Dangermond.org

The days are becoming a cliche – Sunday anticipation and now Monday bam – forest fire erupts of Western proportions. Had the big pow wow this morning with senior people in company after C broadcast a note that was supposed to be for senior mgt only about the shape of the company. We’re down 10% in revenue but while some believe we are in a cyclical downturn and will emerge stronger in the transition – C’s message was we are all going to hell in handbasket if we continue with the status quo and anyone who wants to continue status quo should think about leaving. It is his dark evil twin Skippy who re-emerged after a two year hiatus or maybe he is off the meds – whatever it is he is taking the train to negative town and calling “all aboard.” Two of my colleagues IM’d during the call to say they are quitting. And so Monday begins with a bang.

S called on her way back from her love tryst getaway with M to say she’s not sure about it all because she just doesn’t have the sexual chemistry that is needed to make it work. Ah that old chestnut – all we ask is for the kiss to rock our world and when it comes then you become dog-like, puppy-like nipping at his heels. I want S to have wow, if not with M, then with someone because she should and hasn’t had it since Sh and it’s been a tremendously long dry spell for a girl like her. Not all dry – there have been moments here and there – but while some have come close none have offered the wow and the wow is of the utmost importance in making it all worthwhile.

“Try to stay passionate, leave your cool to constellations. Passion, above all, is a remedy against boredom.” Joseph Brodsky

Sometimes when things are going sideways, all it takes is a little kiss to right things. S calls herself a serial kisser but there needs to be lips to kiss and miss. There is just no way you can think this into happening – it isn’t one of those can do type endeavors – chemistry is everything and it exists or doesn’t and that is the frailty or glory of love.

Sundays are always like that – the gloaming comes and you start thinking anxiously about the week to come. Got word from M that she is safe in LA with J, but that they are not returning anytime soon. We’ve heard these stories – most people interviewed are not going back. Such a mystery when all we can think about is getting home.

The fish bowl is a remarkable place to contemplate what’s to come. There is a low grade of stress that is associated with each thought. Again the only release comes from alcohol and cigs and other artificial stimulation. Everything is built around an anticipation that makes me jumpy most of the time. Half of September is gone, spent here in Arlington, organizing our tiny world into an artificial normalcy.

L called from Hot Springs to say T had called 12 times to disturb their weekend and finally called saying he had injured his back and had to go to the hospital. K left to take care of him and was returning later that evening to their love tryst getaway. T is bordering on desperate now – at first his pluck at winning K back was almost admirable, but now it appears to be a cheap shot at winning at any cost.

Mom seems so happy in her new little world. She said the house is like the one she used to fantasize about in Georgia – a little yellow house with Ronnie and Liz as her roommates. She is staying there indefinitely.

Nagin is opening up Uptown, French Quarter and CBD for residents to return permamently. Mom has rented a “sweet” little house in Houma where she is staying on indefinitely as she is working full time with her patients who evacuated with her. The nursing home in Arabi is gone. We had a quick pow wow last night and determined that we would know more by end of this month what we are or can do. Could be the M’s stay till the baby is born unless they get more definitive news from New Orleans on what is going on there wtih the hospitals.

L is going to Eureka Springs with K for a romantic weekend away – how this fares with T is unknown. N called today to say she and B are going in having gotten a pass – they need their computers. L said that UNO will reopen for business on Oct 10 and everyone will have to work from remote locations. Tulane has said officially it’s Jan 2 they reopen. Not much word on the Can or FSJ area except people are getting in and checking out their houses incognito.

The Muse is behind bars.

S is back from SF so we return to our appropriate gender balance here at the ranch – three boys, three girls – we were off kilter for the week he was gone. Now it’s matter of making it all fun and not letting the tension wind too tight. Last night W brought up the new apartment again so that hasn’t gone away. And A sent a nice little box of clothes and stuff for him which was too sweet. We also received six wonderful bottles of wine from S which completes the glasses and cheese that came earlier. Refugees never had it so good.

I lay on the grass and looked at the stars and now have melancholy tugging at me. N said I shouldn’t have had the 3rd but I don’t remember and then it was too late. The Mexican Train dominoes stink of chemicals so we laid them out to air. What is intoxicating? Talk of skyrocketing – of shielding your eyes against the light – of computers that don’t even get delivered – high on the grass.

On the lighter side of things – I love this – my company feels as if it’s profits are being squeezed so in turn our budgets are being cut back severely for our reporters. Instead of the hit monetary bonuses we used to pay our reporters, we started giving them gift cards – here is one’s response:

i got a $50 amazon e-mail gift certificate. i logged into amazon and bought a couple of books: “How To Start A New Career Doing The Things You Love To Do” and “Multinational Shame: How Global Business Has Beaten The Humanity Out Of Human Resources”

A while ago, when there wasn’t the big relocation and then the big exile, my colleague S and I were talking about how to gain hand in an industry that favors testosterone over the feminine and we were made aware of some power girls in New York who were attending a seminar on how to get ahead. It all came down to having this one item to pull out of your trick bag. When negotiating with a man the woman should look him in the eye and think “I am thinking about my pussy” – we got a good laugh out of this but then decided on a lark to try it out at our next round of client meetings. I had a little more success with it as S got the giggles everytime she thought it, which kind of broke the spell. We still laugh about it but I’ve come to believe there may be a little something in this – the leader of the seminar said thinking this instilled a certain power that was transcibed in your facial expression – but what it does is put you on a level playing field – because if you can think about business and sex during a one hour meeting chances are highly likely that you are on the same plane as the man sitting across from you.

Yesterday was one of those serendipitous days where things just fit together perfectly – I was able to escape the confines of Arlington, spend time in an area where I had more in common, and then return in a daze that persisted into the evening to Nagin issuing a statement that said if the EPA test comes in goody on Monday, he is opening back up Uptown, the French Quarter, and Algiers for residents to come home permanently – he said he is sick of the sound of helicopters and wants to hear jazz. It doesn’t matter to me if he is a Guiliani or not, he is a homeboy and that makes him a hero to me.

I slept last night the sleep of the dead and woke up less dazed, more relaxed, albeit to Arlene quivering on the bed because there was yet again another smoke alarm going off. W came in to give me a kiss this morning and as he puckered you could see the missing two front teeth – the third one came out Monday. He seems to have given up his quest to move to the “new apartment” (the sitting area by the pool) and was happily doing hip hop dancing before leaving for school.

K is back on the scene, with a phone call to L that she can’t stop thinking about him. L said she was settling for safe T and now second guessing that decision. How are we to ever know ourselves?

A phone call this AM to C&P who are staying at a lake house in Alabama – they said they are surrounded by beauty – my response is we are surrounded by the absence of it.

L called to say another one bites the dust – T left a $2K check on K’s pillow – she needs money – and she made her choice. Seems rather harsh in the light of day. But L said she blamed a titanic weakness for T on it despite the fact that she emphatically said T was a horrible lover – had to get rip roaring drunk to … – horrible kisser, jabbing his tongue down her throat – sounds pretty horrible to me. But never underestimate safe – he is known and safe. And as L said, feeling better about at least one thing in his life, you can’t fuck all the time.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch – the eggs are boiling but the handwriting is so damn hard to read.

Poseidon rises from the water and in the golden light of day is mesmerizing.

……

Great god I’d rather be a pagan suckled in a creed outworn
So might I
Standing on this pleasant lea
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn
Catch sight of Proteus rising from the sea
Or hear ole Tritan blow his wreathed horn

Sleep definitely helps – although again I’m a whirling dervish that could tunnel down to China given the right circumstances. Our options for escaping Arlington are growing slimmer and because there is a lot of energy going in that direction it feels like crash and burn ahead. We’re exploring alternatives that may not come immediately but think that something will come eventually. Now we’re looking at possibly one more month plus of exile.

The peripheral cities to New Orleans are taxed with evacuees. L writes the traffic is a nightmare, taking two hours to get from one part of town to the next in Baton Rouge. Dallas has nothing available now and Ft Worth isn’t worth considering according to one source in SF. Although I could really deal another month wtih our situation – think it might be getting rough for some in the group as previously described. As evidenced by N’s comment that it was a good idea for me to have gone out with P to the movies.

Familiarity breeds contempt as the saying goes – example when N says at lunch that my “place” with W is not to lose patience with him as that is his and V’s role I realize that people who don’t have access to you only realize one or two dimensions of you. I only said I was going to choke the little boy – kidding of course. And of course W has experienced many dimensions of me – my patience and/or lack of it before. But when another comment about W rolls around at dinner I feel suddenly like the interloper asserting myself into the unit. It gives me pause because my nature is to overdeliver and my whole being resists being carved up into little bits and pieces. Did I not ask a while ago – who wants just a little Rachel?

So that is what happens in exile – and forced cohabitation – your public face starts cracking and little bits of your private self dance right on out without you having any control over them. And relationships go deeper or pull back in accordance with new information. Best believe that at the end things shake out in their proper chapters – Chapter One: The Isle of S, Chapter Two: The madness of V, Chapter Three: W directs the 7th Star Wars Episode, Chapter Four: L does Laundry instead of Texas, Chapter Five: Thus Spoke N, Chapter Six: The metamorphisis of R. There are animals in this book too, but they only have cameos.

When you’re too tired to think, it’s best not to. L called about K fucking T again – he doesn’t know how he should feel about it. Told him he laid the groundwork for that one having told her over and over that he was going to continue to date and possibly sleep around. But he said the difference is that she loves T, and she lost the General, and her roommate moved so she is vulnerable and that is what gets him the most. He told me he wants me to tell him to give her up, to tell him that she is too goddamn young for him – I said call someone else. He said he can’t stand wanting her, her being with T, and all of it being undercover. Thinks that T might suspect L since K put a photo of L up shortly after her first visit and it’s possible T saw it. Would that be providing the fervor at which he is going back to try to win her heart?

Last night P said he had moved back to Texas to get some land, build a house, find a blonde haired babe and spit out some kids. I asked him if he wanted to play Mexican Train and he flinched, a touch of fear in his eyes. I casually explained I had no designs on him but was simply referring to a game. But back to the plan of moving back to Texas – I just don’t understand that kind of planning – this follows this follows this – I mean look at reality – it seldom works out in a tight knit of what we plan and if it does we tire of the plan sooner or later so sometimes its best not to make any plans at all. For godsakes just look at this whole moving back to New Orleans plan that started six months ago… Arlington is a long ways from home. The SF plan appeared to be a sound plan when it was formed and yet that was cut down at the knees. Plans – who needs them?

Up late a couple of nights in a row makes me feel as if I boarded the wild train while my own is being held in abeyance – day and night conversations are not registering well and simply don’t know where or whether to mentally file bits and pieces away or not. I keep thinking I can tap the Muse to summon clarity when I awake sober or to finish a thought or conversation that stalled somewhere the day or days before, but there is always a scattering of this and that and it is difficult to collect it all and put it back together in a cogent form and spit it back out. P said he went to a boarding school here in Texas. N used the word uptight. I thought we were talking about something else so I disagreed. S said the H’s missed the beauty of New Orleans and now will never see it and I almost screamed in the phone – what? Today he said he got it – why I reacted that way but had been influenced by the darkness at the party the night before. Then in the first light of morning I realize uptight is the correct description, and P would do well to find his blonde and start a Mexican Train, and I might not ever be able to finish each thought, conversation, observation, feeling, emotion, desire, and wrap it up neatly in a bow. And that there are some things that are not getting clearer and some things that are bizarrely transparent.

It’s all coming in extremes – uptight, organic, natural disasters, suburbia, negative town.

L called back and said T coming on with full court press to K, L said why do you think? And I said because he is a man. And L said T is a courtly lover and revising courtship round two by bringing out the whole arsenal. T now is rewriting history telling K he had difficulty declaring the relationship because of the age difference between them. I keep wondering why all of this has so many ultimatums – K’s father told her that she shouldn’t chose either man, but should just enjoy herself – sound advice – and I keep reiterating that fact to L. And at the end of the conversation L circles around to where he was the last time we talked about it. At the end of it he needs K in his life right now – even if it makes sense for him to renounce K, so T and K can get it on, and so L and T can salvage a 30-year relationship, and L says that makes the most sense and he envisions a scenario where he pushes K out of his life and back into T’s arms and then he goes to visit T and there they sit, the happy couple, T and K coupled, and L sits across from them and smiles and that it is all tolerable.

It is so not tolerable. None of what you could put down on paper leaps off the page, instead you are left with innuendoes, double entendres, conversations begun but not ended, thoughts flung hither and yon, emotions dampened by lack of expression.

S dreams of floods, N dreams of big houses, I have not been able to recall a dream but remain haunted by the bayou and how beautiful and blessed each day began there.

It’s possible sleep is underrated.

S cried for three hours today watching the 9/11 commemoration – her daughter is almost as tall as her. In Arlington, we opted out of the commemorative celebration and went to the stockyard and N got boots, and W got outfitted in holster, guns, shirt and black Bart Stetson.

Today is 14 days since our exile and the desire to return home is bordering on a dream-like quality that lingers in the waking hours and supposes itself into a moment when you forget where you are. At the stockyard, in the booth, I forgot we were in exile for one second and it was so delightful that I stopped to hold it in my thoughts for as long as I could.

My friends and colleagues have been sending care packages of love – these outward expressions humble me.

******

Others send encouragement across the miles:

65 and sunny here today
ate banana pancakes and figs for breakfast while sipping DAMN good coffee
rain shower this morning, danced in the puddles at the zoo
got attacked by a band of wild parakeets… Mattie sang “no birdies, NO more birdies!!!”

work will follow you…….

******

It’s always this and that.

Tearful conversation with my dear sweet N – we miss each other, we miss our home – we are still so goddamn fortunate it is unbelievable. Got a slew of care packages from the people I work with today, stuff like you wouldn’t believe, all so thoughtful. There is so much love in the world – I am the bessed one. I need to call L – he called earlier. I just read what S commented on – no one in this world could pity S – like W is want to say – “it’s an expression” – I feel like I got a sandbag on my head cause I stood on it last night – I threw myself out of detox in a violent manner and today feel surprisingly better.

N has a rash all over and can’t eat. She has post traumatic stress. I can’t tell if I am pre, mid, or post trauma. I just know that I feel so fortunate that it’s hard to feel loss. Yet.