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I got in from dinner last night and tucked myself in my hotel room bed as quickly as possible and then a few hours later I dreamt I was standing on the balcony looking at the waves crash against the beach. Why? Because I had the window open and at about 3:30AM for some unfathomable reason New York traffic comes alive and sounds like a continuous wave. The noise here is incessant. I wonder how New Yorkers feel when they are in the quiet, in solitude?

Did anyone see the still photos of Jessica Lange when she won the Emmy for Grey Gardens? She looks like her face was pulled back and snapped shut. Who thinks that Botox makes them look younger, better, improved? We had this conversation the other day – hair color almost 99% improves your looks, exercise 90% improves your looks, skin care 100% improves your looks, avoiding the sun 1000% improves your looks, botox – no, it seldom improves anyone’s looks instead it makes people look at you and go – you had botox, yuck.

Girls, take a clue from the boys – look at this pic of Sam Shepard – wrinkled and still a hunk. The only men I’ve seen with botox are plastic surgeons and they look like, guess what?, they have had botox!

I only am freaked out because I love Jessica Lange and I love that she takes her children home to where she grew up because she wanted them to be haunted by a place and because of this:

During a recent interview, Jessica was asked about the secret to her enduring relationship with Sam, who she met in 1982 on the set of “Frances“. They have been together ever since but have never married. “I don’t know,” she says, growing quiet and charmingly flustered, “You’ve got to have some deep connection… it’s a lot of history and knowing somebody really well, and… It’s being interested in somebody after 25 years; they still fascinate you.”

I boarded the plane to New York thinking about Obama. I was standing behind James Carville and he had a briefcase full of papers and notebooks and I wondered if he was coming to NY also to learn what the United Nations gathering would foment. I had almost pulled my Obama tee shirt out of the closet but opted instead for a plain brown one as I wanted something more versatile for my business wardrobe.

As the taxi pulled up to the Grand Hyatt, there were police stationed everywhere and I remembered that I was here at the Grand Hyatt the exact same time as the U.N. met last time and there was traffic, and police and crowds but at that time it was a lot more tense than it feels right now.

A very large black man stood talking to a man one third his size – he was wearing a tee shirt that had Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King and Barack Obama faces floating like big balloons.

A friend sent me an article from the Boston newspaper about New Orleans and its bohemian denizens – they referred to us as bayou bohos – not bad. If you consider that most of my adult life has fallen into one cliche or another – I gladly accept bayou boho as my moniker – wear it loud, wear it proud.

A friend writes that it has been raining so hard in Atlanta that some areas are flooding bad. In Turkey, the rains were coming for so long a friend writes that it was just like Katrina – a manmade disaster that killed innocent people. In New Orleans, we finished a monsoon week that brought torrential rains nearly every day all day.

Right next to my hotel, President Obama will be meeting at the United Nations, and tops on the agenda is climate change.

I’m hoping for good weather while we’re there.

I was on my way to the airport this morning and went by to see mom. She perked up and smiled when she saw me which made me feel good to see her so alert. My sister was sleeping in the chair next to her and I was happy to see that she was there with mom particularly as I am going to be gone this week.

After a while, my sister woke up and fifty years of turmoil arose again – she prefers this lip balm not the one you are using, use the lotion with perfume that I brought on her not the hospital one, and then the dreaded, Mom has to talk to you (as if I have been a bad girl), mom began staring straight ahead, conflict always the last thing on her mind, and especially when she is trapped like a rat in a hospital bed with not enough strength to run out the door – then my sister began prodding my mother to “talk” to me.

I shouted, “Don’t fuck with me,” which of course got a rise out of mom.

Poor mom – yet I marvel how in mere seconds of being in the same occupied space, it’s flame on. We’re all creatures of habit – my mom avoiding conflict, my sister creating it, and me taking the bait.

I have a small photograph of Joseph Esherick holding a wand and taped to the back is a quote by him – in an article a writer said, “A house is built and then it must be maintained.” He wrote “DAMN” over the quote. I love that. The painters are here putting up ladders and painting what was already painted – over and over – it is all about maintaining around here. Joe was the figurehead of Esherick, Homsey, Dodge and Davis where both Steve and I worked off and on for many years. He was last in a long line of architects that created the Bay Area style.

As I packed my suitcase last night, trying to think of what I might want to wear three days from now – always a struggle – I thought about the comings and goings around here. We’re travelers, me and T, not vacationers, definitely travelers. While sometimes it is for work and sometimes it is for pleasure, I inherited gypsy blood and my wanderings are what keep me centered rather than the opposite.

The pull of a base camp – the LaLa, the bayou, New Orleans – is always there calling me home. When a friend in New Orleans told me that she dreaded coming home not too long after Katrina, I felt for her because I longed and pined for home for 16 years while I was on the other side of the continent to the point that I welped up in the #42 bus in San Francisco when I heard a woman speaking in a New Orleans accent in the back – the accent barely discernible but definitely there.

When I was packed, I went to sleep in our cozy bed, lying next to my loved one, our dogs littered around us on their comfy beds, I thought, and in the morning, I will travel again and then come home to this – and I slept the sleep of the dead.

I like to keep my Tao te Ching beside my bed and pull it out on nights when I am discomforted. I was attempting a meditation on the Tao before Portugal and found that Portugal had the marvelous effect of renewal – just what my soul needed. But before I bring the Tao back to my bedside which I’ve now cleared to only the stack of books I know I will read rather than desire to read, I’ll leave off my meditation with one entry.

#16

Empty your mind of all thoughts.
Let your heart be at peace.
Watch the turmoil of beings,
but contemplate their return.

Each separate being in the universe
returns to the common source.
Returning to the source is serenity.

If you don’t realize the source,
you stumble in confusion and sorrow.
When you realize where you come from,
you naturally become tolerant,
disinterested, amused,
kindhearted as a grandmother,
dignified as a king.
Immersed in the wonder of the Tao,
you can deal with whatever life brings you,
and when death comes, you are ready.

My brother and I write letters to each other – he is away, “working for the government” we used to tell people, when actually he’s locked away for something that is still a mystery to most of us. Recently we quit writing letters because they allowed the inmates to start emailing. It has changed the nature of our relationship from catching up to daily talks. My brother has strong faith in god and likes to tell me that god decides everything. When he starts on about god I stand back from the context of our talks and become more of a bystander. I want to ask him, If god could talk would he tell me why you are locked away for so long when rapists and child murderers walk the streets? If god had one thing to answer for me it would be why addiction is so powerful and why we are so weak?

I have a list I’m saving up for that conversation.