I’m going to stay for a couple of days with a friend who recently left her job after 19 years with the same company. I am bringing her essential oils and bath salts called OPEN ROAD, because both are to open up all the possibilities that await her in her new life. Similarly, I’m having dinner with two gentlemen, one on Monday and one on Tuesday, both who are standing in the middle of my…
A long time ago when I was outraged by Amazon (before they were actually helping support independent bookstores) and fearing and loathing Barnes & Nobles and Borders, I never would have thought that I would bear witness to the closure of the mega bookstore and the rise, yes dear lord the rise of the independents. Maple Street Bookstore opened in the Healing Center – I bought a book for my friend I’m seeing in San…
As Tin is acquiring language and I mean rapidly acquiring it, he often gets one word off, like when he asks, “Can I hold you?” I’m leaving for California this morning and last night he asked me in the bathtub if he could hold me several times and then afterwards when we got out. He’s at that stage where tender is achingly tender and terrible is even worse. While he was supposed to be napping,…
I dreamed that the guy working on our house was also doing an elaborate wood carving to hang over the doorway and I was flipping through a magazine and found a full page ad about his work. Fitting as I feel as if everything is being done to perfection around here but wondering simultaneously if perfection is what we’re after. I couldn’t sleep because of the marsh fire that is sending thick smoky air our…
The life you have led doesn’t need to be the only life you’ll have. Anne Quindlen Tatjana and Tin were at the Orange Couch the other day with Tin wearing headphones and watching his Louis Armstrong DVD on the portable. He had his drumsticks in hand and people kept asking if he is a musician. He’s two and half people! I mean really. But today when he and I took to the streets to follow…
Today, one day before the 6th anniversary of the Federal Flood, the Healing Center opened on St. Claude Avenue. Around here nothing gets started without a second line and some music and dancing, but unlike in Treme when a guy says, “Where’s Troy?” as they were waiting on Trombone Shorty, this time it was “Where’s Chuck P?” since it was his Cafe Istanbul (and Suleyman’s) that everyone was second lining down to at the Center.…
I’m going to a conference on the West Coast on Monday and I will miss the 6th anniversary of the Federal Flood, the first day of Tin’s pre-school, and the humid, oppressive heat of New Orleans as I plunge into the land of long sleeves and overcoats. We brought Tin’s school bag with him on Friday – items like rain gear that he has to leave at school: He met most of his classmates and…
As Irene is blowing the east coast, Germany is cold and rainy, Zagreb is hot and stifling, New Orleans is hot and humid, and in San Francisco people are wearing overcoats to work. There is weather happening all around.
I left for the West Coast in 1990 determined to find myself and instead I found someone else – this person who craved security and order and needed money in order to live. That was so not the person who left New Orleans. There in San Francisco, the living ain’t easy, yes there is abundance, but that bounty comes at too dear a cost. Daily life became the ritual of survival and how to make…
Funny how life is, that the moment you think you have it all figured out, something changes. I am spending the better part of my journey to open my heart, opening my sense of humor. And this morning I laughed out loud – belly laughed. Good for the soul. But I digress, I meant to write about the fact that a few years ago a good friend of mine told me I need to learn…