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.

writing and depression

I went to hear John Irving speak the other day. If you've ever read him, you will know what I mean when I say he writes the same way he speaks. He's extremely entertaining, but takes a very long time to get to the point. In his latest book, apparently he touches the issue of psychotherapy, particularly the use of antidepressants.

A year ago, a doctor of mine, ex doctor I should say... prescribed antidepressants for me. I suspect she was just trying to avoid more questions, but it is quite an experience when you are presented with that prescription. Like getting a ticket to the big game, or admission to some exclusive club.

I filled the prescription. I have it in my vanity drawer (no, not THAT drawer) as a reminder. I don't believe in them, though I'm willing to accept that some people need to have them. I knew that what I really needed was someone to talk to, someone who cared, not someone I paid. It always reminds me of that scene in Pretty Woman, the movie, where Julia Roberts has her legs wrapped around Richard Gere in the bathtub and says "that's 29 inches of therapy wrapped around you" (or something like that)

Anyway.... Irving says that depression is like plotting. It is all about the connections:

We don't really have any control over where events take us emotionally. A small argument takes on proportion that no one anticipates because it dredges up the feelings of another time in our life when bad things happened, and that feeds on itself to remind us of another and another and another until our emotions are spiraling so far that we are officially depressed. The options are to work through it, or distract our minds or bodies with something else... some people are compulsive exercisers, for example ... Irving was a wrestler. Others turn to drub abuse, still others turn to other addictive behavior... gambling, sex, whatever. The difference is that when introducing the chemical substances, whether legal or illegal, you redirect the mind from the connections ...the emotional issues that spiraled into the depression in the first place, severing the one-to- another links of the unrelated events. So for a writer, that is creative suicide, (in his opinion.)

It is the same theory I've always tried to explain... that emotional highs and emotional lows go hand in hand with writing. if I am happy, I am rarely able to string sentences together. It seems only in the rollercoaster ride, either up or down, that I personally can spend time creating worlds.


So depression isn't always a bad thing. And truly, I'm not an unhappy person. I tend to use my friends though, so if you feel used, I guess I owe you a bath. My legs are a little shorter than Julia's, I'm sorry to say.

I have more notes, but I'm feeling nerdy enough already.

beach journal

These may not seem coherent at all, but until i post them i can't write more.

(more photos here, but i've screwed up the sizing and am out of time. Crystal Beach)

--The routine is the same, wake, coffee, journal. Walk to the bluff with coffee, assess the day. Take cups back to cottage, put on swim suits. Walk for an hour or so, to the state park or thereabouts, depending on the crowds, the number of dogs on the beach, whether the flies are biting or the sand stinging. Relish knees working again, the way they should. Spend the morning either visiting, or reading on the beach, or playing in the water, with kayaks, sailboat, skim boards, sand. Talk to people.




Afternoon, realize too much sun and the dog is tired and tends to get grouchy. Return to the cottage for lunch, then read, sleep or go to town for whatever.

Wake, go to the bluff for sunset.

--From AWAD- oneiromancy (o-NY-ruh-man-see) noun: The practice of predicting the future by interpreting dreams.

And this:

Remember, we all stumble, every one of us. That's why it's a comfort to go
hand in hand. -Emily Kimbrough, author and broadcaster (1899-1989)

--Dream notes:

-Paralyzed. Watching as the needle is inserted into the spine and fate sealed. Though mind is fine, no way to communicate. Watching as the man takes first your spouse, then you child and tortures, rapes in front of you. Who is the man?

-Walking along the beach and finding the body. From the cigarette boat races, when one flipped. "I can't go home without my son," his mother said.

-Camping. (why so many things in my dreams that I just don't do?) Coming so close to kiss …but being told no… no. you are married. Knowing yet being consumed with a need to touch, be touched. The kiss so tender, so clean, that my mouth waters to remember it. Lovemaking so powerful and intense … the full moon effect?


--I woke on the couch with a start to the phone ringing, only I thought it was a cell phone and answered mine, my son's and his best friends, only to put together that it was the land line when I picked it up and it stopped, no one there.

I fashioned all sorts of possibilities in my head. It was my husband, who'd stepped out to buy toilet paper or something else that would look odd in the small town blotter, arrested for speeding or reckless driving or something and using his one prison call to call me on the land line, cell phones somehow prohibited in jail.

But it was my friend, to whom I'd sent email that morning.

--Later, in the single digit morning, I went to bed. The air had cooled so much that the fans created cold wind, and I burrowed beneath quilts. What a luxury, fresh air and quilts in July. I fell asleep immediately, the northwoods night like a drug, the sleep REM filled and colorful.

--More dream notes:
--And then I was going down an escalator in a mall someplace, and fell. The falling startled me. I was fully awake and disoriented. I imagined I heard the phone ringing again, and stayed there in bed trying to decipher its jingling ring from the sounds of the night birds and the neighbors, whose cabin had been singing loud country western tunes through the open back window for hours before I went to bed. I am sure now that all that phone ringing had to do with traveling without three of the four children. They grow up. They stay behind. But just as I still hear cries in the dark when they are hurting, I still hear the phone ring to tell me they are home safe and fine. And they are. Mother's ears, I guess, we just don't outgrow them.

I didn't get up. Eventually I went back to sleep. The bed was hard, too hard for my softness. No matter which way I turned, the circulation seemed constrained where I laid upon my own flesh. I thought about dying in my sleep, and wondered if that is how it happens, the strangulation of oneself on mattresses too hard to give. Or so soft one cannot breath. Like Sids, only for adults. Sudden Adult Death syndrome. SAD? Yes, I believe people die from being sad. Especially in their sleep.

The next thing I knew, Scout was nuzzling my hand. Full daylight had broken and she was ready to trek on the beach for hours, ready to make friends with anyone, her tennis ball ready.

--Again the morning was perfect, 72 degrees. I've spent too many hours driving to escape bitter cold in the winter in the north, stifling heat in the summer in the south just to get to 72 degrees. The only thing I worried about were the bugs that had started to take over the beach. They blew in across the lake with that cool wind from the corn fields of Illinois, droves of yellow cucumber beetles. They don't really do anything other than land on us and crawl. They don't bite. Still the sight of them, the thickness of them is disturbing.

I went outside with Scout, and returned a smile to the scowling neighber who watched her. She pointed to the posted, typewritten list of rules. "Keep dogs on leash" is number 12 on the list. Only there have been dogs here longer than I've been here, and I've been here for seventeen years. Whoever posted the rules has neither the right nor power to restrict access to anyone, including dogs. I know my dog too, and know she'd never defile the beach. She goes into the woods like any civilized creature. The dogs are not the problem. Are they ever, really?

---The shadows are long this morning already, I've lain (is that really a word?) in bed too long again, but it was probably 3 before I fell asleep. That is six hours, not too much I think. It was so late because we had a disagreement about sex. (scene deleted)

So that stands between us this morning,

--Thunder is making its way closer, rumbling on the slight breeze that barely ripples the surface of the lake. The air is heavy and damp with anticipation, the night pregnant with the storm that promises cooler weather.

There is nothing quite like a storm coming across the lake. Lightning cracks the vista like the sunset, highlighting the striation of the clouds and sizzling into the water the way the sinking sun does. We can watch it from where the lake curves on the horizon, and can tell within minutes when it will hit the shoreline. The speed with which the storm approaches warns us if we will lose power. Not this time for us, but they do in town.

We leave the decking that leads down the bluff to the beach when our wine classes are empty, and when we are tired of swatting away the flies and mosquitoes. Scout left at dusk with the boys; none of them have patience for friendly chatter. Tonight it is the neighbors who bought the cottage of our closest friends out here…Bill and Molly. Odd that our best friends were in their seventies. Bill taught us to sail when our children were still small enough to all fit comfortably in the sunfish sized boat, and sold us his Hobie cheap when he moved to Florida full time. I miss them. I miss the boat. It stayed on the beach one beautiful fall clear into October. We didn't want to bring it up and put it away… just one more sail. Then the storms came, and it was gone.

--more dream notes:
--In the next dream I was throwing a party for people from my husband's office at my mother's tiny house. Distributed very fancy invitations, vellum paper inserts and tied with satin ribbon… 5-8:30, dinner. Then had to clean the house… my mother was a lot of things but never much of a housekeeper. As if anyone with seven children, a full time job, widowed at 45 ever could be. I pull the party together, everything from plates to bathroom towels; I am good at this. Her bathroom was the same as when she died, handicap equipped, in fact, everything seemed the same as when she died but her. She was two-legged and sober and helpful, even taking me to the factory where she'd worked to get plates from the Employee Club closet. We didn't end up doing that because she clearly thought it was wrong and really, what did plates matter to me? In the end, the plates were the plastic ones with seashells that I'd bought for my daughter's graduation. Nothing fit together in the dream.

--Cool cloudy morning, gentle waves on the lake and the whole neighborhood seems to be sleeping in. I've done some research this morning on the Resort Era in South Haven. Famous Jewish resorts. Some of them world renowned: the Catskills of the Midwest, they said, from 1910 to about 1960. Only a few still standing, most destroyed by fire or the greed of people wanting to own a piece of the lake. Am I any different?

The resorts were torn down, mostly in the sixties, condos, private homes and in one case a parking lot replaced them. At least now I understand the city flocking to the north beach…the north side of the River. It is where all the resorts were, across a drawbridge; there is no bluff to speak of there. Our side has the lighthouse. We also have trees and the state park, and the bluff and no crowds, most of the time, but we are a few miles out of town so the comparison isn’t really fair.

--The boys are interesting this year. They aren't eating as much as boys their age and size should eat, and they are staying up til one a.m. every night. Strawberry pop tarts, blueberry pancakes (the blueberries are amazing this year) and taco pizza sustain them. The term 'beach brothers" comes to mind. I am very fond of the boy my son has chosen as his friend… he is middle child sweet and so easy to get along with. His favorite phrase: "You’re funny."

--The air has finally changed back to typical Michigan air… the morning was in the sixties and everyone complained that there weren't enough covers on the beds. Over our heads is the question of whether we leave today, controlled inmterestingly enough, by the girls even though they aren't bere. If my closing is Friday, then we must leave today. If not, we can take one more day. It feels like we are stealing time. We take it.

We build a bonfire on the beach, roast hot dogs that somehow ended up without sand (unheard of!) and watched the beginnings of the meteor shower. We note how we've seen the stars from so many angles this year, it seems like different skies. Four shooting stars should be good luck, shouldn't they?

After 20 hours of driving, more stops for fast food than I can in good conscious count, and listening to all 17 discs of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince on cd, we are once again at our permanent address.

When we arrived, the back door was standing wide open. One of the cats was in the front yard. The trash container was lying on its side in the street, it's lid in the neighbors yard. After determining that no one had broken in, we ventured inside.

Stacks of mail were strewn all over the kitchen. In the family room, cables for x box and computers and tivo webbed their way through furniture. Paper cups and sandwich wrappers decorated every flat surface. An air pump, from the garage was lying on the rug a friend sent from Turkey years ago, and a gold toned soccer ball, fully inflated, was nearby. A chocolate cake from the grocery story, 80% gone, sat near the stove. The TV was on, 19 messages lit the voicemail box. My bathroom was littered with the paraphernalia of a teenager. The drawer… yes, THAT drawer, in my vanity, was ajar.

You see, my son stayed home to "house sit."

He was at work when we got home.

It's a good thing.

My younger son ventured upstairs, but came back down right away. "Something happened in Jon's room."

"What do you mean?"

"Everything is like… messed up… and there's a blanket over the window."

My son later explained that he "decided" a few days ago to "take over your bathroom."

And that since he was not going to bed until 5 am any night, that even the sun that filtered through the wooden venetian blinds bothered him sleeping. To his normal "wake up hour" of 2 . PM.

When I left, there was fruit, cheese, milk, and meals he could warm up in the refrigerator. When I returned, not only was that still "there"… but also left over sushi, pizza, chicken wings, pasta….etc.

Did I mention he leaves for college in two weeks?

-Quote from my best girlfriend D: "I was the one that found that man. He was still making noise, but everything was crumpled, arms, leg, neck. It was so apparent that he was dead, even with the noise. I was the first responder. It was a long fall. But a short jump."

home

I've kept a running journal off line the last two weeks, taken dozens of pictures and even got some work done. Mostly though, I've spent time thinking.

That isn't always a good thing.

Tomorrow I have to close one of those transactions that should have been clean, simple and easy for everyone. Of course Murphy's Law is in full force and effect, so I will lose a day tomorrow trying to patch tears from loose ends that never should have been dangling. At least none of them were my fault.

Then I will edit my journal entries, and post them. I'm sure everyone here is just waiting to read what I have to say in my own version of "how I spent my summer vacation"... but trust me, it's okay to breathe. Just how exciting can walks on the beach be, after all?

lake thoughts

Laughter. What a sweet sound … genuine, spontaneous laughter. My son and his friend are caught in that boy world that I always expected to be found here, that my older son didn't find as he spent his days reading and sleeping. They've found streams pouring into the lake and rather than be content to build sand castle damns, they follow them into the woods and chase frogs and look for turtles and arrowheads. They found a wild tom turkey yesterday, and you'd have thought they'd discovered gold. Priceless.

They go into the lake, the temps in the mid seventies and they are fearless. In reality, they teach swimming lessons, work as lifeguards. Between them, they have more medals than I can count. Yet two days ago, a nineteen-year-old boy drowned, while his two friends sunbathed on the beach. One must never ever trust the lake completely. So I make arbitrary rules… "Don't go out farther than the sandbar" I tell them, though I know that the water is barely five feet deep between the shore and the sandbar, and as shallow as one foot on it. Doesn't matter… they accept the limit and turn into human dolphins diving the waves, arching tight backs while their near-man rippling muscles glisten under bronzed skin. I want to take their picture, film them the way I did the dolphins in Maui, because there is some sort of metaphor there that I've not quite got yet. Something about connections I think. Instead, I watch them and hold the photograph in my mind.

I've been having odd dreams since I came here, which means I've been sleeping. I am not sure what that means either. That the air is easy to breathe, that I get enough exercise to be tired? That I feel at peace here in a way I haven't at home for so long? Or does it have more to do with the need for the nightmares to assert themselves, get their message across? Do you believe there are other lives in your mind that have either lived before, live concurrently, or are yet to be set free? I just don't know. I know that there are words there whose origin I can't trace, so I try to honor that as much as I can.

I jot down the bits I can remember in the mornings. I am forced to in a way, because I have to connect to the internet by phone. Waiting gives me a chance to write without interruption or the addiction of email.

I've been reading, luxuriously slow reading. Savoring bits and pieces of novels to steal, as my last writing professor advised. Putting together a house leaving messages of what should be attended to for its new owner, taking off sunglasses to hear better. And this from Baxter: "If God appeared on this earth again, lawyers would sue Him."

I've started talking to people too, something I've been criticized for here. That I am aloof, lost in my head and not the friendly one. I am asking for their stories, quietly, casually, and have learned much from the two lesbians, both in their sixties and bleach blond, though different from the blonds from Texas, these two are beefy, full figured women, though I note that their legs are really quite shapely. It is from the hips up that they balloon, almost identically, and I wonder if it is what they do, or how they eat or if in fact it is heredity. They tell me about the weather and the gossip of people I'm supposed to know, but have forgotten.

There is also a nice looking man down the beach a ways, hair mostly white, with a touch of the blond it once was showing. I like him mostly for the pace at which he walks, slow, languid, as though there are things on the beach that must be found and nothing much up ahead to worry about. That seems to be the right way to walk on a beach such as this.

He likes my dog.

They all like my dog. She's well known before I arrive, a stick slut for whomever will toss whatever piece of driftwood she can hold between her teeth. Only these strangers who toss it for her, these people charmed by her intelligent eyes, don't know she has no sense. They have not put salve on her bloodied paws or given her analgesic to make the pain of getting up and lying down easier at night when the sun has gone down and she aches. I tell them, she doesn't know any better, and they simply think I'm mean, not to throw for her myself.

She knows though, and comes with me.

In the morning before the maid comes.

Maid…what a misnomer. She is really the Woman in Charge. The lady that actually cares about the dust and cobwebs in this monster of a house, with the power to send me cowering in my office, behind my precious stacks, while she takes aggressive command of the rest of it. I have to scurry about gathering all the books and papers I've left all over the place before she comes, or risk never seeing them again. So the office grows worse and worse… (grammar police, please check that word usage?) I've banned her from that room you see. For me and the papers, it is safe haven. But of course I end up losing everything in the attempt. Eh.

Even now I am not in my office. She will be here in half an hour or so, but I can have these moments to sit with my coffee in the short silk robe the color or the sky, greeting the words while my girl cat, who spent the night outside, cuddles against the laptop's warmth. The coffee is Costa Rican today, fresh ground. I sent the last of the coffee I brought from Hawaii to a friend yesterday. That's okay though. He did introduce me to Costa Rican coffee after all. ahhh.

I'm practicing a writing strategy this week, that of just typing in the journal to get the words flowing. I'm dreadfully behind on my personal deadlines, and worse, I've let myself get out of the habit of writing. I'm immersing myself writing books, determined to actually read one of them. This weeks choices include Ann Lamont, Bird by Bird, William Zinsser, On Writing Well and The Gotham Writers book on Fiction. I decided it was time to get back to the basics. Or maybe I'm hoping that if I bore my self with the how to books I will write just to win the right to read fiction again. Yes yes. I do play games in my head, don't I?

Enough about that. I may have to break a rule and write about my trip. But only if I can find an angle that makes you feel… something. For now, I have to get dressed because the enemy is approaching and I have to save the lives of some dust bunnies.

sounds

Hello darkness, my old friend, I've come to talk to you again,

Do you remember Simon and Garfunkel? The voices of my angst ridden youth.
Yes, it is dark now, well past one a.m. Time seems caught on a wheel that hasn't decided yet if it's going forward or backward.--too much travel. Tree frogs or bats are squeaking outside, … it's an eerie loud sound, like so many mice up in the trees. No, that's not it at all. It's the sound of clean athletic shoes changing direction on a gym floor. I am fond right now of images that evoke a change in direction.

Because a vision softly creeping, left its seeds while I was sleeping

I was a geeky college kid, always writing poems and staying up all night just to listen to music. I'll even confess most of it was chick music… Carole King and Melissa Manchester and Elton John. The Moody Blues were setting trends then… An aside: I forgot to mention that I saw them in concert on Father's day… the music was the same, the guys were no longer hot…. And the crowd. Oh dear. Just as you'd imagine. Wrinkled hippies with gray hair. The women should have kept those bras they burned in the sixties… gravity didn't treat them well. And they still wanted to groove to the music. I'm still processing that… always the observer you know?

And the vision, that was planted in my brain, still remains.


My journals from that era are introspective, as though I was aware of metamorphosis and hadn't yet decided what to do with it. Then, as now, I wore as many hats as I could…. I was a sorority girl, but served on the political science counsel (apartheid was our issue, and oil. Sigh. Oil.) I was an editor for the literary journal for three years, but don't think I ever missed a frat party. I was a Serious Student. I was open minded (ha!) about sex.

I just realized what a mess this entry is becoming. Feels good. I'm not a tidy person. I do love a good stack of books and papers to burrow behind on my desk. I enjoy the clutter in my head. There are so many interesting corners to dwell in.

I have one more trip this summer, and it isn't really a trip as much as it is respite. My place at lake Michigan. No fish out there pretty enough to swim out to see, no salt. Just beautiful waves, miles and miles of unspoiled beaches, and if I'm lucky, quiet.

Within the sounds of silence.

vacation

It amazes me really, to wake in paradise yet another day, and find the words still hiding. Everywhere I look, from a double rainbow over the mountain to the indescribable blue of the sea, my eyes water with a sweet orgasmic ache, manifestation of the need to see it all. I am beginning to believe the only place I can really write at all is tucked away in a closet or an attic with no windows, where the words are the only sensation of pleasure there is. Perhaps this is why "happy" people don't do much writing. I keep telling myself that I am filling the well with beauty, but I still feel like such a fraud.

Yet even in paradise the small motors hum and manicure of the grounds, the garbage truck grinds the same loud growl of garbage trucks everywhere. Tennis balls plunk against the sweet spot of the rackets on the courts outside the lanai, and the expletives of the players are universal as well. I am still charmed by wind in the palms, though here on the sixth floor they are at eye level and look more like prairie grass swaying in the wind.

And the only thing more seductive, more intense than the land, is the sea, my friends beneath the water: A sea turtle, diameter about 4 feet, as he gulped for air, then dove for food. He and I alone on the edge of the circle of swimmers, not unlike last years nurse shark. No one around to hear my exclamation of joy at his grace. The dolphin who broke surface a few feet away, flirting like a waiter looking for tips.

I would write more, but there are colors to absorb, neon blue racing stripes on black spines and cartoon colored fins waiting for me to come and play. There is sand waiting to smooth the citified calluses from my feet and the sun waiting with its paintbrush of bronzes to lighten my hair and darken my skin. There is coconut oil to smooth over the merging freckles of my arms, aloe to cool my overcooked shoulders and when all that is finished, there is sweet dark rum.

If I'm not exhausted after dark, I'll try to write again, but it has already been a week and I've not adapted to that yet. I can hear the waves kick up on the night wind and the lullaby is irresistible. It amazes me most, waking in paradise, that it is from real sleep that I awaken. It's been a long, long time.

waking to water

The sprinklers were my alarm clock today, leaving the palm fronds dripping like paintbrushes. The mist that hangs in the already too saturated air lets the flowers thrive: plumbago, oleander, impatiens, begonias –Their names like a foreign language rolling off my tongue, without even adding the meanings gardeners of the old world would give them.

The sun is not quite up yet, though I can tell that it has cleared the horizon somewhere beyond my line of sight. The glowing is just-after-dawn light, no romantic rose tones or violet clouds to soften it. Mid-summer, past solstice, I prepare to do what all Houstonians who can do…escape. West, first, to find the mystique again of the islands, see if it will charm me from this slump in mind and spirit. Then north, add to the list of discovery a place I've never been, and try to see through the eyes of a twelve year old (and a dog) again. Then back to my beloved Lake Michigan. Back home.

The strange thing is there isn't that call to go this year. The existence of people makes the difference… the ones I knew are more distant, the ones I know now becoming closer. I suppose I could relate that to the sunrise, too, seeing things clearly. I've certainly done my share of complaining. Reality is this; there is beauty no matter where I look. I just need to accept it for what it is. So the ocean here is not blue with waves to surf and sugar sand beaches to walk on. It is still the sea. The seaweed that clutters the shore may look like detritus to the casual observer, but I know it is Sargasso grass, washed in from a meadow on the ocean. Full of life. I've seen the sea turtles come home here; I've seen the dolphins dance. I've seen the pelicans dive with graceful precision, smashing the image of awkward bird into a thousand tiny droplets shining on their wings. How can I not be home wherever there is the sea?

In two days, though, it will be the Pacific. My first ocean, and yes, my favorite. There are some fish friends waiting for me there, out in a crater below the surface. I'll tell them hello for you.

lessons from my animal companions

It is perfectly quiet this morning. No electronic noises other than the fan in this computer and the constant whoosh of the a/c. I'm sitting in an armchair in the family room, the sun streaming in the window behind me and the cool touch of the air-conditioned air sliding down my bare arms like a blanket when rising. One cat lies on the footstool at my feet, the other in the chair next to me, and Scout is still sleeping up on my son's bed. It makes me smile every time I go wake them, to see them sharing a bunk. She knows she's not supposed to be there, but it is so soft, she risks it. She also knows no one will get mad at her. She's just too sweet.

Wouldn't that be lovely? To have the kind of personality that no one ever got mad at? To always be welcomed with physical touch, a hug, a scratch behind the ears, on a good day a full body rub, complete with tummy pats?

Yet, to always be the dog wouldn't work for me. Lately I've struggled with my sideline roles in relationships that are important to me. I've spent my life behind the scenes, in the center of the action, but often in charge of what goes on "onstage." Why now then? Why do I ponder the reality of it? I don't know.

Last night I met friends for dinner. Writer friends. We were in class together for about seven months, but as I've seen with many such classes, a bond was formed. Perhaps because we trusted each other with that creation more delicate even than children: our words in fledgling form, still undecided if we would let them fly or give them up. I feel protective of these people, knowing that as soon as we venture beyond this circle there are chinks in the wall, someone else to say, "no, this point of view doesn't work," or "your grammar is atrocious," or "this is not credible." Writers are supposed to be tough, I know, but not with everyone. We have to have heart, somewhere. Besides on the page. Don't we?

I've gotten out of the discipline of writing. I used to be able to say, when asked, that I spent about four hours every morning, writing. Words that I save from day to day to let me understand what it is around me that matters. And too often when I let the words free to someone else's eyes, they lose what it is I wrote them for. That happens, that is fiction, but when I start listening too much to the outside criticism and too little to the word whispers in my own head, then it stops being my creation. I have to get better at listening. To myself.

The cat at my feet is curled into a position where his little paws are crossed and curled toward his soft body, and he looks so very vulnerable… not the big brave lion who can chase squirrels from the yard and capture any bird he wants with his speed, but a kitten again, trusting that so long as he stays close to me, he is safe and can rest. It gives him the courage to be that other cat. I think that is a metaphor.

plain old summer heat

I've been neglecting this journal. Not intentionally, but it has historically been where I've written just before sleep, and frankly, this week sleep is on no schedule at all. I'm almost over the terrible sinus infection that disabled me earlier, but the allergies and the HEAT are keeping me inside, and thus my bio rhythms are all screwed up. Blah blah blah.

I am missing my Midwest summers. They get hot too, just not so thickly hot as it is here, nor for as long. Cooling off becomes a challenge, a game of sorts, of putting fans in just the right windows, wetting palms and feet and inner elbows. Sleeping nude with no blankets, staying up late because it is too hot to sleep. Here, it is all… artificial. Just dial the a/c to the temp you want it to be and voila! There is no reason to be uncomfortable.

Today I'm making sun tea out on the patio, and have promised myself time in the sun on a raft in the water, just to remember it is summer. Maybe it's because I'm all tied up with this age thing… I have a birthday coming up, but I'm so damned nostalgic these days. I want to make out at a drive in movie and feel the thrill of just one button unbuttoned… remember that? When just –that much- would make you feel so turned on you could just melt? Or am I the only one who ever has those conversations in my head? The little games where you tell your self… if he does .. x…. then I will do … y…. and if he does… z… I willllll…

Sigh. Summer romance used to be something I enjoyed. Three of my most significant relationships began as summer romances, including my marriage. Something about the freedom to be yourself in the summer that made it more intense. Did you have summer romances? How did they get started?

I'm very far behind in my work, so I'm going to end this now. I'll try to get back in the habit. Soon. I promise.

a taste of a day

The sun is melting into the sky today, the light growing thin and colorless the higher it rises into the heat of the day. The houses and trees are in silhouette, no detail visible, except their shapes, and those in sharp contrast of black against the pale. There are no shades of gray at all it seems, only dark, and light.

The infection in my head runs the same course, either I am completely out, or completely awake, there is no gentle waking or quiet falling asleep. Coughs wrack, and I fear I will keep my partner awake. I know that I have time to rest later, and he doesn't, so I let the sunrise coax me from slumber and remember my routine.

In reward, a splash of rose on the horizon reminds me that it is when things seem most clear that we sometimes get surprised. There may be color to this day after all.

Even as I begin to close this page, insert the date and move to more productive projects, the morning dove and songbirds remind me to use all of my senses. Light or dark, hot or cool, those are easy. Melodious, fragrant? Harder. But the hardest, and thus most interesting, is how does the day taste? Today it is clouded with the salty taste in my head, diluted with fresh water, "natural" (from a bottle?), and soon coffee. Bitter, beautiful coffee. And now, it is full light and the day has arrived.

unwell

I seem to have acquired ocd from hanging around people online. I've had no discipline to finish anything lately, except perhaps this last glass of cab for the night. Hmm.

Part of it is the heat. Sultry baking days. I am reminded that the summer here is like the dead of winter up north, dangerous to be out in, and interminable. Even the pool is over 90 degrees. That isn't refreshing.

It is all relative though. In Michigan, the air rarely gets to 90 and if the water gets into the seventies, we think of it as warm. I need to get back there. My toes curl at the thought of that soft sand.

I've had trouble staying awake today. The sinus infection seems to have control, and if not that then the drugs. Don't talk to me about mixing my wine with my drugs, I'm not driving.

People have been asking me what happened to Megg. I wish I could summon her on a moments notice, feed her a little alcohol and set her loose with her knives and poisons and oh yes those long nails of hers, I do. She's apparently still pissed though, because all I've seen of her in a while is this little fascination with Moths:

They were thick, smoke smudges flitting from the ceiling of the pantry, their casual flight long enough only to choose another place to land. I could close the door and pretend they weren’t there, but even the knowledge that they were there, feasting on the staples, breeding, hatching, multiplying, made me feel dirty. They had to go.

Yes yes, a long way to go. Insects and snakes seem to be what has Megg's attention right now, and sadly, not even the one eyed ones. That concerns me most of all.

expo observations

What do I say about book expo that hasn't already been detailed by the experts? I suppose that my perspective is as legitimate as anyone's… and as a "writer" perhaps I saw things that the publishers, agents, booksellers etc didn't see. I saw people.
Some that made an impression:

~~a younger writer… very good looking, who hadn't quite gotten the hang of the autographing scene, because he took time to talk to me about his book. The themes in it were disturbing, the kind that made me turn my head and look back into his eyes. "is it autobiographical?" I asked. "Not most of it." he replied. I will read it. If it's good, I'll even pimp it a little. He had beautiful eyes.

~~an older gentlemen, with a wonderful British accent, a few years older than me, or maybe not, maybe he was just significantly taller, who didn't "get" the joke of the promo items in the erotic writers booth that said "got sex?" I tried to explain about the whole "got milk?" phenomenon, but I suspect he was also a writer and had never paid any attention to American advertising. Either that or he wanted to keep me in conversation, as I'd picked up a handful of the promo items …I wanted to take them back to a writer friend who'll think the slogan is clever. I thought they were matches and hard candy suckers. It wasn't until I returned to the hotel that I actually looked at them… and discovered they were in fact brightly colored… and flavored? Condoms. I thought the gentleman was lingering a bit long…

~~peripheral connections. As a lawyer, wannabe writer and prospective publisher, I wasn't sure I was legitimate to attend the expo. The registration materials didn't have a specific category for me, so I could only lump myself in with the ubiquitous "industry professionals." It was only when I got email from Author's Guild offering a huge discount on the registration that I decided it was okay. I didn't need to worry. Seems that if you've ever read a book you qualify, despite the warnings that it is not open to the general public and that you should be prepared to present business cards to prove that you are, in fact, an industry professional. Reminded me of the advice a multi-published author gave to a crowd at a workshop regarding publishing houses that read only "agented" material. There is no restriction on who can be an agent. If they want only agented material, you print yourself some letterhead that says Your Name Literary Agency at the top and mail your manuscript. So if you are reading this, and interested in going to Expo next year, go. It's May 19 in DC. Lots of great entertainment, we saw both Billy Crystal and Bill Maher. hearing writers talk about their books, meeting some of them, learning about issues… great fun. No comments on how easy I am to entertain either.

~~as in all conventions, it is clear that the meat and potato meals take place at the private parties after hours and the meetings set up beyond the exhibition floor. The value to someone like me is in the contacts made, and the perspective, honing still what I want to be when I grow up. There were many moments when I wished I'd had a book to peddle, as the offerings don't seem that daunting. There were times when I wished I had YOUR book to peddle… yes, you. And you. There is a market. There is.

~~between Erin and I, we managed to pick up over 50 advance copies of books, many autographed by authors. When we surveyed the loot back in the hotel, we felt like any freshman at such a show. We hadn't considered how we were going to get them all home. Adding that we took the cheap though convoluted route, there was a lot of schlepping on trains and planes, and my weightlifting muscles were taxed beyond comfort. As I'm committed to actually commenting or otherwise responding to anything I read, it's going to be an interesting and eclectic summer.

I'll have to do another entry on New York outside expo, just because there are images I want to capture and there isn't a story to do it with yet. I'm sure there will be though.

chaos

I hear the sea in the wind this morning, the applause of waves in the leaves and the depth in the monotone sky. Off to the south there is a lightening of sorts, where the storm gray gives way to platinum, polished by the sun wherever it is. It is like the beach, where the sand is dark and soft near the water, but as it dries, the darkness disappears. Far up on the shore the wind can pick it up grain by grain and toss each one to chaos, or, I suppose, order.

The words are going there for me, some in chaos, some tamped down on the hard packed edges of my mind. The best part about those is that it is easy to walk on the sea soaked shoreline. The better exercise comes from the part of the beach where the loose grains are tossed in the wind though, where I have to close my eyes to the chaos to avoid tremendous pain, and where, when I can successfully make the trek, the muscles in my thighs scream of the burn that comes from broken down tissue. I like that pain. It means that tomorrow, I will be stronger. It means the words were worth fighting for.

I glance back to the sky to see if the sun is going to make its appearance, cursing the full moon a bit for the fatigue I am flooding with a strong hazelnut brew, and see that instead the sun has gone back to sleep, and the sky softened like the eyes of a lover beckoning me back to bed as well. Tempting, oh so tempting.

reading the dictionary for fun

In the workshop I finished in March, there was a student whose work included a character he wanted to portray as "nerdy"… to do so he, the author, gave the character what he considered an odd habit; reading the dictionary.

I hate to admit this, but if that is characteristic, then I'm very guilty. I just opened the list like dictionary in Word to make sure I was using the word estuary (the wide lower course of a river where the tide flows in, causing fresh and salt water to mix) correctly. When I got through the fifth Latin definition down the alphabetical list beneath the word, I realized what I was doing. It was bad enough that I was reading them. Much worse that I had to retype them into a document. You can't copy and paste from the Word dictionary, at least my version on my computer.

I hate to confess that if that is the definition of nerdy, it fits.

I've not written a word of fiction since The Rejection. I expect another one on Tuesday/Wednesday, Then I leave for New York to hobnob 9to socialize in a familiar manner with somebody, especially somebody considered to be of a higher social class) with The Publishing Industry, including my own daughter. At that point, I will feel not only nerdy, but fraudulent as well. Except I do know a lot of "stuff."

I am most concerned with the designation of wannabe. Iff I do it, I want to do it on a grand enough scale to be taken seriously. Truth is I've done quite a bit of research on the Publishing Company, and know that it is something that can be done. One publisher I talked to told me that he was in the industry solely because he wanted to be… at least I have a concept I want to pursue. That publisher sent me to Book Expo last year for more information. If you don't know, I was well on my way, literally on the threshold of the Expo, when I was called to my mother's bed to witness the pulling of the plug. Everything went on hold then. It is time to get back into motion though; a year of stagnation is too much.

Ah but back to the dictionary. I went to Kemah the other day, in a veiled… or perhaps I should say shrouded… attempt … to entertain my in-laws. Kemah can be fun but has a sense of knock-off Disney about it. Tourists like it. I liked it when I was a tourist too. The good thing about company is seeing the city through their eyes, and remembering why you don't live where they are. My father in law, ever the daredevil, wanted to go up in the Tower… which was little more than a glassed in elevator with a view of the Bay. Mother in law didn't of course…. Afraid of heights… so she chose a bench to sit on while the rest of the family went up. A good Daughter in Law would have stayed with her on the Bench and talked about… I don't know; I've never been a good daughter-in-law.

The tour guide intoned through loudspeakers that we were on a bird migration superhighway, and that the area was an estuary. (See the connection? I know, lame, but it's late.)

Moving water: creeks, rivers, waterfalls, are a source of aquatic joy for me, so much so that I chose my college in part based on its view of the Ohio. Generally now, a river is not enough, not even the Mississippi. To find the aquatic release I need it takes waves, and lately even my freshwater Lake Michigan waves have seemed second rate.

Maybe I have combined, the tides rolling in with the decades, the fresh water and the salt. (We don't need to comment on wide bottoms btw) ...so much with the salt that I don't fit anywhere. I'm not comfortable anymore in Boardrooms because I just don't take it seriously now. Nor am I quite artsy enough to fit the vagabond writer's world. So perhaps this company is the blend I'm looking for. Perhaps.

If you play Texas Hold'em you know how frustrating it is for my opponents to continue to lose to me on the River. If they only knew about estuaries.

Catching a ride on the upswing.

Sounds like a title that should be about golf or something, but in truth, it is about moods. Ever notice how when you are on your way down to the abyss that the people most likely to pull you out of the funk are the people you are least likely to find around? But like golf, when you actually figure out the issue, make contact with the ball so to speak, there those people are, laughing with you, moving back into that arc of sunshine aimed at the green, looking for that flagpole raised high and straight where the grass is trimmed neatly into a triangular… oops. Wrong flagpole….

Okay, so I didn't quite hit bottom, didn't quite feel the depth of depression that I know exists before I consciously turned it around and changed direction. I'm sorry Moods, I just don't have time for that right now.

There are snakes in the story I'm working on this week.(it had to be snakes. i hate snakes!) I used to think snakes were fictitious. My step grandfather… grandma's fourth, remember?… had a farm in Indiana in a place called Clinton Falls. I've written about some of the memories from that place before, but I'd forgotten about the snake until I just typed that. (See what journaling can do?) If you've never spent time on a farm, and by farm I mean one of those places where the family that lived there actually depended upon the fruits of the land and labor to support them, then you probably have never heard of a corn crib. A corncrib was a place to store field corn… as distinguished from sweet corn which is what you eat, whether fresh from the field on the cob, or frozen or canned. Sweet corn. Field corn is hard and dry and ground into meal or fed directly to livestock… seems to me that grain fed cattle eat it cob and all. Field corn is also the basis for many of the consumer products we find in the grocery store.. Everything from the tortillas I used to make enchiladas tonight to the dr pepper my boys are addicted to (since the seventies, high fructose corn syrup, or hfcs, has been the basis of the sweet taste in soft drinks. Not cane sugar. Corn.)

Anyway, on the small farms that prevailed in Indiana, usually less than 200 acres, in increments divisible by 80… we can talk land units another time if you want… the point was to keep back enough of a corn crop to feed the livestock kept on the farm. The rest of the crop was sold at a Co-op, where generally it was transported by train or barge to a larger market, where processors would buy it at "free market" (we can talk about subsidies another time too if you want) rates.

A corncrib was where the saved corn was stored. The one on Grandpa Charlie's farm was rectangular, had a tin roof and slats of old wood pieced together like Lincoln logs, so that air could circulate I suppose.

The biggest problem was that a corncrib was not airtight or secure. And all manner of rodents loved to come there for a quick and easy supper. So Charlie got himself a pair of snakes.

I knew they were there, in the corncrib. But I never saw them. I believed in them though. It is true that things you can't see are still real.
I've spent too long on my feet today, pretending to be something that I'm not. I'm physically tired, yet hesitate to close my computer and go to my bedroom. I wonder if I have more in common with the snake or the mice tonight. And with those references, I know it's time to stop.

back to basics

I get complacent, used to things going the way I want them to, in life even if not in my interpersonal relationships. So I was not prepared for the email I got yesterday, advising me that I'd not been chosen to participate in the workshop for which I'd applied.

Rejected.

Okay. Rejection is normal for writers, but this is a new level of rejection. The piece I sent in was not finished... I knew that. But the class was in advanced fiction, not "show me you already know it all fiction." My sense was that they wanted samples that showed you knew the basics.

Maybe I was wrong.

I'm okay with not finishing first, but not even to be in the honorable mention list is harsh.

Yesterday, I was ready to quit. Yesterday, I let the full moon come in my bedroom window and sparkle off tears that were self indulgent and stupid. "Real writers would be up writing," I whimpered. (Oh to be able to live in purple prose!)

To which my bedmate inquired, "Do you want to go write?"

And I replied no. But didn't sleep. Or anything else for the voyeurs out there.

Today, I resolved to get back to the things I know. To reestablsh the confidence in my work that I've let slip away. I'd sent the piece to an old friend who used to be a fan, and got back insult upon injury. "You can do better than this. Who are you listening to? I see a lot of voices in this piece, but not one of them is yours."

He's wrong of course. Mine is there, but it doesn't know what it's supposed to be doing. It is confused.

I opened up my most recent paper journal this morning, and wrote the obligatory three pages. It was even legible, which clues me in already that there is a problem. If my words aren't coming faster than I can pen them, they are forced, unnatural. I read back over what I've written and see mostly masochistic lashings... all the things I said I'd have done by "now" that I've not even begun. Plenty there to kill all the creativity.

Then I open the word-a-day email, with this quote: Grasp the subject, the words will follow. -Cato the Elder, statesman,
soldier, and writer (234-149 BCE)

So that is the question of the day. WTF is the subject? Pretty sure it isn't complacency.

on the outside

I'm depending on water today. Not just water, Ozarka bottled water. The allergens are overwhelming today, so I gave in to the need to breathe and took the zyrtec my doctor scolds me for stopping at all. "You aren't in the Midwest anymore" she says. "The air is not good and the secondary infections are dangerous."ugh.

But it makes me tired, and thirsty, and vulnerable. None of those are conducive to functioning in modern society. Even virtual society.

I know I could avoid the symptoms of whatever it is in the air by staying indoors. Just going to my nice office, where the air conditioning and the hepa filters keep things clear… bur I can't. It is criminal to be indoors when the weather is nothing less than orgasmic. I know that is a silly use of that term, but its been stuck in my head for days and I had to type it out so it will move on…. Well. . maybe that is a little to Hemingway-esque itself.

Moving on.

A-word-a-day is focusing on eponyms this week. Monday's was Gresham's law, the theory that bad money drives good money out of circulation. The theory extrapolates to other areas as well; politics of course come to mind. Who in their right mind would run for office?

And writing. If one or two biographies of celebrities weren't making it to the shelves, those resources might be going to something memorable.

I'm waiting up for Tubby the cat to come back. I opened the door to call him inside, and he went out. I don't need more legless lizards or de-feathered birds in the living room. I do need his overstuffed cuddling. And for his sister, Buffy, to stop crying at the door. They only really miss each other when one is on the outside.

I guess I understand that, too.