like you could forget all the mess and do what was in front of you and enjoy but all the enjoyment was short lived.

L in his wrestle with K, and out there trying to be normal when things aren’t. N and the Snake talking about maybe having to leave NO. C sending me emails that are pointed and disturbing. And other areas just getting more mired in funk that it seems like quicksand around here.

But as S says – take it one day at a time, one item at a time, and you will get through. She saves me sometimes with her wisdom and I lean on her sometimes too hard even though she is wont to remind me of the time I saved her – it was so long ago, and believe me, she has made it up to me in spades. I miss our trips when we wake up at some ungodly hour and are in bed and talk with the lights off and wonder about everything – the big stuff to the little stuff – never coming to any real good conclusion but always feeling fortified to go on.

In a few days the first parade…….

Yesterday mom had surgery to clear up the obstruction – there was all the nail biting that goes with her going under, but she came through surprisingly well and her only gripe is having to stay in the hospital through the week as she is already getting agitated. S was very agitated at her being in the same hospital that nearly killed her four years ago. But then began enumerating her own hardships right now that spun her down into a major funk. And to think she doesn’t live here.

The week of unwinding went rather well but then the last two nights have caused sleep to take a back burner starting with an SOS on Sunday that was worthy of an interuption but then Monday’s SOS seemed to provide no real clarity other than to connect and actually confusion reappeared in all its glory – in the words of K, nothing new added, and I could have been stronger in towing the line on renounce.

L is finding his mini ephiphanies by looking outside the immediate circle at the possibilities and also losing some of the urgency that has been coloring his desires. K is MIA as usual – dropping in now and then to issue statements of love and longing, but then hiding behind silence the rest of the time. T has been in contact lately, which of course adds an air of mystery to each missive received.

Spoke with F today after a long time and he said he was worried that I was going to let this thing go on forever with N, which would have the effect of wearing me down. But he said I keep getting to forks in the road and keep taking the right path so he’s happy with my progress. He also said that a friend gave him good advice a while back – that you don’t know how long to wait around but you will one morning wake up and know they’re out of time by the way you feel and you will be all right with it.

Meanwhile S makes his way to California – looking forward he said to crossing the state line – he has felt lost for the past nights but think he found himself (with help) the last night in Vegas and so feels centered and ready for what follows. His expressions of love for me soothe me during this nutty time. I keep assuring him he, more than any of us, will land on his feet the fastest. But he says, you have hope. And my response is hope dies last as my dear O says.

Off to meet with E this afternoon and then to the hospital to visit with mom. The sun is shining even though it is a bit cool. February is lovely.

Wretched week that started with me enforcing the unwinding with N and then culminated with S and I plunging the depths of our marriage and what went wrong and could we get it back? all the way to Wednesday when S came across all of my correspondence with N and unfortunately read it. And let me count the days of tears – no I’m not sitting on the stairs anymore crying, which is what I did for so long I couldn’t bear it, but now I’m wailing in hotel rooms, airplanes, terminals, hospital rooms – you name the place – I’ll cry there.

Before I left for SF, N and I were walking the dogs around the bayou and stopped to read a missing person sign. While I was gone N found out the guy drowned in the bayou – possible suicide. I get her missive in SF when I’m walking along the Embarcadero and all I can think of is C, the architect I had a crush on at BAR, who rode his motorcycle to the Golden Gate and jumped off because his girlfriend had broken up with him. Then I hear foghorns and remember laying in bed and looking at the Marin Headlands, and I see fog and recall a time when I walked right up to the Golden Gate bridge and still couldn’t see it, the fog was so thick, then I hear sea lions and remember Sam barking at them. I’m thinking about it all – SF, the crushing feeling that it robbed me of things I wanted, and I sit down at a cafe to smoke a cig and have an espresso and a woman pushes a stroller right up to where I am, stops and two other women come up behind her and they are all looking in the stroller – so I get up and peer in and there is a little girl, curly red hair, laughing and wiggling. And I’m so melancholy I want to step off the curb.

Later that evening – with my girls – J, A, S, and S – I’m laughing and having a good time – and another friend comes up to me and I ask her how things are with her mom and she said last we spoke, my mother told me she had one regret in life, that she didn’t abort me. And I sink into despair for her. How do you overcome this rejection in your life? When I discussed wanting to be a mother to E we talked about how motherhood was my own mom’s single joy – she has said this so many times. And her mother said the same thing.

And I tell S the next day that I was in such a cocoon for three years when we returned from NO – I had wrapped myself in it to protect myself because I didn’t want to be in California. And it was my undoing.

And that afternoon I sat in a meeting admiring my colleagues and our vision and then I felt like I was being summoned – so intensely that I almost levitated – and sure enough by evening my summons was confirmed. But I must be strong or I will be at sea again.

Came home to a nolafugees party at Handsome Willy’s and lots of speeches about coping here in post Katrina New Orleans. Spoke with M about his breakup and how he is not “coping”. All in all a good group of people – I had pondered the beautiful people in SF but looking around the bar Sat evening the cute boys and girls abound here in the Crescent City – J was DJing and L and I almost danced slow to Me and Mrs. Jones and then nightcaps at Pal’s till I was ready to stumble on home but got the other J with his cute dimples to give me a ride instead of waiting out L who was preoccupied with D.

Then awoke to my mother’s cry for help and took her to the emergency room where we spent the entire day – me sitting by her bedside trying to read, crying over my last correspondence with S, contemplating the LaLa and B’s missive that he will not work on it anymore, and just bereft in general of positive emotions. Then the doctor said she had to be admitted and so now home to feed the Bean, check in and back.

So O tells me in SF – Rachel, you just have to put it all behind you and start looking towards the positive. Okay then. So here is how I am going to flip all this in my mind:

N – I have to be strong because he is clear about his confusion.
S – I have to be strong and be direct about my feelings for him so that he can move on even if it would be comforting to me to have his friendship to lean on.
mom – I have to be strong because I feared what I saw today – her lying on the bed, vulnerable, looking old, seeming fragile.
work – I have to be strong because we are in a crisis that is industry wide and they need me to be in top form.
friends – I have to be strong because they want to see me happy and whole and they won’t settle for this shadow of a person I have become.
LaLa – I have to be strong and wrest a price out of the contractor and some reasonable eta for finishing.

I keep thinking there is an end to these blues, but as EmmyLou sings “one thing they don’t tell you about the blues when you got ’em is you keep on falling because there ain’t no bottom and there ain’t no end” – so you have to stop the spiral somehow – you have to put one foot in front of the other and go on and start looking up and not back.

I will not send emails after cocktails – I will not send emails after cocktails – I will not send emails after cocktails – times infinity.

Although cheered as a hero this morning……..sometimes cocktails help get to the point – um – rather quickly.

Miss my Bean already – sigh…………….off to SF.