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Seems like our next president causes a stir with many folks – “I’m gay for Obama!” a friend exclaimed recently.

Spent the night Uptown last night and woke to a different setting – a more typical New Orleans view of mansion sized houses and huge oak trees and the sounds of the streetcar rumbling along St. Charles Avenue. On the bayou, we call this place the Isle of Denial because when the storm hit the area remained remarkably unscathed and people returned to their houses only having to shake off the dust of having been gone for weeks at a time. 

There is still a great divide between us and them – a feigned entitlement that comes from living around institutions such as Tulane University, Loyola University, St. Charles Avenue and Audubon Park and Zoo – so different from the Fairgrounds, Bayou and City Park where we are more scrappy in our appearances and certainly in our lifestyle. 

I walked Loca around the block first thing and the street was so beautiful and the landscape and architecture so large it made me feel good to be surrounded by all of these lovely things and yet, my home is on the bayou, with its mild expansiveness and beasty creatures like nutria and pelicans and musicians and artists. 

I walked through the park this morning with Loca – we had to walk fast because I got up to the Cabrini bells but then fell back asleep and woke later than usual. My thoughts were a little spacey on our walk, but suddenly I started noticing things were coming in twos – there were two ducks chasing each other playfully in front of my house on the bayou, two squirrels causing a riot in a big old oak tree, two swans gliding in tandem, and it made me smile. I had been spending my time questioning the urge to merge and formulating a plan for a life of solitaire – I would notice the lone heron, the single pelican, and myself in the reflection of the lagoon – alone and happy. Suddenly, I walk down the same path with the smell of her hair in my nostrils, the feel of her skin on my fingertips, the thought of us embraced each morning and evening in our big bed, and I feel suddenly like all of us are on Noah’s ark or should be – where two by two we flock and gather. Love is a funny thing – and the world is too as it mirrors back to you your interior condition. 

A lot of people say I look like Maureen Dowd – that’s only because she’s of a certain age, fair skinned and red headed – to me, we don’t look much alike except in pics. But I do like her columns and here’s one that you should read – if the Clinton’s insist on divisiveness to win this election – we all lose. 

My friends have told me about the intensity of women in love – but now I know what they mean. She’s here now – surrounding me with overwhelming feelings of joy and love and yet, very soon, she leaves for long periods of time for Europe. I’m trying to put her leaving out of my mind, but the intensity of now is coupled with the sorrow of separation – I’ll be wailing for my beasty lover on the banks of the bayou – and when I’ve gone completely mad, who will know me? Here is my horoscope today:

Taurus (4/20-5/20)

Your deepest emotions have been coming up to the surface quite a lot lately, and they will likely cause you to act in a very unpredictable manner today. But the good thing is, whatever dramas you stir up are dramas that need to be stirred up. So don’t hold back if you feel the tears or the laughter coming on! Have the courage to start those conversations that don’t happen every day. You know — the ones where real progress can be made between you and someone you love. 

We had friends over the other night for some small bites and wine and conversation. It was an evening of warmth that came through in the food, the lighting, the music and the conversation. One of the topics that stayed with me was the subject of working styles. Academics are given job security, light loads, so that they can read, write, and think about their subjects – to always move towards in depth knowing. They become experts over time on the subject they pursue and over time, their words and thoughts on the subject ripple through the discourse already in play. The school bells ring and there is a sense of permanence, of building blocks being stacked in place – the presence marked by bound books and desks and chairs worn from use. 

Fast forward to my industry where we operate like a newspaper with ongoing research sprinkled with fast breaking news, when we have an “a ha” moment it reverberates across the financial community and causes action and reaction. The time for thinking is now because the research you have gathered just came in seconds ago and there are only moments before you must discern, digest, distill and disseminate the information. By the end of the day, perched at the edge of your chair where you have been since you arrived – you push away from Instant Message, Skype, Email, Cell Phone, Land line – in a daze, a stupor, because alacrity has been your mantra since you dipped your toe off the edge of the bed that morning – seconds, minutes count – the opening bell rings on Wall Street as a reminder you are late, late, late out the gate. 

I am thankful that I live in a city where I can walk down the street holding a woman’s hand and have no one confront me with prejudice. In Grand Isle, a town of 1500, we were met with similar tolerance. My mother said on the phone yesterday as I was hanging up – “love to you both” – she adores T. All of my friends from near and far greet my news with joy that I have found love and when they meet T, they are even more joyous that they now have her too in their lives. 

And yet the first resistance I meet comes not from an outsider, a stranger, but from my own brother who sits in prison and writes to tell me of the immorality, the un-naturalness, the sheer wrong of my being with a woman. He knows I spoke to my niece about T and he also writes his daughter to warn her that she is young and impressionable and should be wary of what I say – she tells him she finds his comments highly offensive. Here is my brother, who I have loved dearly my whole life, despite the fact that he has fucked up not once, but twice, in a major way – and for that reason has spent the better part of his daughter’s life locked away – and yet, I have not begrudged him his weakness nor his motives for what he does – but still, this is the first bit of sand that has been kicked in my face for my choice and it does not go unnoticed that it has come from him, of all people.

My niece received a similar phone call today and called me to say she hoped his missives didn’t bother me, because it doesn’t bother her, and she is surprised that out of everyone she has encountered, intolerance came from her own rather than outside. 

How sad for them, we both muse, and go on with our wonderful lives. 

More than a few of my friends who vote along the Democratic party line have been growing suspicious lately that the polarizing effect of Clinton versus Obama is causing the country to look to McCain as our next president. I say no, no, no. 

I missed Barak’s speech on race – but read the transcript in the NYT – and I say again and again – it’s about us, stupid. It’s about poverty, lack of health care, education – our focus needs to be turned inward, to resolve the weakness in us, and to leave the rest of the world to its own spoils and corruption – how can we go forth and spread democracy if our own experiment with it is currently at risk?

A very last minute decision changed our agenda for the weekend to driving to Grand Isle with Loca to meet friends. The barrier island is at the mouth of Barataria Bay where it meets the Gulf of Mexico. During Katrina, there was five foot swells that destroyed many homes and buildings there, but today, you’d hardly notice. 

In the mornings, T and I would take long walks down the beach with Loca and the first night we went to sleep I had a vision of us in the far future. She made a comment that my marriages were 5 years, 5 months, and 15 years but that we will be together 50 years – and for the first time in my life I can look out that far and see that same vision. 

My dear friend J brought me a book as a house gift called Awakenings that has a zen thought and image on each page. J thought it was clever that I am in a relationship with a woman and it is my awakening to a new life – the one that has been calling to me. The first page I turned to said a child does not belong to you, but to the universe. The first one T turned to said:

Great unity connects all things,

Great darkness dissolves all things,

Great vision penetrates all things,

Great equality encompasses all things,

Great law rules all things,

Great trust earns all things,

Great balance sustains all things.

Walking along the shore of Grand Isle, where I almost fled to this last July when I needed time to write and be alone, I thought of the life that I have awakened to. Kate Chopin spent her summers there and wrote The Awakening, but her protagonist, Edna Pontelier met a tragic end – she drowned either by suicide or fatigue in these same waters – but metaphorically she died to be born, to be self-actualized – to fully develop her emotional self. 

Woman goes on journey, comes back changed: I woke this morning to a sense of peace that rarely accompanies my Monday routine. It was the peace of knowing that no matter what, I love this person lying next to me, profoundly, and this love has opened a new way of seeing, being that has little to do with alternative lifestyle and lots to do with who she is and who I am – and oh, what a difference to me.