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A few weeks ago I was lamenting that I had not been out dancing in a long time, so last night at Mimi’s with Gal Holiday and the Honky Tonk Revue playing, I cut a rug. Mostly I danced by myself but T actually got up and danced two slow dances with me and then Dancing Man and I danced a few songs as well. As I said earlier, Gal’s on her way to California because the call west has gripped her and I know how she feels, but I told her I know she’ll be back. Life on the frontier gets lonely and she’ll crave the fact that on any Wednesday night in New Orleans you could walk into Mimi’s and eat good tapas, get a good stiff gin & tonic, and get your dancing jones fixed. I have to say with all the venues and restaurants and bars in the West, you can’t capture the spirit of New Orleans outside of its environment – we’re the petri dish – there’s no substitute.

I learned that Gal Holiday is moving to California – big bummer for us who were used to getting to see the band plenty. Like T said, “They always make feel good.” We’re going to see them tonight at Mimi’s, because very soon, we won’t have the luxury of just picking a day and going out dancing. I told her that California will be good for her, will make coming home (she will) that much sweeter.

We just finished the fourth season of the Wire and like the seasons before this one, there are indelible images now fixed in my mind about local and state politics. I think through four seasons of the Wire I’ve learned that life in the projects is bleaker than I imagined, inner city children need a strong parent to survive in the most challenging conditions, the school system run by the government, any government, is FUBR (fucked up beyond recognition), local and state politics are so much about power struggles than even the ones with good intentions are reduced to nubs in no time, and it’s not black or white, each race portrayed in this program is portrayed as equally avaricious, power thirsty, myopic, and those who could and would serve are spitting in the wind.

We have one season to go and I can’t wait – why? – because the show has been so compelling but honestly after four seasons of this world view, I feel wary, dark, and hopeless that change is afoot. So when my brother writes me to tell me that Obama is an idiot and he is going to go down in flames, my stomach lurches because it’s these polarizing views that are keep us a people, as a nation, from making any progress whatsoever. What if we all wanted Obama to succeed? What if we all put our energies into making him succeed?

Tin is very taken with the moon and stars and now is branching out to include the sun and sky and clouds in his repertoire. When we see the moon, we always recite what my mother taught me, “I see the moon, the moon sees me, god bless the moon and god bless me.” And we sing twinkle twinkle for each star. Today I saw a woman wearing a tee shirt that said:

The sun is always rising every time we open our eyes. I’ll have to include this one in his repertoire as well.

We woke this morning to an almost twenty degree temperature drop – WALA! – fall, we hope. The dogs and I went for a longer walk than usual and tried to start the day off on the right foot. Then I come home to the headlines – John Mayer quits Twitter (read: just got a clue), Oprah’s gift creates a frenzy (revised: money corrupts even Oprah), Obama’s message is garbled (interpretation: it’s the economy, stupid).

Let’s just say you could create your own headlines today, just what would it be? I’ve decided to be the master of my own destiny, so here’s my headline: “Woman lets her mind soar, while the turkeys around her peck each other’s heads.”

My horoscope backs this up – of course:

September 14, 2010

1. Taurus (4/20-5/20)

   Now is the time to let go of all the ‘what ifs’ you’ve been allowing to hold you back from doing exactly what you really want to do. You’re just about guaranteed to be smart enough to only take well calculated risks, so whether it strikes you that this would be the perfect time to try sky diving, bungee jumping, telling that long-distance lover that you want them to come home now, or something equally precarious, if it feels right, do it. You can’t win if you don’t play.

I ran downstairs to get some notes I had left on the kitchen counter and Tin was walking backwards throughout the house. Seeing how Monday is going, and how it seems everyone keeps saying how good it used to be, maybe we should all walk backwards today.

I keep wondering who this guy is – Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was elected Prime Minister of Turkey in 2003 threatening the longstanding secular tradition of that country (since 1937 the Turkish constitution adopted secularism and gender equality as explicit state policies). But more than 70% of the voters turned out recently to reform the government and give Erdogan even more power – but will it be to move the country to the right a few steps more, is this another advancement in conservative power grab in the world?

We’re very fond of our zoo here at the LaLa despite the fact that Heidi the German Shedder has left a coating of dog fur from one end of the house to the other and barks at anyone who deigns to walk by, and despite Loca’s vertical jumps that have left deep grooves in the solid mahogany window sills, and Bam Bam’s grey fur that has coated the one chair on the screen porch and the smell of the litter box that is incessantly cleaned by T but no matter, still continues to smell or Blekica’s profound need to dig her claws in the carpet and upholstery.

I watched Tin maneuver through the zoo this morning, he got up and parted the dogs to walk through, kneeled down to meow at Blekica, pointed out Bam’s dish and then made his way to breakfast. Surely growing up around animals is meaningful to a child. And in the meantime, we pick up the hair, scoop out the litter box, and keep the spray bottle handy for the clawing.

I’ve been going through photographs of my mother trying to select the best one for a porcelain cameo like the one of my grandmother on her headstone. In doing so, I’ve been looking into her eyes over and over, so much so that she is in my dreams and drifting in and out of all my thoughts these past days. I can tell you that I’m shaken by her beauty, her deep green eyes and lovely smile. I miss her and this wave of grief has had higher pitches even though I am further away from her passing.

I’ve told many people that you could come visit New Orleans and not see a trace of the Great Government Levee Failure of 2005 or you can see it appear through every nook and cranny – just depends on how you are looking. I took the truck in for repairs on Bienville this morning, taking the dogs with me so that I could walk them back home. I walked down Bienville, crossing Carrollton on my way back to Jeff Davis and the bayou. This area used to have working warehouses and a hospital and now it has empty lots, boarded up houses, and vacant large patches of land where once stood a Ford dealership, a Chinese restaurant, and warehouses a plenty. Half were razed by the storm, by the economy, by neglect. Victory Developer came in and bought most of what is there and planned an urban mall – OH MY GOD is how the neighborhood reacted, not only Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) but more like NO WAY IN HELL. And thankfully there were enough people thinking after the storm to stop this sort of nonsense from ruining our neighborhood.

But ruin is a funny word, as I walked home among the ruins, I couldn’t help but wonder what is the alternative – this? I stumbled upon a handwritten sign nailed to tree that said, “Even our most profound losses are survivable” – Ted Kennedy Jr. Sometimes in the pause, the emptiness or ruin, thoughts fill the interstitial spaces instead of development, progress, or the vast money making machine. Sometimes ruin happens and that’s okay.