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Peaks and valleys.

That’s how I would classify life, only as I enter this phase of my life, the peaks last longer and the valleys are not insurmountable and are quickly dispensed with when they no longer serve me. At the end of last week, four work projects rolled in, the pipeline opened. Yesterday, I cracked the code on my fatigue and today started a grain-free diet. Today, I went to yoga for the first time in months, after my hip displacement incident that required six weeks of recovery.

Right now, I’m thinking of this quote by Yehuda Berg, a Kabbalist, who said, “Love is the weapon of the future.”

And today we are starting with self-love.

All of my dietary restrictions have backed me into a corner where I no longer enjoyed food. Food – the very pleasure that I could think about morning noon and night and suddenly, pop, it became a chore, tedious and undesirable. So I changed the equation – instead of finding substitutes for gluten – I have just eliminated grains. We’ll do a week of this and see how my body reacts. In my refrigerator I now have pots holding black eyed pea curry, jama jama, lentil soup, and a basket of fresh greens picked from my garden. No grains – no problem.

At yoga this morning, we talked about the four goals for a civilized life: dharma (your purpose), artha (resources), kama (sensual pleasure), and moksha (liberation). Dharma – I was accepted into a writer’s workshop at Loyola’s Walker Percy Center where I will work out my manuscript and I’m headed to a retreat on racial reconciliation in March. Artha – four work projects, better nutrition, and more movement. Kama – well now, tricky, now that Sty is out of the picture, I need to work on this one but right now I’m filling the pleasure principle with hot baths, gardening, and reading. Moksha – yoga, meditation, writing. I began meditating again this morning – it’s the panacea pill that I’ve been seeking.

See everything I was searching for was searching for me.

If you have stumbled upon this site asking yourself that question, then go somewhere else. Today, with my almost six year old in the backseat, a discussion began innocently enough. How old are you Mommy?

I’ll be 56 this year, and you will be six. You can always remember how old I am by adding 50 to how old you are.

So when I’m 7

I’ll be 57

And when I’m 8

I’ll be 58

And when I’m 9

on and on we went till he was 20 and I was 70, but then he said, and when I’m 100

I’ll be dead

What?

[count, 1, 2, 3 then]

TEARS * SOBBING * HEAVY BREATHING

I don’t want you to be dead! Why do you have to be dead!

Honey, every thing that lives dies, but that is not going to happen for a long time.

Will Stella die? Will Heidi die? Will I die?

Every being is born, lives and grows old and dies. That’s the cycle of life. We are all going to live a long life hopefully and we won’t have to think about anything but living for now.

I don’t want to die! I want to play! I want to be a kid! Will I get to be born again?

Maybe. I don’t know.

[I pull over, he gets out of his seat, and comes over and gets in my lap, sobbing as I try to comfort him in my arms.]

* * * *

Yes, keep moving, don’t pause here to find out how to speak to your child about death.

I’ve been wondering lately why I can’t shake negative thoughts that infiltrate my otherwise sunny disposition. Last night, I dreamed that a friend had gone to protest the vandalizing of a Jewish cemetery. Several Jews had laid down beside the graves to keep haters from destroying the headstones. Instead, the haters opened fire and killed all of the Jews lying there in sleeping bags. I was watching in horror with the same question that has played through my mind my entire life – would I identify as Jewish when they came for me?

This is a question I had in 1985 when Leon Klinghoffer was thrown overboard on the MS Achille Lauro and was a question that ran through my mind during the 70s and 80s when planes were being hijacked left and right. It’s a question that becomes relevant every time the world’s turmoil spins closer to home.

When that happens, universal anti-Semitism waxes too close to home.

I thought of this as I was watching Downton Abbey the other night while Lady Rose fell for the Russian immigrant, who turns out to be a Jew (much to the horror of the family), and we learn that Lady Cora’s father is Jewish. “It’s always something,” Lady Grantham says when she learns Rose’s new beau is a Jew.

With ISIS and the Middle East a pressure cooker and the U.S. trying to “fix” it, I feel this impending sense of crisis escalating for both Israel and the United States.

I think about this with all seriousness as I bring my son to Sunday school today. The world is not safe for Black boys. Its safety for Jews waxes and wanes. And here I am, raising my Black son Jewish and praying that at some point in his life, he’ll embody both AND survive both.

I was speaking to a friend who is a cultural anthropologist and she was talking about universal truths across cultures. For instance, the fear of snakes seems to be universal. The desire to love and be loved is also universal. I left visiting her to see another friend who recently made a move with her family to better their situation but right now that means living without water and gas until it can all get straight. She runs a nonprofit and right now nonprofits are not getting funding because their funding pipeline – people like me – are not in a position to give.

Instead of dwelling on how this area of our life (read: $) seems to be trapped in some sort of redlined groundhog’s day, we talked about what we are thankful for – they will own their house when this is all over. The American Dream. There is something to be said about being able to tap into this ubiquitous dream even if the reality is very different from what its founders had in mind.

The first friend I visited had a dozen long stem roses laying on her kitchen table, which seemed incongruent with the kids’ plates and crayons that were on the table too. What’s this? I said. A muddle, she said. It seems a universal truth that yearning for a lover and the appearance of one can seem to have the same deficient reality as the American Dream. The Big Love. Put it up there on your vision board and try to figure that one out.

A friend in Boston who always seems to be on the same vibe sent me an interesting article today on love and on Fortuna’s Wheel – written by Lauren Slater, a novelist and psychologist. Trying to understand love is like trying to predict your next up cycle. (read: impossible)

Last night, two of my friends discussed love, monogamy, marriage, desire and delusion. I sat between them at my kitchen counter nursing a cup of hot tea since I was feeling peaked. They, on the other hand, were well into their vodka tonics and I found the cold, sober, listening to be like almost tuning into some continuous loop of tape that I seem to have heard my whole life. I told her this, but she turned away. I bared my soul to her and she was not listening. I’m just so sad. All I want is for her to talk to me.

When I shoo’ed them out the door and curled up in my bed with my heating pad and extra quilt, I thought about what we want, what we expect, and what we get. I know it’s gratitude that makes everything tolerable, but I also wonder about these huge cycles of abundance and lack and how when there is abundance there is lack of awareness and when there is lack there is an abundance of awareness. So are we half asleep when all the good stuff is pouring down? Dream like state of bliss? And then when Fortuna’s Wheel spins round to the bottom, we see reality in harsh, glaring, truths.

You can keep it – if that is truth. Humbling as it has been to walk through fire – even ones I’ve set – I have to say the best part about curling up in my bed with my heating pad was embracing the boredom that has become so familiar in my going to bed routine, and it makes the craziness and survival mode my friends are in right now seem like some past life I don’t want to revisit.

Has it come to this? I know I’m coming out of the bad luck cycle that Slater describes, and I know that falling in love is not an if, it is a when, but right now, maybe because it is grey outside, and it’s warm inside, I’m convinced that another universal truth is to know when to hold them, and know when to fold them.

In just this past week, I’ve had three couples I know announce they are splitting up and the culprit – infidelity. One couple was together 18 years, one 10 years, and one four years. This makes my three months with Sty seem superficial and trite before I found out he was stepping out.

I have a very good friend who is polyamorous and who believes that human beings cannot be monogamous. But I beg to differ. I think monogamy may not be a natural or biological impulse, but it is a societal one.

The issue here that I can’t wrap my mind around is in a couple, there is a call for monogamy, a demand for it, an understanding of it, and in the case with me and Sty, these were the marching orders – coming from him. Two of my friends who have always been cheaters are upset because their significant others were caught cheating. What? I say if you want an open marriage – have one, if you want polyamory – go for it, but if you want and demand monogamy, then uphold your end of the bargain or declare that the bargain is off.

With all the breaking up, lying and cheating that has happened this week alone, I’m here to say my head won’t stop spinning. #who’sonfirst

Today is Fat Tuesday and today is cold and today we are not going to parade or costume or be out in the streets wearing blankets wrapped around us like we are watching on the Mardi Gras cam on WDSU.

That’s all the news from Cleveland Street. But know this: we passed a good time Mardi Gras 2015.

I posted on Craig’s List’s Missed Connections and have had some interesting responses – none of which connected with me, but I see how this turns into a call for any response for W4M. Today one of them, a self described “bad boy,” sent me a Valentine’s card – how sweet and romantic to do this on actual Valentine’s Day – too bad he can’t spell.

However, I will take this as the second card I’ve received for Valentine’s Day, which (ahem) is two more than any other Valentine’s day in the past.

Long live romance.

Stella and I went on an extra long walk this morning, down the neutral ground where Endymion stirrings have already begun (portapotty delivery), along the bayou where seagulls spread like a white blanket across the green grass, and into City Park where the birds were still tucked in from a coldish night.

Because she’s a puppy, and still learning how to be on a leash and not dart out after seagulls and dogs and humans and bikes and cars and noises, Stella constantly interrupts my walking meditation. When we entered the park though she did appear to grow calmer, and as we walked along the lagoon, the geese, ducks, black scoters were unruffled by our presence. I closed my eyes and went back into my non thought meditation and happened to look up in the bare trees. There at the top was this fellow – a black crowned Heron – he threw me off because I’m used to the yellow crowned night heron and bluish black crowned herons I normally see in the park. He was a beauty – majestic and powerful up on the top branch.

I thought how could you not look at a bird like this and feel awe?

All around me, the physical space is being invaded by a human energy – a parade is coming, a spectacle is about to happen, and all of the doings that go into making this happen are upon us and yet, in the quiet of the park, in the natural setting of the bayou that has run through there for centuries, birds are oblivious to our actions. Moss grows fat on the oaks. Nature has set its course, and is not so intransigent to give way to changes, subtle or calamitous. Accommodations are always made.

City Park is my living and breathing Turner and Homer. Art in motion.

The spectacle is all around us.

I’ve downsized Mardi Gras and it still feels outsized. I missed Krewe du Vieux because out of town guests were in and didn’t find it appropriate for the children. We kicked off Carnival with Tit Rex and skipped Chewbaccus to get home for bedtime.

Tit Rex Booty

I’m missing the Zulu ball yet again, but going to the Mayor’s Ball. Muses is a must and school’s out the next day. Endymion is coming to us and the home made vegetarian chili is already made. Girls Gone Vegan are delivering the vegan gluten free king cakes on Friday. Missing Thoth this year because my Uptown parade route friends went to the beach. Red Beans parade on Monday in the Marigny where Tin will get to ride in the pedicab. Then I’m debating after Zulu on Fat Tuesday to head to follow St. Ann or hang on Canal Street with friends who have base camp there – for a change?

If Ever I Cease To Love Mardi Gras, I’m going to have to book my beach vacation in advance. But for now, you can’t miss parades with a 5 year old in the wings. And you can’t avoid Mardi Gras if you stay in town. So Carnival it is.

Laissez les bons temps rouler.

“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take. Life is measured by the moments that take our breath away.”
— Hilary Cooper

Indeed. Yesterday, at Whole Foods in Metairie, I was picking up a few items while Tin was in Sunday school. At the check out line, a man came up behind me and picked up a Valentine’s card that was on the floor and handed it to me. It said, “We Otter Hold Hands” and had two otters floating bellies up holding hands. I said, “It’s not my type of card,” as we both read it together and searched for the rack it fell from.

Not my type of card, but he was my type of man, a tall drink of water, crazy locks, and soft eyes and a gentle demeanor.

I paid for my groceries and was balancing a cup of coffee as I put the bags in the cart, he picked up the heaviest bag and put it in the lower basket for me. Again, those eyes. Thank you, honey, I said.

When I walked outside, I couldn’t find my truck and was a little dazed from the encounter and walked in the wrong direction, only to spot it across the way and come back to find the man parked directly next to me. He was finishing up and about to pull out when I turned to return my cart and was face to face with him. He put on the brakes, looked at me, his windows down on this beautiful day, and I said, “Happy Valentine’s Day” – he smiled and drove off.

I got into the truck and realized my hand was shaking and my heart was racing. Wow, what?

The day went by and I couldn’t shake our encounter. Should I have? Why didn’t he? And so I did the unfathomable, me who loathes the concept of online dating, I posted on Missed Connections on Craig’s List. So far I’ve had three responses from men who would like to fill in for that tall drink of water, but he is the one I want to connect with.

What was that all about? Seems like he and I had some powerful history between us because how many times does someone make your hand shake and your heart bang against your chest who you’ve just met in the check-out line? Not often, I’m here to tell you. Will I see him again? Does it matter?

The importance of these encounters I pondered at 2 AM: I’m still feeling it I say about Sty, I say about my Whole Foods Valentine – and even if they be crumbs towards the feast, they are all helping to pry open this big RED heart and so I welcome them with an outstretched hand.