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I spoke with a friend of mine today about relationships and how my approach to them in the past has been wrong but improving. My coping mechanism for things that weren’t going my way was to run the other way. Then I started hanging around to see what was next. This isn’t to short change romance, but the fact of the matter is over 50 if you find someone you are in harmony with, you have to hang around to work out the discordance.

However, in order to be there to work on it – you have to show up sober. Sorry, that is a prerequisite. It is hard to work on a relationship when one of you is not really there.

Can anyone from New Orleans watch this video and not get chills about evacuating or complete annihilation? It made me think of all the hurricane preparedness and what to take when you gotta go – the funny thing was for the Federal Flood I took nothing and that became the theme – nothing from nothing leaves nothing.

This year I know what we are doing for Valentine’s Day – we’re celebrating it. Flowers in the vase, red wine to be opened, a beautiful Chilean seafood stew for a late night dinner with candles. Tin and I have said Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone we could think of while doing our Monday routine and so here is Dusty to sing you a Valentine’s Song but as it gets later into the night, perhaps turn it over to the man, Barry.

I don’t know anybody who watched the Grammy’s last night who was not entertained – Mick Jagger strutted and performed a Solomon Burke tune (read: yo for you), Eminem & Rihanna singing Love The Way You Lie and just watching Eminem stroll out and start rapping as if that is the only form of communication he knows (powerful), but my absolute favorite was the old school performance by Bruno Mars with B.o.B and Janelle Monae of Mars’ song Grenade – that is what hooked me in – brought me back to the days when music made you want to get up off the couch and shake a groove thing. And cutie pie Justin Bieber, what can I say?

And speaking of old school, Kris Kristoferson presenting Babs to sing Evergreen – oh my, took me back in time.

Just so you don’t think it was all oldies but goodies, Arcade Fire was fabulous – punk rockish fresh energy rip roaring.

The Grammys were fabulous this year – just like a music award show should be – what is most unfortunate is that typical of CBS they locked up the content so you couldn’t get it anywhere else – not even on their own website afterwards – HELLO CBS, welcome to the new mash up – we’re looking to pick it up on the internet as we are watching it, we’re looking to talk about it, write about it – but you are holding that content captive foolishly.

I ran into a friend who is going through a rough patch after finding out about infidelity – over the speakers “I will survive” came on – later I saw a sign that said “SECOND CHANCES ARE APPRECIATED.”

What a gorgeous day to run a marathon! Not.

I already ran a marathon, right after 9/11 in Portland, Oregon – been there, done that.

I have no idea why people decide to do it again once it can be checked off your list.

However, it is a gorgeous day and a day that again defied control – I did get to spin class after making French toast for T & T2 – then I ran into a friend and we went over to Satsuma’s to do a quick catch up over some Green Vegetable/Fruit Juice that was yummy. Control was the topic of conversation as we both admitted to being more of control freaks than we care to be.

Then I came home and grabbed Tin to sit outside on the front porch in the sun and neighbors/friends stopped by one after another to chit chat and porch hang. A friend with his five year old kept Tin entertained by running up and down the brick wall. Little boy is growing up too fast!

The theme of last night was Just Go With It as we headed out to see Biutiful with Javier Bardem only to get to the theater and find out they had changed the time till 11PM – first, who would go see this movie at 11PM? So we instead just had to buy a ticket and walk in. I bought The Roommate, not really aware of what it was, but we were knee deep in kids going to see Beiber at Elmwood and we just had to get out of the fray.

A family was headed into Roommate – a nine year old boy, a teenager and a mom – we asked what the movie was about and the mother said about two girls where the friend becomes obsessed with her and then starts killing people. I’m looking at the nine year old and thinking and he’s going in why?

So we went instead to see Just Go With It, the chick flick with Adam Sandler and Jennifer Anniston, which was actually a pleasant surprise because it was funny and cute and lifted my spirits. It took a page from an exercise I recently engaged in from the Actor’s Studio, which is you don’t say no or shut down the moment, but instead you just go with it and say yes, and …

Then we headed to Mondo – the late night eatery of Susan Spicer in Lakeview – only it was 11pm and that means they quit serving, so much for late night dining. We trekked to Buffa’s instead, which is by far the best dive bar late night eating around. The cooks were drunk as usual, a daper older man sat at the bar who kept asking to buy my drinks or food and finally just came out and asked if I was with someone, refusing to see Tatjana sitting with me – and I said, yes with her. Oh, he said and then he left shortly after.

For some reason he reminded me of my mom, all dolled up, some liquor in him, and trying to live out a daydream. I don’t know if it was the William Trevor story I had just read, Reasonable Access, about a man who has an affair and loses his wife and kids, and then spends his time drinking and imagining them getting back together and being a family again – the sadness of it all – the way a few drinks in a bar can sometimes be the panacea we all seek from the weight of our humble lives.

Instead of staying attached to any of these feelings that surfaced – not being able to see Biutiful, not being able to try Mondo’s, the sadness reflected in Trevor’s story, the melancholy of Joe at the bar, the drunk cooks breaking glasses – I let them waft by like the smoke that filled the air in Buffa’s and just went with the moment. Yes, and ….

I took a stroll over to the NOMA to see the Zen Monk Haikun exhibit and was welcomed by the Japanese drummers outside. Today was lovely, a golden light from the sun, redbuds in bloom, and a laziness that almost felt like Sunday accompanied me. The exhibit repeated often that Haikun is the master of the last 500 years.

What is the use
Of cherishing life in spring?
Its flowers
only shackle us
to this world.
Izumi Shikibu

Last night we took Tin to go see Abel Raises Cain at Cafe Rose Nicaud, only Tin decided he was not going to cooperate with the adult plans from the get-go – first he didn’t fall asleep for his nap until 5:30 (vs 3:30) and that was because he had three big diapers to change; then when we got to the cafe, he sat down with his dinner we had brought and proceeded to throw himself into a tantrum.

Thankfully they were projecting the film on the side of the building across the street as well, so while we were in and out with him, we were able to catch most of the film, which was quite interesting. We took Tin over to look in the window of Spotted Cat and Washboard Chaz was playing and smiled at him and he threw himself into another tantrum. Dude, it’s Washboard Chaz for goodness sakes I told him. Next we ran into Jason Butler playing keyboard at Blue Nile and even though he and Mykia Jovan were both sweet enough to entertain Tin from the window, he again, was having none of it – even though he knows Jason from Sound Cafe.

So we walked and walked because we had gone with a friend and couldn’t leave to just come home and give it up. We passed two women who took one look at this miniature tyrant with his hands in his pockets, his scarf tied around his neck and his hat and declared, “How cute – he looks like a little man,” to which I replied, “He’s our prince” and that is what it felt like with T and me in tow behind his highness.

This morning we decided on a different strategy – instead of trying to avert, avoid and obfuscate a tantrum, he can just have one.

From The Monument (1978)

(#9)

It has been necessary to submit to vacancy in order to begin again, to clear ground, to make space. I can allow nothing to be received. Therein lies my triumph and my mediocrity. Nothing is the destiny of everyone, it is our commonness made dumb. I am passing it on. The monument is a void, artless and everlasting. What I was I am no longer. I speak for nothing, the nothing that I am, the nothing that is this work. And you shall perpetuate me not in the name of what I was, but in the name of what I am.