Farewell Geocities and Ode to the Corporate Wife.

It was ten years ago that I realized that "real" writers had websites, and I knew nothing about them. So I took a class, learned basic html, volunteered to edit for three different ezines, one of which I actually learned from, (and is still in existence) and decided to put my own writing site together. I was deep into writing sunrises then... I think there are 6 years of them in the files and I was committed to posting them. I never posted them the day I wrote them though. I wrote one day, then came back the next day and edited. Between times I'd write the journal entry or essay or story that the sunrise seemed to suggest, so the postings were always a day behind, a little cleaner and a little less random. At least in my mind.

The site was named the same as this blog, and lived on Geocities. Geocities, as a free site anyway, died this week. I pulled all the pages.. now I have two complete folders of web pages, one for my law site, one for the writing, that I really should take the time to upload. But i'm too busy playing around with twitter, facebook, plurk, and these new blogs to actually do something that I SHOULD be doing. I have finally requested the release of the domain name from Martindale for my legal site though, so ... progress?

Speaking of Loose Ends....A friend, in chatting innocently the other day, touched a nerve that I didn't realize was still raw. I hope I didn't let on how unsettled it made me when he referred to my Corporate Wife status. I was a little surprised he honed in on that... I seem to spend less time on that particular aspect of my life now than I ever have. I had also forgotten about the book I was going to write ten years ago, parodying the whole lifestyle. Can't decide if i just got lazy, busy, or swallowed the kool aid.

Determined to find out why that phrase unsettled me in the circumstance, particularly because I sprinkle it into my own conversations with some frequency, I did what any self respecting lazy over achiever does. I googled "corporate wife."

As I suspected, the literature on the topic is dated. The articles I found, mostly dealing with the uber rich breed, didn't reach past 2003, with the most in depth one done in 2000.

Hmm, I mused with myself... I wonder if my research from back then is still on my computer?

Hurray for Spotlight, and Mac :) Another seach of my hard drive and I found that "corporate wife" has been consistently in my subconscious, making its way into two nearly complete short stories, both of which I like (though one of which I clearly was having hormonal spikes as it turned the corner from emotional to erotic in ten pages or less!), one "novelette" and is a recurring theme for the women in my almost finished novel. When I planned the original book, I had NOT intended to include the usual crap... ."have your husband approve what you wear" (really?) but instead some of the more human aspects, which ...well... are funny. Or were to me, in my disrespectful attitude toward everything remotely discriminatory.

Has my attitude hurt my spouses career? Looking at where he is and where he came from, I am pretty sure the answer to that is no. I'm also pretty sure I'm well known among the industry as being outspoken (rude? nah. Sassy, maybe.) and more fun to sit by at a dinner than the usual pretty wife. And I'm lucky, in that we didn't either one ever set out on this road, and have written our own rules along the way. We get by with a healthy dose of "whatever works" tempered by "say yes whenever you can."

And I started thinking about the friend who jarred this memory, and about how he is doing a bit of the gig himself, and about my daughters, and think maybe I should update those files, send out those books, and write one more. I have research from ten years ago... how much fun this will be to go back to my chosen interview candidates and update.

If you think you have something to add... you know how to reach me.

Gaps

"Could fulfillment ever be felt as deeply as loss? Romantically she decided that love must surely reside in the gap between desire and fulfillment, in the lack, not the contentment. Love was the ache, the anticipation, the retreat, everything around it but the emotion itself. "

From The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai

i should blame stewart

But I suppose that wouldn't do. He did after all, post a pretty sunrise/sunset before he closed me out of his blog. tsk tsk.

But one of my favorite quotes... okay, one of the thosand quotes i have stuck here and there on postit notes, stickies in mac vernacular, is this one:

When you blame others, you give up your power to change. -Douglas Noel Adams
So Stewart is off the hook, as are the rest of the writing group, and the pompous neighbor who had the audacity to die without letting me know.... imagine that! And so are my brothers and my sister and the cyberlaw boys and and and.

Writing became another chore I was fitting in, and the minute it became something to cross off a list was the minute it no longer felt like art, but craft. Now i'm sure there are elements in all writing of both, but the important point is what it FELT like. And when i no longer felt that i was creating, it became just another boring exercise.

So why now?

Because i find myself speaking in poetic quotes, things i've heard and said aloud so i would remember them. I am meeting new people behind the veil of sleep, characters fully considered, fully alive, tempting me like a man who wants me, but doesn't want me to know it.Poems in magazines in drs' offices, repeating like new budding branches. I am again drifting to literary fiction, putting aside the non fiction, the popular novels, even the classics that have kept my attention for the last year. Clean, clear writing, mesmerizing characters, plot i have to think to follow.

it's what i want to be when i grow up.

Do you think it is time yet?

poor brad

Where did you go, the person in my mind, the one who can muster up anything from a murder to an orgasm and let me feel the terror, taste the blood, come screaming down the other side? Where buried in the chasms… that's the word I misspelled to lose the Indiana State Spelling Bee…. where are you hiding? Did you take all the words and leave? Did you gather my friends one by one and form a perfect V in the sky as you flew south?

Wait. I am south. Did you go back home?

I dreamed I had sex with Brad Pitt last night. Very bad sex. His penis was tiny, like that of an anatomically correct boy doll, and I think he was as disappointed in me as I was him. After, he didn't run or act shallow, I didn't cover my naked skin, I guess we figured the jig was up (is that the phrase? Why does it sound awkward and what does it mean? I could google it, but if I did I'd be swallowed by the internet and never come back again, so the jig will simply have to be up.) We talked about his condo resort development, named in my dream head Redfield, which I know is a photoshop plug in…. and as I looked out at the mountains from the old farm house (the resort was all booked up of course, I asked him, which one do you own, and he said, with awe in his own voice, all of it. I like thinking of famous rich confident people in terms of their most base parts...like Brad as a young boy who just can't quite believe he is where he is. (Disclaimer, I don't know Brad Pitt, only like about half his movies and really never fantasize about movie stars… I think this dream had more to do with things not being as they appear, don't you?)(Unless you really want to believe that rich famous beautiful men have tiny cocks that look like plastic)

Today, I will take pictures of jasmine, magnolia and azaleas. I'm working on a project and I want all the flowers of the tropics in my files to finish it.

Today I will buy tickets to Madrid. I am meeting my daughter there in April. We will fly into Madrid, then train to Cordoba, and then see Granada, Seville and the coast. I am thinking I will rent a car and we will drive to Lisbon then. Ten days. I do not think I will take my computer. I want to travel light.

The first trip time I took my daughters to Europe was the summer we moved from Michigan to Iowa, the summer I actually started writing, really. It had been a whirlwind career year for my spouse, and a good one for me as well… I broke all my personal income records that year. But we'd been on several Corporate trips, all over the world. For this trip, I sent my boys, 4 and 9, to stay with my mother, and packed the girls up with me (middle school and high school).

It was a trip with all sorts of typical family mishaps… passports late in arriving, missed connections, lost luggage, etc, but by the time we had toured Paris and headed to Toulouse for my spouses meeting, we were relaxed. While he did business, we chose to go to the coast… I was given a rental car. I was actually quite proud of being able to drive in France, and the girls were thrilled with the independence the car gave us. We were even doing well with the foreign road signs, until we got to the tollbooth. The fare was something like ten francs (yes. Well before Euros) and I tried to give the toll taker the coin in my bag with the 10 on it

She refused it. I looked again, yes, it said 10, as did her sign, and tried again. She blew her bangs up in the disgusted way the French have and huffed "not a franc not a franc" over and over. My alert daughter finally figured out that I was trying to pay in Mexican Pesos.

We all love that story, but recognize it has limited appeal and sounds very snobby. So we only tell it in the family. If you are reading this now, does it make you family?

So yes, now it's Euros, and I think I can drive. But do I want to? I do love trains. We'll see. First I have to book the flight.

And before I can go, spring break will be here. I believe I am the only person in the world who does not like all the holidays. I miss routine, I miss work.

Wow, bad sex with Brad, and negative on holidays. I think my inner psyche is shouting "not a franc."

on living and dying fast

i went as soon as my husband was home from his travels, and could watch our son. I was lucky, i got to spend a good day with my sister, where she was awake, mostly, and alert, and she knew me.

I didn't know what to do. Terminal illness, when treatment has concluded, doesn't take a lot of time. My other sister, my one remaining sister, and my stepfather had the routine perfected. And the pride of the patient, which always came between us, wouldn't allow me a lot of hands on time.

But i couldn't just walk away, and just as i knew in my guts on Friday it was time to get up there, i woke up Saturday morning knowing exactly what i had to do. It was like i was channeling my mother. They needed someone to cook.

To be fair, my oldest sister was the best cook, the one who had the most years and most attention from mom. I was always destined for a career, so it surprises me still when i know how to do things without looking up directions. Osmosis.

It is also Thanksgiving week. Being in my mother's house, despite the circumstances, meant it was wrong not to have things around for guests to nibble on, for distraught family members to take nourishment from.

So I went to the grocery store, and i cooked. I bought thigns for sandwiches, soup, casseroles, and pie Yes. Pie.

I believe that those things, the soup and the pie, chocolate, made from scratch, were the last things on this earth my sister tasted.

My flight home took six hours. When i left her this morning, she was resting peacefully, breathing well, but sound asleep. I stroked her hair and said, I'll see you later.

I knew as i said the words, the same ones i said to my mother the last time i saw her, that i wouldn't.


She lived fast. She didn't finish high school, though she got a GED later. She married 4 times, though twice to the same man. She had three children. She leaves a grandson.

She started smoking cigarrettes across the street from the jr high when she was 12, because it was cool, and because her sister who was such a "good girl" wouldn't like it.

She had a bad cough that she saw the doctor for in June. By then the cancer was stage 4.

She was 48 years old.

She died before my plane landed in Houston.

She once said, when asked about current events, that she didn't care about that stuff. If it didn't touch her world directly, then it didn't really matter. Life is relative, you know.

I thought that way about her for many years. But I was wrong.

i was wrong.

Rest in peace, little sister.

Still trying

So i've been telling the folks at Ipowerweb, who host my website, that it hasn't been working, since March. Actually, as I review past entries, i see it's been since may. Still, i can't edit, can't upload and even though i think that i don't really care if anyone reads these little blurbs, it seems i do... if i didn't care, i'd continue to write entries and save to draft.

I'd switch to blogger save, but then anyone who clicked my domain link would not see. So frustrating. My annual fee is up for renewal in a few days.. i suppose that means they will handle it.

or not.

anyone know a good hosting service?

just more late night words

Busy week, full and stressful, just the way i like them. But I've neglected the non profit, must get the 501 c3 app filed soon, and the novel lies in dusty stacks all around the office.

I got a copy of the latest anthology in which my work appears in the mail, and even my critical editor child gave the book and the contents good marks. And i got paid.. which makes it even more of a banner week. I know, a good promoter would link her to the amazon site to order, would shamelessly pim the project, but i'm not doing that here. Maybe on the website if i ever get the isp to respond to the publishing issues. The contract is up the end of this month, so if nothing else, i'll switch then. There are just sooo many files.

A few months ago i created another blog for my second life character. i will link you here to it, but not it to you... too much crossover I think. But so far in my almost one year of SL, I've gone through three careers. And I always come back to words for solace.

Depression has been at clinical levels for about a month now. I've promised myself that if i can't break the patterns this week, i'll go in for the medication. Or take the one that i've left sealed in my bathroom vanity since 2004.

but that's another story, and these posts aren't showing up, so i'll leave this to edit another day.

yet another test

trying again... going to switch isp's

august

Reading my friend Fred always makes me want to write as well as he does. He's just journaling. I remember just journaling, but for almost 8 months now, I've abstained. In some ways, it got to feeling like those Christmas letters I quite sending about five years ago… like what I was doing was putting my life out there like I was bragging or something. Not sure why, especially when most of the people who read me lead far more interesting lives, but I guess it's the way I was brought up. You share bad things; you keep good things quiet so that the people around you who aren't feeling so good don't feel worse. It was an upbringing where the negative was always stressed, the positive taken in stride. I don't much care for that.

Right now I am sitting outside the cottage in Michigan, the view of the blue lake available over my shoulder, across the empty lot and through some trees. Not the perfect view of a bluff side cottage, but the safe view of one far enough back for mortgages. When we bought the place, banks wouldn't lend lakeside. The risk of their collateral ending up as trinkets on the beach was just too high.

The air is warm with an edge of crisp morning chill. The newscasters say it is the hottest week in Michigan so far this year. Coming from the sauna of Texas, I feel like I am breathing for the first time in a year. Maybe that is why I am finally writing.

I have bare feet. Grains of sand cling to them and make me a bit uncomfortable, like I am dirty. I am not. Except for the grains of sand.

There is a different value system at a lake cottage in Michigan and a suburb in Houston. Grains of sand on bare feet are valued here, but there, I feel under dressed if my toes aren't perfectly polished and encased in new or nearly new shoes. Part of it is beach mentality I know. Part of it is just not caring about details. Or maybe recognizing which details matter. I don't know.

Today is my last day here this year. I think that has more to do with the writing today than anything else. It took eight months away, and two weeks at the lake to want to do this, and I am afraid the next break will not have an ending.

And I ask myself, so what?

i'm having issues with uploading photos, and am now wondering if words are a problem too. If this works, i'll be back

playing with words

Recently I had a conversation with a songwriter that reminded me how easy it is to play with words and how much fun it can be. I think that many of us who consider ourselves "writers" fall into a trap of taking ourselves too seriously, trying to hard to be good and forgetting the value of telling a story, or expressing an emotion just the way we feel it.

Last week, for example, I had a few "moments" where I found myself saying, this, this is the essence of what I want to say, just remember this scene, write it down, feel it. Oh so artistic! But when I finally got back to my desk, booted up Word, (so dusty from non use!) I could only remember the place, and not the sensations. So much for writing when I get to it.

Today begins the challenge of "summer." The last day of school marks freedom for my son, but increased pressure on making time for work and writing for me. It has been this way every year since I moved my office home. Every summer I think about moving back out to the commercial district, but then I go to a meeting or conference and remember that I was at the beginning of a trend, not a follower, and that it is easier now than ever to work from a home office.

I promised myself that I would write something before my 10 o clock meeting, and it's time to leave for that now. This will place hold for that "moments" thoughts I had, and will make me get back to them. I'm going to seriously attempt daily blogging for a while, see if I can get back into a mode of discipline.

marching on

It is closer to morning on Wednesday than night on Tuesday, but I can't sleep. If my contacts didn't hurt so much, or my glasses would stay together, I'd just stay up tonight. Neither of those are the case.

I've been nagged. I have been on hiatus. hell no, i've been lazy. Playing games, playing house, playing play. Yet none of it makes me feel as though there is anything to show for the days that have passed, and i don't even have littel blog entries that i can point to for explanation. A kind of depression, a kind of head in the sand let it all go by kind of season. I've let myself detach in a way that is too much like what i always never wanted to be. The only connection to the person capable of that judment, that "what i always never wanted to be ness" comes when i can spit the words out of my way and just write.

I had a moment last week. I had a moment when the novel came alive and all the critiques i'd heard finally came together. I know now how to get all the characters in the same room together, which is the goal, they tell me, of a complex multi plotted novel. I didn't know it was suppoed to be so easy. That's why i go to workshops.

My goal in January was to write 20 flash pieces in that month, and I wrote only two. I had also a goal of having sections of the novel finished for each presentation time in workshop, and i did that. Not completely dead i suppose, but certainly in need of resuscitation.

I'll edit this tomorrow. If you read before then, all i have to say is that it is 4:09 am, and i've not slept.

Most truths are so naked that people feel sorry for them and cover them up,
at least a little bit. -Edward R. Murrow, journalist (1908-1965)

magnetic poetry

So she challenged me, with words. Not a duel so much as a "get out of your tax return right brain mode and play" kind of challenge.

here are the words:

grass,idea,rain,wood,upon,chant,fever,compose,smear,write,find

here was the result, leaving me happy to write prose.

I don't know
if it was the grass we smoked
or the fever of lust,
but when he scattered kisses
in a chant across my thighs
and let his weight down upon me,
his body hard wood,
I got the idea that I could write.

Though before
I could compose the words,
he left me
with a smear of what had once been
love.

barking at the sky

Whether it is because we are between Ellington Field and NASA, or close to the water or what, we get all sorts of interesting aircraft flying over the house. Fighter jets, hot air balloons, antique war planes--a regular air show if you want to sit out and watch it.

I'm sitting in my kitchen with my laptop, waiting for the new battery (ah) to run down so that it will stay as charged as possible for as long as possible. Then I have to plug everything in and deal with the work that waits for me. But i was reading for a few minutes with the back door opened, so the animals can come in and out and I can feel the real air. It is cloudy today, and cool, and the air is soft. Cool, here, of course means it's in the low 80s.

All of a sudden, Scout started barking. She always barks at the doorbell or when strangers approach, and we've had all sorts of odd break ins in the neighborhood lately...so I was a little concerned...this is the back of the house, no service people due, and she wasn't moving like there was someone at the gate.

I looked out, and realized she was barking at the sky.

A blimp, SANYO across its side, flying so close it made her feel insecure. I tried calming her, but she kept barking until it was out of sight.

Something about it makes me feel like I am doing just that, futile though it is. Just barking at the sky.


edit: make that a Lightship.

sweet

Every once in a while I actually send something out for publication, and every once in a while, someone likes it. The good folks at Long Story Short are publishing me this month. Here's the direct link to my story Outfield.

Nice publication, and I'm flattered to be in such good company.

refueling

I want to write about the experiences I had last week at
Big Bend, but somehow the noise of the city has filled up that perfect silence that I found in the desert, and the scent of petroleum in the air replaced the perfume of wildflowers.

I wonder why we live like this.

is this heaven?

When I woke at five a.m. I was surprised to see so much light. My senses and the chart I downloaded suggested that it was too early for the day to begin. I was thirsty though, so I got up anyway…to every light in the house blazing. I checked the garage, assured that both of the young adults, who live here from time to time, checked their rooms, and went back to bed. There is a cycle going on here and most days, it takes my breath away. That's not a bad thing.

Is this heaven?

The cold rusty taste of well water reminded me of my grandmother's house, the metallic flavor of childhood bubbling up from the fresh spring. A small river ran alongside the park housing the "fountain" …the fountain being little more than a copper pipe stuck into the spring, and a catch basin made of iron or something non-descript, funneling the unused water back to the ground to be cleansed, and bubble up again.

Fresh air, air that didn't make me feel dirty, that made my skin soft and kissed my hair into relaxed curls, blew in gentle breezes and I enjoyed the scent of the Midwest, grass and woods and trees and …home. Parts of home I'd not enjoyed since before my mother was sick and no longer able to get outside, every trip back spent indoors, or running errands, or the non-stop eating that is the essence of socializing in farm country.

We walked along the river awhile, past a butterfly and perennial garden bordered by a stone path, a small refuge. It seemed more like a preliminary graveyard to me…memorial benches and such scattered among the trees. It would have made sense if the park overlooked the river, but it didn't. Next door was a metal pole barn, across the road, someone's house. Strange.

We walked on and came to the cemetery, where the family engaged in the annual spelling of the surname debate… one side spelling it with an "o," the other with an "e." My role was to offer logical educated theories, none of which were given any credence. I figured any family not close enough to know why one brother spelled his name one way while another spelled his differently didn't need any more of my attention, so I wandered away from Rasmus and Sine's grave, and that of their infant daughter whose name was no longer legible on the carved stone tablet. I walked a few hundred yards, and browsed. Obelisks hewn of soft, white stone…definitely not marble, marked graves of entire families, some born and dead in the same week, or month, or day. Many of the simple monuments marked the graves of both infant and mother, none with the poetry I'd like to think belonged there. But these were pioneers, old country Norwegians and Danes and their heritage didn't leave room for the fussiness of words at such times. Stoicism must have come from Scandinavia.

We came back to the house, and my youngest pulled me aside. "Have you noticed that I'm the only one whose picture isn't up?" He doesn't understand. I don't either. I took the risk when my son, my spouse, his brother and father went to play golf. I told my mother-in-law it hurt his feelings. I wasn't sure she'd care; she's never warmed to this child. Still, I had to say something. The omission seemed so blatant, and cruel, especially when he'd ridden 18 hours one way on his last weekend of summer to visit her.

Later, she brought me three folders. The meticulously organized folders were filled with obituaries and photographs of ancestors from my husband's family long gone, some of them from recent years, some from centuries ago. Mostly, they were lists of names and dates of death and birth. In many cases, there were cemeteries listed, so that markers could be located for the deceased. And in the back of the last folder, there were several pages, handwritten in beautiful script. The same script, over and over, as if rehearsing for some handwriting test. My mother in law had been told how important it is for a family to preserve their memories. She was trying, I think, to understand family, but what she'd written was mostly a tribute to her own mother. Her last sentence said: "She is not only my mother, she is my best friend."

The narrative was written the year before her mother died. I saw something in those words that I'd never seen from this woman who, intentionally or not, has antagonized me for nearly 30 years. I saw her as a person. A person who was pacing the kitchen the whole time I was reading. A person who I've felt judge my meager attempts at cooking, cleaning, and other things that are the province of women from her era. And I saw that the tables were reversed, that she was nervous of the judgment I might pass over her attempt at something that I do. So I was honest, and gave her what I give the other people whose words are important.

"This is great," I said. "You should write more."

She breathed and I wonder if she knew she'd been holding her breath. "Thanks. I like to write."

The rest of the family returned after that, and she made a show of pulling out another box, and sifting through its contents until she found what she was looking for. She wiped the dust from the simple frame and carried it to the living room: my youngest, proud in his baseball uniform. Then she stopped and fluffed his hair.

The trip left me aching, lonely for the things that will never be again. But it also gave me some perspective on things I never quite understood.

As we crossed the countryside between their house and the interstate, taking in the luscious rows of tall corn and verdant soybeans, sectioned off in perfect one mile squares, I felt connected to the past, to family, maybe even directly to the earth. I was pondering the clean life of Iowa, the simple wholesomeness. But then I think we crossed into the twilight zone…

Disjointed notes written down sporadically over the last few days.


Tuesday Night: Full moon, blurred by clouds. Wishing I were still at the beach, but remembering it rained today.


Last week in Michigan: Man in the Laundromat when I went back to change the washer to the dryer, having run to the grocery store in the ensuing half hour, had dumped his dirty laundry in on top of my clean. He was tall, about 6"3" and probably 275. But his glasses were so thick that his eyes looked like frog bulges through the lenses. I sorted his dirty clothes from the top of my clean ones in one of the seven machines I'd been using. Sand poured out of some of them, and I felt very odd handling his dirty underwear.

His only comment to me was "I thought it was empty."

A well-meaning patron came over and whispered to me "He's legally blind, but so independent!"

"I can tell," I replied. I shook the sand from the clothes and put them in the dryer. No harm, no foul.

The other day in Chicago: First shock was staying in a room identical to the one I was in when I found out my mother had died. I didn't realize it when the doctors gave me the details. I didn't realize it when my sister called and said you need to come now. I realized it when my friend, on hearing the numbers the doctor had given me said, "oh hon."

Later, I had to go to the lobby. I don't pay good attention to the directions in hotels and so I turned the wrong way out of the room to get to the elevators. I passed someone else I knew but didn't really want to chat with, so kept going as though it was the right way. I ended up at the end of the hall where a floor to ceiling window looked out over the river and straight on to the lake. It was stunningly beautiful. We were on the 34th floor. It made me dizzy.

I've been through the mail from the last three weeks now. I did all the laundry before I came back from the lake, but I need to unpack the suitcases and put it all away. Something really sad about putting the luggage away, even though I 'm desperately ready to be finished traveling for a while.

June already?

If it weren't for the fact that I've been incredibly busy, I'd feel bad about letting this little blog founder so.

What have I been doing?

reverse order....
-Celebrated our anniversary in San Antonio weekend of the tenth of June.

-Studying creative writing with Justin Cronin for the past six weeks. Great teacher, great writer. I've got ...direction again. Anyone who writes knows how hard that is to maintain over the incredibly ridiculous amount of time it takes to write a novel. I was going to qualify that noun with "plot-driven" or "literary" but none of those words are necessary, or probably even appropriate.

-Spent nearly two weeks traipsing about the United Kingdom with my youngest daughter. Learned that traveling light is something to aspire to, but also that climbing stairs and schlepping luggage is surprisingly good for bad knees.


Those are the most recent passtimes... I'll try to add some more detail in the next couple of weeks. I'm heading back to Michigan next weekend though, and there is no high speed internet there.

free writing, ten minutes

/Ten minutes. 10:58 pm

I used to be able to tune out all the sounds in a room and focus only inside my head. This led to a bad startling habit … being so far gone anyone from the outside world would frighten me if they intruded. I'm a little jumpy that way.

The rain was back by the time I left the gym today and left raindrops on the fence posts like spiderwebs in an iron woods. What light there was sparkled through the clinging drops and made me think of the beauty of an ice storm. I tried to take the picture, but I failed.

I don't miss ice storms, though I must say I'm glad to have known their beauty.

I'm planting an herb garden this year, designing my own planter and placing it outside the window in the family room, which is connected to the kitchen. I thought I would have it in place by now, but won't allow myself the freedom of creation while the tax files are still spread across my desk. Deadlines there, and I face only the deadline of nature with the herbs.

I did lust over some spearmint today. I can't think of what I'd do with it, unless it would be to flavor mojitos. And I'm not particularly fond of mojitos. But it was a nice plant.

I let myself have only one glass of Chianti tonight. Homemade lasagna. I know, it is overkill, but when all I can create is in the kitchen, that's what I'll do. When I went to find the recipe though, I found that the page was missing from the cookbook. It's some thirty years old, can't hold it against the book. So I had to try to remember the recipe, something I've made many times but never really worried about needing to remember. I know I had all the ingredients, but the proportions seemed wrong. It tasted fine, but it wasn't what I expected.

So there is your metaphor for tonight, the things we remember to make the things we want, getting all the pieces right, but missing it somehow. The result isn't bad, just not what we expected.

The iris are blooming in the garden I planted last year, bordered by Mexican heather…the same shades of purple repeating in the tiny blooms and the orchid-like iris. I thought about picking them, bringing them inside to brighten the gloomy rooms.

But I didn't. I let them bloom.

11:09/

another gift.

Gift from my other daughter.

Listening Up

"What is your favorite?"

I had only time for one question; the great author was only signing his name, only three times per person. Those were the rules we agreed to before we got in line for his autograph. Five people before the signing table, we were told to "nest" our books so that there would be no delays in the execution.

I understood that. There were a thousand people in attendance to hear him read, and most of them wanted autographs. I've been to dozens of readings in that hall and none that were so well attended had even allowed signings.

But I couldn't just stand there while he scribbled his "John Updike" and gawk. I came to the reading with knowledge only of what he'd written, not any personal experience, other than a short story here or there. I'd looked down the list of his publications, and listened carefully as he'd described stories and their history. His credits page is long. Where would I begin?

So I asked him. He smiled, ran his fingers through his hair and laughed an almost nervous little laugh. "That's a hard question," he began, "they are all… "

"Like your children, I know. But which one really? I promise not to tell the others."

"You knew I was going to say that."

Hey, we have the same number and combination of children. It made sense that it would be the same comparison. Only a writer understands that each story is jealous of the one before it and the one that followed. Stories are living creatures!

He stumbled a little more, wrote his name my allotted three times, and the person behind me had his books on the table. I was moving away, when he finally replied. "Coup" he said. And then turned away, redirecting his attention so as not to dwell on his disloyalty. That book, after all, was not available for signing tonight.

The interesting thing about his answer was that he'd already described that particular novel as the one least in his style, the one that made him get out of his comfort zone. Something to think about.

intensity

That is the word I'd use for the concert last night. I'm trying to decide what it is about it that makes me feel today like turning over rocks and telling all the bugs of the world to move along, but I'm not sure if that is the music, the presentation or the "package" that went with it.

What do I mean package? Well you know, all the details of a night out. What to wear, what to do with the 13 year old, do we eat first, last, not at all, where to park, buy t-shirts or cd's or beer?

Suffice it to say that we don’t go to concerts of this variety very often. Symphony? Sure, Opera? Occasionally. Theatre habitually. But the music of Sigur Ros is not in any of those categories. But then, it is.

You may not have ever heard the group. I'd heard only the songs played for me by my daughter, who'd given us the tickets to the concert for Christmas, and she tends to have offbeat taste. I liked what I'd heard: haunting melodies, interesting combinations. None of that prepared me for the intensity of the live performance.

I should have had a clue though, from the quiet. The crowd of mostly 20somethings was sober, calm. No one passing joints around, the occasional cigarette was the only disruption to the air. A bar in the lobby, but no line, no one really all that interested in the offerings.

We found our seats, and listened to the opening band, young women from, I assume Iceland, because they didn't speak English very well and their sound had those haunting, wide open tones that seem to come from that part of the world. For their "big" number, one woman played the saw… a real live cut wood saw, with a bow, and it was so beautiful it could bring tears … mournful and full and a touch wild. Two others played what looked like service bells from a hotel, while the other played water glasses. All of this orchestrated by a computer, incidentally the same brand and model as the one I type on this morning.

I wasn't completely sure these girls weren't the band. I hadn't adjusted my attitude appropriately yet, and still thought we were in for the kind of good time we used to have at rock concerts years ago.

I was ready not to be my age. Had on my jeans, which fit well thanks to all the salad, white shirt and had straightened my hair. Okay, if one looked close, they'd see that the concealer doesn’t really deal with the dark circles around my eyes, and the texture of my skin beneath them lately has me trying every kind of anti wrinkle cream I can get my hands on. I won't say we were the oldest people there, but we were in the top ten percent.

My husband was just as bad. He's been to more rock concerts than I ever dreamed of, was actually part of that generation of students who did things like close colleges with protests, went to war. You know, real intense situations. I was always in awe of them, being just a few years too young for it in any capacity but tagalong. He'd already made me promise that if it was bad, we could leave, and just be polite to our daughter should she ask.

So we invited my son's best friend to spend the night… leaving one thirteen year old alone seemed wrong, but the two of them together was okay. (Best friends parents were home, just five minutes away.) Ordered them pizza, decided not to eat before the show. Got directed to four parking lots before we could park.

The second clue that things weren't going to be as we expected was a line in the men's room. But not the women's. Any woman who's ever been out to a public place knows there is something wrong there.

We found our seats, high in the second tier, in the next to last row along far aisle. I will have to ask my daughter if that was intentional… I suspect it was. We really were able to fade into the theater and observe.

The music… electronic and vocal and gifted. Bows used on guitars, I guess that is a new thing, but I'd not seen it. Behind the band, a constant light mural, changing from the faces of the most innocent looking little girl you could imagine, all bright eyes, round cheeks and braids, to, by the end of the set, army boots marching through puddles. The audience was quiet, (and for the most part, there were a couple of inappropriate whoops) respectful. And once I got through the mindset that this was supposed to be a fun concert, and listened, just listened, the intensity of what this little group of people from Iceland were doing struck me. I looked around the room and realized this is the generation that has to deal with things almost harder than that Vietnam group. These people have the legacy of what we've …their parents… done to the Earth, to the world. They don't take anything as lightly as my apathetic generation did. Even their music is intense, and meaningful and what felt like, important.

I can't say I enjoyed it. But I was moved.

The group took no intermissions, did only one curtain call, and returned the standing ovation that carried on for what felt like ten minutes to the audience.

They didn't speak one word. It was all the music.

We left the hall and I realized that I had found something of "not my age" after all. I realized I used to feel that intense about what was going on in the world, that I used to carry a torch with me wherever I went. That was the stake that drove through hearts of my family members. They didn't want to know about global warming or overpopulation or hunger or racial cleansing or back alley abortions and welfare mothers and homeless people and HIV and all the other atrocities that were going on all over the world. It was the Seventies man, and they wanted to hide under rocks and live the lives they were given in their safe little corner of the world, run off to Wal-Mart and Target and buy cheap electronics and country western music cds. They wanted to just be, while I burned with the injustice of it all.

And I'm ashamed. I became more like them, less the idealist. And under what excuse? I had children, a marriage, a job, a career! I could just sit back and enjoy the fruits of labors, not only my own, but those of the rebels before me, who'd won me the right to work for equal pay, to take time off for maternity leave without losing my job, to send my children to free public schools that addressed even their exceptional needs.

And what did it all come down to?

Going to a concert where I wanted to straighten my hair, recapture my youth and rock out, but finding instead, that recapturing youth isn't about sexuality or looks or what to wear… we knew that then…it is about recapturing the fire, the intensity of feeling, that let us have the courage to at least think we could change the world.

And realizing what gifts my daughters have really given me.

pastel rockies

The Rockies, with only enough snow to soften the blow.

playing with light

No words, but looking up

Blogs without pictures get boring.  These are just in my files. It is too dreary to leave them there tonight.

Skyfire, in South Haven, Michigan.

the power of touch

Sometimes I take out memories, and just think about them, about what they meant then, what they mean now.

When my mother was lying in the hospital, trying to recover from the heart attack that led to the stroke that caused her kidneys to shut down, her lungs to fill and eventually, her death, I was lucky enough to get to be with her, at least some of the time. It took nearly two weeks for death to finally claim her. In that period of time many moments stand out as extraordinary. The most intimate moment between just she and I, perhaps any time since maybe infancy, was the night I was alone with her, and massaged her leg.

There was less than half of the leg left, she'd endured so many amputations in that last ten years, and I never touched her before that. I wondered if massage would help increase the circulation that she lacked, the absence of which led to each successive operation. But I didn't live near, I saw her four times a year or so, and she had a husband. It wasn't really my "place" to offer to rub away the pain.

I suppose I was in denial all those years. The last nights in the hospital made me understand that all the people who were close around her those last years were not there out of concern for her, but out of their own needs. Needs which she, even in her compromised state, filled without complaint.

But she was lying there in a hospital bed, unable to move, unable to breathe without assistance, denied even ice chips for fear of aspiration, and the people who'd surrounded her in her years of need were down the hall in the lounge, eating pizza and having a party.

I stayed in her room. It was cold. So cold. Probably sixty degrees, and she was still feverish. The medication they'd given her to regulate her heart rate had the side effect of something thermal, overheating her. The nurses knew this and dialed the thermostat down as low as it would go. But we were dressed for summer, and easily chilled. They gave us blankets to drape over our shoulders.

She moaned; the pain from her tubes, her afflictions surely awful, but it wasn't that. It was the phantom pains that woke her crying in the nights. Pain in the limbs whose circulation had shut down and killed the tissue.

I can handle crises. I don't fall apart when immediate danger threatens, or when someone is hurt. I forgot all about my denial, and went to her. Her leg was bare; she'd pulled the hospital gown up as high as she could to feel the blessed cool air. I'd never really looked at it, and when I placed my hands on the skin of her thigh, she quieted. I kneaded the muscle, soft and pliable, more like the feeling of those water tubes we get at conferences with advertisements, to handle for stress.

The connection was immediate. I knew that it felt good to her, to be touched, to feel my hands working the pain from their memory. I didn't mind, and unlike the way my fingers get when I'm giving a massage I'm not really in the mood to give, I didn't tire. I didn't stop until the nurse came in to do a breathing treatment, and to sedate her so she could rest.

Before I left the room, she took my hand and squeezed it.

I looked in on her the next morning, but they'd decided her best chance was to be drugged to a state of unconsciousness, so that they could perform the next procedure needed if she was ever to come home. Her husband gave consent. His right, his responsibility. She never woke from that state, and a week later we had to turn off the machines.

I wasn't the last person to touch her, there were people in and out the whole week as she slept, but I'm pretty sure I'm the last one whose touch she knew. No one else was with us, we didn't speak, but the power of touch between us reaffirmed a connection that isn't explainable without the experience of it. Parents know it, it is the same one that settles a child's nightmares when he doesn't quite wake up, the

I will always wonder, if I'd been there more, if I'd been there to touch her legs, rub her feet before the doctors began their surgical solution, could her life have been better? Could it be so simple?

This isn't about my mother, or me for that matter, but about the power that humans hold in their hands with such simple things. A soft voice, a kind word, a simple touch, given without obligation or expectation. It astounds me really.

changes

It is the New Year, time for reflection, resolution, revival. I could go on with the "r" words, reason, ruffled, rational… well. You get the idea. I want to get back in touch with words in this blog, and am thinking of stealing the word a day practice that my friend Seliot seems to have abandoned. I've long been addicted to A Word A Day and I can try using them to keep a bit of blogging practice going. There are enough words for both of us. And the rest of you, too!

But tonight's blog entry is about changes. I've given up the Horror writing so many of you have watched me play with. Not because I don't still enjoy playing, but because it wasn't about writing anymore. Many other fine objectives, but the people who I'd enjoyed no longer wanted to have fun with it…it became too serious. So I vacated. I'll move the stories to the website soon, and we can all laugh at Megg's antics. She worried me sometimes anyway.

And look! No more pink! I am not crazy about this color scheme either, but the pepto bismol tones were long overdue for remodeling. The website is next… I don't even have anything I've written in this century posted there.

But tonight I'm in the mountains of Colorado, and I'm using dial up. I don't have the patience for web work on dial up. I know, I'm terribly spoiled. A deal I couldn't refuse. We got ten inches of new snow last night, and clear blue rocky mountain skies this afternoon. Very nice for skiing… tomorrow I hope to actually put some on. Knees, you know.

They tell me it was in the eighties in Houston. It won't be hard to go home.

I've several notes I've not transcribed into this blog that belong here, things from workshops and teleconferences I'd like to share, even some pretty cool photos. I don't think humility is a word of the day.

I'll be adding more links soon, so drop me a note if you want to be included. And for those of you who've faithfully linked to me, thank you. I'll try harder to earn the honor.

cooking

Three a.m, destined to stay awake another hour, because I'm cooking. Yeah, cooking.

I know it's a bit strange, but it's a creative outlet and very soothing. Tonight it is "brook lodge water chestnuts." Last night it was "red velvet chocolate cake"... earlier this week it was chocolate chip cookies. Those are all gone. I have sons.

Why cooking? Non-threatening, left over mid western comfort I suppose. Beats depressed angst-ridden writing, wouldn't you say?

In this room.... the Christmas tree, eight feet tall and nearly as wide. Douglas fir…. The branches are a bit weak, but the needles are soft. That's important when you leave it up for a month and forget to water it starting about the second week.

There weren't enough branches for all the ornaments, even as wide and tall as it is. The ornaments are a habit, some would say a collection but we spend money on such silly things I think habit is more appropriate. They were something easy and inexpensive to trade as youth, and I've collected them since the early seventies. Nothing of more than sentimental value, but there are ornaments from all the milestones it seems. One from our honeymoon, one for each child's birth. One my husband gave me the third year we were married that says "twenty five years together"… it would have been romantic if he'd actually read it!

So many of the ornaments have stories… were gifts or purchased with special people. The tree is like a journal too, keeping its memory pockets.

Last week I was in Chicago, in time to get snowed in. I felt like I was there for my lethal injection of Christmas cheer. Everywhere I went, the decorations seemed gaudier, the music relentless, the compulsion to buy buy buy overwhelming. I succumbed enough to tire of wearing my heavy wool coat, to realize the tax was as high in Chicago as it is in Houston, and to know that if I bought anything of substance, I'd have to check my luggage.

And now I am back, where cold is fifty degrees, and the time warp that goes along with travel has overtaken me. The injection of Christmas spirit took over on Monday and I invited some fifty people to my home. On Monday, there were no signs of a holiday here. Now each corner is adorned with something festive and if I were anyone but me I'd be "bubbly."

Instead, I am cooking. And the chimes to the oven timer say I'm finished for tonight.

from Chicago

I wish I had a camera today, one that would capture the light from the view out my window. I'm staying at the Swiss this time, "where the river meets the lake" and the view is amazing. Navy Pier, snow covered and flanked by lake cruise ships docked for the winter frames the left, tall luxury condos on the right. In the center of the view, the lighthouse out in the water, marking the levy that protects this bit of shoreline. Farther down the beach, which I can see if I stand at the window, the waves are frozen in quiet fear, as though the wind and cold came at just the right moment to scare them to death, their curls and tendrils turned white with the fright of it.

Yet there isn't the silence that I know from the west side of the lake. Around me the city is awake and vibrant as always, despite ten inches of snow last night. Cars along Lake Shore Drive are moving at a healthy clip and even the construction crews on the 27 floor (I just counted) frame of a new building between the lake and me have kept working.

My daughter's college in Austin cancelled classes yesterday due to ice on the ground, yet here in Chicago, life goes on. "Ice on the ground." she laughs. "Texans."

And for her, it explains it all.

frustration

It only takes about half an hour for the day to wake up, going from tormented clouds in a granite sky to wisps of glittered cloudstroke on a backwash of blue. I envy the accomplishment.

I was looking for some magic this morning, I admit it. Something to restore faith and hope and anticipation to my life, or even as non-ambitious as the day. A little Christmas spirit, or anything really. All I found was more negativity, more emptiness, more …nothing.

A failing in myself, of course. What is spirit if not the energy from within to find joy or triumph? What is happiness if not communication, resolution, peace?

Pen to paper, ass to chair.

This is the writing advice I was given by a writer who never seems to have a lack of something to say. It annoys me. Not his work, of course, but that I sit here, fingers poised on the keyboard and words, my best and only friends it seems, evade me. I am ready for them, have purged the 50,035 words of nonsense from November and feel I've paid my dues. It is time to be able to write something good, something interesting, something special! Yet… nothing.

I know how I got here. I know I'm a person who thrives on feedback. Some say I need "validation"… but that's not it really. It is that I …

No, I'm not even able to type that.

That's the problem. I'm not willing to expose my weaknesses. I’m not willing to give anyone the power or the right to judge feelings truly felt, ideas that may not have merit. I’m not willing to risk my tenuous grip on sanity for someone who thinks I'm full of shit. And only when I am willing to do that will the words make sense, make anyone at all care.

In short, I don't have a trustworthy reader, and I'm too chicken to take a risk. I'm like the cat in this room, so brave on this side of the glass, chattering at birds in the garden. He is all talk and no action these days, grown fat and lazy and satisfied. He wants to chase the birds, but what if it means he can no longer lay here by the fire, and watch them out his window, and just talk?

trying, too hard, perhaps

The moon is still nearly full, its luminescence the only light in the room but for the screen of my keyboard. The keys aren't lighting for some reason, but that's okay. I don't need to see them. They don't need to see me. This is an exercise of ... touch. "Let me touch your slight indentations, create a mood or a place," I ask them. "Let me touch your mind, your heart, your soul in our creation," they respond. They are warm to my fingertips, these word creating keys, and if I were more of a romantic, I'd make some reference to the heart of the machine, trapped inside, coaxing me to coax it free with the cadence of the clicks of my nails against the smooth surface, the letters connected to my skin, and in turn to my blood and well. We could go on like that. Or not.

Hi. Remember me?

I've meant to write more, really I have. It isn't that I've been too busy. It's more a lost kind of thing. Can't find my routine, can't find my rhythm, can't find my passion. See? It isn't you. It's me. I can't find me.

I am so good at distractions. It can be baseball (go 'stros) or hurricanes, or websites. Kids home, kids gone, kids kids kids. I have a friend whose command of the language I admire, and that word is one of his pet peeves. I tried hard T, really I did. I guess I'm destined to stay among the lazy speakers… "kids" just has more punch than "children," ya know?

Anyway. I'm tired…. Just let my finger rest on the "k" while I was trying to remember where I was headed with that thought and got kkkkkkkkkkkkkkk…..

So many nice k words to distract me…..

Got a new prescription for vicodin today. Anyone who was with me during knee surgery knows that that's one I just can't handle. And I'm silly enough while taking it not to realize it. But it doesn't matter, I've already decided against the procedure anyway on more valid grounds. Mainly, there is another alternative.

Eh, falling asleep. Wake up G!!

I'm reading a book that keeps posing questions to me in that subtle way fiction does...that way that isn't "this applies to you" but lets you step into the character and become her for a while. For some of the more exotic locales (like South Africa and Madagascar and Spain? ahem.) it saves me lots of money, this imagination of mine. But it also has turned me into such a skeptic. I don't, for example, believe in happy endings anymore, and I scoff at books with happy endings for that reason. Give me an honest story, where the end isn't so tidy but the people are interesting any day.

Like real life you know? I don't have to have my friends all tied up with satin ribbon. I like loose seams and rough edges.

I can't think straight anymore. I'll try to come back and fill in the missing pieces on this, otherwise, just remember it's past midnight and 4:45 comes early.

austin sunrise

contra flow and other observations

The morning blurred with heavy clouds and it seemed there would be no sunrise at all. I poured coffee and stepped out to the patio, empty of all its chaises and umbrella tables, looking bleak without its party clothes strewn about. The green cast to the pool, usually blue and sparkling, was more witness to the heat and days without filtration than the storm, though the leaves and twigs lying on the bottom didn't help. I glanced up to the eaves and was not surprised to see the mud houses of the wasps intact and thriving. Before the furniture returns, the power washer will come out and they too will succumb to the force of water. Odd that nature teaches us the best ways to destroy.

And as I sip the hot coffee, the steamy day begins with a lifting of the dark clouds, and I see far to the east and south, for it is autumn now, pale pink light. One songbird lifts his chortles to the wind, and I remember that a symphony begins with one note.


Observations.

I'm going to go ahead and post these, because this is a journal and I've given a full week now to preparation, evacuation and aftermath. Some of my notes were time markers, from email and test messages I sent en route, some rambling from notes I kept of images I didn't want to forget. It really is okay if you skim by, or turn the page. There are two entries, one, chronological, the other, images. There is some repetition, and I could edit it all to one nicely flowing story, but I am eager to get back to the business of living and want to put this behind me for now.

My list of things to remember:

Contra Flow: doesn't "contra" mean "against?" If so, this works. There couldn't have been more against "flow" of this traffic unless it moved in reverse.

Parking lots: not just the freeways themselves, but the nightmare of cleanup that owners of those lots easily accessible to the masses. I used to think it was the storm that caused the mess. But it was there… long before the storm made landfall.

Caravans: We traveled next to many caravans. It occurred to us that if every family had taken only one car, filled with people and essentials, the traffic would have been cut in half and there would have been no fuel shortage. Instead, there were caravans of cars, many occupied with only one person. Car insurance is required by law in Texas…. So these people thought their cars were their most precious possession? Add to that the group behavior… these were the folks pulling out on the shoulders and driving past the traffic for several miles, then slowing the flow even more when exits, construction or stalled cars forced them back into the main lanes. Amazingly, no one laid on horns.

Semi towing: A cab of an eighteen wheeler, driven by one person, chained to a pickup truck, at least two occupants of that one, tied to an old ford with a nylon rope. No signal lights, no electrical hooked up between them at all. In the third car? Children. Occasionally passed with baby formula back and forth to the pick up. No seat belts.

In the back of other pick ups: Children tucked in to sleep under blankets in the hot sun, and into the night. Dogs in crates, some of them shaded with blankets or tarps, but all of them miserable. Much barking. At one point, when traffic was stopped, a man got out of a car following one of them and offered a water bottle to the dog in the cage of the truck. The dog knew what to do, and drank the water. The driver of the pickup flashed a thumbs-up to the Samaritan. I don't think they knew each other. My own dog drank from my palms. Her tongue on my skin was completely dry, and she had a/c most of the way, and no sun.

Camry, beige: We followed this car for hours. There were five people inside and they were in the "fast lane"…we were still hopeful when we got into that lane that an entrance to the contra lanes would sometime open up. The people drove, as did many, with the doors to the car opened. Occasionally, one of them would lean out of the car and pick up baling wire that had been used to create the road. It was odd, like a bird pecking worms from the spring ground. Just as often, someone would lean out of the car and vomit.

Flushing. We stopped at four different gas stations hoping to find facilities along the way. The first one, on the west side of Houston, where there was no threat, told us there was no water to flush. The next one was closed entirely. The third one was in the town that was supposed to have gas, per the police, but didn't. They did let us use the restroom. The men and women were using both sides, one line, for a change. I got the women's room. When I got there, it was filthy. Paper towels strewn on the floor, the baskets overflowing, the sink splattered and soiled. I took two paper towels and smushed the trash down into the basket and picked up the litter on the floor. I wiped down the sink. I washed my hands thoroughly with soap. I remember my eighth grade science teacher telling us there is no excuse for filth so long as there is running water. I would have done more, but people were banging on the door.
The next one (these were in those last few hours) had long lines, but had reverted to male/female lines. Not sure why, but one woman went to the men's room and opened the door when there were no men waiting and the women's line snaked out to the gas pumps. She simply went "eww" and backed off. The rest of us took her word for it. I didn't try to clean that one. But I did promise myself I would not be a helpless refugee. I'd seen enough of that with Katrina victims, especially in the last weeks. (Incidentally, do you know that the remaining 1700 katrina evacuees in the shelters were flown to Arkansas to avoid the storm? I know that part of it was to take care of the people. Part of it was to get them off the city roles. And part of it was no doubt a publicity stunt. But I'm very cynical now so don't mind me.)

Cats and dog: Animals have so much more intuition than we do. The cats hate to ride, and usually hide from us. They came right out to the car and got in without fuss. They were calm the whole way. Their litter box was available in the back, but they didn't use it. We were in this together. Scout slept with her head on my son's lap most of the way. Sometimes he slept with his head on hers. None of them let me out of their sight the whole time we were in Austin. We are a team.

Things heard on talk radio in the middle of the night: The coast guard had been called to help with the freeway crisis. Huh?

This one made my twelve-year-old cackle. He heard the president's speech…when was that? I don't have a sense of the time anymore… it was sometime after dark. C quotes it as follows. "It's a BIG storm. But don't go getting your guns and start rioting just because you can't get off the highway. " That was about it. When the interview/speech (what was it?) turned to Iraq, even news radio cut him off. A big storm? When we finally arrived in Austin and saw our Leader on TV, the thing that struck me was that apparently he didn't have speech 101. He sat in an open collared blue shirt … how many of those does he have? At North Com and addressed the nation. He smirked. He swiveled in his chair. He smirked when asked if his trip to the storm zone would be getting in the way and said no. But then his plans changed. I don't care what his politics are. There was no call for smirking. There was a need for reassurance and leadership. I didn't get it from his casual attitude. Did you? I'm not a snob, but it was time for him to look like a leader, dress like a leader and speak like a leader. I do note that on Sunday (Monday?) he wore a suit… green with a red tie. I do note as well that he stumbled over his words and lost his train of thought several times. I heard the interview first on the radio and wondered if he were having a stroke. When I saw it broadcast later, and heard him tell us that he was suspending EPA regs, that he was opening up the oil reserves and that we needed to cut through the red tape to let the refineries expand, I had the sensation of thirty years of hard fought battles for the environment whooshing by. I wondered what Jimmy Carter must have been thinking. At least he added a windfall profits tax. Why don't we just hand over the reins publicly to the oil companies? I worry about how well my son and I will be able to breathe now. We are both sensitive to the pollution here.

Honesty: Rather than alarming everyone with 24-hour coverage and flashbacks to Katrina, why not say we don't know?

evacuation

A soft light pours into the kitchen window, filtered only by trees, the air so much cleaner that it is at home. I take the snapshot, "sunrise from my daughters porch" I name it in my mind, in an effort to combine the seen with the thought. I remember that my favorite poet has determined to simply not seek publication anymore, because it robs the joy of the words from her, and I understand that.

My back aches, the mattress that we sleep on is new and unbroken, it doesn't yield to the curve of my spine or my hip and I find my sleep restless. I want to go home, not because I am not happy here or because I am concerned. I can't decide, really, where home even is.

The trip: It will help you to understand that I am in Clear Lake, zone C of the mandatory evacuation area…which means that a category 4 or 5 direct hit could send coastal waters to flood this far into the city. We are about half way between Johnson Space Center and Ellington field, if you know the city. Tuesday night, the news announced the mandatory evacuation of all the zones, and gave times for when they were effective. Noon Thursday was the time we were given.

Houston is a freeway city. There are two loops around the downtown core. The outer loop is a toll road; ordinarily it costs $3.75 to get from my house on the southeast side to interstate10 on the west side, which is the fastest road to Austin, where my daughters have a condo and enough space for my husband and I, my son and the pets. (Two cats, and Scout, none of them welcome in hotels.) We considered going north to the cottage in Michigan, but my spouse needed to stay close to his office.


8:15 Wednesday night.

The alternate route out of town, (state road 90) which my husband wanted to take, has a 9 car pile-up on it. They've announced that there are no resources… i.e. police or ambulances, to service roads that are not designated evacuation routes. State road 90 is not an evacuation route. I 45 between Galveston and Houston was taking 5 hours for motorists to complete the normally 35 minute drive. We acknowledge that if it were just the two of us, we'd stay here. Instead, we decide to open a bottle of wine and relax tonight, get up early and go in the morning. The neighborhood is empty already, except for Matt across the street who is putting painters tape across the lead glass of his front door. We didn't board windows or tape them up or move the furniture to the second floor, as our neighbors have done. Nothing we own is that special. Instead, we move the lawn furniture to the empty garage, wrap the boxes and boxes of photographs in plastic and put them high on shelves in our closet, the most hurricane proof room in the house. The house was only built in 2000, and is built to withstand 135 mph winds. The storm at this point is gusting to the 180's. We are glad that we shared pictures with our parents in the Midwest all those years, so all will not be lost even if our makeshift efforts don't work. We are hanging out tonight, will go in the morning. Car is packed, all but computers and toothbrushes... and we have nothing else to do but sit in the car tomorrow.

Some people are just getting rooms in Houston. I could see us doing that. The girls are excited to have us come. They are a little more afraid of the storm than we are, so we will go.


12:51pm, Thursday

Have been on the road 7 hrs. Not to 59 (southwest freeway) yet. Decided to try J's shortcut anyway, all freeways are nearly stopped, and we figure we have a better chance on the state roads. 103 degrees. Many cars already on the side of the road, out of gas. There is none to buy. I'm glad we chose to only bring one car.

1:38 p.m. The radio keeps announcing that there are refuel trucks on the roads to help motorists. We've seen nothing. We are down to half a tank, still plenty to get to Austin.

3pm We'd be fine if we could just drive! We are all the way to Sugarland. (Suburb on the southwest corner of Houston. Normally a 40 minute drive from home.)

4:18 pm. They just turned all I10 lanes westbound headed to Austin. The radio says the entrance is at highway 6, and that traffic is moving. We are just east of highway 6, decide to give it a try. Besides, we have to pee and need to get out of gridlock to find a place to go. The car thermometer says 115 degrees.

Highway 6 is moving well (northbound from 90 to 10.) There was a convenience store opened, but no gas. No problem, we will just use the restrooms. They tell us they have no water so they won't let people use the facilities. A lady in the parking lot says they do, they are just closed to evacuees. At this point, I don't get it. The boys pee in the grass behind the car wash. I wait. I'm a woman, no big deal.

7:04 The mayor has just announced that if you are in zone C and haven't evacuated yet, that it is too late, given the freeway situation. He says that storm appears to have changed its target and zone C should be okay. We consider turning back as we are still not out of metro Houston and it's been over 12 hours. We call the girls, who are adamant that we keep going. We figure they know more than we do, so agree.

8:17 the real problem is that nothing is open-no food or bathrooms. I wonder for the first time why there aren't Red Cross stations set up along the evac route. 10mph and we are finally at Katy… west suburb of Houston. I know of a truck stop here, surely they will be open.

We stop at the truck stop. It is …frightening. Evacuees are parked everywhere: the parking lot, the gas pumps (empty) the lawn, all along the road. Trash strewn all over as well… as though there are no receptacles or people don't know better. Of course the place is closed. Mob mentality is taking over, and we don't even want to let the dog out of the car here. We've already been warned to take a gun with us, but we wouldn't even if we owned one. I've never been actually afraid of a crowd before. This one scares me.

A note about the contra flow. The radio keeps announcing that I 10 contra flow lanes are opened and that traffic is breezing along. No doubt those announcements add to the mess. Reality is that they are open, but the only place to get ON to the contra flow lanes (the eastbound interstate lanes turned to accommodate westbound traffic) is in Downtown Houston. There are concrete barriers… movable barriers, between the east and westbound lanes. No one has moved any of them. Hundreds of thousands of vehicles are trapped in the westbound lanes, people who joined the line sometime after the entrance to the fast lanes. Our frustration grows as we see an occasional car zipping by in the eastbound lanes at 80 mph. I'm guessing the ratio to be 1:1000 or so. Some drivers have exited and are driving across medians in construction zones for access. We can't believe they won't open another legal entrance… there are at least two places it could be easily done.

Neither one is open.

11:46 Friday. My friend emailed that the cams show the highways are clear on TV. The cams must be from another day. The roads have not changed. Cars all over the place are out of gas... everything gridlocked. At least where we are.

At 3 am, we gave up on I 10 and decided we should have stuck to our original instincts and take the farm to market roads. We aren't city people; we know how to use them. And we know that sooner or later we will find an empty one and I will be able to pee. Only I'm still such a girl, I feel like the bugs are watching and can't even relieve myself in the darkness. The boys are fine, the animals too, and I'll just deal with it.

Only there were a number of others with the same idea and for the first time, we are at dead stop. People have set up camp in lawns along the way, it is like a mass tailgate party in the country. The traffic moves so desperately slow that I can walk the dog alongside the car faster than it moves. We judge how low our gas tank is getting and know we have to go to an "approved" route, if there is any hope of refueling at all. A policeman stationed to block off a road off the state highway that would let cars into town, says there is gas at the next city, on 290. Another 15 miles. Our computer says we have 40 miles of gas left. Austin is still about 70 away.

We ran out of gas and I ran out of phone battery to at 4:30 am, in not the next town, but the one after that, Giddings, and so we stopped at a restaurant parking lot. J passed out; he would never give up the wheel. I tried to sleep, the windows down to the night air but also to the noise and mosquitoes. I realized that now I was an evacuee, and understood a bit of what kept police and National Guard holding "them" at bay in New Orleans. The mindset was not so much of survival, but of lawlessness… there was no camaraderie, but I suppose that I felt that partly because I was a minority for really the first time in my life. I didn't see another white face for hours. I am bothered by the fact that I know that, I am not usually a person that does.

The restaurant opened at 5:30 and at last we were able to use real bathrooms and have breakfast. The people there could not have been nicer. The waitress called around town and said that she'd not been able to find gas yet, but her friend Bucky was going to call her as soon as his station got some. We ate from a Texas buffet: grits and biscuits and milk gravy. Behind us, a couple who'd left from Santa Fe, a suburb in zone b, at 9:30 pm the night before we left. We had arrived at the same place. Their trek took them ten more hours… so perhaps the shortcuts were in fact shorter. A co worker of my husbands, known for his fussiness and conservatism, left town on Tuesday, with two cars for he and his wife. Their trip took 40 hours.

None of us saw fuel trucks. None of us saw National Guard. None of us saw the Red Cross. I'm not saying they weren't there. But that on three different routes out of town, I saw none. TV news shows them on the broadcasts, some people interviewed apparently were helped. I am learning to be skeptical of what I see now.

By the time we'd had coffee, there a few stations were opening and actually had gas in Giddings. We put in half a tank… we only had 57 miles to go and knew what was behind us. It only took five hours to travel the last 57 miles.

By then it was mid afternoon on Friday. Austin was Austin… open and friendly and good. The announcers on the local radio listed things for evacuees to do while there, and asked that we please be more careful with our litter. A caller reported that he'd seen someone throw a whole bag of garbage into the river.

Then the vigil of watching the storm, until my daughters boyfriend came over with DVD's and insisted we pull ourselves away from TV. We watched two seasons of Northern Exposure, and slept off and on. I woke up at 4 am, Saturday, and watched the newsmen blown by the wind and rain. I wonder what makes them think their reports are more credible outside?

The next two days were spent being good refugees. We refinished the wood floor at my daughter's condo, and took them shopping for things they needed and hadn't gotten to yet. They are both very busy, almost never home. School, work, internships, boyfriends, and even a social life. I'm jealous.

We came home to trees down in the neighborhood, one on top of a house. Our home was spared damage, just junk in the pool. The security alarms were blaring, but I assume that was because we turned off the power before we left. They announced an orderly return to the city, but they partitioned it off so that people who were never in harms way returned first. Those of us who were evacuated from the southeast side still show as "pending" on the map of when to come back. Pending? We left Austin a little before ten, and were home in 4 hours. Seems most people followed Judge Willy's advice, from the county just south of us, instead of the wishy-washy ineffectiveness of the Mayor who had the audacity to announce early last week that Houston was the most prepared city in the country, and that we would handle this. I'm sorry to those who want to believe they did the best they could, but if less time had been spent on photo ops telling us that the "plan was almost ready" and simply doing the work, there would be less anger and resentment in the city today.

I don't mind being told "I don't know." I do mind being told, we are ready, when clearly, we were not. We are too smart for this. All of us.

The other side of the mirror

The other side of the mirror

High thin clouds banded like the rings of calcium building up in whirls of a seashell against the pale pink of the sky. The sun itself sparkled lemon, a yellow diamond where the softness of a pearl should have been. The sweet pastels calmed the torment of the night; when I listened closely, I could even hear the sea.

Yes, I watched the sunrise out my rearview mirror this morning, and wondered if I would write it here for you. So many images, so much stress, overwhelming emotions from one extreme to another.

I will write it, perhaps later tonight. I owe you that.

But for now, I will just say thank you to all who have expressed concern. We were in zone C for evacuation, mandatory evacuation as of Wednesday. As you all now know, the storm has shifted to the north a bit, and now they say it is okay to "shelter in place" if you didn't get out. Better than the highway situation.

It took 26 hours to make a 3.25 hour trip. Sadly, most of that was within the city. But we are safe in Austin, at my daughter's house.

The wind has diminished, and the tides have changed. More soon.

just thinking

My son was explaining the different saws he's learning to use in school when my mind traipsed down a path it hadn't been down in a long time. I could hear the ring of a skil saw echoing around the basement walls, feel the vibration of wood against sawhorses, and smell the unforgettable scent of sawdust.

I wish the memory went farther. I wish I could remember anything my father built in that basement. I can return to that place, even now, and see the work table he built for his shop, an identical one built for holding clean laundry across the room. I don't remember them in process. I remember the noise and the concentration, the time it required, the relief from yelling that his preoccupation with woodworking provided. But I don't know that I ever saw what it was we were working on.

Strange to me.

I should think that memory would operate on a LIFO system, so that we remember most the last thing someone said to us, or the last interaction. But it isn't really that way is it? Memory is more like popcorn, random spurts of perfect kernels, each crest of the inflated seed tied to another. And so many old maids left in the bottom that didn't get enough time, or enough heat to reach their full potential.

I guess it is best that we don't remember our last contact with those who are no longer part of our lives. I would not want to remember only the last painful argument, or the way a loved one looked at the funeral.

Still I'd like to know what it was my dad made all that time in the basement workshop, when I was indentured to hold the wood.

*********

There are a million stories from the shelters. Imagine how long we would be spellbound if someone could tell them all. But the telling is exponential. For every storyteller interacting with a "client" at the shelter, another story is born, and in the retelling yet another.

At one point, I wanted to record each day, my impression of the locale, the people, the attitudes of the officials, the volunteers. But what I've decided is that this was like any other shock situation. The reality lies somewhere between the heartbreaking losses and those who would try to beat the system. Most of the people have survived, and are getting on with their lives. It's time I did that, too.

wake up

The sun sparked behind the palms this morning, dazzling rays breaking between the fronds and lifting lightly above the tree line. The morning settled like a soft quilt over the late summer morning, a little warmer than comfortable, but one I wasn't quite ready to kick off, hook my feet on the outside to cool down a bit, and awaken. The light was gentle and persistent, not an alarm clock, but the gentle voice of a mother shaking me awake. I had been dreaming, waiting for the call, and could only tell myself, it's about damn time.

Wake up.

I've become skeptical about public entries in times of great crisis. A friend has accused me (and all women, so don't worry. No one is picking on me.) Of latching onto national crises and making the issue our own, attempting to show how much we care and turn the focus on ourselves when it rightly belongs on the people directly affected. Nevertheless, I choose to write anyway.

I'll say this right up front though. It isn't about me. So if it appears that I am attempting to divert attention or to latch onto this crisis, please accept my apologies. Consider it a failure in my ability to communicate, and not a female thing, okay?

Let me start by saying, I'm really tired.

I'm tired because I spent the day on the phone, on the net and in the shelter, trying to find what I could do, and then doing it. I have done enough volunteer work in my life to know that the very worst thing is to have volunteers show up and not have work for them. So I spent days writing email, making calls, signing up on online databases to do everything from share the extra space in my house to assist in the preparation of FEMA claims. I watched the news; I sorted clothes from the children's rooms. I pulled out the stash of personal items we always bring home for shelters from hotels. I waited for the phone to ring, watching with anger and disgust as the images from my television showed the desperation in New Orleans, the devastation along the Gulf. I wondered about my brother, in Alabama, but knew he wouldn't call me in any case. But surely, surely in this place I have decided to call home, I could do something. There seemed to be so much.

Finally, I couldn't stand it anymore. I logged onto the site of the nearest shelter, and saw its call for donations. Flat sheets, hand towels, pillows, light blankets. At last, something tangible I could do.

I drove to Sam's club, determined to get the most for my money. Flashed my membership card and went right to linens. There were packs of six, white, hotel quality sheets, All the twin sheets were gone, all but one set of full size. I took them, and another case of queen sized. I know the cots are small, but reasoned that the people using them could fold them, or use one sheet for top and bottom. I found blankets as well, but the only pillows left in the store were king size, not reasonable for the intended use. No problem, there were several other stores between Sam's and the shelter. I headed on through the store, determined to fill the cart before I went to the shelter. I found hand towels in packs of twelve, soap, diapers. When I checked out I was surprised at the total. It had always been my way to write a check, but I'm glad I did the footwork this time. It gave me a better sense of how far the money I donate goes… or doesn't go, as the case may be.

I had to wait in line at the check out, and what was in the carts of those ahead of me was an epiphany. The carts held cases of water, juice, personal items. Food in large quantities… not just the general Sam's club value packs, but whole carts filled with hot dog buns, breakfast rolls. Fruits. Essentials of the most basic needs, hunger, thirst, shelter, hygiene. And the mood of the shoppers was neither jovial and friendly, nor desperate and frenzied. It was a mood of action. Of doing something for others, without need for recognition or back patting or being told what to do and how to do it. I was proud to be there.

I stopped at the Linen store to complete the bed pallets I'd determined to deliver, and bought pillows and cases from the 'back to the dorm' specials. Finally I had enough the first trip … I could no longer see out the back window.

With the car filled with my "excuse" I drove to the shelter, a modern church building near the Space Center. Pulled up to the donation site, and helped some grandmothers unload the cargo. I wanted to hug them when they asked if the diapers stayed, too. Of course, all of it.

Then I noticed D. D was manning a card table next to the Youth Center of the church, a separate building, and Red Cross notices all around identified it as the shelter. I parked in a guest spot in the lot, and walked over. "I've signed up online, as soon as this was designated as a shelter…"

"Can you stay now?"

"Yes."

I filled out his forms, very basic, stuck a name tag on my shirt and was officially a Disaster Relief Volunteer. He sent me back to the building where I'd dropped off my donation. There dozens of people sorted donations, placing items in Sunday school rooms marked with makeshift signs on the doors: Water, linens, toys, baby items, clothing, school supplies. We brought donations from the curb to the rooms, divided them as noted and people inside the rooms sorted and divided further: new items, gently used, okay, last resort, and trash. As the day went on, more volunteers came to the rooms to pick out the current needs of the evacuees: towels and blankets were the most popular. Like that famous wine and bread, there was always more than was needed.

I asked the people in the distribution rooms about the organization, which was basically each volunteer for themselves. It wasn't hard to figure out what needed to be done, and do it, but I'm an ex junior leaguer, and wondered where the leadership was. A woman from NASA who was helping sort the towels explained that when the Astrodome filled up the night before, they'd sent us a bus at 1 A.M. The shelter that was barely half full at close of business Thursday was beyond capacity by dawn. All efforts had been focused on getting people places to sleep, fed, showered. No one had time to deal with phone banks and volunteer waivers and the nonsense we've created in the world. So today, the organization went by the wayside, and the caring took over.

At about 6 p.m., a fresh set of volunteers arrived and the donations slowed so that there wasn't much point in the people who'd been there most of the day staying. I went back to the registration table to sign out, and D was still there. He'd been there all day. I tried to get him to let me take over for a while, but he wasn’t' ready to go. I bet he's still there.

As I signed out, I got to interact with the people being sheltered, who were moving from the shelter building to the meal center. They were clean, peaceful, and polite. A group of boys played basketball, laughing and being kids. Another group had found a guitar, and the music that their city wins hearts and minds with was starting to come back. One beautiful woman came to me and asked if there was a list of survivors anywhere. She wanted to find her people. I took her to the registration desk for clients, and all they could do was hand her a paper with phone numbers and websites. She thanked me, and went in to dinner. As far as I know, cell phones in Louisiana are still not working. The only computers around were in use by the registration staff and medical personnel. Tomorrow, I will take more.

Dinner was huge quarters of chicken, and what Texans call "all the fixin's." Yet another cadre of volunteers served the meal, and the mood in the dining hall was not the somber tears or anguished moans we've been seeing on network TV. It was the mood of family… conversations, children, laughter, and the clatter of forks and plates.

It was just people.

Some of them no doubt are the poorest of the poor in the city that was their home. Some of them no doubt have better accommodations in our shelter than they had before the storm. Some of them were people who heard an order of evacuation, and left, finding when they arrived that they couldn't live a vacation lifestyle of restaurant dining and hotels for an extended period of time. They are people who wonder if their children will be okay, if the schools that we will shuffle them to will accommodate them, or if they will be further ravaged by the bias of other people like they were with this storm.

An old friend called me this morning, a friend who grew up in Louisiana. She and her family will stay with me off and on over the next few months, as our schools have opened their doors to the "homeless." I'm sorry to say that her attitude is not one I really want in my home: that this may be the best thing that ever happened to Louisiana. She is frustrated, as a resident, with the gangs that run the public schools, the dishonest politicians, the crime, the filth. She wants the country's attention to clean up the mess in more than just the physical consequences. Her house, incidentally, was not damaged. There are many that weren't, despite the dramatic pictures, particularly in the outskirts.

I'll let her stay, because our boys are great friends. I would let her stay even if they weren't.

You see, it isn't just the government. It isn't just the infrastructure.

It’s the people.

But for every one of the people whose minds are closed, whose anger erupts in violence or hate, for every one who wants to blame the president, the Iraqis, or God, there is at least one fellow like D, still there handing out name badges.

New Orleans will heal. The Gulf States will rebuild. The bureaucratic means that we have well into place will eventually work the way it is supposed to work, and life will go on.

Because, someplace, someone brought an old blanket, washed it, folded it and placed it over a shivering child, or held the hand of a weeping man, or gave a voucher for a quiet meal out to a mother who's seen more than anyone should ever have to see.

Yes, I'm really tired. But I've slept in a warm dry bed every night this week. I've eaten more meals than are healthy, and I've engaged in frivolous exercise on a silly machine. I've had wine, talked to friends, laughed at my daughter's who’ve painted their living room jungle green. I've lived the life I expected to live. Tonight, I am glad to only be tired.

The checks you send are being used directly for such things as vouchers for gas, food and hotels for refugees, school supplies, clothing and basic necessities. As you watch, and see the numbers of the dead and missing grow this weekend, please don't let your anger at the administration keep you from focusing on the people who are alive. Please be like the volunteers at the shelter today, and do what needs to be done, because we can all see what needs to be done, without anyone telling us. And don't do it because "next time it could be us." Do it for the people. The survivors. And maybe, just maybe, we might all find our way to a little more humanity.