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“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

—-from A Return to Love, by Marianne Williamson.

Dinner and champagne and catching up with an old friend now having hit the 50 yard mile – “If only I had known,” she said, “Sex? .. forgetaboutit .. overrated, I could have been so productive,” and therein lies the nuttiness of aging – it’s not that youth is wasted on the young, it’s that aging gives you a new perspective that would have been SO HANDY in your youth it almost feels like some cosmic joke.

Man: “When did you check out of this marriage?”

Woman: “When I said ‘I do.'”

Left New Orleans in the low 80s and arrived in San Francisco with the thermometer at 91 degrees at night – go figure.

After an auspicious beginning to my flight that involved burning brakes midair, I landed and am now sitting here looking out at the dusky light on the San Francisco bay. A Hornblower boat is motoring by and the Embarcadero is active and teeming with walkers and eaters and drinkers all enjoying the view.

There is talk back home that they will take down the Claiborne overpass and having lived here in the Bay Area when they brought the Embarcadero down, all I can say is, it’s about damn time. Claiborne Avenue in its past and present form is about the true spirit of the people of New Orleans undaunted that this once oak lined avenue had been turned into a bottom pit of the I-10, the social clubs that used the avenue for their processions never missed a beat and continued despite the utter stupidity of bureaucratic urban planning.

I was stunned and amazed by how beautiful City Park was this morning but have to admit the weather had a lot to do with it. There was a significant drop in the temperature this morning sending T straight to the closet for a long sleeved shirt and me still in shorts but loving the cool air. The dogs were bouncier than usual and the museum was bathed in this rose light that almost looked as if it had been lit up from the inside out.

Of course, now that the temperature has become attractive, I have to travel far away and I felt the pull from home yesterday as I deadhead the roses and coleus in the front garden, and played with Tin on his floor in his room and T dragged my suitcase out of the closet and I started thinking about my journey west.

We were sitting on the front porch last night after T and T2 came back from a little gathering and I had sorted out what I was traveling with this coming week, when some neighbors dropped by to porch hang. The subject came up about the columns which everyone considers themselves an expert on and all loves to weigh in on. The issue – solid mahogany columns that are gorgeous but need refinishing every 9 months – they were put together in three pieces rather than as one expert suggested in hindsight, six. I demand a natural finish and an expert says then I will be tortured for life because they should be painted white so no UVs can touch them – nothing seems to be able to stand up to the lucky old sun that comes beating down on them and causes the finish to break down and now allow mold to grow. Last night, I was leaning against one of them – they are wrapped in builder’s paper to protect them as we get ready to strip, sterilize and once again try to finish them with something that can take the heat – this time a marine varnish that costs $300 a gallon. Yippee!

Only every time I said one thing about the columns, my neighbor weighed in on just how much I didn’t know shit from shinola. This is a common method among some men, having worked with about thirty while I was doing this house, to belittle and attempt to obfuscate. After the conversation ended, T and I came inside shaking our heads – it was almost as if we had just witnessed a parody of a man moments before.

Today, I ran into a friend who was angered because someone in the family thought it was his god given right to take care of the fold and that her care was unacceptable and unwanted, and he ungratefully made sure she knew it. I told her it was his own young male ego bucking up against a world he didn’t understand (a place where women don’t need men [instead they love and want to be around them]).

Then I went to yoga, a two hour acrobatic class that tested all my trusting and fear and proved to be a transformative experience all the way around. However, while there in the position of the spotter, I tried to explain to the man who I was spotting that he was leaning too far one way (hint: a metaphor) and that is why we couldn’t balance. To which he responded, he could fix that, he didn’t have a problem with balance. Again, I shook my head – HELLO BUDDY – we’re all working here together, can’t we all just open our ears and minds and believe that sometimes we don’t know everything.

My earlier friend was talking to me while I was holding Tin on my hip – he was playing with a little black football that a Turkish friend had given him on his first birthday and wearing the Who Dat? tee shirt that another friend had given when he first arrived – she said I hope Tin doesn’t grow up like that, I hope he is more sensitive. Well I said, I hope he grows up well rounded, after all we had just walked down the street to watch the Saints game begin as he is not going to learn about football from mom 1 or 2, so I figured he needed a little manning up on the sports side.

And I’m not saying women are superior – god knows I live with one and I see first hand all the things I put on the men in my life – the constant talking, emoting, searching for the right and perfect answer, the fickleness, the over desire to be spoon fed romance – BELIEVE ME, I know. But I am saying that along the way some men got stunted at male and forgot to keep growing, and maybe the same can be said about some women I know too.

That’s why I’m taking Real Boys with me to California, so I can figure out just how to convey masculinity to my little boy without pushing him too far in either direction. When it’s his turn to fly, I want him to have grace and balance, something I’m still learning.

It’s Sunday and somewhere there is a pastor molesting a young parishioner – why? I do not honestly know. But today, this Sunday while Atlanta squirms from the latest revelation that the high almighty preacherman * who has denounced homosexuality, protested against same sex marriages, and decried men to let out their wild side and women to submit has BEEN CAUGHT HAVING SEX WITH YOUNG BOYS. Excuse me? Yeah, you hear right, once again the one who smelt it dealt it.

But I digress, today instead of attending some church or synagogue where values are proscribed but seldom followed, we stayed home and made eggs and toast (Tin ate four scrambled eggs, one half pancake, a bowl of yogurt, a bowl of applesauce and one piece of toast (that he shared a quarter of with Loca) and our neighbor came over and read him Jack and the Beanstalk.

Behold the bayou, the LaLa, our Sunday place of worship.

[*note our friend Shane speaking in this clip]

On Superbowl earlier this year, the young families of the Court (which is how we refer to the cul de sac of cottages that begins with my neighbor Jerri’s house) got together and hung a self made screen and projected the victorious game of the Saints vs the Colts. This year, with all the joie de vivre still there for the Saints, they have made a more permanent screen where they have shown the night games and now expect to branch out to begin showing kid’s movies.

This is because this group of people all have young children and all live in the insular world of the Court where there have been challenges and then triumphs in how to share space and also growth and bonding that came from the levee failure of 2005 as well as other tribulations. Nothing rallied the Court more than winning the Superbowl though and now having this outdoor theater is bringing them together again.

I was just lamenting to Tatjana the demise of the drive in theaters – I grew up going to these movies and frankly there is nothing like an outdoor theater.

We went to go meet friends at the Napoleon House for lunch today and sat in the patio where thankfully the sun went behind some big white puffy clouds. The subject of identity came up once again as a friend was talking about how complex her background is and can’t be summed up in any one descriptor. Her husband says she should just say she’s from Florida – ha! She’s from the Lumbee tribe, she’s black, she’s Creole, she grew up in St Thomas, her family tree is a tapestry of colors and peoples and she’s a beauty.

I told her I suffered the same fate having over identified with the Sephardic side of my background, simply because it was a quick way to tell everyone who was looking at me and thinking I am an Irish Catholic that I’m dark meat on the inside – Spanish, Turkish, Jewish inside – and Irish Anglo outside. So my story was always I’m a Sephardic whose grandparents were from Turkey and my mother from New Orleans. Later, I realized I was leaving out a large part of who I was – the Anglo part that came to the US near about the first time any whites stepped foot here and started working the land all the way till they got to Louisiana.

I came to the realization from traveling all over the world that it was best to just say I’m American because that was truly the only nationality that allowed me to be a Heinz 57 variety.