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We watched Amreeka last night and the actress, Nisreen Faour, was so engaging as a newly arrived to the U.S. Palestinian mother trying to find the best place for her son to grow up; I expect we’ll see more from her. The movie is definitely worth renting – add it to your Netflix list.

The Arabic music was as familiar to me as Sephardic music, the food was most of what I grew up eating because of my father’s background and having Turkish grandparents, the character’s mother back in Israel sounded just like my mother-in-law with, “even if the roads were paved of gold in America I would never go there.” Ah, all so familiar. And yet right now, 2011, Palestinians and Jews are killing each other. Insanity.

Here is the NYT alert I just received:

“I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m leaning to sail my ship.” Louisa May Alcott

It’s not stormy weather around here, it’s actually beautiful but there are so many fronts of action (like there always are, she says to herself) and I’m just running here, and jumping there, and ending my days spent. But last night we started watching Amreeka and I actually can’t wait to get back to part two (oh, the days when you could watch a movie straight through, she says to herself) and in between I’m reading Alex Baldwin’s Go Tell It On the Mountain and Michael Montlack’s Cool Limbo. And last night made these tasty red lentils with chilies and shredded kaffir lime leaves. Yum!

Oh, and I forgot raising the most adorable 2 year old in the world!

So I’m not in the midst of a storm, I think I’m smack dab in a circus and I’m on the wheel spinning and spinning.

Did I mention I forgot to meditate this morning? Rushing to get to work. Now that is a big sigh.

I’ve been getting calls from concerned people wondering how we are doing here in New Orleans. And we’re fine albeit those barges look like they are eye level when they float by because the river is so high. One hotel in the wake of the river had this on their website in Memphis:

As we are sure you have heard of the rising Mississippi river waters in relation to Memphis and possibly some mis-information, we wanted to provide the following facts regarding the situation.

• The Mississippi River is expected to crest on Tuesday, May 10th, 2011.

• Memphis is known as the Bluff City for a reason. We were founded on the Fourth Chickasaw Bluff, high above the Mississippi River. The original city, now known as the Downtown Core, is the highest elevation along the Mississippi River from Cairo to Natchez. The elevation of Front Street at Union is about 78 feet on the Memphis gauge, or about 30 feet higher than the water is expected to rise.

• Only one Memphis tourist attraction has been affected by the high water. Mud Island River Park is temporarily closed due to the lack of access for road traffic and emergency vehicles.

• All other businesses on Mud Island, Paulette’s, Tug’s and Miss Cordelia’s are open.

• No Memphis hotels have been affected by the rising water levels.

• Memphis International Airport has not been affected by the river in any way.

DIARY

Steadiness, all of a sudden,
is not a state.
Nor is it omen or greeting.

Steadiness, all of a sudden,
is perpetual war
waged at the furthest
borders of the day.

On the tongue of first light,
o to speak,
or the slaked lime of nightfall.

by Luis Muñoz

A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME

One thing’s for sure:
these years won’t come again.
You will live out your meagre share
of apportioned time,
your eyes will be fretted with shadows
and, after a while,
the light will annul your face
in the null of the glass.

And it won’t be that long, so they say,
till you’re sick to your soul
of watching, as the windows
fade to grey,
sifting the dregs of your life
for a paradise lost
that you know you once had, more or less,
on a day like today.

by Luis Muñoz

T’s friend and poet Luis Muñoz told her he liked Simic’s poetry – I do too!

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”

Henry Miller

One two buckle my shoe

Three four open the door

Five six pick up sticks

Last night, when Tin had demanded yet one more reading of Bad Kitty, we switched back to the Family Book that I had made for him a while back that describes his coming to the world and to us in the form of a fairy tale – the thousand miles, to be exact, that we had to bridge to be together as a family. But I found both Tatjana and I racing through it, anxious to finish the movie we had started yesterday, The Secret of Kells and go to sleep. This morning, I found myself racing through my meditation. Where am I rushing to? I asked myself

Yesterday, walking through the park the mayor asked if I knew a woman who used to live here in the neighborhood? No, I don’t recall her name. She also adopted a child, now eleven. Her husband dropped dead yesterday. 47 years old. He asked me to send her positive vibrations. I came home and the candle I light by my Yemaja statue for my mom every morning, Yemaja who is the ocean, the essence of motherhood, and a protector of all children, I now dedicated to this until now stranger and child, now fatherless, husbandless. Did he rush through his child’s bedtime story the night before? Did he rush to kiss his wife as he went off to work?

Seven eight ain’t life great?

Nine ten do it again?

A friend wrote me the other day that he was going out for a long bike ride to figure out his life. His life. What would he do with his life?

He’s young, I thought, more importantly what will I do with my life?

Another friend who is about to retire said the whole notion is unnerving, to be entering a time when the years of making money are behind you.

I said embrace the new, and later was scolded for being a Polly Anna and not saying yeah, I bet that’s scary.

I was taken by the poems at the Saints & Sinners Festival that talked about the men who have died of AIDS, and I searched Tim Dlugos and read his poetry and felt a loss and did not even know him.

It made me think of Harvey, who dying of AIDS with his “family” around him, his mother a persona non grata not there, talked about being a “gum shoe” in his delirium. I liked him, I didn’t want him to die.

Do you know that massage therapists have recently been granted the right in the United States to massage breasts? I wonder what has taken so long. Why always just the back, I was wondering. The front is where all of my tension goes, my emotion accumulates, what I see in the mirror. I always ask for my stomach to be part of my massage. I would like my breasts and chest rubbed too. I had that several times in Bali by a lithe Thai woman or two who hopped on top of the table with incredible dexterity and made sure no muscle or part of me was untouched, unmassaged, left for dead. Imagine not having to wait for your annual pap to get a thorough breast exam.

Today is beautiful, cloudless sky, cool dry wind, and fast moving water in the bayou.

When I was a pre-teen in Puerto Rico we had slam books – a composition book that you posed a question and your friends answered in it, along with other notes that accumulated in them. Where those slam books are now I have no idea. When I first got on My Space it was only due to intellectual curiosity and so it was that I followed the social media path reluctantly to Facebook because I didn’t see any reason to be spending time I didn’t have writing about things that possibly only one person cares about, namely me, and so I stayed on Facebook long enough to know that I found no purpose in being on there. Then later I came back to Facebook because of events I wanted to be updated on and I liked the fact that FB created a platform for you to keep track of nonprofessional events.

In the last week, I have had two interesting conversations:

ONE – Two young men, in their late twenties, told me they would be willing to ditch their cable TV, their journal subscriptions, and any news feed but they would not ditch Facebook, that they would pay upward of $30 a month to be on Facebook because it was so important to their friendships.

TWO – A father of a two year old son and an 11 year old daughter said he nor his wife is on Facebook because they want to set an example to their kids that socializing is something that is not done through a digital medium, face time is valued over typed messages.

At the end of the day it is about finding value in what you do. I have had conversations with a cashier at the K&B that made me reconsider my entire life, while for some engaging in most conversations is a painful and arduous task. It doesn’t matter if you are doing it digitally or in a spiral back composition book, the value of the dialogue is what is important, not the medium. I like blogging and I sort of dislike the chit chat of social media, but I like going on Facebook to learn about things that my friends’ know about like a good show that is coming up or some great music they heard or even news that hasn’t made its way through any of my feeds.