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This morning as 8,000 people ran and walked in front of my house to build awareness for Breast Cancer, I read several articles in the Sunday Times that spoke to past recessions and how physical health improves because stress levels go down, and people are spending more time with their loved ones. It seems – or so the paper says – that money does not make you happy – that once basic needs are met, more money doesn’t buy happiness. But didn’t a Peruvian writer suggest it buys something that seems an awful lot like happiness?

But I digress, today I had a million work thingies to do and you know what? It has been an outstanding fall day and what I ended doing instead of my yard work and real work was making chicken dumpling soup for my gf and her friend and then visited with my friends and then took Loca for a walk and still the pull to go upstairs and face what awaited me began to seem more like preparing myself to walk on hot coals.

How to live during a recession? Beats me.

This time it was a Hebe Jack-o-Lantern, yamulka and all, looking right at me when I opened the door to grab the Sunday New York Times.

If Williams was a bigot he would have looked a lot like the guy who was chatting with the couple in front of us last night at the opera – he’d have that Southern twang, he’d have been dressed in that dapperish gayish mode, and he would have been saying exactly what this guy was saying:

Yes, I’m living with mother. We finally got the house in Gentilly fixed, but we are still working on the other ones. Honestly, I’m so tired of dealing with the people here. When mother dies, I’m so far out of here. I am headed to North Carolina. That’s right. I was telling (mumble) that I am so tired of the tax money they are getting from me for nothing in this city. (Mumble) said that money goes to pay for schooling for the children of the city. And I said I don’t know why those people don’t work hard and send their kids to private school like my parents did. I am just blown away by everyone wanting a hand out these days. Yes, when mother dies, I’ll be leaving.

Before the opera started last night, the orchestra played the national anthem. My Croatian princess refused to stand for any national anthem, I was up like a rocket and singing along with the group AND THE ROCKETS RED GLARE, THE BOMBS BURSTING IN AIR…

The national anthem still gives me goosebumps – what can I say?

Mark Strand is tops on my list. Last night, we went to a party after the opera and in handwriting tacked to a wall in the host’s house was this poem:

Keeping Things Whole

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

— Mark Strand

Guy Ritchie and Madonna have settled their divorce, according to the U.K. publication, The Sun. The “RocknRolla” director will reportedly walk away with assets totaling around $60 million, including a 1,200-acre country estate, a London pub, and a cash settlement.

Madonna will hold on to her New York and Los Angeles homes and most of her considerable fortune, The Sun reported. “The negotiations were relatively painless,” The Sun quoted a source as saying. “Guy knew what he wanted and Madonna knew what she was keen to keep. There was a spell when Guy was in a mood to dig his heels in, but he decided this arrangement seemed reasonable and a long battle over money would make life unbearable.”

We know where the assets go. But where does love go? There is nothing more thrilling than new love, and yet nothing sadder than the slow fade of love.

I remember something remarkable about my grandmother. She was raised in the South and had a tough life. She ran a dairy farm by herself after my grandfather left and raised five children. She was cool as a cucumber but tough as nails. As she aged, this miraculous thing happened to her – she began opening up and getting more girlish and you could almost see her enjoying herself.

Sometimes, when I see T jumping up and down like a pogo stick because she’s happy, I can see the child she was. The one her mother said used to go out into the woods near their house and play for hours and come home so dirty that her nickname Pipi Long Stocking actually became Pipi Dirty Stocking. I see this child in her that is part of her stubborn face, her happy face, and her loving face.

She tells me all the time that I’m like a child. Really I say? Well, that’s quite an accomplishment given the fact that it was hard to be a child when I was mothering my own mother. For me, childhood was something I ran out of as fast as I could. If today, T sees me smile like my six year old photo where I’m grinning to beat the band, or if she sees me carefree and happy like a child, then I’ve come to a place I’ve always wanted – I’ve waited nearly half a century to enjoy my childhood. Better late than never.

Once again the mysterious pumpkin carver has struck the LaLa!

We returned at 2 am from a fun party to find not two, but three pumpkins carved and lit up with candles – the perp we deduce was in mid act as a lone candle was left behind, as well as one pumpkin gone missing. And in the missing pumpkin’s place were an array of Indian corn, gourds and squash.

We have four potential suspects, but my desire is that I keep buying pumpkins, and s/he keeps turning them into jack-o-lanterns because what the hell, why not?

Notice in the original, now moribund jack’s caved in mouth is mulch – a clue I’m sure but to what I don’t know:

Here be sure to notice, aside from the cornucopia that the Great Pumpkin Carver has left, are pink sticky notes inside the front door – all love notes to me to stop working so hard and reminders to de-stress:

We went to the opera last night to see Puccini’s Manon Lescaut. Mind you, I was stressed all day, I was tired, and I felt like I was spun as tight as a Turkish top, but we were so happy we went. It was one of Puccini’s early operas and there are themes he brings up there that are more fleshed out in his later works. One is the theme of the poor wench, in Manon the case is a whore with a big heart, but he makes that same woman more sympathetic as he goes along, cumulating in Turandot where the woman is the prize. Puccini is probably one of my favorite opera composers of all time. His arias are unlike any others in their ability to take a single moment – when Cio-Cio San believes her fiance has returned, when Calaf says to Princess Turandot that no one will sleep, not even her, because he will win – and raise them to great heights – they are all jewels.

Manon Lescaut (1893)
La bohème (1896)
Tosca (1900)
Madama Butterfly (1904)
Turandot (1926)

We are having the reader’s digest version of a relationship and luckily I have enough age on me to do more than take an educated guess about how to react to our curves and dips when they appear. Today, we woke late after coming home from a party at 2AM – we had our coffee and tea on the front porch. The day began as one of those unforgettable fall days here in New Orleans. The bayou was glistening in the sunlight, the air had enough of a chill on it to make the sunshine delightful. We put on Kiri Te Kanawa and then Jessye Norman and listened to their beautiful voices fill in the in-between layers with even more beauty.

Then we took Loca for a walk and came back and again found ourselves surrounded by a day that made sitting on the porch mandatory. We put on Grant McLennan, who I just found out died young, in his early forties, and were chit chatting about an upcoming trip and our perceptions about where we were going and who we were seeing and it became clear that we had different expectations for our travels.

In a skittish moment, when her vision was bouncing off of mine, in our peripheral vision, we both witnessed the first pelican returning to the bayou. A large Louisiana brown soared by with ample wingspan enough to catch a shadow into the calm water, he sailed passed the house and then swooped around to pass again.

Amazing.

The stop gaps on our visions began loosening up and before we had finished lunch, we had modified out travel plans to include yours, mine and ours.

I learned sometime back there are no mind readers in a relationship and communication – as trite as that word might seem – means you have to talk, say what you feel, be vulnerable, you have to risk that your demands may appear petty or unreasonable to someone else, you have to open yourself up to someone else’s point of view, you have to stop worry about being a burden, and that relationships are a delicate balance between not losing yourself, about finding yourself, and about being yourself – the ole staying me in the we chestnut.

The pelicans are back!!