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The other night I had a dream that I was chatting with a friend while naked. Who knows? But, the point is that an interloper was trying to inject negativity into the scene and I was taken aback that this person could be not only negative all the time, but invade my dream with her negativity. Shoo duppy shoo.

Which brings me to the Marley movie that has me listening over and over again to Bob Marley and thinking about his gorgeous self and his inspiring music. Reggae – come on mon. Can you dig it?

This past Sunday, the New York Times’ Meh List had “the clarinet” as number one and I was struck by the ignorance of whoever added that to the paper. Shame on you is all I could think and also, what do you know? I wrote to the editor at the Times Picayune rather than the NYT to say, well I’m just saying, if you don’t appreciate the clarinet for all its wonder, you are stupid. They printed it this morning but not without calling me yesterday to verify. The woman who called said she was stunned. I said, me too.

I don’t condemn, I don’t convert is my motto. That negative duppy floating in my dreams is one of the lesser evolved people I’ve met in a work situation. The person who compiled the Meh List the least informed. That’s all.

While walking the dogs this morning I ran into a neighbor and learned that they were set upon hard times financially and I said to her, “Well, I have been saying woe is me, but I think I’m changing my refrain to woe is us.” She’s pulling a kid out of private school and sending her to public.

Then I took Tin to the doctor and after we had discussed everything about Tin – tall for his age (obviously nutrition as his birthparents were petite) – she said, “And how about you?” Obviously prompted by the bald head under my scarf. I told her the highlights and about having embarked on Plan C and she said, “That’s what I was supposed to be doing (she has four boys), but I don’t know how we could afford it.” She has all of them in a school that costs $16K a year (each). Good god. She said she wants Plan C. I told her if her hair fell out she might consider it.

So blessed are the bald. An ex colleague and good friend is flying in for Jazz Fest and he said he can’t wait for me to “rock it bald” and so there you have it. He sent me a book, Man’s Search for Meaning by Frankl with a note that reads: “The only true freedom we have in this life is choosing the attitude that we approach the world with. And you’ve got one of the best attitudes of anyone I know. Enjoy the book. Love ya Possum!”

The choice is to dig a hole and hide in it, or rock it bald. Which would you choose?

There is increasing evidence that multitasking makes for chaos not better work.

Since WWII women have been flooding the workforce no longer content to be unappreciated as stay at home mothers. Yet today I caught up with a good friend who has built a very successful career in PR and she said the reality is that you can’t do both. She said when she tries to do both, everyone and thing suffers. So if this economy and this country wants to get back on its firm foundation again the thought might be given that having a child(ren) is a full time job so one parent works out of the house and one in. That would eliminate the big conundrum of how to employee all these people, would go a long way in solving teenage pregnancy, wayward youths, and low test scores. The problem is how do you do it?

Pity the single parent trying to raise a child and work and be all things to all people except themselves. But what about the fact that we have built an economy that makes it literally impossible for one parent to stay home for the 99%. Why not offer a substantial tax credit to those families who make the broad leap?

A group of us went to the late night screening of Marley, a movie by Kevin MacDonald, who also did The Last King of Scotland. The film was incredible, the artist transcendent.

Coming on the heels of having finished the Jobs book, if I were to stop here, I would say that all great men have shadowy but pillar women in the background, neglected and out of wedlock children on the sideline, heavily regimented patterns with food, and a singular focus that is so urgent and so powerful it is almost as if divine intervention were at work.

The legacy leaves an incredible body of work, a rocket ship persona, and one scarred for life little girl (a daughter).

People have been commenting on my talent for scarves and I have to admit I’m someone who could never even put a barrette in my hair and here I am creatively learning new ways to dress the head. I am a firm believer that given an opportunity everyone learns something new and so that is why life is constantly throwing you these boomerangs – to keep you a student.

I was at the Zen center a few Sundays ago and had stayed for the service – and found it not my thing only because I had grown up with a religion steeped in its own idiosyncratic rituals and to accept another was just too much in my longing to simplify. But the good thing is that they are very amenable to you taking from it what you want. Today, in a pleasant surprise I heard them open up to the idea of creating our own thing based on what people want – so will be interesting to see which way this winds, but for now the meditation part has been inordinately helpful.

I keep facing the fact that my troubles are mere bubbles in the pool of teeming angst that has everyone in its artful grip. A friend and neighbor called to tell me her sister had died suddenly. My troubles seems surmountable in this perspective. I saw my other friend and neighbor who has just gotten through her breast cancer, and she informed me two young women in our neighborhood have been diagnosed recently.

Last night, friends and neighbors threw a party and invited us all to come celebrate with music and food and friends and again I found myself impressed by my bounty.

So I am learning about scarves – one day at a time.

Last night, we made dinner to celebrate the honorific title of Uncle on Darrin who now refers to Tin as his nef. “Who calls me nef?” Tin asked this morning. I made French Greyhounds, my new favorite cocktail with vodka, St. Germaine and Pellegrino’s Grapefruit – yum! We also had crawfish sausage, roasted potatoes, roasted bell peppers, broccoli and carrots – yum!

The long and winding road has brought us a tribe that continues to be vibrant with love. Evan and Nina – the godparents. Marline and Lazlo – the legal guardians. Aunt Jerri – and now Uncle Darrin and Auntie Yolanda. Everyone already thinks Darrin is Tin’s father since they sport the same fro.

After trimming his hair, we celebrated with a toast, a virgin greyhound for Tin and glasses raised to congratulate Darrin for getting in Jazz Fest and to codify his relationship with Tin with the honorific of Uncle (and thereby nef).

As Darrin is want to say, “All good.”

Bill Moyers came along on another walk with me today, this time he was interviewing W. S. Merwin and it was so mesmerizing that I walked double the length of our normal stretch through City Park. Listening to Merwin read this poem made tears spring to my eyes for both my mom and my dad:

Listen to him here or read below:

Yesterday

My friend says I was not a good son
you understand
I say yes I understand

he says I did not go
to see my parents very often you know
and I say yes I know

even when I was living in the same city he says
maybe I would go there once
a month or maybe even less
I say oh yes

he says the last time I went to see my father
I say the last time I saw my father

he says the last time I saw my father
he was asking me about my life
how I was making out and he
went into the next room
to get something to give me

oh I say
feeling again the cold
of my father’s hand the last time

he says and my father turned
in the doorway and saw me
look at my wristwatch and he
said you know I would like you to stay
and talk with me

oh yes I say

but if you are busy he said
I don’t want you to feel that you
have to
just because I’m here

I say nothing

he says my father
said maybe
you have important work you are doing
or maybe you should be seeing
somebody I don’t want to keep you

I look out the window
my friend is older than I am
he says and I told my father it was so
and I got up and left him then
you know

though there was nowhere I had to go
and nothing I had to do

I crawled back in bed right as the 6am alarm was going off but couldn’t go back to sleep until I told Tatjana about Jack Bartlett. He had been weighing so heavy on my mind that I actually saw people gathered in a procession crying about his death. I had been walking home with the dogs yesterday morning and had stopped to admire the house around the bend that has just been painted a perfect Wedgwood blue – not only has it been painted but the entire house was re-sided with Hardie board and it looks beautiful. My neighbor was standing there admiring it also as she waited for a friend to pick her up.

We were chatting and she told me the house was relatively new, maybe twenty something years old, and that Jack Bartlett and his family had lived there before he was murdered. Jack grew up in the neighborhood and moved there with his wife and they had three children. One evening he rode his bike down Harding Street to go visit his mother and two young black men approached him and told him to give them his wallet. He laughed and said, I’m on my bike, I don’t have my wallet. And they shot him.

I researched Jack’s murder because it is still unsettling even though it took place in 1992. My neighbor told me his wife moved to the Northshore after a while because she just couldn’t stand walking past the triangle where he was killed. I read the testimony from the trial and it was chilling. The two young boys were laughing as the father of three boys lay dying.

You wonder why a woman would ask me to escort her passed young black boys playing in City Park. You wonder how two young boys could come to own a gun and so cavalierly take the life of another human being. You wonder about these things and your stomach just folds in on itself and your wondering goes nowhere.

To Jack

Jack, it is spring now
in your neighborhood, and you
still are rooted here

I love to sleep, I truly do and my habit in life has been to fall hard into sleep and then to wake like a house on fire setting about task after task till I could make even the busiest person’s head spin, and yet now I am not sleeping. I woke at 3 AM and just thought, I can’t sleep I’ll get up. I listened to a podcast, I petted Blekica till her kneading made me throw her off my lap, and then I began to write. I think there is a tendency in my writing to either whine or regale and really there is a lot in between that doesn’t see the light of day.

So the interview with myself:

How does it feel to be bald?
Well, now that you asked, I sort of feel like every day it’s ground hog’s day. I get up and go pee and then see myself in the mirror and think, wow, you’re bald. Not boo hoo but also not hurray, just you’re bald. And a piece of it seems to settle in later as perhaps a good reason for depression, but mostly it seems the baldness is a sign. Or at least a sign of the times.

What are you going to do with your life?
Live it. Work on it. Meditate on it. Show up.

Are you happy?
For the most part, albeit I find myself in some sort of stasis right now that is hard to describe. My energy level keeps fluctuating which I can at least now chalk up to the thyroid medication trying to get right in my body. A nurse friend told me that this might take as long as a year. Hmmm. I’m not used to running on 70% and so being forced to slow down makes me think something’s wrong but maybe there’s nothing wrong.

Why are you smoking again?
Because I feel like it. I’ve done all the stuff to be good, and now I’m sick of it. I can’t bring myself to yoga. My Zumba instructor has had other things and hasn’t made some classes, so I’ve only been able to go once a week. My whole charted outline for getting into my walking has gone nowhere. I can barely even walk the dogs. So I’ve been smoking. This is what woke me at 3 AM, I was lecturing myself in my sleep – why are you smoking I kept asking myself. “Because I am,” an almost Tin like refrain, but whatyagonnado? Well I must not do this I say to myself, but right now I am doing this. Note to self: figure this one out.

If you could do anything what would it be?
Right now, I’m not sure. I have had so many aspirations to such a myriad of paths that now I find myself at the turnstile going round and round with no desire to walk through any of the doors that are open. So I’m resisting any of them, all of them. And a birdie keeps telling me that another door has yet to open. And so I wait.

Somewhere around the end of the day every neighbor and their child decided the best place to be was on the bayou and so we went, in search of an end of the week feeling (it’s Thursday – always for New Orleans, the true end of the week), and we passed us a good time cher – yes we did.