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Okay so sex doesn’t induce but semen contains some prostaglandin, and having an orgasm may stimulate a few contractions. What the hell, sometimes myths are true. Like the myth of finding a place to call home. Back in New Orleans we are active in the find a restaurant game – one that doesn’t close before 8 PM and one that is possibly open – but is it for lunch or just dinner? – no one seems to know. What I do know is that driving back from the gym today – yes it is open – hallelujah – the lights were all out and I forgot my cell phone and there are nails and stuff in the street so I was just waiting to have a flat on a dark corner without a phone – lovely. In New Orleans that would be a bad night but post-Katrina it could be a terrible night.

The city is clawing it’s way back. N installed an electric water heater so baths were taken. Hair will get washed one of these days. Meanwhile, the hood is a mess – trash everywhere and the buildings seem to keep regurgitating it. But no coffee or sandwiches in sight. Hoping soon to get some kind of food operational around here particularly since the gas isn’t on and so cooking is an issue too. But baby steps right?

Tomorrow is cut up the tree that fell in the backyard day. We got a chainsaw after we heard the guys wanted $2700 to cut it up – what goes on I ask you? – some kind of insane gouging. How we are ever going to get our house finished with workers running amuck charging outrageous amounts of money for stupid things like cutting up a tree is beyond me.

S was in town with D, her husband, and they were going to take the Mercedes but decided it was too old and had too many miles and was basically fucked up. Uh duh. Meanwhile on the way to Uncle D’s funeral, Mom took a wrong left turn and nipped a truck of which the guys spilled out and started demanding cash. Turns out it was a commercial truck owned by someone in Texas (of course) and Mom gave them her Geico card and they called and told the agent that Mom tried to bribe them with cash. The usual fiasco that has no real way of knowing what really went down. But thank goodness she didn’t give them my insurance card because I would have had a fit. That is the beginning of having now to deal with my mother and her propensity to find trouble and make it more trouble.

Meanwhile L was going to go dinner with us tonight but said instead he couldn’t go out and talk because given the circumstances with K, he needed to sit home and contemplate the fact that his life could drastically change – he could be getting married and having children. Earlier today I was bemoaning something I had done which was so typical of what I do and he said it is your nature. You can’t change it. And I said your nature is to overthink things instead of just letting them be and sure enough he is sitting home right now overthinking K instead of just accepting K.

Today at dinner W made me laugh so hard I almost cried. His face is changing into his adult face. He laughs out loud at jokes and understands adult humor almost. His knock knock joke was off the wall – who is there? – Lou – what goes on? I ask. This kid is like the best person I’ve met in my life – just pulling together the discordant notes and making harmony. What will I do? When I asked him how I was going to face not waking up to him every morning he said – oh, you’re going to suffer – and he’s right. I suffer his absence.

Meanwhile the bayou is low – like Katrina gave all the water we might have needed for a few years and now the air, used to water, is sucking everything out of the land and crevices looking for moisture. The wind is rattling all the loose roof shingles, doors, and windows that were loosened by Katrina. The air is still choked with a weird smell that when you do smell something nice like Jasmine or otherwise you stop and go, what was that, that nice smell? Katrina sucks.

The Muse is dancing on another planet again – away, hard to reach, hard to harness any energy from – and I want to write so bad. I want to get to it – git r done – but I can’t. I want to beat my head on the wall to just let it all come spilling out – to stand on Big Blue and holler like a demon but I can’t. And I try to figure out what are all the things that are keeping me from doing that and they are too fucking many to list – as L is want to say with his list of Reasons to be with K – too fucking many. Reasons not to be with K – too fucking many. I have too many fucking reasons to not stand on Big Blue and yell at the top of my lungs or to beat my head on the wall and let all the words just keep running out of me like the levees coming down and the wind howling at all hours.

These days it’s best to sleep and perchance to dream.

S was in SF seeing John Adam’s Dr. Atomic 0pera while I was in Dallas seeing Opeth – this from band’s website:

“I met David Isberg sometime during the same time I did Eruption. We were into this skateboard thing, you know? All of us were having a fucking skateboard. Anyway, he was really into extreme music as well, and I guess I owe it to him that I like this music so much. He really sparked my interest when he loaned me the Mefisto demotape called “The puzzle”! I was awestruck! They had cool solos, grim vocals, acoustic guitars, everything! I thought they were way better than most Death metal records I had bought.”

The crowd was entertainment in and of themselves from the hook em horns unison screaming for Opeth to the young couple in front of me, laconic and slumping, but occasional outbursts of intense affection. P had a bandstand and a bench in front so no one blocking his view. I couldn’t stop the vertical assent but we switched to club soda and that helped neutralize me again. We meandered to a red painted bar, Reno’s, and found just what we were looking for – bustiers and blonde wig bartenders, a red sequined honey shaking for a man who looks like the only thing he brought to the table was his wallet, an eclectic crowd, back room with poorly improvised table dancing considering it was coffee table height but the girl with the shooters kept hiking her bustier up to show her sexy black panties. Found a girl for P but in order to get close would have had to bum a cig and start that whole chestnut and so wasn’t looking to go down that road with my sensitive lungs having suffered so the past week.

Refugee ranch cabin fever spiked but again Opeth was suprisingly relaxing and Reno’s was awesome, our new fav bar, and all in all sky rockets in the night. Opeth ranged from sweet to devil’s music – clearly what the devil has in mind if you were to go out with him and hear music but then it switches back and forth so always leaves you a little off step.

Was not ready to come home but N was so I slunked in behind him and went to bed and stared at the ceiling. Sky rockets in the night and no where to go. The moon was like a big lazy eye – N’s description – but it might as well have been full for the howling that could have taken place.

In the constant search for adult pop lyrics – “my dream is to be able see you as you are – no more no less” – trying to picture what kind of music to accompany, possibly sweet maybe even just a strumming guitar. How about the head banger song – “what can I do for you” – or the longer ballad of “here are my goals tonight” – but then there is always the darker lyrics – “you will be disappointed by what I am thinking” – which should be accompanied by some sort of sparse stringy instrument that winds down like a Chinese opera.

Meanwhile, last day and night in Arlington. We leave tomorrow for New Orleans. S and I will stay at N’s house while she and B stay at the camp, and then N, V and W go to Jena. L is back to warehouse district. Arlene will feel so lonely without Zeus to play with 24/7. I’ll miss W being around since I won’t be getting him from school as both parents are home. Wish we were going to the Can to sleep in our own bed but that looks like it might not happen for a while. Might end up in Betsy’s house on Soniat and Camp as an interim solution. We have been living in the interstitial spaces for so long we might forget how to reenter cosmos and be normal.

S called yesterday and remarked that I sounded like I was in a better place than I have been – not hinging – she’s always advising me not to hinge – so yes, I guess, I am not hinging but still not getting anywhere with any of anything. Return and rebuild is the new marching order, proceed with love is underlying but not fully realized, I’ve lost the ability to discern my path from whatever it is that is pushing me forward.

In some ways I’m ruined – there’s no return to before, there is no place to hang my hat so it is this constant unknown.

But the strangeness is everywhere – got this note from J today – “you know what i love about creative writing and discussions…there is no compliance, other than verb context, punctuation and spelling. i hate the rules. but sometimes they are helpful…called 9-11 for the first time last night when some guy in street clothes showed up at our house at 9:30PM flashing a badge asking about some woman he thought was in our house…said he was a detective from Los Angeles…had no idea who we were…weird communication…no car visible..told me he could come right in the house if he wanted to…said you dis respecting me?…I shut the door on him..911..cops came turned out he was legit…just awkward and out of his hood.”

In the end Editor’s Notebook was doomed from the get go.

Three more days till we leave – yahoo! Last night on rooftop at Reata I told S about a conversation I had had with the other S about how there is all this hitting on going on at the company and how she said I intimidate men – funny I thought I was demure and approachable – said that is why I only attract strong men and S said does that mean you think I am strong – I’m like what goes on? The rest of the conversation could be encapsulated in one statement – our differences are exaggerated right now – but there is a measure to wait until flood waters recede and one home leads to another home leads us to the home we’ve been trying to create and then there we will stand and evaluate whether we are home to each other.

Meanwhile there is my conversation with L who said to me that I need to ask myself hard questions and he was kind of annoyed with my silliness at August – said he has never seen it to that pitch. “Are you trying to embrace all things adolescent?” and I’m like oh forgive me old wise one but I thought I was titillated to the point of passing out because of how happy I was to be back in NO with people I love and eating at one of my favorite restaurants. Is that not allowed beyond a certain age?

And then N who said she was glad to go back to the camp and get away from her house in midcity – said no reason to be there. They’re having the big bash for B on his birthday this Saturday at the camp – L says that means everyone is forced to drive there and he has the dogs and it is all so overwhelming.

Good grief.

The next five are going to be interminable but soon will be home. The morgue is alive and well in the meantime – silence on the point of … – meanwhile since I took all my Vs for recreation now don’t have them for medication, which of course I totally need today. Trying to gather momentum to at least go out and take a run but difficult when you feel like organs are being compressed in a vice grip. We watched the home made movies last night with W who is visiting from NY – you might think that all’s right with the universe by watching but like all home movies there is a lot of back story that is lacking in the script.

N and L are both depressed about midcity even while I receive mostly upbeat missives from the Faubourg group emails. Just got one a minute ago that says they might not have gas in our area for a long time. N says you can’t even buy a newspaper in the hood. L says no one in the hood. It’s all so daunting but think it will be fine.

One week away and almost home – meanwhile some people want me just to themselves, some want me as an addition to their group, some want me to play 24/7, some just want me to pick up the phone when they call but what I say is when is that time that I get to sit on a porch alone and think about the things that I want? The time alone in my life has grown as rare as the smell of night blooming jasmine outside of New Orleans. I remember M saying she thought the smell was cloying and I knew then instinctively she wouldn’t stay. The other night, on reconnaissance we stopped at the Milan and smelled it going in – such a nice reminder of what New Orleans can yield.

Last night S said he is tired of the show and I know what he means and feel for what he feels and yet the big distraction goes a long way to camoflauging the stuff none of us want to deal with. There it is – you want it to be compelling but sometimes it just makes everyone weary – so you seek alternate routes of entertainment – S is headed to the Adams opera this Thursday.

We arrived in New Orleans after a not so long car ride that included a stop at PreJeans for lunch. N asked the waitress and anyone else that would listen if they had a car to sell as Mom had called crying and said her car was dead. The waitress asked if he had a house to sell as they had lost theirs in Rita. What goes on? It just is so invasive Katrina, Rita, the rains in New Jersey now for 8 days – the finance guy at the Ford dealership said it’s biblical. Well it has biblical proportions but certainly not end of days type stuff.

Meanwhile this roadtrip was actually wonderful or won’rful depending on who is saying it. The first day was somewhat disorienting as we were looking for an epiphany and it was hard to come by and then we started going around the city in different increments – S and N went to get coffee and rediscovered Magazine and I went for a run to the park and saw such varying degrees of repair that it gave me heart. The decision ended up being to come back and the how and whatever is still being figured out but it lead to me going to the Ford dealershp and buying the truck I’ve been wanting while I gave the Volvo to mom who was in need of a well running car.

The city was hard to digest – one block perfectly in tact, the next trees felled and houses regurgitating stuff. Then the smell – no one has collected garbage and it was all out there but when they started getting it it disturbed the protective seal of being there for a period of time and the stench appeared. The refrigerators sit there like white vertical coffins – with notes on some that say “Free” or “Buffet Inside” and then there was the rumor but now confirmed story of Zara’s throwing their meat on the sidewalk and as it rotted the stench causing the entire hood to fall apart – they are now and foreever boycotted because of their total irresponsible actions. But there were also fifty egrets sitting up from the bayou on the neutral ground – hovering near home like the rest of us.

Or there was going to August and seeing John Besh and Michael and having the best best best meal of our life. And just being there brought everything into focus – they are back, they are making it work and they have been trying to be there for the community to the point of John handing out red beans and rice when it was all going down. Is this the best restaurant in New Orleans? If you don’t believe that you are dead. Along with the company – L and N joining us – and the wine Napa Valley Napanook – what could go wrong – everything was perfect. Then going to the Gold Mine to see Bill who we missed and hear the poets come out of the woodwork to support or tell the story of our fair city.

Then we returned – I fear coming back to the morgue but P and W were here to assuage any sullenness that might have tainted our road trip. And we are so on board with leaving on Saturday or Sunday to go back and reclaim our New Orleans life. So many things about yesterday were very nice – and so very hard to put in words – running to Audubon Park, having a crying session on a park bench there, being close to those we love, having moments and hours of utter delightful joy – life sometimes can be so utterly rewarding it is hard to think of what is wrong with it all.

Husband says to his wife in bed – you don’t love me anymore – I feel adrift and depressed. Wife says I love you deeply. Husband says I watch you with the boy and see unconditional love there, I want that love from you like it used to be. Things are different now, says the wife. I’ve been changing. I’m overwhelmed by what goes on and so I move to the nonserious, to the ephemeral and joyful. When life was simpler I clung to the serious – we paired well – you being so serious and cerebral. As I move away from that world and trivialize its icons, you cling tighter and our rift grows. Husband says I feel like a third wheel at times and see your eyes sparkle for others – in the late night sitting close and watching inane canine massages on tv – too close when you’re actually sick. The co-advil makes me wired, says the wife. I try to move back to you but you distance yourself on your island and look disdainfully on my chatter of friends goings on, my choice in music, my desire to have fun and be carefree. It’s not about those things, it is about love, he says. And I do love you, she says. But not like before, he retorts. There are too many things happening externally for me to know whether I can go back to where we were or whether we can pass through this to a better place. I can’t know that right now, she says. I want to feel your sparkle, your passion, he says. If you had to choose you would choose the boy, he says. She responds: I chose you 15 years ago, 10 years ago and again 5 years ago when it was about a boy. But, he says, you wouldn’t make that choice now. She sighs. Most likely not if I had the choice. A discussion of what fatherhood is or is not ensues (ad lib) and then who is or who is not a good father and whether he would have been one or the other. She says, you can’t know that now. I feel unrequited love, he says. I just don’t know what to do anymore, she says. I try to show you love in my actions – fixing your eggs in the morning, folding your clothes neatly for your drawers. I don’t care about those things, he says. No, you never have, she sighs. Again he reiterates he longs for the passion of her. The wife says, it has to come naturally or not at all.

S, N and I are driving to New Orleans tomorrow to check it out and see if we can go home yet. The Can isn’t letting anyone in for two months but S and I could stay at T’s house till the Can reopens. Meanwhile, L is back and he says the first day Max rolled in a dog carcass on the bayou and that was his welcome home. He’s bitter without having had a lot of damage – just bitter about how his world has been disrupted and how it seems overwhelming to get the city back up and running. “I can’t even find a fucking sandwich” was his complaint on his way to teach a remote class for UNO.

Meanwhile today is N&V’s 13th wedding anniversary – and the rest of us in full cowboy regalia went to All Good with P to eat dinner and afterwards went on stage to do some W original tunes (Do Not Enter, I Care About You, Cowboy and Cowgirl, Hey Zeus) – the staff came out to cheer us on. Sent G an email and he wrote back “love you to the moon” – this is the kind of connection you don’t get in California – ever – it won’t happen – and we sent G an architectural book because he lost everything in the flood. Mold is crawling up the sides of his house – his Landcruiser is rusted in the front yard with a note from someone saying they’d buy it off of him just as is. But he threw the complete works of Louis I Kahn into the yard when he found his library water damaged.

Was thinking about the Dylan Thomas quote heard yesterday – my heart is under your hammer – and thinking about A’s notes today about her woes with G, and about S’s woes with M, and L’s woes with K, and all of the woes combined. We are all actors, strutting and fretting across the stage. And the band played on in L’s words.

Right now I feel tempted to tuck and run – save my sanity – spare my heart – learn another way of life – unhinged – I have no room in this life to spread my wings and bask in the glory of the day.

But NO bound we are, to see for ourselves the devastation and restoration progress and to see if it is fit for us to return. Some cosmic joke played on the best city in this country. As if it weren’t precious before, now made more so by coloring the green brown, letting the sky shine through the missing trees, dead carcasses littering the ground, the silence that is not serene, the parties postponed.

N believes the wee wee wee cannot come first, of course he was the one who told me how the piggies really go – you do the wee wee wee by moving past the little piggy and scaling the rest of the leg – makes total sense but I had it just at wiggling hard the last piggy and that was wee wee wee. I was driving down the freeway and thinking to mysel why can’t you start with wee wee wee??

Meanwhile this has been a busy travel week – Portland, Boston, NY and SF and in the meantime a trail of something left in the wake – an earring left here, a coat left on the plane (always for me a sign of disorder in my mind when things turn up missing) – I’ve steeled myself against all matters of the heart so that nothing disturbs me from the path of self actualization – right – okay but here is what I came across in the novella on the plane that gave me pause – this is from William Trevor’s Two Lives –

Sister Hannah’s the wise one. A person’s life isn’t orderly, Sister Hannah maintains; it runs about all over the place, in and out through time. The present’s hardly there; the future doesn’t exist. Only love matters in the bits and pieces of a person’s life.

S&N missed their flight home and so we are driving to NO on Wednesday – thankfully – want to be there, Mom will be there if she isn’t in Baton Rouge, N will drive in, L wants to have dinner as he is returning with dogs since UNO is supposedly starting up on Oct 10 – The Milan is open, Slim Goodies, as well as the F&M and I’ve heard people are getting coffee at Degas – not to mention S heard that August might be opening soon. We are all so ready to be back.

I keep going back to how confusing a day can be – where you think something’s going on but it’s really something else and you just don’t know and it all gets convuluted but you can’t do anything about it because you really don’t know and then all you can do is just try to enjoy your day and bring that kind of happiness into the world. But it leaves you with a feeling like you are being cavalier while all is not right in the universe – I guess you can’t help these feelings of guilt, anxiety and all the other things that seem to fall in line with this. So we went to Dallas and met P for a drive through a neighborhood he discovered – an old 50’s Dallas neighborhood – and then we ended up at old shopping area with little boutiques and Vera Cruz where we had this delicious lunch that still makes me feel full.

The travels to NE were punctuated by a sudden abundance of good food and like a squirrel preparing for the winter we stocked up on all that was presented now making my limited refugee wardrobe tight to say the least. Arlington is so sucky when it comes to food – it really is a like a mote of hell in contrast to what we are used to – NO, SF, NY, Boston, Portland – on and on.

What a strange day all the way around. I told A to turn her back on G and to make sure D was in perspective. While in SF I spoke to M on account of S and she cried after too much sake because B told her that M wasn’t edgy and possibly not the right one, learned that L is pregnant, and still believe there is so much that is missing from the picture that I will never really understand but all in all good to see familiar places and faces this past week – helped me get a little more grounded.

Translates into don’t be impressed by anyone else’s version of the future, you have all the perspective you need right now to fulfill your day. This day has exhausted me because it started with a hurricane (alarm didn’t go off) and it has been thick with trying to stack the piles in their appropriate places and not making any headway. Traveling seems to wear down my defenses so I need to get my guard back up – because it’s like you are going along and then you realize your shields are down and bam, sharp objects poke you and make you bleed. Wonder Woman be my guide.

Some impressions from recent travels to Portland, Boston and New York:

T is a thin Donny Osmond with small teeth. He remembers when he was 11 and I told him to go out and engage with real people because that is where he would learn his best stories – as Eudora Welty said “Southerners live their narratives” – he’s now 14 going on 19 – adorable.

Casco Bay on Saturday morning with D who has started running again and was in Portland for the opening of the Gulf of Maine Research Lab – thoughts of my blessed body remembering how to run again – along the bay, across the old railroad tracks with diamonds dancing on the cold water.

A walk through the Commons in Boston with O – such a bright girl for 27 – reminded me of a year or more with J walking the same speed and having the same type of convo – the ability to have undisturbed serious conversation – provides a perfect venue.

Weather is outstanding

Dinner in South End at Stella – nice looking moes when we walked in and food fabulous – tagliatelle with bolognese – JW and S sitting at next table – Julie’s survivor package she pulled together for us because of Katrina – mojitos, stress mints, relaxing lotion, bath salts.

S laying out on O’s sofa at Custom House snoring up a storm while O and I try to drink bourbon and smoke cigs.

My laugh has changed to a throaty he he he than the higher pitched laugh I used to laugh.

Thing I learned – you can’t recall a sigh.

Or that F tells me he has moved passed lonely and he claims to be a homing device for architects – he looks like one of course which must be reason number one.