Dangermond.org

A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

fool’s paradise

PRONUNCIATION:
(foolz PAR-uh-dys, -dyz)

MEANING:
noun: A state of happiness based on false hopes.

Yesterday was a start over type of day, everything back to a routine. I went for a swim and was pleased when several swimmers commented that I am a “fast swimmer” – it made me go even faster.

Of course, I had gone in the morning when the blue hairs go swimming, but nonetheless, I’ll take my encouragement where I find it.

A full day at the desk made my back ache again as I have not been sitting in a desk chair for prolonged periods of time in a month of Mondays.

Meanwhile, outside, everyone is lining the streets with their arborgeden debris and the garbage cans are overflowing and fairly smelly since we have not a) had trash collection in over a week and b) everyone had rotten stuff in their fridge. Where is Sidney Torres, our handsome overlord of trash when you need him?

Still and all, towards the afternoon, someone on the phone asked me how I was faring and I said as I always do, “It’s the price we pay for living in fool’s paradise.”

City Park is still dealing with a lot of limbs down and a lagoon that looks like it was almost drained. But I have lots of faith in that crew over there – they have made that park shimmer and shine through worse. I walked earlier and so I could feel a little crispness in the air – surprising given the heavy humidity we have been having since the storm.

The light through the trees made me think of fall, or maybe it was on the way back seeing the Cabrini girls in their plaid uniforms that made me think of fall. Or it could have been Tin, who was excited about the prospects of back to school and then fell into a complete and utter funk about it all in a five minute span – he told me that kids are nervous at school. About what? I asked. He said, School.

And there you have it – transitions in and out of phases of our life – are sometimes a little unnerving. A friend is beginning a new job, she’s nervous. My child is beginning school, he’s nervous. Tanja is beginning a new semester, she’s nervous. I have a lot of work ahead this September and I’m nervous.

It’s unsettling and yet comforting to think that these rhythms in our life keep coming around. Who wants to remain in a job that is so status quo, it can be done in your sleep? Who wants to stop learning? Who wants to feel the same wind, see the same sky, behold the same leafed out tree? No one. Our bodies and minds need breaks, need change, need to know that we move from season to season and though they may be different times, what we find is often similar, familiar, comforting like greeting summer friends, or packing the new lunchbox for back to school, or sitting down to the desk and making a list of things to do.

Happy Back to School.
Happy Back to Work.
Happy Fall.

If I coulda I woulda written this post, but I didn’t, and I’m sure glad Chris did.

My blood work came back and said I had too much thyroid in me now and it is suppressing rather than replacing my thyroid – so my doctor called (while on his vacation) and ordered a new prescription. He said we’ll see how this works and go from there. He asked me how I’m doing and I said, “It’s hard to tell what is external and what is internal – I just have this “whatever” attitude to everything that comes my way.” And he said, “That’s remarkably good.”

Yes, there it is – apathy is the new black. I was walking the dogs and I came across my neighbor – an architect who has work for the first time in a while – so much so that her husband doesn’t have to work out of town anymore. She said she’s been dealing with so many crises over the past seven years that she now says “whatever” to most everything that comes her way.

So today, in order to combat apathy, I hung out of my shingle and told the world I’m ready to get back to work. I changed the image on my computer screen to this one:

The house is clean, the laundry is done, Tin’s school clothes are folded and ready, his too-small clothes given away, the yard is mostly picked up, and now it is time to get back to work.

September promises to be busy and productive – in a good way.

Last night, we celebrated our power being on by sitting on the front porch with friends – I know, it makes no sense – but there it is. And then we came in and slept the sleep of the dead, the dead that sleep in a/c that is, a/c set to 75 degrees cool. We even put a sheet over us – it was lovely.

Tin didn’t wake up until mid morning – he found sleep heaven as well.

I took the dogs for a long walk in City Park and assessed the damage – lots of trees lost limbs but for the most part it didn’t look as bad as I’ve seen it before and the birds were very happy. Greeting me on my arrival were two pelicans grooming in the denuded tree in the front lagoon. Then several types of herons skirted the banks – immature black crown night herons, little blue herons, and a great blue.

When the birds are happy, I’m happy.

We spent the rest of the day just tearing it up – cleaning up the yard, doing laundry, cleaning and storing and unpacking and repacking, getting Tin ready for back to school [verdict: pants that fit are too short, pants that are big are long enough], and then we just crashed.

I really feel that all politicians are fractured in some way. But I’m just going to say this and I will say it only here and only once because honestly I hate all this political divisiveness – it’s toxic.

There was a day when a Republican stood for fiscal conservatism and social liberalism – but those days have long been gone and that is why I vehemently oppose the Republican agenda. I do not believe that government should be in my vagina or my bedroom – why are they trying to insinuate themselves there all the time – abortion, sexuality. NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS.

I also feel that life gives you a canvas and what you do with it defines you. Do you care that while you are happy someone else is not? Do you care that while your kid is in the best school there are kids who barely get an education? Do you care that while you eat, a child does not? Do you care that while you get good health care, many do not? These are the areas that government should rise to potential of all of us – to help those who cannot help themselves.

I am going to vote for Barack Obama – not because I think he has done the best job as a president, I think he has done an adequate job, but because I believe that his agenda more closely aligns with my agenda – I don’t have a romantic vision of him as I once did, but I know that he thinks the way I do, I know this and I think that America has a choice right now and always – to decide what is important – is making money the most important agenda or is living in a country where a woman decides whether she needs an abortion, whether she loves another woman, whether her children will have a fighting chance amongst the other kids and whether her parents will receive health care that will improve their lives – or not.

I vote because it matters to me – otherwise I am unfortunately apolitical and almost apathetic when it comes to politics – I will vote for Obama and that is all I have to say about it.

I took the dogs for a walk after the storm and it started pouring down rain. But hey, I don’t have hair, so what do I care? I was just going to get wet and either you are wet from the heat and humidity or you are wet from warm rainfall.

We walked down the bayou and a pelican flew by. Out of season.

The trees were down, the houses boarded up, there was a stillness that storms always bring to the area – something still inside me as well. I’m a hopeless romantic – I realized that as I walked along the bayou – I really do believe in the fantasy of life’s potential.

A brass band at night, a banjo in the late afternoon, old houses beaten by the storm, a duck mama with many ducklings (out of season) waddling along the banks of the bayou.

I’m cursed I thought as I walked and soaked in rain, memories, the aftermath of yet another storm, the bayou, the birds, the architecture, the what? What is the question I keep wondering to myself. Silently. I’m not screaming on the outside, it’s only occasionally on the inside.

I spoke to a good friend and described my trip and my state of mind and she said, “Well it sounds like you have a zen attitude about it all” and I said to myself afterwards – is it zen, is it apathy, have I crossed too far into indifference – the true opposite of love?

Numb I am. But something on my walk awakened my true nature – the romantic who gets carried away by nature, by thoughts, by deeds. I cried when I parted Zagreb telling my mother in law that I’m so happy she loves Tin because I wish my mother was alive to be a grandmother to my son – because and this is because my grandmother was so IMPORTANT to me in my life. She didn’t have to fall in love with Tin – but she did. And this moves me to tears.

My friend who has a shop in Zahara gives us little presents all the time and I tell her she is supposed to be selling stuff not giving it to us – I cried when we parted.

When my dear friend in Zahara left ahead of us, I stood in our patio surrounded by bougainvillea and cried – I was not ready for her to leave – I only have two weeks with her a year.

As I made the bend of the bayou, the rain had grown more forceful and my stride more rapid and tears commingled with the rain and I thought of all the great books I’ve read, and the movies I’ve seen and I couldn’t help but remember one line that always haunts me – Bladerunner – Rutger Hauer (he made this up, it wasn’t scripted, and but it’s the most haunting line from a movie that I could remember): “and yet all those moments in time will be lost like tears in rain.”

I just ordered a glass of champagne and was given a bowl of assorted snacks in the Lowes Hotel on Poydras. There is a/c, there is WIFI, there are cocktails and food. I’m now a believer that I can survive anything if every once in a while someone gave me some luxuries. A friend is here with her son, Tin’s friend, and they are up in the room jumping on the beds in the a/c. We all have our priorities.

We got home Monday night and lost power before I could have one full night of chilled out sleep. And so began our big welcome home.

When I heard about the hurricane, my initial thought was “whatever” – a far cry from the dramatic reaction of 2005 or even 2007 with Gustav’s evacuation. I’ve reached a saturation level of crisis in my life, and now I’ve grown, how should I say in English, APATHETIC.

Apathy is dangerous. In Spain, when the politician stood up and said FUCK THEM ALL about the unemployed, no one reacted. There were Facebook posts, and tweets, but nothing to suggest outrage that a Spaniard’s tax euros were going to pay the salary of a very loathsome woman wearing Gucci shoes and giving the finger to the masses.

It’s the same apathy that was apparent in Croatia where the people are used to not having luxuries or rather that only a few have luxuries as long as the common man has a place to have a beer and a place to lay your head. Apathy colors every mile on this journey.

Now at home, Hurricane Isaac, and what? Nada. A big bunch of nothing. We have come home to the house that is either a blessing or a curse – we haven’t decided – or perhaps it’s both and we deal the cards. Although I’m not so certain that I deal any cards anymore. If the Federal Flood wasn’t enough to demonstrate that I have no control over my destiny, and 22 hours behind the wheel for Gustav wasn’t, then Isaac is here to say – you’re a nutball if you think you have any control over your life.

The night I arrived a guy was playing the banjo, the next night a brass band erupted on the bayou and played until way after nightfall as friends poured in from their own hot houses bringing food that might go bad. The stop bys have continued, battery powered fans have been delivered, and still we are all at wit’s end after day upon day of no electricity, unbearable heat, and I can hear my neighbor weeping (they finally left), I can hear my other neighbor’s generator that is causing major distress to the other neighbor, I can see the ragged edges of my other neighbors who finally left for Florida this morning – it’s been 6 days without electricity.

I went this morning for a blood test – I had to fast before I went and I just felt like why not – we’ve been using cold beer (from neighbor’s coolers), and assorted snacks to weather the storm, but inside we are not weathering it anymore – we have reached our limits.

Our apathy has turned to anger but we just don’t know where to vent it anymore. We don’t know if we can escape our lives – Spain has a drought and the highest unemployment in the land, Croatia is inhospitable to us (although I must say I did see blacks and gays there for the first time on this visit), and New Orleans – my darlin’ New Orleans – how can we continue like this?