In the room next to me, they are fucking like rabbits, the bed banging against the wall rhythmically then not, rhythmically then not, then pounding, almost coming through the wall. This has gone on since the early hours. Outside, horns are blowing, people are speaking in raised voices, and it is cold.
Why does it seem as if time has sped up to where hours pass like minutes, days like hours, weeks like days, months like weeks, and on and on?
Forty degrees and the city that never sleeps. I’m back at the Muse – my home away from home for eight years now – and they’ve put me in an upgraded room that seems a little too slick. I prefer the way it was – the cool comforter on the bed, the robe that I ended up buying cuz I loved so much (now there are leopard print terry robes – too cool for school) – and L’Occitane bath products – all so chi chi. No wonder they want $500 a room as opposed to the $245 we were paying right after 9/11 when no one was coming to NY but a few of us and we supported them.
Tripod, deaf, old cat
Everybody wants you bad
Goodbye – boney dog
This morning a complete stranger hugged both T and me and wished us luck in our life. Even she recognized the beauty in us and our potential.
T’s friend quotes his mother saying we look to our next love to remedy what was lacking in our last relationship – for me, it’s the tenderness she offers that is so palpable, so desired, so appreciated. For her, she says it’s my taking control of the scheduling? Sigh. Whatyagonnado?
My favorite flower is a peony – abundant in petals and as the bloom waxes they unfold so beautifully and as the blossom wanes still you see the lush beauty in the fallen, heavy head. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…to the height, depth, and breadth my soul can reach when feeling out of sight. We keep talking about the layering – the way we fit each other so perfectly – how we met under the spell of Mardi Gras – the chance we both took in being bolder than we truly are – about being lucky in love – and we both, at this age, in this time, have our own abundance of petals to behold, to unfold, to show. There is no better time to be in love than in spring.
In New York that is – here in New Orleans it is a super duper beautiful day – the sun is shining, it’s in the sixties and headed to the seventies – and I’m headed to NY (why that is?). Meanwhile, I’m only gone a few days and then my girls from Nantucket are arriving on Friday and we have a fully loaded agenda of fun in NOLA planned. Saturday is the St. Patrick’s Day parade – we just had the St. Joseph’s Day parade this past Saturday where my neighbor was in preparation for three days that culminated in him adhering an Italian flag sticker to Blue’s bumper.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch – the girls are coming and we’re headed to see the parade with a stop at T’s for cocktails and bites, and then to the other T’s to watch. But now I learned that Sunday is SUPER SUNDAY where the Mardi Gras Indians parade with their new suits – and so Sunday’s plans have changed from Commander’s snooty brunch to down-home good-time parading Indians and a shrimp poboys, fried pickles and icy scooners of Abita beer afterwards at Liuzza’s on Bienville.
Why do people live anywhere else? I keep scratching my head about that one.
When I was pulling back the shutters this morning, a pelican was taking off across the bayou and the sun was glistening and dancing on top of the water. This sort of activity might have been that I woke up late – having spent most of the night warding off night sweats caused by this stage of my life. All of these signs of aging used to cause me to be melancholy about doors that had closed for me – and now they no longer signify the same woe. In my zen mantra, one door closes while another opens, I think of the doors that have opened, if only one month ago, one week ago, and as recently as one minute ago and I am so enormously happy that I could burst from the joy of it all – who has such joy in her life? Why I’ve been chosen to receive such abundance is always a mystery to me – but a mystery to which I subscribe and appreciate and am eternally grateful and hope to spread to others.
I had another identify theft dream last night – this time I was with a client and my wallet fell out of my back pocket and when I found it later on his credenza, there was nothing in it – no money, no id, no credit cards – all gone. There was no anxiety accompanied by this, more just simple observation. T said I dreamed about it because my identity is morphing into a Lesbian – she thinks this is very funny only because she doesn’t really want me to be a Lesbian. She wants me to be me – a woman with a past – she prefers it that way.
On the same note – I want to have a party in late summer when she moves in – and call it our In/Out party – she’s moving in and I’m coming out – she’s against the coming out part of the equation – she’d rather me stay in because of her own image of who I am – her friend didn’t like the connotation of in and out for the sexual images it conjures (not that anyone is opposed to in or out), so we’re going to have an In/Out party and I’m not a Lesbian and I’m not sure why all of this makes me dream my identity has been stolen but it is all curious, isn’t it?