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A friend gave me the book Dogs in Heaven – it was touching to read this morning over tea and breakfast. Today would have been Arlene’s 14th birthday. I realize now in hindsight, I was keeping her around for selfish purposes – her birthday (so arbitrary to a dog, really who can figure out dog years anyway?), and T’s family coming in June, and my own need to have her near me.

The vet called and her ashes arrived from the cremation people, ready to be picked up. It was supposed to take a week but arrived on her birthday. I guess she wants me to celebrate anyway.

So we will.

My sweet Bean running circles around dog heaven, Happy Birthday!

Well if it is in the next few weeks you are guaranteed to be exhausted. Here’s the game plan:

Today starts Jazz Fest – get your ticket in your hand. Brass Pass if you can still get one, which I heard you can, $350 not only gets you into 7 days of the best music in the world but also is a big donation to the best radio station in the world – WWOZ – and wait, the food, forgetaboutit, but wait there’s more, there’s art and jewelry and let me tell you, you won’t want for anything.

Then Friday night, tonight, there is Helen Gillet and James Singleton at Zeitgeist and tomorrow night, Saturday night, at Bacchanal around 9PM Chuck Perkins.

But wait then there is all next week Jazz Fest – my 50th birthday where Jon Bon Jovi will be singing to me (forget about the other 90,000 people there, like my then 6-year-old niece told her mother, let me have my fantasy), and then we are closing the fest with Alan Toussaint, Neil Young and the Neville Brothers – excuse me, would you be anywhere else?

Then there’s my clothing optional pool party.

And while I’m away for business, there is yet more fun to be had – a friend writes that on May 13th at the Blue Nile: “my dj friend from Ibiza comin in and spinnin that night starting round 8 or 9 i guess..still puttin together flyers and promo stuff but please come out? Tell anyone you think would like housey, soulful, jazzy, island music to come too.

Take your vitamins, drink plenty of water, put your sun screen on and come on down – the party has started.

I went to see Scott at Jupiter Salon and after 16 years of being a semi natural redhead, I had him change my hair color. It’s going to be a transition to get the red out and go back to my natural color, which is anyone’s guess at this point, but somewhere along the lines of a dirty blonde.

I was getting a massage a few weeks ago when I made the decision. I had five things I wanted to do for my birthday – have a party, go to Jazz Fest, take a spiritual trip, invite my mother’s to lunch to thank her for my birth, and do something that I never thought I’d do. People suggested I jump out of a plane (NO WAY), or get a tattoo, or take singing lessons.

As I was on the massage table and it had just come to me, I told L that I had been thinking about my red hair and how I was brought up in a household of beautiful women – my mother, my sister, and then sister in laws – mostly blondes. Blondes blondes blondes. I decided I should be a redhead because I wanted to be unique. I felt my red hair made me special.

I told L, now nearing the 50 year mark, I don’t think I need red hair to be unique anymore.

She welled up and said she was so proud of me:

But I digress, look at this cut – I went in for a change in color and got a fabulous cut as well. I saw a friend later who knows Scott and she said WHERE DID YOU GET THAT GREAT CUT and I said, Jupiter.

I was talking to some friends and neighbors on the bayou the other evening and said I was working on getting rid of some 10 pounds that were clinging to my middle for dear life. One said, “Well, what does Tatjana think?” And I said, “About what?” And he said, “If she likes you with those ten pounds then what do you care?”

Last night, we ran into a friend going through a divorce – she’s thinner – she said, yeah, I don’t recommend this diet. And I said, yeah, well look at me and I patted my round 6-months pregnant looking stomach.

I seem to gain weight in stressful times. When I was going through my divorce I got fat. I was fat for all three weddings. I eat in times of stress. There has been a lot of stress in my life due to market conditions (not to mention aborted adoptions, mother woes, doggy dilemmas). I’d rather not focus on whether T thinks I’m fat or not and focus on how I feel – and I feel like I want to lose these cling-on pong pounds asap. Can I lose ten pounds by my pool party in two weeks?

Most likely not – but I have started adding running a few days a week, spin class on Saturday, and plan to conquer each one of these pounds in my own way, in my own time. And you know what? T might not love me better, but I’ll be styling in my clothes that are waiting for me in my closet.

I was speaking to a friend the other day about love and she was saying sometimes it just doesn’t seem worth the effort because it ends in heartbreak. I was thinking about our conversation as I went through the long last week of Arlene’s life and wondering why do people do this? Get a dog, put it to sleep. Heartbreak.

A friend wrote today about his own thoughts of having a dog: “I just don’t think I can go through it again (getting another one and going through the heartbreak, I mean, even with all the joy). All that innocence, that unconditional love, those ecstatic responses, night after night, to the same damn food. . . It’s just too much.”

I was assembling some notes about turning 50 and some physical goals to ward off the effects of aging, but there is no warding off heartbreak – it comes from places and at times you don’t expect. The only real way to not have your heart broken is to not use it and just think of how that would look?

The heart after all is a muscle – it gets stronger with exercise. The metaphorical heart does too. You love not necessarily deeper each time, but you love wiser and you understand that love is a gift and is not to be taken for granted. It becomes more precious as you age, more ephemeral, more pure.

I looked at the faces of Loca and Wolfie this morning – eagerness. They were awaiting my love, their breakfast (same damn food), and the start of a brand new day.

If we could all begin that way each day – damn, life would be good.

John F. Kennedy once observed that “Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion, without the discomfort of thought.” 

Loca and I walked through the park this morning and noticed along the way, the things we haven’t noticed, there are ducklings everywhere! I couldn’t count how many. The pelicans and cormorants are gone, but one slick black cormorant had spread his wings in the middle of the lagoon and was drying off. All along the banks, I noticed the yellow-crowned night herons, Plenty of them. I was smiling for the first time and happy Arlene was at peace as she hasn’t enjoyed the park in so long.

A friend sent me a Mary Oliver poem in Arlene’s honor:

Heron Rises from the Dark Summer Pond

So heavy
is the long-necked, long bodied heron
always it is a surprise
when her smoke-colored wings

open
and she turns
from the thick water,
from the black sticks

of the summer pond,
and slowly
rises into the air
and is gone.

Then, not for the first or the last time,
I take the deep breeath
of happiness, and i think
how unlikely it is

that death is a hole in the ground,
how improbable
that ascension is not possible,
though everything seems so inert, so nailed

back into itself–
the muskrat and his lumpy lodge,
the turtle,
the fallen gate.

And especially it is wonderful
that the summers are long
and the ponds so dark and so many,
and therefore it isn’t a miracle

but the common thing,
this decision,
this trailing of the long legs in the water,
this opening up of the heavy body

into a new life: see how the sudden
gray-blue sheets of her wings
strive toward the wind; see how the clasp of nothing
takes her in.

Last night, in honor of Earth Day and of Arlene passing, we held a small ceremony of recycling. Loca was honored with Arlene’s collar and told this was a very big responsibility. Bam Bam took Arlene’s little bed that Aunt Jer had given her a few holidays ago. Wolfie received her old big bed and since Wolfie is two weeks shy of her heart worm treatment recovery, she was welcomed into the house. Wolfie was also given a middle name like the rest, Wolfie Levee (a nice German Jewish Shepherd).

We woke this morning – all of us – peaceful in our thoughts of Arlene, knowing she was running free at last. My friend sent me these words from Neil Young, who happens to be closing Jazz Fest the last Sunday:
 
Although these changes have come
With your chrome heart shining in the sun
Long may you run.
 

Ashes to ashes on Earth Day. Arlene’s remains will be delivered to us in a week and then, we’ll have a celebration of her life – a sprinkle on the bayou, next to Cabrini where she chased the ball endlessly, by the American Can because she suffered with us all through that ordeal, and some in the backyard.

Loca has been weirdly quiet.
Wolfie is aware something is going on but she’s been isolated so she doesn’t know what.
Bam Bam has claimed Arlene’s bed.

Boo hoo – we miss our little skater and her little white paws.

RIP (run in peace)
Born, April 24, 1995
Died, April 22, 2009

A lucky dog and a good companion passed this morning and now resides in a certain dimension of our minds where memories of joy and sorrow exist in equal measure. If the benchmark for how much you are loved is calculated by the number of nicknames one has in life – Leenie, Torreadora, Little Black Bean, Seal, Lil Shaver, Skater, Lucky Dog, Cardi Girl, Sweater Girl, Arli, Arlushka, Arlosh, Beanushka, Beanoslav, Mushkoslav – then she was well loved by all.

How could you not love The Bean?