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I was in Rouse’s last night picking up dinner fixings (crawfish ettoufe and sauted cabbage) and kept running into someone I knew from a past life – I tried to ignore him but ended up in back of him in line. He was so weird – turning around and trying to meet my eyes – I kept looking at the magazine rack – but I did notice that he looked pretty good despite.

Outside on the bayou, it’s like a merry go round of people who I have intersected with in the past, round and round and round they go, are they spiraling upward, am I? Are we meeting at a higher plane or steeped in the same muck of our past. 

I remember when I met two of these people twenty something years ago I had a dream that I told my therapist back then –  both of them were across a big field and I was trying to get to them but the field was knee deep in shit, and I kept trying to wade through it to get across. She said, “Rachel, don’t you see?” What? It took two decades to figure this out? 

JetBlue is offering wifi and email access from your Blackberry in flight. Why? Air travel was the last place on earth where you could get your reading done. 

I admit I am the prize. But in wondering why we are in each other’s lives right now, I came to this realization: You are here to tell me that I can love again and get my mojo back. I am in your life as the white elephant in the room, the one with the white lace bra, forcing you to face the big empty space you are creating in your life (again) – it’s the space you have been trying to fill forever now – you find someone who fills it up so perfectly and then you see flaws – in them and you – in us – and so you open the big gaping hole back up and find someone else to fill it – and then you open and refill – and open, refill – and open, refill – it becomes a pattern – it’s what you do – but then you start getting older and you think, damn, it’s exhausting this opening, refilling, opening, refilling, does it ever end? And you start seeing that the common thread is you – and so you have to start thinking, hurting, working, to see if you can figure it out or at least get what you want which is for that hole inside of you to shrink and shrink and shrink all by itself, to where you are the only one in the room and you feel whole inside and good, and then you find someone who is whole inside and good, and different patterns emerge. Good ones. Great ones. Better ones.  

Nonetheless, today you are the grand prize winner of one business class ticket to Las Vegas since it was you who found my missing mojo. 

The real prize remains elusive.

I had therapy yesterday – several armchair therapist friends and myself ransacked my being and came up with answers, advice, and areas to watch. A long distance ACT (arm chair therapist) had said to look at ANW (action not words) and yesterday while I was busy doing other things other than thinking about my current affairs, I started registering actions that were not jiving with words or with the picture I have painted in my mind. 

Making dinner for a friend, I tried not to serve up bullshit and lies, but I also wanted to keep myself and my thoughts and most of my desires insular and safe from being picked apart by someone who means well but may not respond well and who brings her own leftovers (past hurt, present fear) to the dinner table. 

Moosey showed up in the middle of dinner – a reminder of how desire can be restrained and yet still enjoyed.

When both guests had left, I received a text out of the blue to appear before a tribunal of two ACTs – one had just spent the evening at a function with her recent ex – while she put in the time to doll herself up and look hot, she also took a moment to jot down all the reasons why she is not with that person anymore, which helped her stay the course in the face of emotional upheaval. Of course, I had made my mental list earlier of areas to watch and that had given me pause and perspective, even if it did not diminish desire. 

It was a long day of hard work both real and experienced – and I came to this conclusion: I feel good about who I am and where I am in life. Whoever enters my sphere as a lover has to come carrying the same credentials – or at least be getting close to owning past behavior and actively attempting to remedy it. Read: I’m ready but are you? 

J and I walked Loca and Lucky through City Park today – it was the gloaming time, when light is suffuse and makes you nostalgic – the holiday red and green lights shone up against the concrete walls of the museum and the stone pillars of the park’s entrance – and I felt suddenly and again greatly blessed to be living in New Orleans, surrounded by people I love, and with enough challenges that keep my day to day life interesting. 
 

AA calls and asks me to call her back to recount my crisis du jour, my drama of late – she craves news from me because she says she loves me. 

Flower responds when I ask her if things will ever be normal – “I’m learning to deal with the new reality.” How come she is so wise at 29?

Two friends ran an intervention on me today to save me from the lion’s den when I meet with another friend who has an agenda out for me tonight. 

My lovely and adorable accountant says he wants to invest in property with me here if I am interested. He also told me I am basically fucked when it comes to taxes. 

Friends came over to celebrate the second night of Hanukkah and light all the menorahs with me – one made potato latkes and I brought steaks and we had champagne. Sometimes, as much as you are wanting and needing rest, friends over and enjoying the evening with you help assuage any bit of loneliness that might be threatening your usual joie de vivre. 

J thought I was bitchy so I put on my platinum blonde wig and some red lipstick and my mood did improve. 

Have you come here to break my heart?

Just to say Happy Hanukkah.

If I could lasso time in a neat round up I’d make it all happen right now – but faced with the fact that you come packing – lugging baggage – when I’ve spent so much time divesting myself – again, I’m faced with a waiting game that never seems to end. Because – because what?  

I went to bed at 8:30 last night and read and read and read till I fell asleep. Then I woke at 3AM – my mind a bevy of detached thoughts – do I need to get a waterproof bag for my duck hunting trip next weekend? – how come I am head over heels about someone I barely know? – my mother left a message to watch the Victoria Secret show, I didn’t call her back – I had about a zillion things on my to do list for work that didn’t get done so that gets added to my kazillion today – why can’t I sleep? – is Pilates enough or should I go back to weights also? – should I go meet this guy on Friday or not? – why is my bed so cozy? 

I woke this morning with no more insight than when I had gone to bed – a restlessness still rattling my cage – but there has been a slight buffering of the edges – I’m trying not to get bruised up as I work through this – trying to be kind to myself and congratulatory that I got what I did get done yesterday and that I made it through yesterday without my heart or head exploding. 

Hanukkah

The story of Hanukkah is the story of religious freedom. In 168 BC King Antiochus the 4th, who inherited his kingdom from Alexander the Great, set up an idol in the Jewish temple and ordered Jews to worship it. He was a zealous Hellenist and wanted all people to follow Greek ways. A revolt led by Mattathias and his son Judah the Maccabee to overthrow Antiochus raged with the odds against the Jews;  they were ill-equipped and vastly outnumbered. But the Jews were fighting for their homes, their faith and their freedom as the Syrian mercenaries were not. So, in the winter of 165 BC the Jews were victorious and marched into Jerusalem. The first act was to clean the temple and get rid of the idol. When they arrived, there was only a single flask of oil to light that should have lasted one day. It miraculously lasted eight.

Later, to commemorate the victory, candles were lit for eight days. There was an interesting dispute between the followers of Shammai and Hillel. Shammai advocated lighting the eight moving downward to a single candle. Historians believe Shammai basic view was that the glory of Israel lay in the past and there had been a steady downward trend among the Jews. Hillel’s followers foresaw a glorious future for Judaism. Symbolic of their faith and hope, they advocated a rising crescendo of light. Of course, they prevailed.

The basic issue of the Maccabean struggle was religious freedom. The Jews fought for their right to worship God in their own way. Not long after the victory, war broke out again, this time Judah was killed in battle and the new colossus, Rome, bestrode the Middle East. The Hebrew state was crushed until May 1948. It is interesting to speculate on what this victory of the spirit has meant in human history. If Judaism had been destroyed in the second century before Jesus, would Christianity have come into the world, or Mohammedanism? Both were products of Judaism and both derived sustenance from the living Jewish people.