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We pulled Brief Encounters out of my Janus collection that T gave me for my 50th birthday and began watching it last night. It’s a 1945 movie by David Lean about a woman who has an affair – it’s a melodrama – they say this movie may have even set the bar for melodramas to come. It’s a great movie and deserves to be part of anyone’s classic collection. The thing that was fascinating is in reading the review in the Janus book, it describes the woman’s reaction as being rather dated but actually I watched the film and found her reaction spot on. She loved her husband and at the same time was so drawn to this man and the affair. She was tortured by her decision. I love the part (almost reminded me of The Louise Logs) of her whispering to her husband as they sat across from one another in their living room – having experienced the exact same phenomenon – it’s like an out of body experience.

It is a beautifully drawn character study of an ordinary woman who is having an affair.

The ending is happier in a world where things get righted – the big screen – than it is in real life where things turn upside down, but if you are like me, you come to believe there are no accidents in life, there are no coincidences in life, we are writing our lives every moment, we are narrating our lives in shouts and whispers.

We don’t have a babysitter so we can’t go but if we could – we’d be there with flying colors:

Evan Christopher and Tom McDermott at Snug Harbor joined by James Singleton with Meschiya Lake on vocals.

Damn!

When I saw that 2000 dead birds had died the same day I was contemplating double digit birds on a wire, I worried the news was a harbinger of worse things to come. Now I read in the NYT this morning that it was 5000 dead birds in Arkansas and 500 here in Louisiana. I read this with great interest because for the 60th day in a row, I woke with a terrific headache. A sharp piercing headache I am now wondering if it is caused by the dispersants that continue evaporating into the air and raining down on us during our typical New Orleans monsoon season.

The other day at the Dive screening, everyone who is hipper than me, spoke of a movie called Gasland that talks about fracking and other things and suddenly everything was spinning out of control – instead of belonging to the Polly Anna world I have occupied my whole life where “everything is going to be beautiful” (a phrase an ex brother-in-law of mine used often), I was now on the other side, the world of Susan Sontag where my not participating in a huge way meant I am shallow with nothing to offer the world (guilty by non action).

The dead birds might have something to do with my headache – they may have everything to do with the horrible BP tragic oil spill – they may have nothing to do with the Saints losing last night – I lay claim to their loss myself when on the advise of my neighbor I ran back in to watch the last seven minutes and to my anxiety they lost – is this because I gris gris’d the games by watching them? If so, can wenall get on with our lives post Super Bowl 2010?

While the Saints were trying to pull off win in the final moments, I yelled OH SHIT and then Tin yelled back OH SHIT – so I changed to Bless You Boys – and Tin said BLESH YOU BOYZ over and over but T wasn’t too sure she wanted this quasi religious statement to be the phrase of the house, of the evening. So we turned off the TV abruptly.

To the dead birds I say shit happens. To the world I say wonder happens. Bless us all.

The New Orleans Museum of Art’s 100 year anniversary kicked off this morning with the St. Augustine Marching Band marching up LeLong Avenue. We got out there right at the band had gotten into formation, at the entrance to City Park, and what ensued was nothing short of magical. I’ve always seen the band marching during Mardi Gras, but to have this outside on this splendid day almost to ourselves was just splendid. They were like a well oiled machine, a hundred black beautiful young men in royal purple and gold uniforms holding their instruments as if they were limbs on their bodies. The guys with the cymbals were like zen masters, they raised one then the other and their arms floated in the air – everyone else was quiet – and then they began – every horn from clarinet, oboe, trombone, trumpet, tuba you can imagine to drums began all at once. Tin was mesmerized, and so were we.

We ran to get ahead of the band to watch them march towards us, and I saw a few older men getting out of their cars with purple jackets that had the script A emblazoned on them and then I realized what that A symbolizes – the one on the flags I see hanging from people’s houses throughout New Orleans – St. Augustine – that’s it! There they were coming towards us marching in amazing precision – someone said there is a lot of arrogance at the school and I could see nothing but pride in this high school band – that’s right, high school – tighter, better, than most musical bands you will ever see – these guys had the moves, the tunes, the rhythm, the march down to a science.

What joy! A for Amazing is what I say. I didn’t have a chance to take a photo or a video – I was too into watching. But later I got a shot of Tin and Maxwell playing on some girl’s big wheel.

We went to see Dive last night, shown by the Afrikan Film Festival above the Fair Grinds Coffehouse and it was refreshingly well done. Of course, it brought up a lot of the same reaction I had to reading Michael Pollan’s food diatribes, in particular the open letter he wrote to the President elect printed in the New York Times. We’re caught in a trap could have been the title of either – the film or Pollan’s letter.

When you look at this on the surface, the enormity of the absurdity is so overwhelming it makes you scratch your head and say, whatyagonnado? But this guy, the director, who majored in theology and art, and wanted to make a film which turned him into an activist has the right idea – a drop of water creates a ripple of change.

Last night was an innocent night out, to go watch a documentary, which I will go into later, but along the way many things happened. I had emailed a number of friends about the film and when I saw one of them there, I was delighted. Then she told me that she’s separated from her partner. Like us, they recently adopted a little boy. I just started crying. It almost reminded me of my friend in California when I called her to say I was getting a divorce and she just burst out crying. It all seemed too overwhelming. I couldn’t help but wonder if it wasn’t just another lesbian train wreck. Musical women. But then I thought about my relative divorcing after almost half a century of marriage and thought, maybe it’s just too damn hard, who the heck knows.

Later I was speaking to someone about a family member provoking her because she’s gay – the religious relative obviously thinks there is something wrong with it. Made me remember when a friend’s husband asked me if I thought God had sent me Tatjana in a very sarcastic way because in his mind, OBVIOUSLY God would never do such a thing. He was chuckling as he said it. Later, I heard about this incident at Belmont University where the coach was fired because she said her and her same-sex partner were adopting a child. HEAVEN FORBID. God Forbid. Someone forbid.

Today, I was speaking to someone splitting up with their partner who said that after all these years, her father had asked her to bring her when she came to visit. “Why now?” she asked. Why not, I wondered.

Truth to tell more and more I realize just how fragile human beings are – relationships are – for someone to condemn you for who you love, for someone to care when they are being condemned, to be fired for wanting to adopt a child with the person you love, to have a child and then split up, to weather years together and then abruptly leave. What goes on?

This week felt like 10 weeks and I still can’t believe I’m telling people to have a good weekend. Monday started in fits and then proceeded to ramp up and up and now it is at a level of impossible – so this is when you say, Phew! Thank God It’s Friday.

We’re headed to see a documentary on Dumpster Diving that is being screened at the Fairgrinds today at 6PM.

If my dad were alive, he would turn 87 tomorrow. He died in 1985 – 26 years ago. It took a long time for me to think of him as gone – he was such an enigma, so powerful, so iconic.

What I always remember most is being in my parents’ king-sized bed and being tickled, hugged, snuggled and kissed. 51 years later I still hold those memories fondly.

One of my dearest friends just sent me her resolutions for 2011, on her list – make memories. I love that.

Make memories.

To further seal the deal, today I got the shiny dime that we had hidden in the sweet potatoes on New Year’s Day.

It is a lovely day here in New Orleans, January 6th, Epiphany, the beginning of Mardi Gras and a temperate winter day as we have come to expect here in the Gulf South. The dogs and I romped through the park this morning and there was a bird party going on. Geese, grebes, ducks, swans, cormorants, pelicans – it was looney. As we rounded the backside of the park and were making our towards the pavilions, a lone cormorant was perched on the end of a naked branch that was half submerged in the lagoon, his black wings spread out and his beak pointed straight towards the sky. He was drying his wings but he looked like he was having an epiphany instead. And then he twisted one wing in front and one in back – honestly, I’ve never seen a bird do this before and he proceeded to change his positions after holding them for 30 seconds and it appeared as if he was doing yoga practice. It was quite a sight to see.