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Keeping what is best and throwing out the rest

I went to see my therapist, E, today to work through some of the uglies of the past six months and wala, I feel better. I haven’t seen her for a while. Probably the most important thing I got out of talking to her was permission to grieve my mother and also permission to not have to be strong all the time. Yes, okay, so you know this already and don’t need a therapist, well…

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Good Yom Tov

Sort of redundant but this means good good day and it is a greeting Jews deliver to each other around this time of year – the high holidays – this Friday night is the eve of Rosh Hashanah, which is the Jewish Near Year and literally means when we begin anew. Well, I’m ready for some newness that is for sure. And so the year 5770 begins this weekend and is followed ten days later…

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A bonafido good time

I was reading in Urban Bark that you should sometimes give your dog the walk the dog wants. So yesterday evening I let Wolfie have the sniff me to heaven tour and this morning I allowed Loca off the leash to do somersaults in the mud puddle in the park with a big once white sheep dog. Everyone had a swell time.

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En plein air in City Park

The artists have returned to City Park to paint the live oaks with their heavy branches and moss dripping down as well as the pre WPA bridges that cross the lagoons and the barn red structure that sits by the old meeting hall. They have their wooden easels and oil paints and their hats and big white canvases all set up. Another sign that summer is over.

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The rains that never came

We were due to have yet another storm pass through New Orleans early this week but it never came. Instead there has been this thickness in the air that can best be described by trying to imagine you got up and took five Valiums and then walked out your door. That’s about what it feels like. But there is something about this humid, thick, air that has its benefits. Hair and skin stay moist even…

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Life is short but it’s wide

I think the thing about so many deaths and illnesses being the main topic of summer when it was supposed to be the summer of a birth is that it makes you become a miser of your time and you start counting up your years and your possible years left and those around you and their years left and soon before you know it you have this very limited view of the world. The Mayans…

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Everything spins

We had a sub for Michele in yoga today, and she talked a lot about how our thoughts tend to get in this circular pattern and we focus in on one thing and then endlessly analyze and rehash it – whether it’s somebody we felt did us a wrong and we play out all the scenarios in which we respond or also simple things like I need to go the gym, I need to go…

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The bayou overexposed

Loca and I left for our walk a little after six this morning, when the sun had not risen and the houses around the bayou were backlit as if the water, the structures, the trees were all a negative image, overexposed to some pockets of light. We walked over to City Park and the Museum with its night lit facade looked imposing and made a statement at the end of the boulevard that is the…

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Things are not what they appear

I was speaking to a friend last night and we were talking about someone we know and I said it appeared like everything was coming up roses for them, and my friend said, well, things are not always what they appear. And she’s so right. We make assumptions that sometimes prove to be so far off the mark, it almost sounds like we pulled our thoughts out of a completely different script. Today, the washing…

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