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Virginia Tech – 32 dead? – 21 dead? – first it was 1 dead – still no news as I sit here in some form of paralysis that started early this morning – a dread that has been confirmed with the smallest incident (the concrete layers hit my water pipe in the front yard three hours ago) to work issues that have people acting conspiratorial and weird to large events like a gunman killing innocent people in a classroom to speculative issues like this WILL BE THE WORST HURRICANE SEASON to just uttering and muttering incomprehensible sentiments of gloom and doom and hoping, just praying, this too shall pass. But how do you even say that when so many people were killed by a nut with a gun?

I stayed in bed late and read the paper front to back with the heat turned up in my little cocoon zone. It was cold outside which is mind blowing since it was 89 degrees one day and then back to shiver me timbers. I took a walk with Arlene and J came with Lucky and the wind was blowing so cold on the bayou that we walked in back along the houses – we said hi to this and that neighbor – a who’s who of local musicians that make this such a great spot to live in. Then I headed to mom’s house for a quick visit. Maria had blown her hair – normally thick and wavy – straight and it was sort of weird seeing her look so different. She also looked blonder – as does everyone these days – as if summer had already waved its wand over them.

I then came back and picked up G and we went to the Fest just in time to catch Trombone Shorty – who was awesome. Then we made our way over to the Mint looking for the crawfish sausage poboys from Vaucresson Sausage Co. – he was in the paper earlier in the week because he had been through so much around Katrina and just now before the fest someone had stolen his custom made grill. So we wanted to make sure to patronize him and of course, we wanted that poboy.

Then it was back home to LaVita for some visiting – M was there with B, and F, and we all just enjoyed ourself and came home to start the week.

Sometimes talking about something makes it all better.

Saturday after a gloomy start the weather cleared and I went to FQF to see Kermit Ruffin get married to Juicey on stage. He was followed by Big Sam Nation and I caught up with Ham and Teresa as Ham was running for paramedics on account of a woman had passed out behind him. I ran with him and the paramedics back to where his friends were and the woman had disappeared – it was almost like Keyestone Cops – and then Papa Grows Funk came on. I had been wanting to hear this band since a friend loves them so much, but I found the music a tad boring so we all made our way over to Rebirth and then I took leave and headed back to MidCity where I picked up TL, called G and we all went to La Vita. Evan is in town and came to join us. Always good to see him. I just sent G the photo of Y on one side and E on the other and she wrote back and said “looks painful” – but it wasn’t.

Yesterday work was crazy until late in the afternoon when a source of mine in New York said hey, why aren’t you at French Quarter Fest and I said I’M TRYING! – it was so gorgeous outside and the forecast was for rain on Saturday. So around 5 I caught a cab to Woldenberg Park and caught the tail end of Algiers Brass Band, and walked over to see Benjy Davis Project (which I like a lot), and then back to Jumpin Johnny Sansone, which was okay, so I walked over to Big Blue Marble where the singer had a good sexy singing voice.

G was perhaps going to meet me later but I was digging being solo, so I walked down to the Louisiana Pizza Kitchen and got a grilled shrimp caesar and propped my swollen foot up to enjoy it and a glass of wine. Two NOPD guys at the table next to me kept trying to engage me in conversation as they ate a big whopping slice of bread pudding with a thick rum sauce on top and a tall guy at the head of another table housing a bunch of pretty drunk people kept trying to make me join the party because I “shouldn’t be sitting alone” – and so I focused on my own thoughts.

My mind flittered between sweet elation of a beautiful day, of having enjoyed music, and as I looked outside the windows into the gloaming I couldn’t help but remember when the LPK restaurant used to be Tortilla Flats and I would sit there with the first love of my life Ken McElroy and he would eat like a center on the Grambling football team (he was 6’8″) and he was nuts, in a very very sexy way. He was always running his hands through his thin blonde hair and laughing deep throaty laughs. He kissed like a house on fire. Wow. I couldn’t stop thinking about us there 27 years ago – about me, unsure of who I was at 20 years old with a brick shithouse for a body and how his preternatural stare brought me down to my knees.

It took twenty years for the spell to break about Ken – so deep under my skin had he penetrated. Sitting in my chair, eyes focused in front of me, I thought about my propensity to let a man in so fully that his very essence gets pumped fluidly through my veins vying for room with blood and whatnot. What makes a woman love like this – so profoundly?

G text me to meet her at Swirl, and it was a call to another self, the carefree out and about dancing on air self, and I chose to tuck in, wanting to feel comfortable with the woman I was, and can be, the one that is intense and has known and will know again desire that burns from the inside out.

I’m finishing up my Richard Ford novel, Lay of the Land, and his protagonist, Frank’s Permanent Period is as right on as the dreamy period Frank first spoke of earlier in the trilogy – both pronouncements mirroring my life at each juncture.

It’s strange that I, a wordsmith myself, don’t have words to articulate how I feel about my ex-husband right now, about how my affair with N was otherworldly, and how now all of those events swim in the past as if trapped in jars of ether in my new house, my new self.

My close encounters with men since have been guarded and odd as if I am not who I used to be and not fully formed into someone I am becoming. E says, this too shall pass, that old pendulum thing – I’m stuck to one side of a polarity of who I might be when I let go.

Yesterday, I got a call from my work husband saying he had gossip I might want to hear. A man – B – who I met almost two years ago in NY after a long day of meetings and had a cocktail with – we had something something going on, it was apparent to everyone around us, but I was married, and he was married – is getting a divorce. Hmmm, I told my work husband, very interesting news. I said, B needs a year to digest his divorce, then give him my number.

I’m tired of clowning around with phantom men, I want a real one that I can touch for a while. Not a needy man, but a manly man, who is Tarzan, so I can be Jane.

A friend in crisis – pregnant, horomonal, in the midst of remodel – called to help me get her off the ledge. The crisis? Metal, plastic clad windows and French doors that were installed instead of wood. She said at this point I will only take your word on this – so I gathered up G and we drove uptown.

When we arrived my contractors – D&S – were there and I got out of Blue and said we’re here for quality control.

And both G and I looked the windows and then went to the backyard where the pool is dug and looked back at the French doors – which looked more like French Fried Doors – a 70’s rennovation idea – unauthentic.

D&S were visibly shaken by this visit and the confirmation that this was a bad choice for a gorgeous all wood uptown house.

Later S said no one will know the difference once they are painted and I said I would. L would. And that is what matters – that L would.

This morning someone knocked on my door and asked me where my columns came from and then said – they’re beautiful – I said thanks, Turntech – are they solid? – and I said yes, mahogany.

He said my sister used to teach at Bonnabel and she’d let me use the shop there and no one understands what it feels like, what it smells like, to work with mahogany and cypress and wood. You just don’t understand that unless you are working with a wood like this.

On my walk through the park this morning, the blue herons taking flight as we came around the bend, I crossed over to the other side and while Arlene and I were watching the ducks comingling with the swans, a guy on a riding lawnmower said “hi,” and I smiled, he turned off the engine and he said, “what a great day huh?” and I said “for sure,” and he replied “and what a great place,” and I said, “yeah you right,” and then he said, “Life is great, huh,” but it wasn’t a question, and I said “Yes indeed, life is great.”

How did you start your morning?

Marty is here with his crew making my concrete retaining wall for the front yard along with my brick walkway – he had a run in with my neighbor who came out to tell him that his driveway is private and if they trespass they will be arrested. Nice huh? Welcome to the neighborhood where 99.9% of the people are friendly except the one who lives right next door to the LaLa.

Code says 7′ is what is allowed for the fence – trees will make up the rest.

There is a good op-ed piece in today’s Times Picayune by Jarvis DeBerry about the misconception of Katrina by the American public. I encountered this with my cousins from Miami, who believe, as does my renegade ex-brother-in-law, that New Orleans was hit by a natural disaster. Wrong. As DeBerry so eloquently puts it:

“There are Americans across this country who are resistant to the idea that what happened here in New Orleans was something other than a natural disaster: It was nothing more, they believe, than a low-lying city getting swamped by a huge storm surge. We have science on our side, but there’s a segment of the population that believes that scientific conclusions hold no more weight than their gut feelings or the pablum that talk radio feeds them.”

The fact is that “The United States Army Corps of Engineers built the New Orleans’ flood protection, and more notably, the Army Corps of Engineers has admitted that what they sold to the city as a fllood protection system was “a system in name only.”

The ignorance is astounding.