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B decided to go commando and sneak back into to see his house before they were letting people in. A big tree fell through his roof and the water had been up long enough to soak the mattresses inside. He went up on the roof and fell off, cracking his ribs and hurting his shoulder and had to go to EJ for help. Now you know that EJ has nothing better to do than to fix a renegade’s ribs but there it is – anyway he’s back at S’s again and going to see specialists and as S says, I now have a moaning and groaning dad.

Last night I felt as if I was being held prisoner – problem was I couldn’t walk the dogs far enough away from the prison to shake the feeling. The bayou seemed like a dream away. Compliant is not my nature – instead of running out of the house screaming, I succombed to the inevitable. I got in bed at an unreasonably early hour and turned over and prayed for sleep. Perchance to dream. Some of the tension was explained in a note this morning – a scare – but that is only a manifestation of what is real.

S is depressed. His ability to negotiate group dynamics is flawed. He says I am his only link to sanity – I pity him. My sanity is running thin.

The rest of it is just darkness for no compelling reason – a negativity that sits in the room like a white elephant and demands and absorbs all positive energy in its wake. I see it, but don’t understand it, and don’t care to either. The only reason it intersects me is that I care about those connected to it and watching the manipulations of feelings as they occur gives me pause and at times enrages me. Again, emotions with no release because they are not attached to me in a legitimate sense.

They will be looking for an emergency route – I should ask them to also find a clear path to the sanatorium for me.

S is gone for a week. I might ask P if I can spend the night at his house this weekend.

We all need a game plan – thought we could coast on the reality but think that there are those (S, V) among us who might not be able to handle it without more breaks involved.

Can we all just get along? Rodney King

24 days to drain Orleans Parish. At least two weeks to get electricity back and running. How long to get the poisonous snakes, rats, nutria, and corpses removed? We’re here in October, I can just feel it. The food is wretched as well as the absence of beauty – except at Mellen’s house where brisket and turkey and Thanksgiving dinners for the refugees are so wonderful. I think I need to get off the detox program – this is no time to be dealing with reality.

I had a brief talk with L yesterday – his phone has been busy at Fauna’s house with people constantly checking up on him – T has come back into K’s life and is putting the full court press on getting back together. K is torn because L is not offering permanence – what man could in this situation? – don’t you think that is a lot to ask of someone who has just been displaced, possibly lost his job, house, etc? But L couldn’t have guaranteed permanence before either – he lives in the underworld – wants so badly to obtain that level of perfection that some of us seek where it feels just this good all the time – and it can’t. It can feel good a lot of time but not all the time. He also can’t shake her age – it’s too much of a social stigma for him – after all he is not a movie star.

I think we need to add to the list of what to bring back to New Orleans – bug spray. Imagine how fortified these bugs must be from the toxic water?

I sat in a restaurant last night and had these huge pieces of battered steak put in front of me – not what I ordered – so I left it untouched which caused a great disturbance among the staff. I felt the same way I did that night in Chicago when I thought we would relocate there and all I wanted was to be back in New Orleans – this was 1997 – and I looked at the people at the tables next to me and thought they’re not my peeps – I am a fish out of water – I want to go home. This is my plea to those who left – COME BACK!

What has happened down here, is the winds have changed
Clouds roll in from the north and it started to rain
It rained real hard, and it rained for a real long time
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

The river rose all day, the river rose all night
Some people got lost in the flood, some people got away all right
The river had busted through clear down to Plaquemines
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

Louisiana, Louisiana
They’re trying to wash us away, they’re trying to wash us away
Oh Louisiana, Louisiana
They’re trying to wash us away, they’re trying to wash us away

President Coolidge come down, in a railroad train
With his little fat man with a note pad in his hand
President say “little fat man, oh isn’t it a shame,
What the river has done to this poor farmer’s land”

Oh Louisiana, Louisiana
They’re trying to wash us away, you’re trying to wash us away
Oh Louisiana, oh Louisiana
They’re trying to wash us away, oh lord, they’re trying to wash us away
They’re trying to wash us away, they’re trying to wash us away

You can destroy an author’s original notes for a novel, like to Moby Dick, and the words, printed a million times, won’t be lost – every story I read about New Orleans never recovering just makes me think all that is fit to print is bullshit and hyperbole and not worth reading. Every email that comes out of the St John Community is about wanting to return now. Every fiber of my being wants to return now. I don’t know a single citizen who doesn’t want to return right now.

If we can’t go back in a month we are going to have to reconfigure our lives in exile. I miss everything and everyone about New Orleans. John Besh is in Slidell serving red beans to evacuees, Liuzza’s is under water, Sidmar’s is gone, Frank Brigtsen said he has relocated and won’t return. We keep getting offers to come live in certain houses but they all involve traveling yet further away from New Orleans – I don’t want to go further I want to get closer.

Today was day one of detox again – maybe this is a bad idea – it is so much easier to stomach exile with a couple of cocktails. But the cocktails keep leading to the cigarettes and well it’s all not goody. My lungs are just not holding up worth a damn.

Looking at the future was thinking that we could get a bus and outfit it with cages so that next time we can get all the dogs and cats out.

Life has now found its true bizarre context living in Arlington in this corporate apartment wanting nothing more than to return home to play date, the Can’s swimming pool, and watching the LaLa’s progress and plans. W picked up a wrist band at a store en route that says DESIRE and that is definitely what is the theme of the day – desire to return home, desire desire desire – shoot me now.

My desire to just hit the streets and run looked like it might be working until yesterday at the sink I took a step and felt that old familiar tightening after getting in a nice easy run earlier in the day.

It’s hard to think about Adele and the novel in light of this huge interruption in life – the Muse did follow me here though so I will try and use the opportunity to write more and figure out a game plan for Adele’s story as well as other writings/musings – although truth be told, writing with any clarity is very difficult when desire seems so pervasive. I was on the brink in New Orleans of segmenting my life to such a degree that I could be front and center for story telling but now reality again has intervened and made fiction move beyond the pale.

Emails from St John community group say water damage seems minimal but fallen trees are the worst – emails say bring a chain saw if you can get back in. Mom went to her apartment in Jefferson Parish and said there were National Guards on every corner, streets were ghostly with occasional outbursts of activity, and that her apartment was fine but the other person in the car drove up to the front of her apartment missing and a total disaster. We had just taken down the big trees in back – perhaps could have saved ourselves some money and let Katrina do it.

Matters at hand – we want to go home as soon as possible. I’m trying to make up my mind what to do – part of me wants to take a hiatus from work and go help NO get back on its feet in whatever capacity I can and part of me is just paralyzed by trying to use this opportunity to find my voice again in an increasingly complex fabric of refugee land.

We’ve set up our refugee camp and all told we are the fortunate ones. We’re here with those we love in a comfortable apartment and have friends who cook wonderful meals for us. I just received a care package for Arlene and Zeus – filled with toys, cookies and a portable water bowl not to mention a blanket – T was concerned and wanted to send love through the mail and she did!

I miss N&B and Renny, Les and his three – Max, Henry, and Felix – so much. How will the Parkway fare? How about Pal’s where the bartender Peter had just committed suicide the week before – he missed this event.

K is visiting Les in El Dorado. She had a tough go with putting down Jerry Lee, aka General Lee, and T was there to comfort her – much to Les’s chagrin. But she has now met J, which I believe was a hurdle for Les, and so maybe things might roll along, maybe.

There are so many complications in these matters – Les desires K but is fearful, K desires Les but wants too much, T desires his ex and she wont take him back so he throws that energy on K who now may see that she was a distraction for T instead of real. Here at refugee central desires are hard to zero in on – L desires to be close to her daughter V, V desires to be left alone and work, very similar to S who has the same desire, W wants a playmate, N is hard to read, and I desire to be home again soon and back on plan. Very soon.

Be careful what you wish for – in the end it might be more frustrating than you might imagine – desire is such a tricky thing and cosmic occurrences have the ability to rise up and thwart you – you have to wonder if you should indeed let go of your attachments like Yoda warned in Star Wars III or if you are capable of twisting them even tighter to your core and making them natural parts of yourself. Cliché or not – that which is desired when held at arm’s length becomes even more viscerally needed and drives your mind to distraction until you can have it again. Makes me want to go out for a run right now but already the heat has made it unsafe for humans or animals.

So we are attempting our first week of normalcy here – we’ll see how it goes.

They are trying to wash you away.

Took 15 years to come back to my beloved city only to find it now completely under water. I did not want to leave, but Sunday morning with Category 5 warning and a mandatory evacuation notice, Steve made the decision for us. At doggie playdate we held a conference: Nancy not going, Bill nervous, Val going, Les gone. Back at the Can we gave ourselves an hour to get ready – we went to the LaLa house and secured the windows and tarp (nutty), took showers, brought the TT to the shopping center and parked on the third floor, and packed a few shorts and tank tops for a two night away trip. We drove in convoy with Nick, Val and Wade with Zeus and Cadillac in one car, Steve, Arlene and I in our Volvo, and Lorrie in her car.

You realize how fortunate you are to have a place to go – we saw cars jammed with 10 to 20 people piled in them, cars pulled over, rest stops overflowing with people and calm scenes like tailgate picnics eaten on the side of the road. The police had set up a contraflow to allow all lanes to be one way out of New Orleans but still we went 10 miles an hour all the way there. We hit one arm of the storm at a gas station somewhere in Mississippi and had a taste of Katrina. Arlene was so scared she got back into the car and wouldn’t pee. Steve now believes he has seen footage of that gas station in Hattiesburg leveled.

It took 16.5 hours to get to Shreveport where we were joined by my brother Bob, his wife Barbara, daughter Jana and her boyfriend David, my other nephew in law’s mother, Jeanine, at my niece Sara’s house. Sara and Michael and baby Rylee were the most welcoming hosts on the planet. Their neighbor came by and wanted to give us money.

Down the street – PJ’s coffee house was filled with New Orleans refugees the next morning.

We spent our evenings on the back porch, drinking and smoking and the weather was unbelievably beautiful – clear skies and a slightly cool breeze.

We spent days staring at the television. Then we needed a plan – so we, by a long circuitous route, decided on Dallas, or rather Arlington, and called and rented a corporate apt for a month. We drove to Arlington and moved into our new temporary dwelling on Wednesday afternoon. It’s a three bedroom and Nick, Val and Wade are in one room, Val’s mother Lorrie is in another, and Steve and I are in one room. We’re going today to rent folding tables to set up our offices. Hopefully will be up and running on Tuesday after Labor Day.

Day before yesterday L told me I am the only woman he loves and trusts – this is after G reamed him out about K and K told him that T is calling her wanting her to meet him – she’s meeting him today for coffee and talk. She’s doing that because L said he would still date and possibly sleep with other women and yet he wants to see her once a month and maybe meet at the Peabody in Memphis. S IM’d the other day saying her nerves are gone about M and A being in the same room in Vegas. S has blisters on his feet from SF because he’s not used to wearing shoes. B called today to say the skeleton key is missing. And D this morning at playdate seemed insecure about whether or not S in fact might be speaking to someone else about his office needs. Mom has pens with her name on them. Listening this morning to N’s mini and must say most of the music is good – hard to believe.

Last day of detox and the melancholia is so thick you could cut it with a knife – let go of your attachments – what makes you happy?

what does that mean? it’s on the church marquee over on broad street. Something bizarre. Okay why is it that everyday seems like an enormous task just to take care of matters at hand? tomorrow instead of lunch at mom’s, she’s going to come here and go to Parkway with me – saves me the smoky room for two hours that I find toxic.

S is in SF this week and I had a lot of to do’s when S is gone lined up but thus far have only accomplished one of them, it’s an important one, involves the Muse and trying to work on this book that now seems to be overladen with foreshadowing and double entendres, what worries me are the triple entendres, but anyway, I’m really trying to keep it all simple but think it gets overly complicated for no good reason. I’m trying to conjure this Adele who is carved up but right now can’t seem to push her into the next scenario, is it one of disaster? wonder? nada?

There is some weird thing going on in my life where S keeps trying to get closer to my face – what is that? Then there is the whole ebb and flow thing where it is so unbelievably difficult to get ebb and flow together. I keep thinking of Bill Murray and that movie – does he have a kid or not and the way that bit of information changed every step forward – it’s ridiculous that women don’t have this kind of mystery in their lives – what if someone came to the door, some old flame like K or something and said, btw we have a child. How radical would that be? L was describing one of those enthusiastic mothers at UNO on the way home from playdate the other day – he said she has that smug look on her face. N said yeah, that “I’m the only one who has ever gotten pregnant” look, and I said, I thought it was that “I’m pregnant, you’re not,” smug look.

The detox plan seems to be rapidly unwinding but I will try to preservere if only for my waistline.

Stormed all night with Arlene up and down in the bed with the quivers. Vivid dreams. Walking along the bayou to playdate the pinky blue clouds were skimming the water. There are too many images, memories, words, feelings to get them all straight in my mind. I keep trying to lay them out in some linear fashion but they get all tangled up again as soon as I line them up. Saw Broken Flowers last night – a quiet, profound Jarmouche movie. Resonates in the longing and what if – and imagining what it might have been when the reality could have certainly been different. Beautifully done by Bill Murray and an excellent ending. I love seeing these guys Jarmouche, Murray at the top of their game after being in it so long – the habit becomes them.

Silence on the point of …… the Muse is torturing me again, can’t put down in words, can’t even line up the thinking – what goes on? If I sat down to write a friend about where my head is now I would fill blank pages with silly nonsense and still come no closer to uncovering the truth.

While everyone else went to watch Valiant I went for a family visit. B and B are going to Israel because B can’t stand sitting around after the feds confiscated his building, his car, basically his life. This is over $3 million – surely these people have better things to investigate or dally on. S&M are in love and M’s cute and so lovingly sweet, perfect for S who needs a lot of attention. They are going to try for #2 as early as January. R looks a lot like M now. Still in the wide eyed stage. Always liked that stage. On Saturday, with J&G’s sons, noticed how M is in that stage, just kind of wide eyed innocence while G is still bobby. It makes W seem so fully formed because he is able to hit multiple levels of intelligence so at the ready. In my history of these relationships W is the most intriguing I’ve met – it doesn’t help that he is so goddamn handsome – I’m hoping all of him stays open to all of it as he gets older.

Yesterday is gone, tomorrow is uncertain, all we have is today – from Broken Flowers. But isn’t aging about being able to conujure up all those yesterdays into a narrative that you fits you like a tailored suit?