Dangermond.org

Check this out. Gives me nightmares.

I heard the Cabrini bells this morning and failed to get out of bed because snuggling and trying to remain calm amidst crazy times just seemed like a whole lot better idea. Of course, this meant that Loca was shortchanged. And when I got up to my desk, it all started over again – the panting and heart racing and just overall “make it stop” feeling.

My hairdresser told me she is voting for McCain because she fears Obama is a socialist. And I said, “eh?” Did the Democrats make this mess? Not that I recall. A friend sent me a great website that explains the meltdown in layman’s terms. Here is a good piece from Lessons, the last section:

3. We move inexorably toward the socialization of credit risk and a much larger role for the state in the direction of the national economy. Courtesy of Bush and Greenspan, Marx has made a comeback. In The Communist Manifesto, the fifth proposal in Marx’s ten point plan for placing the means of production in the hands of the proletariat was the “centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.” Marx didn’t get it quite right; we’re getting there via the dictatorship of the kleptocracy. But hey, it’s a start.

Why have I been glued to the computer screen all day?

Days go by.

Yesterday about 11:30 AM I got down on my hands and knees because I had this crushing feeling of anxiety in my chest. It was a collusion of trying to remain positive in a rapidly deteriorating environment. By noon, I had to get out and take a walk just to get some fresh air.

Later, as the day grew dark, I lay in bed and told T that I was overwhelmed by work right now and I sometimes felt I couldn’t breathe. She implored me to get out and take a walk with her and Loca and so off we went.

We crossed the pedestrian bridge with the sun almost setting, a group of regulars who meet on the bridge for wine and cheese were sitting in their camping chairs and chatting away. We got to the other end and turned around to see the red sky and pause for a moment of beauty. Along came this character as I will call him. This young boy with all the charm of a snake oil salesman, he held us in rapt attention being a grown up, a little boy, and an imp all at once. Then his mother drove up and said, I’ve been calling you. We told her he had been entertaining us and she said, “Yes, he’s a character all right.”

Then we kept walking and were directly across the bayou from the LaLa when a car pulled over and a man and a woman got out and went onto the grass and started hula hooping. We kept walking pass Moss and circled back to the house down Hagan, the street directly in back of us, and then cut through St. John Court, a tucked away culdesac dotted with cottages, and popped back out to the bayou. When I came in I spoke with J who said that hula hoopers had stopped in front of my house and she thought they were putting on a show for me. I said nah, they are random hula hoopers, but they have good hoops like mine.

A bubble bath, a wodka tonic, and my sweetheart helped to lift the elephant off my chest. Now today to try to get through the to do list in a more regimented, less daunting, effort.

This morning Loca and I rushed out the door, late again, for our walk. The weather outside is outstanding and Loca was in a rather subdued mood. We headed into City Park, saying hello to the usual suspects, and saw a friend of hers ahead. Instead of getting excited, Loca was sort of like don’t bother me and was going around behind me instead of engaging. The owner and I chatted and she said I haven’t seen you in a few days, and I said I’ve been waking up late, and she said, me too, it’s that transition period. I said I used to get up at 5:45 like clockwork, and she said, I was always up at 6 and I don’t have an alarm. I said I haven’t used an alarm in years and usually it’s the Cabrini bells at six that tell me if I am sleeping late or not. I said this morning I heard them then went back to sleep. She said, one of my favorite things about living here is hearing the bells, six and twelve and six.

As we were coming out of the park, Loca saw her new best friend, Sangi, and decided to become an acrobat and so we let them off leash and they ran up and down the bayou and then straight into the bayou – not heeding a word we said. She came home a funky mess.

But I was happy that both of us are out our little funk.

Two years ago I went to the hospital to hold a brand new baby – a tiny scarlet red faced and body baby who cried like no tomorrow – her life for the next two years was a see-saw of joy and tragedy – yesterday she passed peacefully at home, loved and now greatly missed.

Yesterday, was supposed to go something like this in my mind, I woke up and planned a day that involved getting exercise, working in the garden, and doing some work.

Yesterday, in actuality went more like this, lounge in bed, open front door and be greeted by a Hebe Pumpkin smiling up at me, retrieve and read the Sunday NYT, a knock on the door from a neighbor asking to watch his daughter while he and son go to the shooting range and mom runs the Breast Cancer race, Scooby Doo now inserted into the DVD and cereal and milk laid out, a piece of toast with scrambled eggs and truffle oil from Istria now in front of me, suddenly a race of 8,000 people go by the front door, afterwards, walk over to J’s and see what’s happening, return to work but in a split second decide instead to make Chicken Dumping Soup with chili broth and kaffir leaves for T and a friend for lunch, run to store get fixings, return to make soup, vacuum house, sit on the screen porch and eat lunch, T goes to nap, I go back to J’s to see what is happening and hang out, talk about work, come back to house to actually work but we decide to walk Loca around the bayou because it so outstandingly beautiful outside that people are laying in the grass and reclining on porches and being inside is intolerable, we pass a small impromptu jazz band on the pedestrian bridge, we pass a party at the house directly across the bayou where one of the guests has decided to swim across the bayou (we watch him get out, his body tattoo’d from head to toe), we come back around and pass our friends all lounging for the lord, drinking wine and eating french fries that are hot out of J’s oven, we force ourselves inside and both finally get to our work and then T makes us vodka tonics (pronounced, always, Wodka Tonics with her delicious accent), and to end the long, meandering day, we run a big hot bubble bath, light candles, and plunge in while we listen to Cheb i Sabbah’s Devotion.

Joseph Campbell said you have to be prepared to set aside the life you imagined for the one that awaits you. Amen.

My mother called and said she had a plan to save my sister which involved asking the guy visiting the guys who live downstairs to drive her to Atlanta and pick up my sister and then drive them both to Florida. There was something about this that made my insides crawl.

I consider myself a tolerant person, a free bird, open to new ideas. But what about the times I haven’t been? I remember when at the time the love of my life asked me point blank if I could accept that he might want to have another woman in his life at the same time. He said he loved that I was light skinned and light haired but he dreamed of a dark haired, dark eyed woman.

I was young enough that I would have laid across a railroad track for him, but for some reason as much as I tried to accept this all I could say was FUCK YOU and storm out. He never let me live that down – my inability to deal with things outside my normal scope – and I always struggled with my lack of “openness” – it’s been about thirty years since that encounter and I still scratch my head – was he wrong or was I wrong? I’ve chalked it up to neither-nor proposition but rather what he wanted not overlapping with what I wanted – maybe not end of story but end of that chapter for sure.

Last year, I met a woman who I was interested in and knew she had a history. I would ponder the ability to have a future with this woman and I entertained an open relationship. One where she could do whatever she wanted and we would have whatever it was that we were going to have but we wouldn’t enter a monogamous relationship because I sort of believe it would be doomed to short-term if we did. I never came to a conclusion on that – could I live with an open relationship? I don’t know the answer to this – all the parts that put me together say no, but then I also realize a lot of the construct was put there by people whose architecture didn’t necessarily serve them all that well.

If age has taught me anything it is to listen to my gut – it’s the Blink phenomenon – if my first reaction is negative, I listen. I may not act right away but that’s because who I want to be gets in the way with who I am sometimes.

What I can’t reconcile is how come when I say no to something that doesn’t please me, and then it doesn’t please the person I want to please, I feel bad. It’s like a no win situation.

Need I say more.

Well maybe this one quote from the NYT Monday morning:

“As gifted as he is, he is essentially going to execute the Republican agenda, the orthodoxy of the Republican agenda, with a new face and a maverick approach to it, and he’d be quite good at it. But I think we need a generational change.”
COLIN L. POWELL, discussing Senator John McCain, and endorsing Senator Barack Obama.

Or it was more like one Obama maniac this morning as I wore my tee shirt and yelled to the crowd of people who were doing the Breast Cancer walk/run. I heard one yell “McCain” back at me but mostly people just looked perplexed.