Dangermond.org

Some Mondays seem to start off fine – like an unexpected cool breeze in August – the bayou full and even slightly choppy – then wammo – sidelined by idiot contractors – like this A-1 Contractor fool who did such a shitty job on our house to the point where we now have to hire some other company to fix the foundation and two flat tires on the bike which the pump couldn’t help because a) no one knows how to use it, and b) guy at Bayou Bikes said it will only put in about 70 lbs anyway. Finally get air in the tires and then have too many work things and the heat is rising and so there is that wonderful, perfect, anomaly of a morning obliterated – damn Monday mornings – why do they always have to be such cliches?

Just broached subject of why it is I have started to objectify men and my colleague told me she seriously thinks she is turning into a man. I do think this job, the times, are all putting us on a more even playing field so that what was clearly a gender defined trait has more universal application. Broached similar subject with S:

R (4:20:29 PM): why do you have that spicy chicken back up?
s (4:20:39 PM): everyone giving me shit about the rat I’m kissing.
s (4:20:46 PM): how did you know I needed to talk to you

s (4:22:16 PM): think I am too, all I can think about is the sex I’m not having
s (4:22:25 PM): or the sex I’ve had and am not having now
s (4:22:32 PM): or the sex I wish I was having
s (4:22:33 PM): whatever

The great divide has been crossed – K turned 21 today. You think about these things like a thirty year difference and you know that they really don’t matter in the end – only if the participants are able to truly believe in what they are doing. Right now the jury is definitely out on L, but K leaves soon and we’ll see if that doesn’t present a more compelling story. Meanwhile, at Brigtsens last night the food was good but not great – his signature dish, the rabbit, was dry and even the duck was dry. No one really liked the bisque – said it tasted like roux. Of course, S and I were comparing it to our fabulous last meal at August and there is no comparison because they are different types of food. The service was a little spotty, which was truly unusual and if P hadn’t been there to throw in some overseeing, it would have been not good. I walked in back and P said “is that L’s date?” and I smiled. Then somewhere in the middle of it all I was at the table with S, L and K talking about her birthday and smiling at P as she walked by and then this other waitress who I had met before when I went with F earlier this year at the ad conference – who is really cute – her name is S – came by and smiled – and I had a convergence of ten years ago when I was working there and F had developed his issues due to R having his ear, and somewhere hovering in the present crept in the knowledge that the house is delayed yet again because of a bunch of hillbillies, and then out of the clear blue I felt the pang that almost made me double over and as it is wont to do – I couldn’t shake it. It is a visceral longing that makes me want to just ball up like W does and lay on the floor for a meltdown. I went to sleep with it and woke up with it and I wonder if this is ever going to find a remedy or if what ails me must be approached piece meal till the end of days.

Spacey all day and so I have noticed a pattern whereby too much excess tips me off center and that is when the pang is at its worse because the whole ingredient list just starts swirling around and doesn’t present itself cogently into any form that is recognizably comfortable or reasonable – instead everything seems just within grasp but not quite there.

I had a nightmare last night over the most inane stupidest thing – I know it sort of reaches back to the other night in the courtyard when N said “I hate your hair like that” but my dream was I cut it all off and died it blonde and walked in and N looked at me in horror and then I looked in the mirror and had not realized D had cut it so short – like MG in that movie that S said reminded me of when he met me, the short hair and big earrings – but I screamed when I saw my reflection. What goes on? Has my life gotten so superficial that the thought of cutting my hair gives me nightmares?

It all can be traced to pure and utter burn out – I’m fighting for time off right now as September looks to be a gnarly in terms of reports but each vacation day never really takes hold – F said I saw you on email on your day off, you are addicted – I said yes, I am addicted and overwhelmed and I can’t seem to get centered. Again cannot be swept away within the terms “bizarre context” – it all just hovers in the ether trying to find some place to land.

S is in town with M and R and we hope to go see them tomorrow.

Had a short conversation with J&P today – it’s P’s birthday. Weird distance between us. They fly around and visit the brood willy nilly but never seemed to have time to drive only an hour and a half to see us – of course, there is no compelling reason to – S and I don’t offer them immortality like the others. But we plan a visit there in Dec and both of their responses were “if we’re here, we’ll see you” – S has no compunction to try to figure this out and chalks it up to the way his family is – weird – and I certainly am not going to broach what is clearly some weird chip on their shoulder – I mean P called EHDD to discuss the Yolo project rather than call his own son – clearly there are issues but as Rev B said, it’s not my place to negotiate with S’s family. So I stay out of it and deal with my own tribe that conjure up enough for me to deal with regularly.

Lunch with Mom yesterday – I asked a simple question “how’s S” – Turn around! she said, turn around and look at me now – so I did – and she mouthed “he got fired” and I shook my head in disbelief because I keep wondering how S got on this downward spiral and where the bottom is. It scares the hell out of Mom – she has always worried that S has suicidal tendencies when I’ve always worried she has homicidal ones.

E’s mother MiMi died and he left a photo of her in her younger years tucked into the NYT on L’s door mat. An inscription was written in E’s handwriting in back, which read “L, thanks for being such a good friend to E, I appreciated it, love MiMi”. L said she died on Friday, he went over on Saturday and when E answered the door his eyes were swollen and red from twist and grief. L asked if he should come to the funeral and E said, “No L, you are ancillary to her circle, but I appreciate your offer.” L thinks he twisted it around when he told N.

Yoda said attachment leads to jealousy, which is the shadow of greed – let go of your attachments. Uh, no. Perhaps too much Anakin in me than Yoda.

Arriving in SF on Thursday made my heart race – irrational fear that I would one day move back – deep breath, rather walk off planet. Cold and foggy except for Napa, made me long for tank top and shorts despite L telling me the weather here was not fit for dogs or humans.

I am freezing versus I am sweaty – which do you find compelling?

Friday morning laying in bed with the foggy wet cold streaming into the open window at the Argonaut – I longed for my Muse – sank under the covers – the long term plan became crystal clear to me… and with it a sweet serenity.

I have lost the habit of art…

[Adele was……notes to self – could start dead or dying]

K is in town and not sure how L is going to handle revealing it to others or not. Said he’s felt elated and some dread of what to do. Today at playdate was like first day of school and it is for so many – all the dogs were present at play date – N starts at the can this morning – W starts Country Day this Friday – Sep promises to be crazy busy – and as Les is want to quote – and the band played on….

A had me laughing with her bandaids and bj demo – the smurf – step one – who knew – then S with her jealousy of A, her giggles over “don’t touch that!” and overall good raucous time with everyone but so sweet to smell the humidity in the plane’s air as we came closer to the gulf. B was called bitch boy? – what goes on, and P told he was now in the cool club – all this from the love van – poor Ches (Chest), but more importantly poor B – damaged goods now.

philip (7:56:09 AM): oh.my.lord.
philip (7:56:17 AM): the love bus?
R (7:56:18 AM): Allison had remorse
R (7:56:21 AM): the love bus
R (7:56:32 AM): we had a good time (ahem)
philip (7:56:39 AM): didn’t sound like that much remorse
R (7:56:44 AM): next day
R (7:57:00 AM): “did we call Philip?” – what did we say? – oh no!
philip (7:57:12 AM): in the cool club? i hear that right?
R (7:57:19 AM): that was her remorse
R (7:57:28 AM): we think we’re cool
philip (7:57:43 AM): mmm hmmm
R (7:57:53 AM): hey, you want in or not?
philip (7:58:04 AM): 😉
R (7:58:26 AM): when I heard you were going to jump off boat in bay I decided to come for client event
philip (7:58:36 AM): absolutely
philip (7:58:48 AM): lap around the boat
R (7:59:06 AM): can’t wait
philip (7:59:17 AM): who was in the “bus” ?
R (7:59:44 AM): Shannon, Allison and I on way home with Brian one seat ahead (he is now damaged goods poor boy)
philip (7:59:52 AM): stunned
R (8:00:00 AM): you or baby Brian?
philip (8:00:05 AM): BB
R (8:00:12 AM): will never be quite the same

Sometimes my friend L has good insight and sometimes he is troubled by everything he sees. Walking along the bayou this morning I told him I was troubled by wanting to have it all and he said some days you just cannot. And there it is – there are seamless days, there are days where one or two things are hitting perfectly, and then there are days like the last two where I’m here, mind’s there, body’s way over there, and you just can’t seem to round everything up in a tidy package.

The question of how vulnerable you allow yourself to be when you can’t muster all your forces is still out there, but there’s hope.

The neighborhood is having a rash of break ins and robberies and here we think the bayou is so bucolic. Our columns arrive today – yippee.

Eating a brie and pear sandwich in the quarter on leaving New Orleans Feb 2005 – with N who articulated something about place for me, he said, “I could picture living in San Francisco, New York or Chicago. I can actually picture living in a few other places. But I cannot imagine not living in New Orleans.” I swear I finally bit into the pear right when he said that. And still it was not my decision to move home – it was S who woke up one day daunted by the path EHDD was on, by the forty grand we would spend on the front yard, and knowing that I would be gone yet another summer that propelled us here.

No sleep yet again. W’s got growing pains and I’ve got the equivalent, an aching that sometimes is profound. The humidity is rising again and with it comes less clarity. S asked me to tap my Dorothy shoes this morning, ruby slippers, and I said, “there’s no place like home” and it fit comfortably with the surroundings, but then Lance attacked Arlene and a bee bit M on the eye and before you know it, the denouement of playdate was thoroughly underway.

L had a restless night thinking about K and whether he is up to the challenge. I had a restless night thinking about fragments of conversations that have no context, beginnings that can’t find endings, middles that are on continuous loop – the Muse says it is all up to me – I feel like beating my head on a brick wall.

A marathon is about the mind’s ability to run the race more than the body’s. Once you become a marathoner, you carry around the knowledge that the mind is strong enough to (fill in the blank). So you train your body, you trust in your mind, and what? The third region is the wild card – the one where the fork ran away with the spoon or the cow jumped over the moon. And it’s all caught up in waking, dreaming, intoxicated states of being that further blurs what’s really going on.

Next try to communicate inertia –

in·er·tia n
1. inability or unwillingness to move or act
2. the property of a body by which it remains at rest or continues moving in a straight line unless acted upon by a directional force

Inability to act versus continuous motion being acted upon by a directional force. You realize if a small noun can have such varying interpretations what to make of a grown girl?

My friend S always tells me my mind is powerful and I can do anything I set it to – she channels my mother who raised me saying those exact words – and yet when the Muse comes the mind grows muddled, confused about the task at hand – given all this strength of mind, why can’t I string together actions, conversations, dreams, desires, daydreams to present a balanced story? The addition and substraction of characters in this story is mind numbing. The inability to know thyself is of major concern. I had a long talk with L about this as he consternates over K – what do I want? the endless question right? It’s just that simply wanting isn’t enough – I want (fill in the blank) is fraught with risk and reward each step.

I dreamt Max was a fox and stood on a mountain with three dogs. A man ripped his ear off and he came to me, wounded, and I watched him die. I woke up feeling wretched and groggy.

What’s missing is the groggy clarity that L said he had about K the other morning. I want to wake restful and know myself. Instead I awake restless most mornings and feel drawn to a directional force that I feel I have no control over. The Muse so forcefully presents itself but tells me I am the one in control of the situation – and yet I cannot write.

Woke up from a restless sleep with last night’s musing on my mind – hot and cold – at times it winds to a perfect pitch and then a nuance can derail the flow. So seldom to enter sleep with a smile but delightful when it does happen. Yesterday I laughed a lot, which fits neatly into the five year goal to be happy every day. Maybe the long term plan is about fitting the Muse in more regularly and maybe, just maybe, that is not too far fetched an idea.

Subtitle: Take the poison pill:
Mom called the adminstrator and told him she’d like to meet with him, she wants to narc on the ADON who spent three hours putting in hair extensions last Saturday instead of working. She also wants to point out all the twist that goes on in the courtyard by the nursing assistants. I told her to keep a low profile – besides it’s not hurting the patients. Oh indeed it is, she told me. They are not getting the level of care because no one is around to give it to them. It’s like a real bad day care center – warehoused children, warehoused elderly. I need to find the poison pill and keep it close for when my time comes.

L and I had a discussion today after playdate that is best to remember. His peeps are saying no way, not good about K except for me who appreciates what might be there but then again I’m a know nothing romantic but I told him what I know about living – sometimes your peeps give good advice and sometimes they don’t. When S and I met 15 years ago his roommate S told him this is not good, don’t do it, but S was jealous because he was older and had just two weeks before informed S that he would find a woman first and he was also looking at the circumstance instead of the whole picture and conventionally it was not stacking up.

At the same time, my peeps were like are you out of your mind, you are on #2 and only into it 5 months and what? But I couldn’t help remembering when I met G I felt it wasn’t something something but I was swept away with the threesome of G, N and I and it really hit me when we are off to Spain alone and I sat next to the guy named Dwayne and I was married to G that I realized I was a fool in the middle of a bad rhyme. But weeks before I had been at the Milan with the Trout and C and said I don’t think G has the depth to love me like I want to be loved and they were both like, oh you are so wrong. Uh, no I wasn’t.

S always tells me that I pay too much attention to my network and I say, hey, go get a network and then you can criticize.

Last week J said I’ve never seen it like this but I have and he has and isn’t that the glory of the years when you can say, huh, been there, done that, kind of know what to expect or at least no need for panic. Yet.

I made a bet with N that I would not smoke for the first six months of living in NO. Lost it. I made a pact with S that I would stop and have been dallying. My body rejects cigs and yet I want a puff here and there — always with a cocktail. K said to L before they hung up, “Baby, let’s quit smoking,” – wish he would, he’s kind of the last vestige that keeps me dallying.

I woke up before all of this to a worry about N and S and their gig together. N just lept out of a 12 year gig and is ready to scale the mountain, Steve just came down from the mountain and he wants a scaled down version of the mountain. In one sense they need each other, S has work and needs help, and N needs money to get out, but worried they both can’t articulate what they actually want from each other right now other than help, and bothered that old behaviour – S not considering others needs and N wanting to roar – might hurt a long term friendship until they both understand what it is they truly want or could give each other. Seems to me and what I said to S is what’s important is the architectural compatibility not the how do we work details. Know they will figure out their lives by themselves but where my worry comes in is S and I have experienced a closeness with the M’s – awful close to what we had with the H’s a few years back and that did not end well when T and S were at odds over what they each needed, wanted, etc from work. We’ve circled back and our friendship is stronger with the H’s but not without the scars.

My muse visited this morning and told me it’s all a turkey shoot. But I didn’t write about that.

The kind of closeness K craves in L is what I linger on – untenable closeness – not even smoke between them.

L told me that T advised K to keep some in reserve.

How many times do you keep learning the same lesson? Or realize it is the dominant theme of everything that could cast a pall?

It wears me out… to keep starting over and stopping again.