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Had some routine test this morning but was holding my breath a little after the doc last week said she didn’t like what she saw – always makes you go, huh, if you don’t like, how do you think I feel? Anyway, so this genial doctor comes in and starts examining me and telling me how he stayed through the storm and did three surgeries during the storm and then it was like dead and everyone there got all weird like did everyone die or go away? And then suddenly when people started coming back – it was like constant triage because people were falling off roofs (my brother), sawing their legs, and pounding nails into their bodies – this is what happens when an entire city suddenly becomes DIY renovators overnight.

While I am sitting there wanting my clean bill of health this doc proceeds to ask me what I do, do I like it, blah blah – I tell him I am a writer – and he says no kidding – I write songs. I wanted to write rock and roll but instead I have written three country songs and one has been picked up my a song broker in Nashville. So I’m like do I have cancer or what? Then he tells me about his investments and his teaching residents at Ocshner. He’s a renaissance man. The good news – I got a clean bill of health after our chat.

The metal windows for the addition arrived today in a big old crate and J and his boys and I unpacked the crate out front of the LaLa and brought in each window and they are beautiful. J is seriously tweaked about the screen porch that S designed – he doesn’t understand why it has partitions – it just freaks him out for some reason – and so I told him to do what S designed – that there is a purpose for everything he did. Meanwhile he was scratching his head because the terrace has a solid rail and I finally told him that is so I can sunbathe nude – and it was like a light bulb went off over his head and he finally accepted the design. Of course when we got to the privacy for the outdoor shower’s exterior wall he said to me “you know they (my neighbor) could get a ladder and look down in here and see you” and I said, “J, if he gets a ladder and puts it up in that window so that he can see in my shower, if he goes to that trouble, he can look.”

G and L were going for sushi and wanted me to join them but I passed because the day was nutty and I have a busy week ahead and was eager to chill out. So I rented some Grey’s Anatomy episodes from first season – I’m hooked on the show after two things – 1) I haven’t watched television since it seems like years, and 2) the first episode I happened to see was art imitating my life – so a natural hook. My favorite line was the end of episode 6 or whatever – where Meredith says – So why do I keep hitting myself over the head with a hammer? Because it feels so good when I stop.

N wrote me late today in a funk – pains me – depressed and can’t pull out of it. It pains me. She was looking for me to walk and ended up taking a bike ride through the park to try to lift herself out of it – and turns out the park and its funk sank her further. The deep well of sadness – this is what the aftermath of Katrina has wrought – a city of the walking wounded – I focus on my personal pain as if it is not reflected in the landscape as S said – it’s all manifest – but I do believe we have to stay strong as Jackie wrote in her inscription – we have to overcome – we have to believe in our resilience – and have grace under pressure.

Mom called late in the day – I think she is purposely tormenting me with her scattered mind – “my doc appt is moved to Wed morning instead of this afternoon” – you told me it was Tuesday afternoon – “no, it has always been Monday and now it is Wednesday.” The television is blaring in the background and she can’t hear a word I am saying – I keep telling her that soap is the problem – it irritates my skin – she says WHAT – and I yell back SOAP – and she repeats and repeats – and I say SOAP SOAP SOAP vying against the backdrop of some incessant television noise that has been her constant companion since dad died twenty years ago – SOAP SOAP SOAP! – and then a long pause and she says, you always had sensitive skin. And I just want to bang my head on the wall.

S is in Hawaii with his brother C – no cell service at the house so he called while C was in the hardware store today. Communication has been limited as I try to limit any outburst of anger – and he is limiting his communication so as to not express disappointment. Underpinning all of the anger, disappointment and sadness are many good memories that will take a while to return.

Today a big envelope was in the LaLa mailbox – Cliff usually brings my mail to the Can – it was an Abita Beer cap that S ordered when we were in Arlington – it finally made it through the mail – so that’s progress, isn’t it?

G and I talked at length last night at Ralph’s about how we are living through one of the biggest events that has ever hit the United States – Katrina. To this community it has changed the landscape more than the depression did. There is talk of us becoming a white-washed retirement community with adjunct tourism. But I just can’t believe that will happen. Or I can’t fathom it happening. It makes everything else pale in concern.

N and I walked Renny and the Bean this morning and it felt like rain, but by afternoon the rain still hadn’t come. M is still in the hospital and depressed because he thought his ticker problems were behind him, but on his 34th birthday the ticker reminded him of how short his life could be if he doesn’t straighten up. N’s sister P & A are in from New York to do Habitat for Humanity for the week. She called the Snake to wake him up in Austin since he is flying home today, he had been staring down at the bottom of a tequila bottle with J.

Went for a long run this afternoon along the bayou and through City Park listening to my new playlist and one of my new favorite songs – Needy Men. There were a lot of people out in the playground, the park, and along the water enjoying the temperate weather – the before the storm weather – as what is happening in Dallas today is supposedly headed our way by tomorrow.

Had a long good talk with S today about all things big and small – the reason behind Terri Hatcher’s puffy eyes all the way to archives of S in Brazil. I told her it was uncanny how Anette Benning looks just like Nicole Kidman in Becoming Julia. We talked about how so many things can be used for bandaids to cover up this or that emotion and it is much better to actually sink in to whatever, no matter how painful, so that you can come out on the other end of it.

P called because I told him Opeth is playing at the HOB tonight. His 40th is coming up in a week and so he is making plans to mountain bike in California with some old high school friends. I told him to take control of his celebration because my 40th was a bomb. He’s coming in the first weekend of Jazz Fest and I told him the Boss is playing on Sunday and he said good – that way all those types will be at that stage and we can enjoy the rest of the fest. Brilliant pov, I told him.

Mom came by to fix her resume and we drove over to the see the addition at the LaLa – my neighbors, the good ones, were out in their backyard with their chiminea in full flame and sitting around laughing and talking with friends. As N says, when the LaLa is done, I can have my “good” friends over and we can do much of the same. Everyone wants to know when that exactly is but right now I’m coasting on soon but not soon enough and it doesn’t look like it will make my birthday.

I’m at the threshold of giving up the nicotine yet again – okay, so I have had some lapses – but I think I got it going this time as I have had an insufferable last three days – crying jags that don’t stop – bouts of mania – I exercised twice yesterday because I was wound up like a top – a long run, a weight class – I was throwing off sparks by the time I got to the parade last night.

And I walked this afternoon with N and Renny and the Bean, N said I wasn’t looking that goody – she said she was going to get a Raggedy Andy doll and put a kilt on it and hang it from the bridge and set it on fire – because she was tired of him making me cry. I told her he was definitely going in my hall of fame for most tears shed and I’m tired of crying too but I think it might be the nicotine withdrawal maybe more than the N withdrawal because I have been pretty woolly the last three days, which have been nicotine free – I’ve been three months of dealing wtih the withdrawal of N. She said she was going to get the Raggedy Andy doll anyway and when she burned it she was going to take a picture and send it to him. I said I’m sure he’d love it. Probably frame it and hang it in his new house.

Then S came out with Leo and hailed us both and said that she had heard from some of the nuns that the charities are not giving any money to the poor in the 9th ward because they are not going to help anyone relocate back here. They said these people are better off where they have landed and now have a chance in their lives. Poor New Orleans.

Meanwhile we went our separate ways – N was going to M’s birthday party and I was coming home to go meet G for cocktails. She called me having gotten over to M’s party before I even started getting ready and said there was a sign on the door that M had another heart attack – 34 years old – and he’s in the hospital. Takes my nic/N woes and puts them in perspective – here M is such a handsome young man and on his birthday he is in the hospital with a bum ticker. Humbling.

Then I went to get my mail and Cliff left me a note saying I had a package at the security desk. I got it and came upstairs and it was from T in Los Angeles – I opened it and read the inscription and have not stopped laughing since. She ran into Jackie Collins in the grocery store and had her autograph her new book for me – so it says “Rachel, Stay Strong and Best of Luck, Jackie Collins.” In T’s note she says to get on it and go ahead and write the book, if Jackie can do it, so can you. I am still laughing about Jackie telling me to Stay Strong. Puts things in perspective too.

Mom got a call from the administrator of a nursing home in Raceland saying they were desperate for a Director so she took the job. Crazy – she told me it takes 25 minutes to get there and I told her in her dreams it takes 25 minutes – she just admitted it was 40 minutes but it’s a drive in the country so beautiful – I told her to tell me that after she had done it every day. Mothers, whatyagonnado?

N and I went from 0 to 60 in a matter of two hours – sitting on the back of a pick up truck outside of Markey’s we watched the parade start – led by the elderly man using a walker. After the parade he came by in the walker seeking a smooch from the girls. A man brought me a rose and a kiss and another a green boa. We caught some beads and had a good time. Then we went over to Vaughns where I realized I had had too many cocktails and N had to take over the driving part of the evening, which didn’t thrill her at all.

Later in the evening in the hall walking the Bean down for a final pee, H and T were coming up the elevator and H held out a green feather and said, “I knew this belonged to you” – I smiled and held the wall up with my boa still in one hand.

Advertising is seeking to find out what makes people happy – and it’s been determined resilient people are happy. I’ve been relying on my resiliance to get me through but this morning when I went to walk at some ungodly Saturday morning hour along the bayou I mistakenly wore a tank top – got downstairs and nearly froze so ran back up to grab my fleece and wanted a scarf but nothing heavy so I grabbed the orange bandana on my desk and tied it around my neck. I walked along the bayou and a man passed me who was so utterly gorgeous I thought he was a phantom and when he smiled and said hi I started laughing – obviously still had a little rum circulating my system.

Which meanwhile L called from his golf trip last night before I went out and said something to be funny and I laughed thinly and he told me if I didn’t lose this laugh that he would never speak to me again – he has been ragging me about this closed mouth laugh he said I have developed since N – as if I have no reason to laugh out loud anymore – but he’s wrong – I do laugh out loud – but that kind of closed mouth laugh is my that’s funny, but not that funny laugh – and I can tell you that I was holding my mouth completely shut when that stone fox guy said hi because I almost laughed out loud in front of his cute face.

So I went by the LaLa and went upstairs again into my soon to be office. I don’t know how much longer this house is going to take but I know I can’t take much longer – the not knowing what is coming next money wise is enough to send me over the edge. And nothing seems to work like it is supposed to. It’s all mind numbing. And the flipside is that the office seems like it will be a great place to hang out in – it is not at all what I pictured which shows you how I cannot read a plan to save my life because the space looks nothing like I envisioned – that bathroom was somewhere else entirely. But having worked in a closet, a bedroom, a basement the last 15 years I look forward to having a real place to work.

Meanwhile, I got home from walking the Bean – and not thinking I took off the bandana and for some reason bunched it up and brought it up to my nose before I knew what I was doing and it smelled as if N had just taken it off his head and my knees grew weak and I almost got a little weepy – but instead I smiled – sweet memories and nothing more.

All the things I wanted to do and didn’t
took so long.
It was years of not doing.

You can make an allusion here to Penelope,
if you want.
See her up there in that high room undoing her art?

But enough about what she didn’t do —
not doing
was what she did. Plucking out

the thread of intimacy in the frame.
If I got to
know you that would be

— something. So let’s make a toast to the long art
of lingering.
We say the cake is done,
but what exactly did the cake do?
The things undid
in the land of undone call to us

in the flames. What I didn’t do took
an eternity —
and it wasn’t for lack of trying.

Lee Upton
New England Review
Volume 27, Number 1 / 2006

I had to wash the sheets this morning because R was coming to clean up and I noticed that the feather bed has two indentations – one large one from me and one small one from Arlene. That whole other side of the bed is bouyant, weightless. I think I need to change sides every now and then so the bed doesn’t list to the right, or is it the left? I want to get a king size bed for my bedroom in the LaLa but that would mean I would have to shift three times, left, right and middle to keep the bed even.

It was a beautiful day here today – sort of like early spring. The Ides of March today. R came with her mother and said that they were going to move back into her house in two weeks. Her house had about four feet of water. She said there is still so much to do.

L and I had a couple of long talks today and I was perhaps harsh towards him when he might have needed more sympathy. His men friends keep corroborating certain assumptions he has that I find one-sided and unyielding. I would hope and believe I don’t see men the same way they sometimes see women. Are we trying to have it both ways? Perhaps, but I reminded him that women still do most of the heavy lifting when there are children involved and that women still underearn men by a wide margin even in my industry. So if men occasionally have to drive or pick up the tab more oft than not, is that not acceptable? The argument about the way things are just leads you to the way things are – if you accept is that complicitness or does it save you resentment? I would hope that I see men as people in all their complexities – the lapdog and the lion – but I guess sometimes I am guilty of being a girl and wanting it both ways and at the same time wanting men to possess that mysterious otherness.

G called to make a date with me on Saturday – we talked about what we might do and decided to be spontaneous. It reminded me of my buddy D’s boyfriend B, who when S called to ask him to meet for lunch, he said he had all this stuff to do on the boat and go to the gym and S said well, can’t you be spontaneous? And B responded, “I could be spontaneous if you gave me a little notice.” D – before C – they were all mimbos.

Since R was vacuuming from the minute she walked in, I took the Bean down to the courtyard and made some of my phone calls from there. The sun was shining and the air was cool, almost crisp, a feeling hard to come by in New Orleans. But there were still workers running around in white haz mat suits going about the tending of the first floors of the three front buildings that flooded. Even on a gorgeous day like today, there are always constant reminders that 7 months ago this city was under water.

H down the hall took my UPS packages in for me and when I went to knock on his door, he said come in. He was laying on the couch surfing the television. I think he was tight or stoned or something. He still hasn’t found work since getting laid off. He says he still doesn’t know what to do after 23 years of working in the same place. I took my packages and left him there, smiling, and felt like telling him good luck but that seemed trite.

I’ve found some renewed energy with work – I guess I have a lot of time to invest in it these days – but speaking to my sources who are scattered across the country, they always want to know news of here. I tell them things are getting better every day – cause they are – but – I guess there is no but – we are getting stronger every day. Resilience is not just for children, adults, hell entire communities seem to possess the ability to bounce back – to pick up the pieces and go on.

I dreamt last night I was wearing a long pink nightgown – but I was supposed to be in evening wear and had forgot when I showed up at the big event – I kept wondering in my dream if anyone would notice, if I could pass in the hot pink and at a certain point, I said what the hell and walked in the door. When asked what is my best quality – I said fearless.

My contractor is MIA but J told me they were going to put the roof on the addition to the LaLa – I walked by this morning and he was getting out of his truck and I said hi and he said good morning without turning. He then stopped me and asked if I wanted one of those shelves like, like, like that architect said, and I said S? and he said no the other architect across town – and I said N? and he said yes, he puts these shelves up and you have 9 feet, do you want one? And I said yeah, whatever. I’m not even sure what he is talking about but there it is.

What’s good about the last two days is that a couple of people I am close to called because they weren’t okay, and I realized that maybe the phone calls asking if I am okay had finally subsided. I take that as a good sign as my reluctant heart keeps moving forward.

I was contemplating Mary Magdalene and the final hours and Noli me tangere – Touch me not – a powerful statement about the confrontation with death, about losing forever the thing you love. It all started on the 7th floor in the doctor’s office when sometimes a place like that makes you contemplate these things. And then I thought about the human capacity to torture oneself with thoughts of the worst case scenario anytime scenarios are not spelled out – as they sometimes aren’t in doctor’s offices.

A conference call in the parking lot, a walk to get my mother’s car as Blue went in for a/c work and never came out, and a day of constant demands from work, from other areas, doors closing, doors slamming, doors not opening, what’s behind door number 2. A whole lot of doors. And it made me weary.

But I reached into the hat and found mirth yet again despite the deck stacked against me – I thought of G’s tale of her recent boyfriend she just broke up with, he wore a uniform to work with a name tag, and also had a little trouble with French, her friend told her the last time she dated a man who wore a uniform and name tag, his name was Moose, and she was in college or high school, or sometime long ago. Kind of funny.

So E decided to take a journey down the rabbit hole all the way back in time and I went on the ride with her and found very interesting factoids to ponder – interesting to go back and see that the woman I am today had all the same trappings in the girl I was yesterday – my adoration for my father – his musical talent, his offbeat personality, his charisma – all balanced against the nuttiness – I still seek his qualities in men. She also calmed my nerves from this morning.

Ah, but that’s typical therapy stuff right? This morning I placed my nose firmly against the window on the 7th floor of the doctor’s office and looked out at Metairie – flat it is – and I told myself that today I was going to harness my thoughts and when memories crept in and tried to taunt me and make me woeful, I’d shake them off, and think thoughts of now, and sure enough when the memories started marching in later I held them at bay with my virtual stop sign up. Perhaps I had a better chance doing this today since Ambien did give me six and a half straight hours of sleep – that and the apartment chilled down to 55 degrees – poor Bean was almost lying on top of me this morning she was so cold.

You ever have one of those discordant days where everything is a nonsequitor? I started with the belief that I would create my day – and then N and Renny, L and the boys, and me and Arlene took our walk and the conversation turned to gender studies of the dating ritual and what women supposedly want – the lightning bolt – and L discredited this as pure adolescence and N and I defended it as the only catalyst to begin love – and then back to speak to media sources about the changing landscape – the dying one and the advent of the new digital world – restlessness – then a conversation with the vet about Arlene – she can’t exert herself but she can take her walks – she might be hypoglycemic – then my doctor calling and wanting me to come in to check me out – followed a sudden downpour of rain and a race to close all the windows – then suddenly a foggy memory of a strange dream last night that has no waking correlation – and then a clear memory of loss – restlessness – and then launch a new report – and finally go to the gym to work out and work through the stretched tendon – to run into a familiar face – A – who is dancing in a burlesque show in the Quarter and wants me to come see her – and then to return movies and rent Crash – this got best picture? – a sad commentary on whoever judged that award – a dinner of popcorn – a long cuddle with the Bean – a feeling lingering in the air that things are not right and I don’t know when they are going to be – take out the trash and take the Bean down to pee – an almost full moon if not full – restlessness – a tarot reading for the hell of it – The Seven of Cups intrigues: A man ponders seven Cups appearing out of the air in front of him. He is perhaps overwhelmed by his choices: his ideal mate, a serpent of temptation, a dragon of power, a castle, jewels, victory (and the skull beneath it), or perhaps his own divinity waiting to be unveiled. The Seven of Cups is about castles in the air. There is an indication of an imagination that has been working too hard, and has created confusion. Resources are scattered, and decision must be made as to which goal to focus on. Be thankful for what you have and know that you will put things together in your mind and reach a resolution – a quick call to S who was sitting at a bar waiting on a friend – and now to unwind with Updike and a short story collection about a rough divorce – and Ambien to help me make it through the night.

I did not create this day. Or did I?

Sunday night – N came back without the Snake from Austin and I made her some delicious black drum and cabbage and sweet potato fritters. Yum. It was good to see her since she lives right down the street and we both seem to have our dance cards full these days. So we made a date since the Snake is gone till Sunday – Markey’s for the downtown St. Patty’s day parade – and dancing after. I told her to rest up.

Meanwhile – the week ahead is going to be full – J is finishing the framing of the addition, I start my hour and half sessions with E, and take L to the airport on Thursday – truck in for the a/c – etc.

Mom did her first weekend shift after recuperating from her operation. I had a terrific run midday today – I went by the LaLa and walked up the stairs to my office – the window by my desk looks right at the bayou – it was exciting to feel it for the first time.

And color – I want a copper red but all my reading says it makes a small house look smaller and fades quicker not to mention retaining heat and causing more moisture – made me think Steve might be right to keep the house color light. But I keep seeing it as a red house. So to be determined.

L, who is making dinner for G tonight, called me from the Whole Foods parking lot because he got in the car and started balling his eyes out. It’s this PTS that everyone keeps having – it’s like Katrina doesn’t go away – it just haunts you. When N was finished with dinner I told her about L and she welped up saying that in Austin they had seen everyone who they hadn’t seen since Katrina and how emotional the reunion was and how she can’t believe she went through what she did at 50 – “At 20, yeah, bring it on, but 50?”

But I’m getting restless at the Can – want to be in my house and have stuff out. Particularly making dinner – it’s what can I make with the stuff I have available rather than being able to do whatever or consult my cookbooks.

N said she was thinking I ought to start thinking about dating – I didn’t tell her I have a pact with E to not go there – but serendipitously “If I can’t have you” came on right when we were talking and she got a big laugh when I sang it for her full on – she said well I know how you feel but you are going to have to start thinking about it because we girls like our men – and I said you know, I’ll pass for now. We’re both going to see about joining Muses and I entertain the aspect of meeting more women friends and people outside my current sphere rather than anything romantic – I’m not getting over my heartache easily and I don’t even have any desire to let anyone into my life until I get whole – which could be a long journey – and that’s fine with me.

Don’t know why I’m surviving every lonely day
When there’s got to be no chance for me
My life would end and it doesn’t matter how I cry
My tears of love are a waste of time
If I turn away am I strong enough to see it through
Go crazy is what I will do
* If I can’t have you, I don’t want nobody baby
If I can’t have you ah ah, I can’t have you
I don’t want nobody baby, if I can’t have you ah ah

Can’t let go and it doesn’t matter how I try
I gave it all so easily to you my love
To dreams that never will come true
Am I strong enough to see it through
Go crazy is what I will do

Finished the movie – What the Bleep Do We Know – and highly recommend it. My brother sent me a letter that was somewhat loving but ultimately scathing and said where do you find redemption here with this story – he offered his own where to find it – which ultimately I reject – but it set in motion my thinking about how others perceive reality versus my perception and how to hold onto what is my thinking versus the other in the face of sometimes enormous backlash.

This movie offered other insights – that not only is it a thought process but it is a chemical processs. E and I have spoke at length about what is love – and ultimately – there are some areas of mystery that are hard to understand. But in the film, they talk about the concept of love and how our idea of it is stored in the neuro net of our brain and it is a combination of ideas, thoughts and feelings that we build models of how we see the world outside of us. And the more we see, the more we refine that model. We then tell ourselves a story about the outside world. But that ultimately the neurons form a neuro net which essentially are nerve cells that fire together and become wired together – i.e., if you practice anger, frustration, victimization daily – you give reason for these things in your life. But if you disrupt that thought process your nerve cells break the long-term relationship of that indentity.

In adulthood we operate in an emotionally detached way as if today were yesterday. So that addictions arise – addiction being literally something we cannot stop – and if you cannot control your emotional state you must be addicted to it. So how can anyone person say they are in love with a specific person? They are only in love with the anticipation of the emotions they are addicted to because that same person could fall out of favor the next week by not complying. Heroin uses similar receptors as our emotional addictions. But we can correct the course by understanding that the universe is larger than we thought. We can dream better and when we do, old concepts start to fall apart – feels like a nervous breakdown but we have to entertain the expansion of rewiring our brain to a new concept. What am I addicted to? you ask yourself and then What will I lose because I will have to experience withdrawal from the addiction by enlarging to a new concept.

So the pact again becomes waking up in the morning and deciding to create my day – manifest reality – which is quantum physics in action – develop a gift of intentionality – very similar to flip it to the good that S and I speak of often. While acknowledging choice you move towards enlightenment and to pursue knowledge without any interference of addictions.

So instead of looking in the mirror and believing negative thoughts – you look and decide to see possibilities. Like June Carter Cash said “I am just trying to matter.”

And thus springs redemption.

Yesterday morning walking the dogs with L, we decided to take a longer walk through City Park and coming out the front we came face to face with almost instant death. A large black truck slammed through a red light and came a breath away from crashing into me, L and our five dogs combined. Luckily the truck swerved to the right as hard as it could and missed us. But we all stood there in shock processing what might have just happened – even the other cars around us stopped moving and became paralyzed by the thought of what could have been.

L and I went into Cabrini and I held the Bean so she wouldn’t chase the ball, but when the ball wasn’t in play and I took her off the leash she dashed out for a long throw as if the ball was going to be thrown and I couldn’t catch her to quit her full steam running. After she was spent and woolly from having exerted herself and I paced her slow on the way back to the Can so as to not incur any episodes. She is really exertion intolerant.

Even though my arm is still very sore, I went to the gym to do weights and M was there and told me after feeling my elbow down my arm that I had definitely stretched a tendon and that it just needs rest and stretching so I used little bitty girly weights and felt silly with the pink weights in my hand when I am so used to lifting heavy. L came to the gym and we followed each other to Whole Foods which has reopened uptown. It was good people watching as much as grocery making. LoLo’s is gone, now an empty lot, after being torn down. And out front were pens with ragamuffin puppies that some shelter had set up hoping for adoptions. I wanted to take all the puppies home, but Arlene is what kept me from doing so. She needs rest when she’s home, not a puppy chewing on her ears.

The St Patty’s parade spectators had already staked their claim along Magazine and I thought about calling G and going for some green beer but then opted not to. I picked up my Mardi Gras photos and there was some from W’s last visit with me – where he took off center photos of me and some of the Bean and then I took one of him – hand on hip. He looks 12 years old in the picture. Later, went out in my new red shoes and had sushi at Wasabi. While we were there we ran into old friends who had just come back to NO weeks ago – they had evacuated to some farm up in Pennsylvania and had the air about them of the newly arrived. Upon returning she had lost her job – another ding. Their house had taken less than a foot of water but because it had sat with that water mold had eaten up the entire contents. They talked about driving out in Lakeview and seeing friends’ homes ruined. They hadn’t been to the 9th ward yet. They were half giddy, half depressed, and 9 parts in shock.

We left Wasabi and walked over to the Bank for a cocktail and had just situated ourselves at the bar when L thought he recognized someone there he didn’t want to see and we made a quick exit. After that I came back to the Can and began watching “What the Bleep do we know!?” a mix of quantum physics and reality perception quirky movie. I dreamed a lot of W – all fun and happy dreams. I heard his voice clearly in the dreams, so much so that when I woke this morning I felt like I had spent the evening with him since the interactions were so realistic and his voice so clear.

When I walked the dogs along the bayou this morning – Renny shedding like a persian cat – L and I talked a little about what the hell quantum physics really is – I was thinking it was that in order to know matter it had to interact with other matter – which seemed to be the thrust of the movie that we create our own reality because whatever we know we interact with – but L seemed to think it sounded more like existentialism in that we create our reality through action and interpretation. Quantum physics is simplistically called the physics of the incredibly small. We talked about happiness coming from within rather than external – but couldn’t come to any conclusion about what that really means – we can both say we are content – but what does it really mean that happiness is within us and not derived from the external? S would say in a negative tone that I keep looking outside of myself for happiness – and I would say in a positive vein that I am a seeker of all things – experience, knowledge, interactions – and am thirsty for what the world has to offer. But then again I think I am more the existentialist and he definitely the rationalist. And these philosophies are fundamentally opposed to each other.