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TGIF and now I lay my head to rest. Well the Jewish New Year started with a bang and ended with a whimper because once again I took on too much and my head and body are reeling from the overwrought to do list that ended up zapping me of energy – and not exactly giving back any. I had an interesting conversation with one of the children’s mothers in nursery when I picked up Tin, she said they are visiting and had left an animal sitter and housecleaner taking care of their home back west. I talked to her about VRBO and we both marveled over how wrong we’ve had the equation – paying people to stay at our fabulous houses – absurd. Just as we were about to figure it all out, Tin tried to escape with a large green plastic dinosaur and I had to deal with a temperamental toddler who refused to let go and let god.

My office has stacks all over it since we moved the queen sized bed up here and I’ve been trying to sort through the piles but they left me even more weary. I have stuff that dates back almost two decades – what is it doing in my office? Meanwhile, trying to re-imagine spaces and sort through the next steps on this journey not to mention keep up with my off duty community work and well, sheesh, the whole thing is exhausting.

So to start off the weekend on the right note, I’m going to forget about everything else for the next 24 hours and just focus on one thing – me (and perhaps T square). I’ve learned that I can do the impossible in very little time, but at this point I realize that I went too far. My good friend says there is no rest for women in capes, and I’m inclined to agree with her.

If you were contemplating super heroic efforts this weekend, why not have a change of heart and opt for simply being – isn’t that the path I thought I was on, we all should be on?

Today is the second day of Rosh Hashanna – the Jewish New Year – it is the year 5772 on the Jewish calendar. L’Shana Tova Y’all. The weather has turned cool here in the Big Easy making it truly feel like September, and new, and holiday like, and well hopeful. I took Tin to drumming last night with Angie and Gingerbread and the drum circle beat to War, Huh, What is it Good For, Absolutely Nothing. Then we walked over to Swirl which was hosting the HRC mingle and had champagne, cupcakes and pita bread with friends – it was a riff on the honey and apples I had earlier in the day (sweetness for the New Year), the champagne (for high spirits), and bread for sustenance.

I learned the other day that Angel who owns Lola’s had passed away. Cancer. The “C” word. I thought about him and our neighborhood this morning, with all the changes we have seen in the last few years. Rest in peace Angel. And happy new year to all of us still here.

September 29, 2011

1. Taurus (4/20-5/20)

    

   Your bold new plans are the hot topic among your friends — although not everyone agrees on whether or not they will work. Go to the folks who you think are the most pessimistic and find out what they have to say. Encourage them to tell you the truth — after all, you can handle it. Accept what they have to say, but do not let their opinions make you think that you have to alter your ideas. You have a clear plan, and this time you need to carry it out.

Well, I can tell you that I entered 2011 with great anticipation that a lot of what was plaguing me was behind me and a great year awaited. Well great years are tallied by not how much fun you had, how much you laughed and danced and sang, sometimes great years are made by how much you grow. And honey, this year, I have grown. I have grown weary, I have grown tired, I have grown and outgrown my old self, I’ve grown old, I’ve grown back into my skin, I’ve grown more forgiving at least of others, I’ve grown tired of seeing children going hungry in this world, I’ve grown sick of war and politics, I’ve grown unaccustomed to the silos of race, gender and religion, I’ve grown accustomed to being loved, I’ve grown used to hearing the tip tap of Tin’s little feet in the house, I’ve grown aware that there is more in life than what I see, I’ve grown my spiritual repertoire, I’ve grown up from being a child, I’ve grown to the left, I’ve grown to the right, I’ve grown tall, I’ve grown roots deep down under.

Today begins the year 5772 on the Jewish Calendar and I am locked, loaded, ready to get this new year started and shake the devil of yesterday off.

In the category of what would Joseph Campbell say, to wit:

God is a metaphor for that which trancends all levels of intellectual thought. It’s as simple as that.

Rosh Hashanna starts tomorrow night and begins the year 5772; I engaged in a conversation on Linked In (TED) about Israel that was provoked by the recent article Thomas Friedman wrote in Sunday’s NYT and I’ve thought a lot about this new year coming, about God’s manifestation in my life, about Israel and about being a Jew. I think the failure in leadership right now comes from the crisis of the severed head.

Rational thought will only get you so far and could very well destroy what it seeks to construct. Leading with the heart won’t offer you the same apocalypse. Campbell collected all myth and collapsed it into universal concepts. God is a metaphor. Religions imbue the metaphor with meaning, people corrupt the meaning and rationalize their actions.

Jewish belief might be honed to one sentence: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. No one looking at Israel right now believes the leaders are following this moral dictate. Their rationale for killing their neighbors and brothers, for denying them a place to live, is that they are persecuted, so they have rationalized themselves as persecutors. The mind is a terrible thing.

On the eve of Rosh Hashanna, in this house, we will eat honeyed apples, bread with butter, drink wine, and open our hearts and spirits to the sweetness that life offers and we will hope for sweetness in your life too.

Identity seems to be on a lot of people’s minds these days – tell me who are you? and then who am I? I know that has been my critical path the past 18 months – who am I? who do I want to be? And then began the full make over – cut the hair, give up the past vision, expand the new, stretch the boundaries – there are a lot of growing pains associated with changing your identity – let me tell you.

So it was interesting to read about a book published about post black identity – even groups are trying to figure their own collective identity. The book is called Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness? And it looks to be a good read, thoughtful and expansive. Meanwhile, Thomas Friedman wrote in the NYT this Sunday about the identity of Israel and perhaps it needs to be overhauled. That of course, led me to a video of Jews trying to come to terms with their Zionist identity, also worth a watch.

The Jewish High Holidays are approaching, the eve of Rosh Hashana begins this week at sun down on Wednesday, September 28, it is the year 5772. This year I have two changes to my agenda. First, I bought a shofar while in San Francisco at the Jewish Museum and plan to blow my own to start Yom Kippur. Second, I’ve decided that my entry into my Yom Kippur journal will begin with all that I’ve accomplished in the last year and will be a blueprint for the process (rather than the goals) I intend to follow for the coming year.

Shape shifting is the new trend. Identity makeovers, identity searching like the vision quests of Peruvian children, identity juggling as in our multiple personas we inhabit on the web. Here’s our new call to arms – re-identify. Check in and see if the identity you have assumed is actually serving you anymore and do what you will to allow change.

Well the germ bus from Tin’s school packed a wollup of a virus – lost my voice for three days, hoarse voice for two days, and now just head cold extraordinaire – MAKE IT STOP!

Nevertheless, Tin and I headed to the Quarter for a little sunshine and movement as there has been little around here for the past five or so days. We parked on Esplanade and walked up the shady side of Royal and then headed down to Jackson Square where we each threw a penny in the fountain. We then headed up to the Moonwalk where I noticed the inscription from Moon Landrieu’s inauguration that we would not let anyone in this city no matter their race or religion get treated indifferently or not equal. Hmmm, I thought, now Mitch Landrieu is mayor and we are still working on this issue but I don’t seem to remember him addressing it in his inaugural speech.

We walked down to the Steamship Natchez just in time to hear the organ playing When the Saints Go Marching In and then caught the same guy on the saxophone we see busking out there nearly every time we go. The lines were long for Cafe du Monde but what most tourists don’t know is that you can sit inside most all the time and it is air conditioned in there. So we ate some beignets and drank some chocolate milk and then we stood in line to go to the grungy bathroom – blech. Don’t touch anything!!!!

Back through Jackson Square to throw some more coins in the fountain and then home down Chartres Street to Esplanade. Coughing all the way.

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Chuck Perkins sent me this clip from the opening of the Healing Center, you’ll see me pushing Tin in his stroller a couple of times but you have to wait till the very end to see Tin as the star of the show. Go Tin! and Go Healing Center!

Our time in Spain on the beach is priceless because it’s so easy to have a toddler and be on the beach. We went to a neighbor kid’s birthday party at her grandmother’s pool today and Tin got on the big slide and slid right into the pool – all it took was for him to do it once and then it was party till you puke – literally he swallowed so much water one too many times till he was vomiting it back out. He then tried coming down holding his nose but the gravity of free falling always made him pull his hand away at the last moment. Luckily friends Keith and Jim were there to help him up the slide and down the slide.

Unfortunately I am just getting my voice back and I sound like a frog who smokes and the mic is obviously right by me, not who I’m videoing.