Weaning Yourself Off Hope
Crawfish pie last night was delicious – the food is the reason why people can’t leave this city no matter what the circumstances are that they face in staying. We took Blue down to MiMis and were surprised by how few people had assembled moments before the first parade of the season was to begin. The crowd filled out as the parade rolled in but not to any degree that I have seen that crowd before. The floats were funny with Katrina Ejaculation and Cuntraflow – I caught a surprising amount of beads, or rather was handed them. The temperature dropped about 10 degrees while we were out there and as everyone rushed on into the Marigny – we evaluated and knew that once in it would be hard to extricate ourselves so we detoured to Pal’s and spent the rest of the evening there.
P called from Texas formulating our plan for Mardi Gras – told him he was welcome here and if he wanted to go between N’s house and mine that wasn’t a problem. There is no animosity between N and I. I told him I am still practicing the Electric Slide – the girls – N, T and I – were doing it before we left for the parade last night – so that we can perfect it while he is here. P says he wants to sit on the porch of the Columns and enjoy a cocktail. I haven’t done that since preKatrina – it sounds wonderful.
L called with his ruminations this morning having missed the activity last night since he was feeling peaked. We talked about our predisposition to a certain type that may or may not be fraught with conventional backlash. We spoke about our mothers and how now is the time to take care of them. When W and I had run to my mother’s house the other day I noticed, because W wanted to investigate every room he had not seen before, her closet rod had fallen and all her clothes and stuff were heaped on the closet floor. I need to go take care of her and the closet today.
As I was leaving the hospital yesterday, the sheetrock contractor called and said they had been waiting for word to go back and finish as B had told them the electrician needed to finish the boxes before they could come back. At least I know why no one has been at the house all week. I sent a terse email to K to take care of this and had thought she was taking care of this. It’s like I am the contractor for the contractor etc etc. I don’t mind the role – anything to get this house moving along. S said to me in an email that N was his revenge on me, and I said I think the LaLa might be your revenge the way I’m feeling right now. He said one day the house will be finished and it will be great – I don’t see the light yet.
Sitting in Pal’s last night N made a comment to J about my doings and I heard her from where I was sitting and thought on the surface it sounds bad, but I wasn’t going to provide the backstory that might have changed his reception of that information. Last Wednesday, N wrote and said he had hit bottom and felt nothing. I’m hoping his mother’s visit provided a salve for his emptiness. But I woke this morning and felt his words ring in my head – I have hit bottom – I don’t see how much lower it could go. The parade and friends were my salve last night but the cold crisp morning air when I woke made me say aloud – I feel nothing.
Wouldn’t it be nice to wind back the clock and go back to more comfortable days when life had a certain structure to it and the people in my life had roles that were knowable and people’s feelings were pretty much in tune with simply enjoying the fruits of our labor? But the truth is forces were amongst us pushing and pulling us all into the eye of the storm and as the woman in the elevator said to me yesterday – we are going to come back and we are going to be stronger, you have to trust in that. It’s called hope.