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Here in the Big Easy, you can take the outward or inward misery tour – in each setting, images are frozen with all the horror of a catastrophe that came on suddenly and left devastation in its wake – inside and outside we are the new Pompei – you can drive Claiborne and Robert E Lee and Pratt and see the outward relics – you can come here and read about the inward ruins anytime.

Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends……..come inside come inside.

If all the girls I know agree they like to be hunted, and all of the men report they like to hunt, then why is it that only few men are skilled at hunting, and (as my evil twin is want to ask) why do so few of those actually eat what they catch?

Where do you want to be in five years?

Note to self: try to answer that question while figuring out why you seem not to be able to answer what you want right now, or even when you think you know what you might want in the here and now, you appear incapable of asking for it. What about you has changed? Really? Why not rely on the old habit of pleasing, it eases the burden of having anyone please you.

I was driving out to Metairie today on my way to see Abby with a pair of tiny shoes with mermaids on them in a bag next to me and my mind was in full gear after a good night’s rest – then memory flashes began going off in the rat-a-tat-tat fashion of a semi automatic and I was overwhelmed by sadness, grief, and joy competing for my attention – all in a matter of a few seconds on the I-10. Sometimes I wonder when the sadness will just find a resting place.

Here are some sayings to get me through the day – week – year:

Go within every day and find the inner strength so that the world will not blow your candle out. Katherine Dunham

Each moment is a place you’ve never been. Mark Strand

Two or three things I know for sure…and one of them is what it means to have no loved version of your life but the one you make. Dorothy Allison

It’s never too late–in fiction or in life–to revise. Nancy Thayer

Life is demanding of me, “Start again. Begin new things. Again set to work to build your world.” Jean Toomer

We are here, charged with the task of completing (one might say creating) ourselves. William Cook.

My niece L called to say I should have come back over – I left when other company arrived to give everyone time to visit – Abby has so many people around – an entire village, ney a universe, that loves her so much and all she had to do was show up – is that lucky or what? It makes me think that there is some child out there who was not born lucky who might need something I have to give. My friend L and I in California started to adopt a poor child through school – to clothes him or her – but we ended up sponsoring a group instead – getting a rug for the reading room, etc. – I think I need to look again at philantropy in the area of kids. All children deserve a fighting chance.

Our visions begin with our desires. Audre Lorde

The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen. Frank Lloyd Wright

Don’t be satisfied
with stories, how things
have gone with others.
Unfold/your own myth…

Rumi

No baggage – holding Abby #2 today and she is quite a pretty girl I might add and you just want to get to know her because then I went by my mom’s and agh – the same old drama. She’s yet to visit Abby – won’t budge – dunno. Then she’s having some scary medical problems that she is going to get tested on – then there is my sister who is scary to begin with and all the drama that pours through the telephone lines that brings my mother down and finally I just snapped and said all three of you are codependent – you, S and her husband. Good grief. Stop the drama. We need a drama break. Babies don’t have drama – well the drama has a cause – feed me, change me, hold me. Simple needs that can be met.

I knocked on T’s door and asked her to walk to the bayou with me – I had a slice of bread and plenty of sins.* She thinks of me as a novelty act, I’m sure, but Rosh Hashana is the Jewish New Year and also a time for forgiveness – both forgiving those who have wronged you as well as asking forgiveness to those you have wronged. Needless to say, I should have taken a loaf of bread down there, but a slice was representational at least. We halved the slice, I took the bigger half, and we took little pieces and threw them in the bayou and silently asked forgiveness for our myriad sins. By the end of my slice I was just asking for general forgiveness for lying, for sloth, for not appreciating every moment and thing and person in my life.

Then we said a prayer out loud – that New Orleans recover better than she was before, that H&T find a house to call a home, that the LaLa get finished without killing me, and that we live our long healthy lives together here in New Orleans.

*It’s become a tradition to take bread and walk to a body of water and as a symbol of renewal and redemption you throw representational sins into the water to wash you clean. The New Year is all about forgiveness. Jews love ritual – think of Passover when we pour out the wine in drops to symbolize all the plagues. Plagues, sins, you name it – we love all this representational stuff.

A good night sleep last night was just what the doctor ordered. Up this morning for a nice long walk around the bayou with the Bean. Then out for a two hour bike ride that was blissful. Down Marconi to the Lakefront and then along the lakefront past UNO and circle back around. Went by N’s to put up her paper as she and the Snake are at the camp this weekend. I rode up Ursulline to look at L’s, man of mystery, old house, a beautiful big white house with a wrought iron fence around it. He downsized into the charming house he lives in now that H&T might buy. Then rode to CC’s, which just reopened, and had a delicious Mochasippi with a shot of caramel. Yum.

Home where within seconds the sky opened up and it started pouring. Didn’t even realize I was making it here under the wire. I came back to find a missive from a dear friend in California who has MS. And she says she would have killed herself if she had to go through what I have been through – imagine that I consider myself lucky.

S gave up after three weeks of working for the man and realized yet again that he is the man so we sent him a Bean-O-Gram and wished him good luck and we’re thrilled that he has left the dark side and returned to the light.