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N just called from Austin because the Snake wanted to dog whisper to Renny. But the best is that today my red shoes arrived and I had them on and she said she was getting me a necklace that said “diablito” and so suddenly in the wake of what has been a most excellent (MOS X) Friday night – things are on fire and working – watched a really good movie – Walk the Line – makes me want to spend the rest of the evening listening to Johnny Cash – meanwhile Renny is still shell shocked over his cell phone dog whisper missives – and my red shoes are stellar!

G called from L and they wanted me to rally with them – but I said oh no – too many things pulling me in another direction.

There’s a lot to love about this Friday – most of which is hard to translate – but a letter from D that caused me heartache – and red shoes that arrived after – and L being a bit of a pistol this afternoon – and a busy day at work – and a morning that was teetering on losing strength and breaking code – became an exercise in strength – because I miss – but let the weekend begin – I’m ready – and who is stronger now?

I vowed to uphold the pact with S about waking to the flipside – all good – but sixth night in a row of no sleep and it was hard to hum sunny side of the street when the clock hit 6AM – although with two dogs now awaiting their walk – it wasn’t a linger in the bed and be woeful type morning – it was more like, damn I want more sleep and these dogs want to go out and you have no choice but to move. But I found this in my bedside drawer as I dug around for my Vitamin E cream to put on this horrible burn I got a couple of weeks ago – burned a hole in my finger – do you know how regenerative skin is? – my skin covered the hole – hard to believe – but it is still magenta colored so hence the E cream – meanwhile back to the point – here was my wake up missive found by way of a tear out from a magazine read a while ago:

Things to Think

Think in ways you’ve never thought before.
If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message
Larger than anything you’ve ever heard,
Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,
Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose
Has risen out of the lake, and he’s carrying on his antlers
A child of your own whom you’ve never seen.

When someone knocks on the door, think that he’s about
To give you something large: tell you you’re forgiven,
Or that it’s not necessary to work all the time, or that it’s
Been decided that if you lie down no one will die.

Robert Bly

is upgathered now like sleeping flowers
for this, for everything, we are out of tune
it moves us not
Great God I’d rather be a pagan suckled in a creed outworn
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn…….. [Wordsworth]

Tornado warnings throughout New Orleans – wind rattling windows – dogs listing with the gale force – grey skies – no work on LaLa because wind too strong. L called and said one of the teachers had cancelled class because of “high wind” – talk about skittish. The woman at the drugstore today told me she was leaving if it started raining.

Drove out to Lakeview to pick up deck samples from B who is working on a house there – all the houses there were completely underwater – the one B is working on was completely devasted by water on the ground floor – he is rebuilding from the ground up – I said they’re doing all this work and then what if it floods again? – B’s response: “what if it doesn’t?”

S was IMing me and she said “I want to do naughty things to you” and I was like “come again? that kind of makes me sick” – we were having too many conversations simultaneously and the wires got crossed – so we had a good laugh. She then called later when I was lying flat on the sofa trying to nurse my new cold that I was sure was only allergies till I had to be horizontal – she was in the tub and was phoning with a pep talk for both of us and we made a pact to wake up in the morning and flip it all into all the good.

Meanwhile I signed up for two races in the coming weeks and further away, my birthday present to myself is a trip to Arkansas to spend the weekend with the elephants! L is going to be there for a golf tournament so I may stay on a day or two and drive with him to El Dorado and go see J since it is a holiday weekend.

The Bean has Renny here for a slumber party for the next few days since N and the Snake are in Austin. These two are jealous little devils that carouse around my legs vying for attention nonstop. At late afternoon when I was feeling the lowest from this cold, I ran a chicken bath and filled the tub with Tingle salts and both of them crowded in by the tub and just stared at me with curious dog eyes watching me soak – it was a little unnerving.

I had technical difficulties with email today and spent an hour on the phone with India four different times – all for naught – called S in SF and he was just finishing unloading the truck and he was able to solve in minutes what all of India could not.

At Pilates, M said she had gotten back together with her boyfriend – the hmfvd boyfriend – and I said that’s great and she said, “well, we’ll see.”

L brought me a great New Yorker cartoon last night that I taped to the fridge – it’s a couple sitting in their living room, the man in an easy chair and the woman on the couch with her legs crossed, both have books in their hands, the man is looking over at the woman and asks, “Did you ever have the baby that you wanted so much?”

Rachael Yamagata’s The Reason Why

I think about how it might have been
We’d spend our days travelin’
It’s not that I don’t understand you
It’s not that I don’t want to be with you
But you only wanted me
The way you wanted me

So, I will head out alone, hope for the best
And we can hang our heads down
As we skip the goodbyes
And you can tell the world what you want them to hear
I’ve got nothing left to lose, my dear
So, I’m up for the little white lies
But you and I know the reason why
I’m gone, and you’re still there
I’m gone, and you’re still there
I’m gone, and you’re still there

I’ll buy a magazine searching for your face
From coast to coast, or where ever I find my place
I’ll track you on the radio, and
I’ll sign your list in a different name
But as close as I get to you
It’s not the same

So, I will head out alone, hope for the best
We can pat ourselves on the back
And say that we tried
And if one of us makes it big
We can spill our regrets
And talk about how the love never dies
But you and I know the reason why
I’m gone, you’re still there
I’m gone, you’re still there
I’m gone, and you’re still there

So, steal the show, and do your best
To cover the tracks that I have left
I wish you well and hope you find
Whatever you’re looking for
The way I might’ve changed my mind,
But you only showed me the door

So, I will head out alone, hope for the best
We can pat ourselves on the back
And say that we tried
And if one of us makes it big
We can spill our regrets
And talk about how the love never dies
But you and I, you and I, you and I know the reason why.

E and I made a pact to quit speculating – we both have the tendency so we now have a pact and when L came over for dinner tonight I told him we had to have the same pact – live for now, and quit speculating on what the future holds. Today was another outstanding day weatherwise in New Orleans but I felt a little bit of a pall for what the rest of the world has going on – Dana Reeves – how horrible – a tragedy and that 13 yr old boy now orphaned by two outstanding parents. I read in the WSJ today that when interviewed three years after the accident Christopher Reeves said – “The mind and body are connected. When Nixon was lying through is teeth, he got phlebitis in his leg. The body expresses what the mind is trying to suppress. But if you have a postiive attitude, and the faith and love of people around you, you heal faster.” The truth – because I have been blessed through my travails with unbelievable love and support from family and friends and the gratitude can never come close to expressing what this has meant to me.

Speaking to S today when she was driving somewhere in Marin – we talked about how everyone seems to be in this sort of malaise – the Jimmy Carter term – love him dearly – but really look at the external – 9/11 and then tsunami and then Katrina – you don’t think these huge external natural and manmade disasters colors your world – it does. I sit here again thinking of my myopia and trying to pull out of it and think of the world in larger terms and I’m surprised at how I could ever think that my own personal and external issues are not almost common right now. As I wrote yesterday my industry that I work in is in such turmoil that there is uncertainty and my colleagues suffer from that as well as the huge issues that cast a pall on all of us – so it takes my own personal challenges and makes them shrink in perspective to what the world at large is feeling. A friend wrote about her own pet going through trauma at the expense of her own stress – and I think of the Bean who the eye doctor said was perfectly fine – with these undiagnosed episodes – she’s my lifelong friend and what? she’s not going to suffer seeing her companion wracked with sobs and tension of the circumstance – yes, of course she will. So there is the beyond putting on the good face, the fake it till you make it, there is counting our blessings – and taking time to love those who are pure and innocent in light of the wake of madness and chaos.

L brought his journal with him and we discussed several poignant events in our life and how to handle closure as well as hope – and we did not come to any grand conclusions but the sharing of the pain and the love is what is going to make us bear the days ahead.

I had so hoped to leave in a few weeks for a weekend with the elephants in Arkansas but it looks like that trip might have to be postponed till May because of scheduling – but I look forward to the solo road trip and the weekend of communing with these animals that I have always had such a strong connection to and finding out what that is all about.

N and the Snake are out of town and I have Renny and so Arlene is at least getting a slumber party with her friend – which you would think would be good – but they are both acting like little jealous two year olds – wanting my attention like they have never been loved before.

The LaLa was demanding today – my contractor and the framer were wanting information that I couldn’t satisfy and I couldn’t reach S who is driving to SF with all his belongings and at one point I just said – think of what N and G are doing across town and that is the effect we are looking for and of course, they both had a light bulb go off over their head – it was like think of what we would normally do and don’t do that. And finally S called back and sure enough, he confirmed that assumption – the whole less is more.

I ran today and my body did not respond – it was gorgeous outside albeit windy – but it was like the mechanics were off and the body said how do you do this again? But I worked through it and kept on in a clumsy fashion. The elbow injury is getting better but still can’t lift weights like this. Emails exchanged with D – who was my best man when S and I got married – and he is going to pick me up next month when I get to La Jolla for our reporters conference. On the bookend, L flying to meet me from Sacramento for a girl’s night quickie. So a trip that I wasn’t looking forward to that much is suddenly taking shape as a good respite and re-connect.

I’ve taken a turn to the resolute – things are what they are and the understanding of what is will take some time to filter and figure and so this will be a process – a long journey – so no instant gratification in sight – just one foot in front of the other and keeping central issues in focus to work through them and make the end of the journey perhaps sweeter. Not the usual trajectory or goal – which has always been now now now – but an acceptance that right now things can’t be any different from what they are.

Jazz Fest just announced big line ups – Bruce coming – etc – which makes JF much bigger than it was originally shaping up to be. Not the biggest Boss fan but his attendance does draw necessary attention to our awesome festival.

In Instyle an interview with some hottie and the guy said he plays Wolf Parade all the time – uh oh – pop music from my source of alternative tunes – there it is.

The framing on the addition is already at the second floor – LaLa starting to come along. Scary and exciting. I’m going to bubble wrap the columns since the framers dinged one bringing in the industrial windows yesterday – made me physically ill.

And so here we are – March something – I made a playlist for L coming over tonight and the songs that stood out were interesting – and I do love pop music and have no shame in that.

“If I can’t have you, I don’t want nobody baby.”

I swear the weather has been like living in the tropics here and it is early March. I’ve got some sort of pulled muscle in my elbow so no weights and some pulled muscle down below and so no squats or lunges and so what’s left – yes, you got it, a nice long run along the bayou in the sunshine. The first floor framing is going up on LaLa and I had to go get the big industrial windows that are going on the second floor from the shop today. I remember my friend P saying in California you will carry those windows around and never use them – HA – wrong. I also remember that S and I took these windows down from the warehouse that EHDD was in in the Mission District of SF when they moved after a few decades because the city was kicking them out of the warehouse. I can’t help but remember – because that was my first miscarriage and I thought it was because I had done all that heavy lifting getting the windows out. J at the shop helped me get them in the truck and he was funny cause he said “I wasn’t no boy scout” when we were trying to tie them down with the rope in the truck – so we improvised – I did the only knots I knew and J judged them fine enough. But then he spray painted a paper towel pink for the flag in back, which was also very funny.

Had a very satisfying talk with E today and am going to increase my sessions to an hour and a half – it’s my commitment to her rather than go the drug route which I am adverse to – she’s worried about my hopeless and dark thoughts and I told her, hey I’m worried too, but they pass, and I’d rather go down into the dark quagmire of this and come out the other end then put a bandaid on as a smile and just let it all happen without me being a participant. These things have a way of coming back to haunt you. We talked about love, about family, and about many things that are important to how I process information and relationships – she made me pledge a few things that I will uphold and I felt rather good leaving her and knowing there is again a “to do” list that tells me what to do next.

Dinner with mom – she made arroz con pollo – my favorite of her dishes. We sat around and compared aches and pains and drank some wine and felt horrible about Christopher Reeves’ wife who died and left that poor 13 year old boy with no parents – horrible. I told mom that I had looked up some adoption agencies and was thinking about this more seriously but had decided to wait until next year when my life is more settled. Then L called while I was there – poor thing is still trying to make it through her first trimester and there have been so many scares and emergency room visits that she said she is just ready for anything – and of course, I’m hoping that the worst is behind her and a healthy happy baby is the end reward. They are still trying to fix their house that was flooded from Katrina, they’ve been living with my brother B who finally got his house back together after the big tree came through the roof – and she said the one thing was the roof had finally gotten totally repaired and they were happy and then the cabinets were delivered and the truck ran into the side of the house and totally destroyed one side of the roof and a wall – and the wrong cabinets were on the truck!!! Welcome to life here – try to go through ordinary life stress and add to it 100% of post Katrina stress and you end with some pretty f’d up people.

And meanwhile – work is riding some low wave of uncertainty – people are skittish – will we get bought by a larger concern – or what? Think we were hoping to be bought to grow in new ways but could be we reinvent ourselves as we always do. My usual optimism is taxed right now under the circumstances and my colleagues are weary from speculating what is next. I am talking about some seriously strong, determined women and to see them ALL feeling a little woolly gives me pause. But I can only hope for the best possible road ahead as the industry and we work through the kinks.

The Bean goes to her eye appointment in the morning – hopefully nothing seriously wrong but hope the doc can tell me what might have been causing her episodes. She is getting a little fat – like a tick – not getting her exercise. Mimicking the five pounds her mistress has put on during Mardi Gras excess and traveling and not enough exercise.

And late tonight A IM’d to say that the one thing she knows from reading my blog is that I am loved by a lot of people – big SMILE – don’t I know it – could I have gotten through my life, at least the last year of it, without the love and support of the wonderful friends and family I have – NEVER.

Is the Fool the hero or the joke? I like best to think of the Fool as the one in the deck about to step off the cliff, to give herself over completely to whatever – romantic love, to a new beginning, a fresh start, a new path – it is the Enthusiast in the deck – the one that says here is a big risk and I will delight in all that it brings – the Fool is the perfect example of inner faith facing life and the journey unafraid. Ultimately the Fool reminds us of things, sacred and forgotten or repressed. The card encourages us to walk our own path and not the path of the “herd” – to trust our inner voice, our intuition, and to embark on our life course with a stout and open heart. Have faith in the goodness of life and people and an undying belief that all will work out exactly as it should. When it comes up in the deck it points the querent to develop faith in her own abilities to make the right choices, to keep the faith, and to walk our own unique path with optimism and hope.

It points to my Zen dropping that has been on my desk for decades – “Whereever you are in this moment, is exactly where you are supposed to be, no matter how things may seem to appear.”

A reminder from my Tia to not feel sorry for yourself – to see the world unfolding and jump naively into its web.

My dear friend L writes to me early this morning from his groggy state of mind – “two things now: one is that i love you beyond belief and the other is that NOW is the better life–you’ve got health, looks, intelligence, personality out the ass, a good job, the bean, money, lots of friends, and precious days (though fewer than we once had) stretching out ahead. “Once upon a time/The world was sweeter than we knew,” goes one of the staggering lines from a Sinatra song. Let’s know and believe that the world is sweet now, even though it isn’t the sweet that we might want. Sometimes everything sounds like a platitude ( I know this sort of does), but sometimes only platitudes will do because there’s nothing more to be said and because in their apparent banallity, they pierce to the core like no high-flown insight could.”

And I taped together the birthday card from S (ripped apart after I ripped him apart) with the Robert Hass poem:

The Problem of Describing Color

If I said–remembering, in summer,
The cardinal’s sudden smudge of red
In the bare gray winter woods–

If I said, red ribbon on the cocked straw hat
Of the girl with pooched-out lips
Dangling the wiry, black-nosed lapdog
In the painting by Renoir–

If I said fire, if I sad blood welling from a cut–

Or flecks of poppy in the tar-grass-scented summer air
On a wind-struck hillside outside Fano–

If I said, her one red earring dangles from her silky
lobe,

If she tells fortunes with a deck of fallen leaves
Until it comes out right–

Rouged nipple, mouth–

(how could you not love a woman
who cheats at Tarot?)

Red, I said. Sudden, red.

It seems that either I have a missive in my email box each morning that says “dude, you sound depressed” or one that says “you seem to be moving forward quite well” – people are reading the same entry and getting completely different ideas of what life is like in my world. It’s very curious.

So a friend sends this to me this morning in hopes that I will see the light or what has been an omission in my life – this she gets from reading Oprah at 2:45 AM:

To emphathize literally means “to suffer with,” to share the pain of other beings so entirely that their agony becomes our own. The reason to develop a capacity for empathy, and then exercise it regularly, is that only a heart strengthened by this kind of understanding can effectively deliver the oxygen of the spirit: love. Love requires connection between lover and beloved, and empathy is the quiet miracle by which this connection is forged. When you share others’ suffering, you also share their experience of receiving your gift – the gift of being accompanied into grief or anguish rather than bearing it alone…

Rogue Wave: Publish My Love

Wait there, just enough to see you smile.
I mixed up the distance of the miracle mile.

You could never publish my love
You could never publish my love
You could never publish my love
You could never publish my love

Just stand there, you could never make me go through it.
The congas, they’re bleeding through his bit-battle wounds

You could never publish my love
You could never publish my love
You could never publish my love
You could never publish my love

Whip me, but don’t beat me.
I can’t can’t call?
I can’t can’t call?
You never left?

The sun beats down upon the brain of confusion?
But houses seems much better if the roof is connected.

You could never publish my love
You could never publish my love
You could never publish my love
You could never publish my love

Whip me, but don’t beat me.
Yeah, I can’t cat fall?
A cat cat call?
You never left.
A cat cat call.
A cat cat call.
A cat cat call

Glorious blessed day – long bike ride out to the lakefront – cranes and workers doing work on the levee – visit with Mom (S went back to Atlanta this morning) – lights starting to pop on in the wasteland outside the Can’s window – sheetrockers might start tomorrow – framing starts tomorrow – LaLa money hemorrhaging starts tomorrow – less than a 100 days till hurricane season. S home in California, R home in New Orleans, the Bean becoming more of a snow bear – a reminder to remember the mirth and carpe diem and all the other platitudes you can throw in the mix.

Buddy – I’m not scared of you.

The Bean would not let me linger in bed this morning even though every fiber of my being wanted just that. Yesterday was a wretched day – really – hard to believe you can keep having wretched days but got up and went to work out and exercised for two hours trying to push passed feelings of anxiety and sadness with S leaving later that day. Then home to turn over the truck to him so he could go have lunch with a friend. I kept weeping – just sitting around weeping all day. Couldn’t quite put my finger on what was causing the wretchedness because at dinner the night before I acknowledged to myself how much I do love S, but how I believe in us moving on apart as the right thing for both of us.

I walked over to LaLa with Arlene but she hesitated and needed to come back upstairs, so we got part way there and turned around. I went on by myself and looked around – the lumber is there, staged, and ready for the framing to start. The gd bobcat bit a hole in the front porch stairs. On my way back S was driving up. We went upstairs and the Bean threw up. My nerves get shot when she is not well. So between the already weepy mood and the lethargy that is pulling me downward – I just became more wretched and lay on the daybed unable to move.

While I was contemplating the four walls I thought of this guy who went to dinner with F and I in Orlando. He asked me if I had children and I said no. And you? I asked. He said he had had a vasectomy at 16. Is that even possible? I finished my fifth T&T and called it a night. I’m sick of the smugness of people who make life’s decisions when they haven’t even begun their life yet. Boring.

L text while I was on my back and asked me to come for dinner. So in the afternoon S and I went over to look at the Pitot House – the colors and the brick – and then I took him to the airport for a tearful goodbye. Then S called and she talked me off the ledge yet again. We talked about the two year plan and the darkness before the light and she did make me feel better.

L’s been sick and he was in his jammies when I got there. We sat at the table and I straight up told him he was dealing with a miserable human being and enumerated all my reasons for being f’d – and he turned them all around on me – sad that S is leaving is to be expected – it is sad – I’m not ruined – loving someone is not foolish – one day the LaLa will be my home – at least I’m not a tick – whether or not the weasel exists is tbd. He then reminded me of the affirmations I gave him a while back – act studly was my favorite one. We went on to talk about his graduation from the fake ID into another dimension and where things stood right now – again tbd. I told him about seeing M earlier in the day and her tales of miserable men.

So between S and L they got me out of my wretchedness and back on track. I still didn’t want to get out of bed this morning because I was having a long string of curious dreams. In one I was at some sort of amusement park and I had to get to the next level, but that involved climbing a curved ladder – but the foot bars were on the outside like spikes and I had to climb up into the curve and then almost be upside down to get to the next level and I had to do it all by myself and I am terrified of heights. An attendant walked up and told me I had to take off my locket because it might choke me. I climbed on, held on tight and tried not to look down at what seemed like a black abyss from where I started, the attendant had vanished, and when I made it to the top my sister with her long blonde hair flowing and one of my nieces were there waiting for me, and a couple of other children I didn’t recognize, and N – whose hair was long long long. They were all laughing at the scared look on my face – I could almost feel my pallor. Instead of getting mad at them for not sympathizing with how scared I really was, I got the giggles because they were laughing so hard.

I woke up with mirth on my lips and thought how the road ahead is not going to be straight but curved and laughter will pull me through the wretchedness – and that is my first affirmation – open my heart to mirth again and again even though I risk a great fall every time.