Dangermond.org

Stress takes on many forms – anxiety dreams, short temper, tight and rigid body. There is a way out. Hooping!

Let’s see start the day with a nervous breakdown, let that carry you through every detail of the day as it progresses, then finally capture two solid hours of productive work that is not fraught with trying to get online, stay online, send an email, receive an email, and take breather and run to see one of Prospect 1’s installations in City Park at Popp’s Fountain. Here is Loca enjoying it with me.

These are photos taken of City Park by Michel Varisco after Katrina hanging in big canvases around the pergola.

As soon as she got out of the cab, we whisked Flower to the Ogden to go hear the second half of Mary Gauthier. It was standing room only when we walked in the door, and Mary’s rich vocals were already in play singing Christmas in Paradise, one of my favorites. She looked so petite, smaller than I imagined but her voice carried the three story height of the Ogden, reaching up to the people sitting along the stairways and hanging over the rails on the third floor. She closed with Mercy Now, T’s favorite. When we stood in line to tell her we loved her music, I saw that she was inches taller than me even with my cowboy boots on.

We headed to Meaux Bar and Jim was welcoming – got us Debbie’s table by the window – and the bartender made us his delicious Kettle One Cosmos.

Evan and Tom were at Donna’s, so after dinner, we walked down Rampart and Evan was just picking up his clarinet since he was late to the gig. Didn’t matter. He gets better every time we see him and Tom’s always good.

It was a full moon and before we left the LaLa, we opened our purses in unison and said “Fill it Up, Fill it Up, Fill it Up.”

Flower asked “Why open your purse?,” I said it gets filled with money, and T said, “No, filled with love.” And I corrected myself and said filled with everything.

At midnight, when we returned, the moon was high and bright in the sky, and our wishes had come true.

I was moping on the couch, trying to get work done the other day when this email flashes across my screen from the Ogden After Hours – Mary Gauthier is there tonight. The wonder of living here. Flower gets in late, we’ll start her visit with some good music.

Yesterday, I spent all day studying different areas that inform media and I realized how often it is easy to suffer from tunnel vision. I’ve been sitting in the same bath water for so long, it’s gotten polluted. As a fiction writer, I always abided by the notion that all things inform your work – art begets literature begets architecture begets dance begets music begets just about everything – even the food you eat, which by the way I learned in yoga yesterday should be diverse to get all your vitamins – but as you look at an industry trying to understand the moving parts and the players and the directions – you get saddled with what everyone else knows biasing you to look a certain way – if you use a different lens, you see things, different directions, alternative realities and possibilities and suddenly what was dirty water becomes a fecund pond with lily pads and little frogs hopping around. Well, why not frogs?

I had this surreal moment this morning coming out of the park and seeing the mayor of the hood. I remembered a dream he was in last night where we were sitting in his kitchen eating waffles. I was at the corner and the streetcar was coming, and I saw him to the right with his dog, and then a nun appeared out of nowhere and was crossing in front of us. That wasn’t the dream, that was this morning.

I caught up with him and told him about the waffles and he said, funny you should say that, we made fresh homemade waffles this morning for the first time in a long time and even had flax seed oil in them and everything.

For the record, I’m not looking to make Tatjana my fourth husband, in case inquiring minds want to know why I’m obsessed about this Prop 8 nonsense – but I really can’t believe in this day and age that gay people can’t get married. I came across this today and have to say transparency never sounded so good (please also, ahem, note the reference to do onto others):

Barely woke this morning because I felt like my whole body had jet lag and basically have moved through the day in that constant state of feeling peaked, puny, under the weather. I went to yoga to try to shake the feeling, and while it provided a temporary reprieve, I almost felt like crying when I was in downward dog.

I have spent the better part of the afternoon working from the den, and even though it is in the same house, I feel as if I am working remotely and actually have gotten more done in this strange room than I could have up in my office.

A photographer friend of ours came over last night to shoot some pics of T and me. He’s doing a piece on femininity, challenging the notion of what it means. For T and me, it’s uncanny, how our looks betray us – yet it took me world enough and time to come to this realization on my own.

The exhibit will be on display at Swirl, opening the first Friday of December.

We spoke this morning with an attorney who specializes in adoptions, her experience, knowledge and big heart assured us of our next moves. This is my Daily Affirmation:

November 10, 2008

I give thanks for all those who have come before me and brought enlightenment to the world. Their legacy enriches me beyond measure.