Dangermond.org

Dilemma #1 = where to put the guests
When the LaLa was built it had ample storage and plenty of places for guests to sleep. Fast forward to one partner, one kid, two dogs, and one cat and there is no place for anything anymore. My large house feels like a cottage. My bike that I love is under a tarp in the side yard which is where it should be since I never have time to ride it anymore. The storage room is T’s office. The guest room is Tin’s room. Leaving us with a dilemma I’ve been trying to figure out.

In comes my neighbor [we are bookended by two men who are master craftsman – woodworkers extraordinaire], the one to my right who has just made his family a gorgeous teak outdoor shower. Brilliant idea I told him – not only is it not what I had in mind to remedy my situation but it’s exactly what I needed. My office with a convertible sofa/futon/bed of some sort, already has a half bathroom, and now this on the terrace (this is still in I want stage, not I want therefore I get stage) – behold the outdoor shower for my terrace which is right off my office that becomes presto change-o on the weekend, our guestroom:

I heard a man today on LPR saying he hoped that our state bird would not die out because of this oil spill. Pelicans be strong. I can’t imagine this city, the waterways, this bayou without our beloved state bird – the Pelican. Yesterday, in the midst of a conference call a small sparrow collided with the large window in my office and plunged to his death down in the outdoor shower. I ran down after the call and he was still fluttering so I put him in the garden. Later, I believe he died. I hung up a bubble wand on the window that I had purchased at Jazz Fest a long time ago until I can get a crystal to hang there and deter these birds from believing they can fly through glass.

Today while I held a cell phone in one hand and my Blackberry in the other trying to conduct business in the waiting room of the hospital, an elderly man with a smile approached me. He said, “I hope you don’t think I am rude to be staring at you.” I thought, you were staring at me? Then he said, “You look just like my aunt.” I thought, your aunt? He laughed and said that I was a carbon copy of his aunt and that I stopped him dead in his tracks when he saw me walk into the room. I asked how is aunt is doing and he said she is in her 90s and healthy and happy and I said, I hope we have something more than looks in common.

He walked back to his gathering of people in his jolly way and then when they were leaving about a half hour later another elderly gentlemen from the crowd approached me and I said, “What? I look like your aunt too?” He said, “No, I’m not related to him, but wasn’t that a good pick up line? I’m going to have to use that one.” Then he winked at me.

Meanwhile the truth is that every where I go and usually in airports or waiting rooms or malls, I’m usually approached by someone who says that I looked exactly like someone they know. I just always respond I have that kind of face – where I have over a thousand twins on the planet.

But Flower tells me no, you look unique and others have said the same. So who knows why, but for some people I am a clone.

We went into the hospital today for a thirty minute surgery on T’s meniscus, only we arrived at 11 and left at 5 – it’s amazing to me that doctors don’t think we have anything else to do with our life but wait on them, listen to them, and generally just stand there like a deer in the headlights. As I waited in the lobby I was given a device much like they hand you in a restaurant and also a tracking number so that I could follow T’s progress from pre-op to post-op.

I truly wonder why hospital decor needs to be so drab, why medical workers need to be so mysterious with YOUR information, why nothing happens on any schedule that would abide in the real world?

What is it?

I dreamt last night of a train wreck only it was a streetcar and a barge and they collided on the street in front of me as I was running from hearing something disturbing that a loved one said to me. I looked up what this means and all I can say is go figure:

Dream Symbols – Train Wreck

In modern society trains have become relatively rare. Just what does dreaming about a train wreck mean?

First, a train isn’t run by just any Joe off the street. Trains are controlled by engineers that have had a lot of education and experience managing the train. They are supposed to run on a track, not just whereever they want to. They are supposed to run on a set schedule and millions of people depend on them.

For you to dream about train wrecks means that something OUT of your control, that you should be able to rely on and trust in, has gone haywire. This isn’t about you and something you should have been able to do properly. This is about someone or something else that you *Trusted* that let you down completely, in a way that had a huge impact on your life.

Train wrecks aren’t about small dings that a mechanic has to fix. Train wrecks are about huge national-news issues that affect many people.

What major incident in your life is causing you trouble? What large issue, that should be reliable, has gone off kilter?

The president told Matt Lauer that he is looking for whose ass to kick – big tough guy. You know what, it’s Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser who is out there figuring it out. BP has proven to be the most irresponsible, arrogant and patronizing company that I’ve ever seen the likes of since Enron. As a matter of fact the Federal Government has proven to be the most incompetent governing body that the United States has ever seen from 9/11 to the failure of the levees to BP’s oil spill – the response has been shortsighted, reactive, and incompetent.

Obama – he can talk tough all he wants but he needs to make sure that BP and all the rest of these companies pick up the check for everything – the clean up to the restoration of our precious Gulf.

In the meantime, ordinary citizens are doing what they can like my friend who moved to the beach to raise her son there – she’s blogging about the beauty that might disappear any day now.

I See the Sea…

I see the sea shrink
then shrink again
until it fits in the palm of my hand.

And I
hear the sound of flying fish,
the dead sailors’ cough, the burning whales,
the shivering mermaids, the horses and the wind,
the sea’s white curls,
and the drowned strangers who have forgotten their human voice.

I see
the sea
shrink
then shrink even more
the oars’ hopeless beats,
the foam-circled boats,
the frozen shadows,
the salt-encrusted stores,
the disheveled hopeless left on the shore….
Oh what strange mystery,
the sea!

I see your purple fingers
in the beakers of the dead,
and the shoulders of the wind
drenched with your mouth’s sweat,
and I see your bitter joy.

I see
the sea
shrink,
then shrink again,
and I
float farther
from the invisible shore.

To where is this familiar boat,
whose oars’ solemn sound mingles
with the rain, carrying us?

SHAMS LANGROODI
translated from the Persian by Sholeh Wolpé

Forget about all those books like why New Orleans matter – food, music, port, culture – there is simply no way to describe walking out of a building after a rain coming down while the sun is shining and feeling like you just took a sauna. We took the dogs and Tin around the bayou this afternoon because I felt the need to bolt from the LaLa after a day in front of the computer and not spent with my family. We ran into a neighbor who was walking around the bayou because she too had been under a deadline, in front of a computer. We ended up on the porch for a bottle, with the fans on high speed to offset the heavy humidity.

Happy as clams.

There is a great song sung by Waylon Jennings and his beautiful wife, Jesse Colter call Storms Never Last. Well, it’s raining again in New Orleans, storming, with thunder and lightning and just now I read on a friend’s blog a great way to think:

Life isn’t about waiting for the storms to pass . . .
It’s about learning to dance in the rain.

I started thinking about all the reasons why the dark sky outside would be a harbinger of Eli’s Coming, but instead, I’m changing my tune and seeing this rain as a chance to wash us clean and refresh us just once more. Tonight on the Weather Channel, Sandy Rosenthal from Levees.org is going to be speaking about how on this 5th anniversary of the levees failing, what we should know about where we are here in New Orleans with hurricane season underway.

One of the white ducks got hit by a car and is limping around the bayou. Word up is the lady who put them there in the first place took the duck to the vet to find out that it costs several hundred dollars to euthanize a duck – really? I said, my neighbor will do it for free. But the duck actually looked like it could handle its new gimp leg and so unlike the unnaturalness of this Pekin duck being in our natural waterway, nature will take care of its own gimps soon enough and so it is being left to its own devices.