of a storm that blew us away & brought us together

a natural phenomenon, a conflict, a woman's name, a nine letter word, a conundrum, a warrior, a time period, a killer, a re-uniter, a one-in-a-million, katrina.

without doubt and with assurance she altered the course of many lives. very few we know. rich and poor, black and white, weak and strong separated us as she passed through the gulf of mexico, onto the shores of louisiana and mississippi. what kept us together was our lack of readiness, our innocence, our vulnerability, our common home.

who could be ready for her kind of reality? her kind of audacity? her personal attack?

within hours of her arrival, we were changed though and noticeably troubled. we experienced disorientation, whiplash. no one that i knew, no one that was near me during that storm had ever experienced the breadth, depth, or magnitude of her power. i doubt we will again.

all we really knew, beau and i as we played boggle and scrabble and read in our rooms at the holiday inn express was what was immediate and present. we relied on reports we overheard, resources not belonging to us, and telephone calls when we could get through. we became survivors. we speculated and tried on optimism when we got scared. we held on to each other a lot. i remember not wanting to be too far from beau.

for me katrina's impact seems to be an ongoing rite of passage. since she blew my house away, "all gone" says karen blixen as she watches her coffee farm burn down in the movie out of africa, i have been telling my story again and again and again and again. each time slightly differently but the basis is all gone. since katrina i have become more committed to discovery and married to mystery.

she didn't change my attitude about life at all. i don't think anything ever will. how else could life be but vulnerable, impermanent, infinite, tantalizing, demoralizing, awkward, fleeting, scrumptious, and deep?
but she did bring me to a place that i never imagined being: Asheville where seasons change and snow falls, where I walk more than I did because it's too beautiful not to; where I learn about growing zinnias each spring and summer; where I discover farmers at their markets that make the grocery store look archaic and backward.

Every day is a change away from how life was because Asheville, via Katrina, asks of me to be more grateful toward Mother Earth than I might have become in Pass Christian. I don't know. Here, too, I met this surprising and simple and singular man. Who makes me fruit relish and toast and hard-boiled eggs. Who shows me how. Who makes me angry and frustrated. Who hasn't given up.

I found out I am a good swimmer and don't have to wonder about that anymore. My Grandmothers give me reason to keep going, being beyond 90 and beyond their own abilities to understand life herself.

More since Katrina I've held Chapman and Sadie for the first time. I bought another house, one I don't adore as much as my first but that I do adore in an older, wiser way. And I have a more grown up relationship with my sister than I did five years ago. We get into it, we try harder, we speak our truths with more willingness and less fear.Since Katrina, my Dad and Marda visit each year; we eat dinner, maybe ice cream and we tell stories about our lives here and there. Since Katrina, hiking with Martyn in the mountains, sitting by a fire at their home in Cashiers, Mom and Martyn come close sometimes.Since Katrina, my friends are not all southerners or privileged or social.
Since Katrina, my way of life is not steady.

In essence, Katrina made me look and feel and see and think and let go and hold on---all at once! She shook me up, made me cry and had me lose because it's not a race. It's a life, and we're on a journey, and there is no map except for the faces and the places and spaces of this moment, the ever-present.


THERE WILL BE STARS

There will be stars over the place forever;
Though the house we loved
and the street we loved are lost,

Every time the earth circles her orbit
On the night the autumn equinox is crossed,
Two stars we knew,
poised on the peak of midnight
Will reach their zenith;
stillness will be deep;

There will be stars over the place forever,
There will be stars forever;
while we sleep.

SARA TEASDALE

coxcomb

dear friend, it is never enough to be anywhere. we are not satiated. we aren't meant to be. e v e r. do you think the universe stops wanting? wishing? living? dying? "tut tut," says its heart. you are meant to continyou.

we adore you. you adore you. you adore we. the house that dave lives in is the house that z lives in right now. does it matter that he built it? what isn't yours? what isn't you?

congratulations to waking work and play. you're living. what else could you be doing except dying and you're doing that too! Your youness teases me with deep affection. we need some time together.

It's an adventure. Miss you dear friend while simultaneously feeling you everywhere. Til soon, all my love and worship,

me

We love our strange beauty and amazing pain. We love our hungry soul and extraordinary games. We love our flaws, our gaps, our fears. We love our mysterious dazzling frontiers.

My friend writes,

Been spending an amazing time in a little town named Rico Colorado. It is a rustic little mining town with mainly dirt roads. A mix of run down shacks, and some really fine homes/buildings. We are staying here with friend of G's who has down well for himself by pure chance, he followed his passion for dodge power wagons. His name is D. and he is a really good guy, I like him. Was nervous to meet him, but it's all good now.

G. has some really good friends. People he trusts, people who are genuinely happy for him, people who know him and they tease each other with deep affection.

Here are some shots of his home:
I enrolled myself in a WD online course. It is $129. They recommend one lesson per week. I downloaded my first pdf of lesson #1, and as I read the glossary of terms, I began to weep.The initial phrase that got me was “Awakening: The lifelong process of realizing who you are in your totality and living your truth in whatever ways are natural for you. Awakening is the process of maturing into your own full expression as a divinely human creature. ”

I want to live my truth! And feel I am not living my truth So much, So badly, so SO SOOOOOO aaaaarg!!!!! je suis one passionate bump on the log who occasionally jumps off because it rains and the tide picks me up...
I do believe I will get my money's worth. I am putting my heart into it and am looking forward to m un-windings.

I went to Facebook, and was cruising around. I went to your page, I saw 56 profile pix..wow! I looked at this one,
and began to weep. Weep for you because I love you, I love exactly how you are in the world, the curve of your cheek, your athletic way, your laugh, your style, your sadness and your joy. And why is seeded watermelons so hard to find?

What am I gonna do with my life ("exactly what I'm doing" well, that doesn't help (why do you need help) it feels like I need help, the occasional arising tension in my belly tells me so. I AM the princess with a pea.

I love you, my wonderful dear sweet human friend passionate and giggly T!!!


Your Z girl in Colorado.

boxes inside boxes

Russian dolls, those little dolls within dolls fascinate our imagination. The big doll is the momma of the next doll and the next one and the next one. Like her, I am the daughter of the daughter of the daughter of a woman I don't know at all. Sons are the babies to the fathers who were once sons, babies who had fathers who were born babies.

Stories are stories within stories within stories; and no character was born in a vacuum. We do not live our own lives. We are always taking care of our historical mothers and fathers, having fights with siblings we don't even know. Enjoying the manna of a world more mysterious than the pictures outside our windows.

Literature is a source of inspiration and reflection for people. My friends are those who love a good story. Who doesn't love a good story?

Reading allows us to make sense and unsense of our lives. We do this well: making sense or making unsense of that sense. We identify with the lives of fictional characters. Sometimes their intelligence or wisdom guide us. Sometimes we are awed by the authors who write these stories. All of it is part of why we read.

Who are we not to wonder about our lives and making sense of them? What else are we supposed to do?
Paul Harding won a Pulitzer Prize for his first novel last year. Tinkers enlightens and entertains in equal measure. It's a short book so I read only five or ten pages before bed each night, without fail, to make it last. I am nudged forward by George's imminent death, 8 days away, as the story begins. He processes his life, making final connections between himself and his father before he steps into eternity. Both tinkers, these men sell the miscellaneous and the precious, thread, twine, tobacco to men and women before our time. We don't have their lives, but George and Howard, son and father, are as knowable as our own families since their story is not only theirs.

I'm finding gems like this: O, Senator, drop your trousers! Loosen your cravat! Eschew your spats and step into that shallow, teeming world of mayflies and dragonflies and frogs' eyes staring eye-to-eye with your own, and the silty bottom. Cease your filibuster against the world God gave you.

Have you ever noticed yourself engineering a filibuster against the world? Or thinking that you must stop the filibuster someone else has against the world?

Reading an interview of Harding, I fell harder for the novel because he admires Emerson, Whitman, Melville. If you know me, you know how I swoon at their mention. (Who does that for you? Who has you swoon and wonder and buzz?)

Intensity and honesty are two requirements for literature (and people) for me. Highlighting was necessary here:

The distance between Howard and his house lengthened and, as it did, segregated him from his life as if it were time. The smell of the wood oil and kerosene from the wagon made him think of the rooms and stairways he already knew he would never enter again and he realized that what he sat upon, the swaying cart full of products for cleaning, scrubbing, patching, organizing, maintaining domestic life, was a house. I am perched on a house, he thought. He thought, God let us perceive that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his own work. God hear me weep because I let myself think all is well if I am fully stocked with both colors of shoe shine and beeswax for the wooden tables, sea sponge and steel wool for dirty dishes. God hear me weep as I fill out receipts for tin buckets, and slip hooch into coat pockets for cash, and tell people about my whip-smart sons and beautiful daughters. God know my shame as I push my mule to exhaustion, even after the moon and Venus have risen to preside over the owls and mice, because I am not going back to my family---my wife, my children---because my wife's silence is not the forbearance of decent, stern people who fear You; it is the quiet of outrage, of bitterness. It is the quiet of biding time. God forgive me. I am leaving. *from Paul Harding's Tinkers

Mesmorizing is the way Harding collapses boundaries between time and space. Readers are tempted by the way these lives mirror our own. What happened when and how does it influence us? My great, great, great grandfather, who was he? A man as parched by his marriage as Howard? Probably not, but I love the idea that I am living parts of his life that influence me in ways I cannot know. His mysterious hand tinkers in my life, and ah yes, this is life and I give up eschewing and filibustering against it.

Thank you Paul Harding.