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My flight was delayed out of Los Angeles last night and I arrived in New Orleans around 3AM. When I walked out of the plane I smelled the familiar smell of the Louis Armstrong International Airport and then beyond. I got in the truck and WWOZ was playing back to back Johnny Adams – our native son singing his guts out as I made my way home to the bayou in the wee hours of the morning. I pulled up to the bayou, the street lights twinkling in the black night sky. I tried to creep inside but T woke up and the dogs and she came to greet me. Tin was sound a sleep on the video camera. I crawled in bed, home at last.

Oh yes, there is nothing like coming home. Nothing.

I’m trying now to use the Force to navigate me through these troubled yet awesome times. Has BP created the end of the world as we know it? Hard to say but don’t give into what is going on right at the moment as this too shall pass is something that I’ve learned after 51 revolutions around the sun. Short-term thinking has never served anyone. I keep looking out at the Pacific Ocean here in Palos Verdes and it looks so healthy – kelp populating the near shoreline, schools of dolphins that darkened a long stretch a little further out, pelicans flying in V formation, and a general appearance of freshness right before my eyes. Meanwhile, images from back home are oil slicks, brown coated pelicans, sticky fish and lots of despair populating the home blogs and news feeds.

I have to believe it is not the end of the world.

My head tells me this catastrophe will change us but change is not to be feared, but rather embraced because a phoenix rises through the ashes and is beautiful in its new form. Is this the worst tragedy in the world – I wonder – as lately I have been thinking about my friend who lost her daughter almost two years ago – that I feel might be worse.

I’ve noticed lately that my mind was ebbing with toxins about the current state of affairs – last night when someone said Obama would never get re-elected I just had to recoil – why not? He is being judged for the moment, and sorry but there is not enough information to shine the light on a moment in time to make any judgment.

I put my reggae list on the iPod this morning as I got dressed to go see clients – One Love played a dream beat. I checked in on my friend’s blog in Florida (she’s not seeing brown slicks yet, just a lot of trash washing ashore).

I’m keeping an open mind that the answers aren’t all in front of us right now but the truth will be revealed in its own time. In the meantime, my heart aches and soars simultaneously as I take a snapshot of my life right in this moment, and now No Woman No Cry is playing and I am keeping my eyes, heart, and mind wide open.

Okay so Toyota made the headlines as not being the safe company that everyone perceived them to be and worse, hiding the information rather than addressing it head on. Evil company.

The pope turns out to have had a long history in turning a blind eye to pediophiles within the church and to sheltering these predatory priests by shipping them into new areas rather than owning up to the problem. Evil church.

BP let’s loose a cluster fuck of events that result in a cataclysmic oil gush that has no remedy in sight and instead of saying mea culpa and admitting they don’t know what is going on they keep a tight lid on information and try to control a situation out of control rather than admit they need help. Evil corporation.

You wonder who is controlling the spin on any of these stories.

Today, Toyota announced that it is going into Mississippi where the oil spill has caused jobs to shut down to open a plant that will employ 2000 people. Read: Toyota the hero.

What’s the headline tomorrow look like – Pope figures out a way to cap the oil pipe?

See if you can keep up.

I’ve been Skyping with Tin every day while I’m in Los Angeles working and when I look at him on this computer screen he just radiates love. How can so much love be wrapped up in that little 22 pounds? It’s nutty!

One thing my friend finally made clear to me the other day is the need to get off the bottle. I find that most of the transitions that Tin has to make – whether it be eye surgery or learning a new anything – are harder on me than on him. I polled a bunch of breast feeding mothers and the consensus there was to breast feed till 18 months or two years. The books say twelve months transition off the bottle. The doctor said now. I asked other parents who had adopted infants who were not newborn (internationally mainly) and some have continued night time bottles even at 3 years old – for the bonding, the comforting.

Who is being comforted? When my friend explained how sucking on a bottle keeps formula around the teeth and thereby causes tooth decay – I finally understand why Tin has to get off the bottle and why I have been reluctant to give it up – I am comforted by having him in my lap, still, sucking his bottle. He will be just fine without it.

It’s amazing to me how sometimes my trips away from home, routine, and setting always seem to shine light on grey areas.

I watched Ben Stiller in Greenberg the other night. I’m still trying to sort the movie out in my mind. Was there a character arc or wasn’t there? Ben Stiller did a perfect and nuanced character profile of a man who nobody could be comfortable around, not even his own mother (had she been alive in this movie). Very disturbing in an undefinable way. But Bravo Ben nonetheless.

A long time ago when I was an undergraduate studying English Literature, I happened upon a quote from Flannery O’Connor where she described the importance of establishing the habit of art. I was thinking about that today when the question of creativity came up in a discussion about other things.

In a world where there is no time – you make the time for what sings and who sings to you. You start discerning and narrowing what is important and what isn’t. So while we lament the time we don’t have to do certain things we wish to do, we end up doing the things that are important. As my ex father in law was want to say – some things are better to think about than to actually do.

I told a friend of mine who was off to start on an entrepreneurial path that while I thought I didn’t have the energy level these days for a start up the truth is that a start up would energize me. He agreed. And so it is with creativity. I blog every day because I have established a habit of art. Not because I have time. And because blogging gives me an area to be creative, which in turn feeds me and yields its own energy and time allotment.

In his opening statement, Barton, the top Republican on the committee overseeing the oil spill and its aftermath, delivered a personal apology to the oil giant, BP. He said the $20 billion fund that President Obama directed BP to establish to provide relief to the victims of the oil disaster was a “tragedy in the first proportion.”

Shame on you, you stupid son of a bitch.

I was describing all the areas of my life yesterday as great big bubbles of uncertainty and someone said, “Well your love for Tin is certain.” And that of course is true. A friend’s son hit a home run yesterday to win a tied baseball game and you would have thought that he had won a Pulitzer – it brought proud tears to my eyes too. Love your children – that is a fact. I wanted to have children because I know first hand that my grandmother, my mother, my aunts, uncles, brothers have all told me the same thing all my life – that having children was what what made them happy. I was reading a passage that my cousin included on a pictorial memorial that she had put together of my grandmother after she passed, it was written in November 1999, three years before her death; my grandmother said:

I have always been very proud of all my children. They grew up to be very fine men and women. I have never regretted the life we had together. There’s nothing in my power I wouldn’t have done for them. I would do it all over again if need be. I love each and everyone of my family very much. Their love has made my life very happy.

This year marks the fifth anniversary of the levee failure in New Orleans and you know what someone asked me yesterday? “Is New Orleans doing okay? Is it coming back?” I was a little surprised because I got these questions a lot in the first couple of years and my response was pretty standard – “You can come to New Orleans as a tourist and not even know that something big happened.” So when people ask about the oil spill and how it will affect us, I just shake my head. Already I’m hearing that people are avoiding seafood from the Gulf, that vacationers are canceling trips to Florida and Alabama beaches, and this is only month two of this horrible catastrophe.

The one thing I can tell you is New Orleans is doing just fine and there are many of us who believe that having gone through the levee failure of 2005 made it easier for us to go through the historic downturn in the economy. There are some that believe that this oil spill is making us scrappier and tougher and that we will survive this like we have past events and we will come out of this better – with a plan for our energy consumption, with a plan for Louisiana’s wetlands, with a plan for a different way.

Hope dies last.

Sitting outside with tea this morning watching the seagreen foam of Pacific ocean roiling while scores of pelicans pass in flight to somewhere, I’m reminded of my pelicans at home slogging through oil slicks dead or dying. I received a distress email last night, a female Shepherd at the LASPCA about to be put down today. Emails, phone calls, and lots of hand wringing and someone to take the lead might save this one. This one.

But how many animals have to die before we the people begin listening to what they have to say to us. Those pelicans didn’t detour from their flight to come over here and poop on my head. Those Shepherds (dogs) don’t corral us in pens and threaten our lives.

Imagine all the people (creatures), living life as one. You could say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.