Blazing skies
Bolted out of bed this morning after having a rambling dream that included Vince Vaughn. When I got outside the dawn was like a blazing fire in the sky and I said thanks to the sky as Arlene and I rushed to catch up with friends for our daily constitution. N was in a funk because of uncertainty at UNO and the Snake is sick and a general malaise that surrounds all of us here post Katrina. As we circled the bayou there were flowers floating along the edges from the memorial for the guy who drowned last week.
Nice visit with mom last night but later learned she was having trouble and worry that she was supposed to be released this morning but now might be held back another day. Nice conversation with Tia L afterwards who is recovering from her operation and as always full of advice on how to proceed with my life. Both of them are strong and braving illness in the late years of their life and their thoughts are not on the same plane as mine or those I’m close to at this moment of my life. The evening dinner conversation centered around opening the mind to possibilities and some dangers that lurk from satisfying feral desires in lieu of common sense.
L and I talked about P and when she was thinking of leaving and he told her she should be 100% sure before she made a decision and she said, I don’t think I’ll ever be 100%. But what I do know is that I can’t give you what you need. It reminded me of a conversation I had had about living with uncertainty and letting it coexist with your clarity. And this morning I explained to L about how we operate at my work. We have to make our clients money and if we are right 60% of the time, they make money. So we are faced most of the time with going out with a story when we have only 70% conviction – it’s the risk that we operate under all of the time – and C has always pushed us editors to go out on the limb at 70% conviction, which means sometimes you are going to be wrong. But what separates the girls from the women in this job is having the guts to do that and taking the risk that you may be wrong.
I think of the adrenaline that has fueled the last eight months of my life and how many decisions have been made at the gut level, at the 70% quotient, and how I’m still not certain that all of those decisions will not come back to haunt me, but at the same time, it propels me forward and I feel on a gut level that they have been the right decisions even though at times these very same decisions seem irrational or half cocked.
Yesterday I spoke to one of my long-term sources who has reached a position of power within the movie industry and she said she operates on this gut level and it is akin to walking a tight rope sometimes but that is life and she wouldn’t live any other way.
Then L called this morning after our walk to get a song out of his head from Fountains of Wayne – Prom Theme – “Here we are at last…the moment soon will pass…we’ll forget each other’s names….but reach for the stars….play our air guitars.”
When I woke Wednesday with the dread that soon became the reality that colored the last 48 hours I didn’t know how things had come to this point because going back and connecting the dots didn’t seem to add up to anything other than a cliche of sorts and people who I expected would not fall into any pattern of obvious were operating in the obvious but one thing became clear and that is when the going gets tough, some of us shut down and some of us step off the cliff. It’s what makes us who we are and at the end of the day – that’s more important than the circumstances that are pushing and pulling against us – know thyself – being comfortable in your own misery is no way to live, it’s a cop out – but as well as knowing thyself is surrounding yourself with people who celebrate life in the same manner and take risks in more or less the same playing field, and who love life even when it is thick with uncertainty and wretchedness.
There is a relief that comes with the denouement – well hard to call it a denouement literally at this moment in time – but the telling of the whole story to everyone involved finally happened and knowing this was not a Katrina moment between us, not a moment of insanity, but a long term struggle against what is and what could be and years of letting someone into your life whether that be to learn to love them or as a distraction from the darkness – but a worn path was laid – no matter what the reasons that led us down it, the path was cut and became indelible and no amount of turning away takes it away.
Don’t feel sorry for yourself is all I ask of you, my Tia said. You are strong mi amor, and through the darkness comes the light. The blazing fire ball of light.