traveling swallowing dramamine

no rocks no base

these are the rules of hide-and-seek.

there are things i haven't told you.

the last time i wrote here, i was unhappy.

i'm not anymore. i'm too busy. i've been eating little and sleeping less. usually when my alarm goes off in the morning i hit snooze about five times. lately i haven't been able to stay in bed. as soon as i'm conscious i'm stressed. this probably isn't healthy.

but at least i'm not unhappy.

i want to play piano and read plays by tom stoppard.

i turned in my thesis rewrite at noon. i'll work on minor revisions tomorrow and submit the final draft on saturday.

we had a wine and cheese party for rikki's birthday. everyone came. it was a good party. i love it when people tell me, "hey, good party." as if i had anything to do with it. if my friends show up, it's a good party. if they don't, it's not.

they're so enthusiastic. that's what makes these parties great. we had about twenty-five bottles of wine and all sorts of cheese. 

i couldn't bring myself to get drunk on red wine, though. the last time i drank red wine was my valentine's day hangover. shuchin gave me some seagram's, which i drank with coke. eventually i switched to jack.

we all ended up sitting on ross's picnic table. i was afraid he was going to come home and be like "what the hell are you people doing in my yard" but instead he came and sat with us. we hung out at his house till seven in the morning. me, ravi, shuchin, matt, deville, bitoun, jacob, adam. and ross. who'd never met any of them before. it was a louisiana school invasion. i was glad he got to meet my friends. i just wasn't expecting it to be all at once.

as soon as the dance concert is over, i'm getting a haircut.

there is so much music going on. it makes my chest feel tight to think about all the music.

sunday after the party, there was a caterpillar on the pot of marigolds. he made laps along the rim. for four hours. i don't think he knew he was going in circles.

um.

i'm done with school. for the forseeable future.

this is the first time in eighteen years.

i woke up with my stomach in knots. the same knots i've had all semester. it's 9:30 on a saturday morning and i can't fall back asleep.

i'm going to ballet in a minute because i don't know what else to do.

yes it could be worse

and that doesn't really make this any better.

friday catherine came in town. i met her after work at the mellow mushroom; the mixed nuts were playing 80s covers. it was a bunch of drunk mount carmel girls smoking cigarettes and i felt uncomfortable, like always, i guess. cat watched me tired, held my hand and bought me a jack and coke. then i took her to louie's and it was like taking another version of myself around baton rouge. the me who stayed. except i'm not catherine, and i was never on student council like the rest of them. i was a theatre kid.

she slept next to me and we had our real conversation in the morning, in bed. she's supposed to be going to england on the 1st. i don't know where she's flying out of.

then saturday ross's niece was born, and her name is katherine with a k i think.

then there was this hurricane.

i called my mom saturday afternoon to see what she was going to do. becca was already headed to lafayette. my mom is the first to evacuate, always. we always evacuate together. "i don't know yet" she told me. mimi and grandpa were already in baton rouge. i said what do you mean, you don't know. she said "they don't know which way the storm is going, and besides the traffic is so bad right now."

finally i said "well what is fran going to do" and she said carefully "oh he might go visit his family in boston. and if not, he'll be with me. and you have cats, don't you" (because he's allergic)

so when she woke me up sunday morning, shouting into the phone that it took her an hour to get from our house behind dorignac's to clearview and she's not going to make it to baton rouge, she'll have to go north-- i told her well no one is surprised.

then she called me three hours later, i was at work and she said "now you're the closest one to the storm, maybe you should leave baton rouge, maybe just get into your car and drive to natchitoches, stay in the girls' dorm" and i said no. i said "is fran with you" and she said oh well no he's up ahead a little ways. they were "tentatively" planning to meet up.

ie she waited to evacuate because she wanted to see what he was doing. which is why she didn't make it to baton rouge. and now i haven't heard from her in three days. the phones don't work. i think she's in mississippi somewhere. i was so mad at her that when i was calling my relatives frantically all day monday i didn't even try to call her. i called my dad and michael and aunt pattie but not my mom. not that it mattered, because i couldn't get through to anyone. but i felt like--she picked fran over me, and now she can't get in touch with any of her family, and i'm sure she's frantic and i feel like she deserves it. this, i know, is ridiculous.

except that yesterday i finally got in touch with my aunt pattie. they're staying at a hotel off siegen. she came to visit me at work, along with aunt ellen uncle tim cullen aunt shannon leigh kurt mimi and grandpa--and i kept watching the door for them--and kept waiting for my mom to walk in. i wanted her to. i wanted her but she never did. then my family was at the door and i ran across the restaurant and tackled my uncle. aunt shannon cried when she saw me. i don't know why.

they'd let me use the office phone to call the hotel. when i got my aunt pattie on the phone--this was at about 6pm tuesday night; the last relative i'd spoken to was my brother at around 10pm sunday--she signed off our phone conversation saying okay i'll see you, i'm so glad you called, mimi and grandpa are coming, i'll call the restaurant if something changes but i'll see you in a little bit--

then she paused and said, you know everything's gone, right?

i didn't see the news till monday night. i knew st. bernard (where my family lives) would be underwater. i was sitting with abby, barrett, jacob and his cousin and brother--we're from metairie, the west bank, destrehan. we're watching CNN at barrett's house (barrett said why is this crap still on and jacob's cousin said 'she hasn't seen it yet'--my house didn't have power, still doesn't) and we're identifying neighborhoods, or trying to, from the helicopter shots--but it all looks like houses and water, houses and water, and that same pan across the clearview mall parking lot, target and zia's with the roof torn off. i'm learning the geography of the city from this aerial view. i didn't realize the 17th street canal was the one right by my house, at the end of vets, separating jefferson and orleans parish. all i knew about the 17th street canal was that it was between "eight-by-yo-mama's" and "six-pack-a-dixie" in the Yat Days of Christmas song. we're watching CNN and they're talking about the breach in the 17th street canal and i sang, "17th street canal" and abby paused and sang, "dix pack of sixie" and i was glad to be with a bunch of motherfucking new orleans refugees right then.

all day yesterday i was so glib because none of it is real. i had a hair appointment on magazine street at 1pm today. it wasn't until i was reading the WWL tv forum and watching the live feed online--it wasn't until i saw blanco crying and landrieu saying, with great force, "you should get down on your knees"--that's when i lost it. i was alone at rikki's house doubled over. then i went to work.

i cried over cheese and onion enchiladas (the lady said she didn't want the onions) and people were tipping like crazy. like crazy. you could tell the new orleans tables, they were the families with little kids and the parents slamming back beer and margaritas. the husband at 53 said he wanted chicken quesadillas, 86 peppers and onions, and i asked the wife if she wanted the peppers and onions on her quesadillas. she looked at me blurrily and said "you know, at this point i really don't care" and i said "what part of new orleans are you from." they were from kenner. i told her i was from metairie and hadn't been able to get in touch with my mom, dad, or brother since sunday; she looked at me like a horrified sympathetic mother. the table behind them was from covington and then the shackletons sat down at 81 when my aunts and uncles left. i wouldn't have known it was them except the dad was wearing a white polo with St. Catherine of Siena Men's Club embroidered on it. i touched his shirt and said "i graduated from there" and as it turns out, sydney and adam are sitting right there, unrecognizable now to me, but i was on quiz bowl with adam when i was an 8th grade girl and he was a 7th grade boy, and sydney was in michael's class. this is what happens when new orleans comes to baton rouge.

i walked out of work with 120 dollars on a tuesday night and went to chelsea's, where shuchin bought me a lemon drop, and pj's friend serendipitously brought out a bourbon and coke that he didn't want, and then he bought me a tequila shot because i'd never done one and he's from new orleans and so is pj and everyone at chelsea's was a refugee and we toasted to that. i was too drunk to drive home so anson brought me to barrett's, where i showered and slept.

today i got voicemail messages for the first time since sunday. my phone hasn't rung in three days. my dad says: i am safe, please get in touch. my brother says: have you been able to get in touch with mom, because the first extended is this weekend and uh i don't know i'm doing.

i told barrett: i've got to figure out a way to get michael home.

he said: what home?

sweet or unsweet

and for every one person he rescued there were ten bodies he had to push aside
hacking their way out of the attic with a
the reason is because they issued a no fly-over with the helicopters and the news cameras
with an axe and a bat they
they said it was too gruesome
the second floor of chalmette high as a morgue
found an axe and a bat in the attic that's what they used
huey p long fieldhouse as a morgue
20,000 body bags
and the new orleans i was raised to fear gutted and splayed across the national news i am ashamed
this is what happens when new orleans comes to baton rouge
don't take terrace back to your house you'll get raped
R U SAFE?
twice
fucking animals
these are not bad people
busses and gas, not food, not supplies, busses and gas
looking like third-world refugees but this is not
where's the national guard? where's the national guard?
where is the national guard?
candace who cut hair what's your mama's maiden name that's right that's right can you believe that pattie can you believe i remembered no mama i can't
(in the middle of all of this, every conversation still beginning with where you from where you went to school what's your mama's maiden name and my aunt pattie actually making a flow chart, an actual chart, i asked her and she said 'he's my neighbor!' as in, he's got the next room at the marriott, evidently such connections merit graphs)
alliterative disaster rhetoric and unwater isn't a word it isn't a word they couldn't have made a dewatering committee it's
surreal it's so surreal it's surreal it's just surreal it's surreal and i'm not going to believe it until i see it for myself
(i'm not going back i'm never going back i don't want to see it just give me the money i'll get and you can raze the lot we're going to tennessee it'll be like a vacation just a week we'll go to dollywood)
and all these connections lost
you're born in new orleans, you live in new orleans, you die in new orleans. everyone knows this. a whole city can't disperse. neither can it be homeless. and the joke no one gets-- did you hear the one about the speaker of the house (rep. dennis hastert, R-illinois) and it's funny how touchy people get at the suggestion that new orleans could or should be bulldozed since it's below sea-level because in fact new orleanians have been saying it for years

thursday night we went to sogo it was supposed to be rebirth brass band but instead it was the refugee brass band two guys from rebirth and the rest from the mike foster project five dollar cover and two dollar everything me barrett bitoun wade josh breton clinton jacob ravi alanna shuchin and another scattered few dancing barefoot and the guy from tulane up by the stage with crazy eyes (i lost everything i had) shouting fuck you katrina to the beat we had a chorus then they played oh when the saints and i ran to the bar grabbed a fistful of napkins and passed them out we second lined around the dance floor then the band came down and led us out the door i told barrett i'm so happy right now is that corny and he said we lost our houses and that's kind of corny so

proud to crawl home

thanks for nothing

driving around no gas no air with the gray and wind my ankles are wet. i put on elliott smith and it's like getting punched in the stomach. i miss you. which changes nothing. tired of the same old shit and it's always. i can't do this again we did it three weeks ago my cellphone doesn't work and lisa if i could call you i would. you sounded angry on the voicemail that took me an hour to check because. this goddamn hurricane. i don't even care about the flooding in new orleans because it's all destroyed anyway. my street is flooded too. i used to practice casting from my front steps into the lawn. i met a boy and he told me he was an alcoholic. i met a boy in line for the bathroom. spun me around. that night when you touched my leg. you look at me hard like you're waiting for me to figure it out. when did this happen. the conversations i can't have it's what i was trying to tell you about being superstitious (to say it aloud makes it real) you can't understand because of the promises you don't keep. did i ever tell you i think you're pathological. i wish i could touch someone without fucking someone else. keep your hands to yourself. okay so far.

this is going to get so much better.

i just moved into a one-bedroom apartment.
i have been four days without electricity.
by the time i get off work, it's dark outside.
so i bought a bag of votive candles.
on every ledge there are piles of dead matches.
my mom came up to help me today.
she is always busy so it was a big deal.
we had four hours.
our first priority, she said, is getting some window coverings.
i have four giant windows facing my living room and bedroom.
there is one mini-blind.
i get dressed laying flat on the bed.
i guess i could go into the bathroom to change.
anyway.
we went to siegen and back.
the electricity was supposed to be turned on but they said tomorrow.
mom forgot the drill bits at home.
i got some from ben b.'s friend down the street.
but you can't use a power drill without electricity.
and the curtain rod was too fat at the end.
so we went to siegen and back again.
then she had to leave.
i only wanted to get one thing done and it didn't get done.
and today was my last day off until sunday.
and i don't own any tools.
and i'm too short to install the curtain rod.
so i cried a little because i was frustrated.
then i unpacked my bookshelf.
arranging my bookshelf is like meditation for me.
i arranged my bookshelf for three hours.
now i feel much better.

here's to the future.

for the first time in my life, the new year comes as a relief.

i'm starting to get in the writing mood again, which is generally a sign of improvement in my mental health.

still i'm not really feeling complete sentences.
or full paragraphs.
so.

there's a lot going on, but what i feel like saying is this:

--the effort this will require makes my chest hurt a little bit so it comes out as it comes out--

finally moving out of my old apartment was a deadline push. i was sweating it, but now that it's done it's a weight lifted. fred had stayed there for the interim. i thought it would simplify things, i wasn't really ready, i didn't have all his stuff, plus i was out of town. all of these things were excuses. i wasn't sure how i would sleep, physically how, i don't have doors except for the bathroom door, and i have to have some way to keep fred out of my bed because otherwise  he sits on my face and i'm a light sleeper. so i bought a pet gate, and returned it, and bought another pet gate.

i packed up my car new year's eve and then i unpacked it and then i packed it up again, this time with the cat on my lap, and i actually said to him, as i was driving away from the old apartment, 'free! free from the ties that bind!' which doesn't really make sense in context, but it was heartfelt.

i didn't have expectations for midnight but still somehow was disappointed.

came home at 2am and set up the pet gate at the top of the stairs. fred cried a lot and i didn't sleep very well. at 5am i became more awake than i had been before and i checked the clock and realized fred had been crying for three hours. i try not to cater to his whims, i don't want him to think he can get whatever he wants by crying, but three hours of crying isn't melodrama. he was in an unfamiliar apartment, he could probably smell the previous resident kitty, and there was nowhere soft for him to sleep downstairs. so i took down the gate and he got in my bed and he was shaking. i was laying on my stomach and he sat down on my back. when he was a baby it was cute but now he weighs like thirteen pounds. and he kept kneading me. we came to some sort of agreement about appropriate touching and i fell asleep eventually and woke up every two hours or so.

last night was better. i only woke up once, right as the sun was coming up. before bed i was trying to write this post, and in the middle of it he sat down on my stomach so i couldn't see the computer screen. i gave up. he's so aggravating. i'm not going to get a solid night's sleep ever again, until i move someplace with doors.

still it wasn't home until he got here.

how it always ends

okay, since people are evidently confused by this post: what follows did not actually happen, except in my head while i was sleeping.

mom and i have been fighting again.

she and michael are sitting on the sofa in the den--the sofas we don't use anymore. maybe she had given me the gift first, and then michael came in and sat down.

the gift is an apology. we have been fighting again.

the gift is a series of of wooden frames. they are large, rectangular wood frames the color of unfinished pine. each frame is actually a set of two parallel frames about two inches apart. threaded between the two frames is a mass of colored string--it's almost like a loom.

the knots in the string tell the story.

the knots take on shapes like faces and actions and in each frame i find them doing something hurtful. to me. i look at every one and the knots are forming patterns that i can't believe. the stories they tell. every one offends me. we have been fighting, and this is her apology. i am enraged. i throw them down on the coffee table.

how can you give this to me?
how can you think this will make it better?

she doesn't say anything, just looks at me.

this is a horrible present. i hate it.

she watches me, silent, impassive.

i pick up one of the frames to show her. i tell her what the knots say.

she looks at me with flat eyes.

holding the frame, i point out the story. but now the knots are just knots. there's no story. no faces, no actions, no shapes at all. just knots in staggered rows.

she and michael exchange amused glances.

i ask her why she doesn't give a shit about me.

with her flat eyes.

then i beat the frame over the end table. i smash the wood down. this is a gift she made with her own hands. each frame, painstaking, woven, knotted. i want to hit her. i pick up a heavy vase, maybe it is metal or maybe glass. i almost hit her and instead i put it down. there is a little bit of water in the bottom of the vase.

i apologize for breaking the frame.

she picks it up eagerly, to see if she can salvage it.

meanwhile i am standing there, feeling insane.

i have a secret

i want to give it back

if i can keep moving there's the part that's talking and the part that's underneath the same words over insistent and spinning i can't go to sleep because i'll have to slip under i won't follow it down because i don't know how

how can you breathe

talking out secrets always made me feel better maybe because you distribute the burden the more people you tell and the less they matter to you the further they carry it away till finally it reaches someone for whom it is insignificant

this one i keep gift punishment legacy silent

the thing about secrets is you can never unknow them.
today i know this one for the rest of my life.

have you ever felt your whole body beat

whiskey out the flask
bitebruise on your upper arm
girl in a mask and pink party dress
finger to that guy on the huey p eastbound
sangria from a pink thermos
pat o’s bloody mary
sips off somebody’s hurricane
mardi gras mambo on speakerphone to boston
crown on the rocks
crown on the rocks
dollar for the toll bridge
lose an earring
twelve dollar strawberry margarita unfrozen
hershey’s kisses foil hats
whiskey out the flask
crown on the rocks
crown on the rocks
dark sidewalks down
le bon temps to tip’s to some girl’s apartment
sleep on the floor
boy’s sweater balled up for a pillow
watch the sky light up the window
igor’s bloody mary breakfast
streetside jambalaya
cold abita keg on the neutral ground
homemade jambalaya
nap on the sofa
semi-stale fried chicken lust
bacchus zulu the first fifty-three floats of elks
first sunburn of the season

driving down west end past the wreckage and over the canal, it fullbody hit me how the levee could have just as easily cracked the other way. it could have been my house with water to the roof. it almost was. and instead it was lakeview. by blind unfeeling incident.

i knew this year it was about morale and stress relief but there’s also a sort of bewildered pride. that we’ve made it, a kind of milestone, after everything. here we are.

at midnight, when johnny vidacovich said happy mardi gras, it was the kind of heartleap joy you want to feel on new year’s.

the buses pouring poison but the flowers surviving

5:33pm / highland / on a napkin

went to bed suffocating woke up sick of myself so restless all i can do is sit on the sofa staring the cat is shedding everywhere must be summer and today i'm not sure what i'm doing here
but
karen and i raided her fridge for: blueberries, orange juice, cooked veggies, turkey sandwich
and
i'm in the homestretch of herzog
and
it's patio weather at highland
and
i got a full stamp card from becca
so
(maybe just a little longer)
ok.

what you get

last night at chelsea's after the show we were standing in that little hallway in front of the bathrooms on the bar side. saying how i liked meeting new people but right now it feels so tedious, the whole getting-to-know-you thing, which i think i used to enjoy.

but i feel like there are these fundamental things about me. there are themes. there are certain words. like: dad. anyone who knows me at all knows what weight that word carries. and i find myself making the face when i hear it--the face that means "my dad and i have a strange, strained, dysfunctional relationship (although right now it's going pretty well)"--but we haven't gotten to that yet, and that's not really a starting point, is it. you don't start with that kind of stuff. but it's so big. these things are pervasive. how can you understand me at all if you don't have the context? this is the value of old friends who already know. right now i feel like i don't have the energy.

so we're standing in front of the bathrooms and the people walking by and i say, "i hate explaining myself."

and karen says wait. and she gives me a hug. she says, "oh ann. it's just you seem stressed lately. and like you just now got really worked up."

and she says, "are you tearing up?"
and i say, "i have pms."
and she says, "well, you can't tear up because that will make me tear up."

so we stand there blinking.

i tell her how i went to highland earlier to work, and i didn't want to walk because it was cold, so i drove my car around the block but the parking lot was full, and so was tequila's, and i came back around to the front of the apartment but now all the spaces were taken because of fucking serranos, so i parked in the artful dodger front lawn, and walked in the cold, and set up my computer at highland, and realized that i'd left the papers i needed in my car. so i stamped my foot.

she said, "that's it? you stamped your foot?"

well yeah. that's what happens when i have pms and am full of rage.

we walk to my car and sit inside for a while with the heater on. and she tells me about going to katie and adam's new apartment, and how excited they are, and that it's good for them, because it's time. it's time and katie said that she's not sleeping at the old apartment anymore and those are the words that carry the weight because it means it's over. and she's crying a little in the car because she's got pms too and we are sitting there blinking.

she said why does it happen all at once? and this is a hard time in our lives. because change is hard. always always.

and i'm thinking about moving to new orleans and how it depends on where my friends are. and i'm counting the ones i see every day and realizing that the difference is in the friends i don't see every day but i see everywhere. the friends that mean: no matter what bar or coffeeshop i go into, no matter what night, i always know someone there.

and i'm thinking about barrett, how he's in pennsylvania without his coat on, and it's cold, so he's probably cranky. and he says he doesn't know if penn state is worth "giving up everything." but if he stays at LSU for grad school i will think he's a pussy. and i don't want to tell him that, so from now on i'm going to have to watch my mouth when we talk about it. because i understand that you want to be in a place where you're happy. but the difference is only hard at first. and you are resilient. and here's this opportunity. and it's time.

karen says: we need to get out of here. but it has to be break-all-ties. and i say yeah. if i'm going to go, it's got to be someplace new where i don't know anyone at all. and i thought it was because i wanted to start over. but it's because i don't want to choose.

i drop karen off at her car. she's hungry and there's no food at her house and it's too late for taco bell, or the line is going to be long, or something. i kiss her on the cheek and drive home.

at the light on may and dalrymple she calls me. do you maybe want to go to louie's? and i say of course, i'll meet you there.

at louie's we know everyone and all the waitresses hug me and richard cooks karen an omelette the size of her head. beki says there's no ticket so i leave her all the cash i've got (four bucks) and karen leaves a five on the line for richard. we sit outside with him and paul smoking and beki comes out and janey and this new cook talking about opium, and which dishkid got fired for smoking weed in the walk-in. i've got my pepperjack hash in a go-box and richard is making lewd comments about my breasts.

when we leave i ask her if she feels better.
i feel better.

this, this. this is everything. this is the everything i don't know how to give up.

most lovely pancakes

i am missing my grandmother.

i just drove down christian street and the second-to-last house on the left had a red rosebush.

and i'm thinking about going to grandmotherdear's house, where new people live, and cutting some roses from the bushes in the front. i've thought about it before. the sweet cool smell and the clear vase on the kitchen table.

every time i see ham and eggs i think of her.

and the day last year i was sitting on the porch at violet street. rikki and i were on an iced tea mission.

my mom had spent much of her marriage trying to make iced tea like my grandmother, to my father's satisfaction. she'd try lipton and he'd say it should be luzianne. she'd try luzianne and he'd say maybe it was lipton. it needed mint. it needed lemon. more sugar? although when grandmotherdear made it for him, she made it without too much sugar, how he liked it.

my mother's tea tasted like a caricature. it was always good but never right. it had so much of everything.

rikki and i went to winn-dixie and they were out of mint. mint is essential. and i remembered there was a ton of mint growing by perky's apartment on carlotta, so i called him and he said his neighbor wouldn't mind if i cut some.

so we made tea.
and i'm sitting on the porch reading and drinking the tea and
it was like
it was like exactly like her tea. it tasted like she made it. it tasted like she was there sitting next to me. i didn't know what. i don't remember if i was happy or sad or both or what. i called my mom and told her it was the mint, it had to be fresh. that was the whole thing.

my grandma grew her own mint.
she had turtles, too. they hung out in the backyard. one of them was named red bean. i can't remember the others. i think red bean might have run away at some point.
slowly.

my grandma was on prozac for a long time. she was depressed. when you asked her something she would give a big sigh and say, 'oh, honey.' we made fun of her for that.

when she found out she had cancer, she refused treatment.
she died in four months.

they said it was perverse to want to die.

i thought it was brave.

she'd been so depressed.

uncle vin delivered the eulogy. he told about her garden and the turtles and the birdfeeders and the dogs, lulu and nutmeg. he said she loved having life at her fingertips.

i'd never thought of that.

it occurs to me now that the new people, whoever they are, probably don't live in her house anymore. and the roses probably aren't there either.
there's nothing much growing in chalmette.

when i grow up maybe i will have a rosebush.
for now i think i'll start with some mint.

block terror doubt lazy laryngitis

rereading old journal entries is supposed to be funny/humiliating, right.
and hopefully you can see some sort of progression.

so how is it that i feel like i've lost my voice?

maybe it's just different.
maybe it's that i'm older, or more experienced.
or maybe it's that i'm more full of shit.

enough of this gaspy girly melodramatic lorrie moore (the tedious repetitive fact of it!) crap.

i need to start writing again.
and not journal entries and grant applications.

to be assertive

early on i decided here's what i like about living alone.

because when my roommates and i went to the grocery, rikki always picked blueberry jelly. we'd work our way through the jar and i'd think, thank god, next time we can get a different flavor. and she'd get blueberry again. and finally reid and i were like, look, how about something besides blueberry this time.

so when i moved to the tula street apartment in december, my first moment of this is going to be just fine was when i made my condiments-and-other-necessities grocery run, and i decided all by myself to go with the smuckers one hundred percent fruit black cherry preserves.

i just made myself peanut butter and jelly on a whole wheat english muffin. i still hesitate between spreading the peanut butter and going for the jelly. when i lived with other people i always rinsed the knife off between jars, because some people don't like it if there's peanut butter in the jelly jar. personally i don't care if there's peanut butter in the jelly jar. so why the hesitation? because i don't want the hypothetical people who might one day see my jelly jar to be disgusted?

fuck that shit!
i don't have to accomodate anyone else's jelly jar preferences.
that was lesson one.
lesson two is
how to rid myself of this phantom guilt?

and sometimes it takes astonishingly little to make me happy

i just got back from jordan's. we played the game of life.

i think i'd only ever played it once before, at jennifer j's house. we were probably in sixth grade. i remember it being kind of boring. when you're a recent college graduate surrounded by recent college graduates and about-to-be college graduates, it's not such a light-hearted game. my lesbian partner alicia and i were in debt most of the time. debt is so hilarious and fun. especially when you're actually in it. like in real actual life. it's funny like car insurance.

on sunday i went to breton's house on the west bank. she was having a graduation party. her mom got a cake that said 'good job, breton.'

clint and jesse were there. i played the piano, like i always do, which makes breton's family inordinately happy. breton wanted us to learn a song for the occasion, so we did 'three hits'--indigo girls, inevitably. (indigo women?) we got the harmony mostly right. we did the usual fiona repertory: love ridden, paper bag, i know, parting gift, oh well. when breton took a break to socialize with the party guests, clint and jesse sat with me and we mangled some ben folds (annie waits, boxing) and counting crows (black and blue, amy hit the atmosphere). breton came back and we did raining in baltimore, we rocked the fuck out, all of us at the tops of our lungs and it was amazing. the grown-ups came and sat around us and kind of stared. i think they find us quaint, the way we sit around a piano and sing old songs we love. we saved natural woman for last--i've started doing that on purpose, so at least everyone's sort of warmed up for the chorus, if not the bridge--i leave that to jesse. everyone sang along to carole king. everyone sings along to carole king.

at one point it was just me and clint and jesse lying on the carpet in front of the piano. 

all three of us graduated on time in may of 2005. it's been a whole year. i spent my year waitressing, bouncing between apartments, and writing grants. clint was a delivery driver for a while and i don't know what else; now he swings kegs for a living. jesse's in law school at tulane, so he spent half the year hurricaned in lake charles and just finished his first fairly miserable semester.

so we're lying there talking about i don't know what, life, and jesse said something about maybe going into therapy, he said actually the other day he thought about committing himself.

ordinarily i'd roll my eyes at a statement like this.

instead i told them how when i was driving in that morning for the party--i've got a lot on my mind, short-term about work and where to live, long-term about what to do before grad school and what to do about grad school and why am i not writing if that's what i say i want to do. on top of all this, i've been feeling kind of tired and sick and generally out of it--and driving, i felt like i wasn't really able to focus on the road. which probably isn't terribly safe. and what if i got into an accident.

wouldn't that make everything so much easier.

and sometimes i think that a lot.

and clint and jesse laughed. i knew they would. that's the only reason i could tell them.

none of us are doing what we want to be doing.
i don't think any of us know what else to do at the moment.
none of this carpe diem fucking bullshit, either.
i think i'm doing what i should be doing right now. but i don't know what it is that i want to be doing, now or five months from now or five years from now.
we're sorting it out.
it's scary and hard.

clint said laughing about our quarter-life crisis and i said it's no bullshit.
he said not to mention the
and i said yeah, the actual fucking tragedy of the past year?

anyway. not many people in my usual circle of friends have been out of school for a full year. it's a special sort of mindfuck. it was a relief to be around old friends who felt it too.

afterwards i drove to metairie, feeling alright, and glad to be home again. it's been a while.

then i pulled up to the house, my mom's boyfriend's car in the driveway and immediately that old tight feeling in my stomach, and remembered why.

i'll save this stuff for tomorrow, maybe.

here's the rest of it:

i work on oak street and our office is lovely and i like the people i work for. yesterday a guy from the neighborhood merchants' association came by to greet lynne and eric. he runs the oak street cafe; his name is brad. today i got lunch at the oak street cafe, a bacon egg and cheese sandwich on toast, and brad handed it to me and said oh, hello ann, i guess we didn't officially meet. i smiled and shook his hand and turned to leave, but he stopped me, he came back with a little bag and smiled and said thanks for coming in. and in the bag was a chocolate-covered glazed doughnut.

of all the doughnuts that currently exist in the world, chocolate-covered glazed are my favorite.

mckenzie's chocolate-covered cake being the obvious first choice, but c'est levee, as no one but a new orleanian could say.

i was ecstatic.

so i walked down to the rue, ordered a mango iced tea, sat at one of the outside sidewalk tables and had an egg sandwich and tea and a doughnut.

lagn
iappe.

both of two things

i would tell you this story
(and) i can't even write about it.

and her talking brighter and brighter
and me saying less and less

phonecall warnings and you can come out of hiding now,
fuck you, how droll.
you want the i'm-over-it announcement,
you got three years of denial and a hurricane honeymoon.
i get to hide in my room and pretend i am
not home, you are not home, it is not home.

make easy offers because you know i won't take them
and scold me for behaving badly.
you behaved worse.
i don't listen anymore.
(and) outrageous
(and) hurts every time.
from here it doesn't look like it will ever.

it has to. i hate it.

(and) shut down so hard
(and) screamed the phone receiver
i don't think i've got any fight left.
that's the sad thing.
i don't know what else.
i'm ready for you to do the fighting.
instead you deflect all the battles
because the sad saddest thing is you want it
but you won't fight for it
you say you're not strong enough.

you left and you wait
for me to open the door, turn on the light, climb into bed.

The rest of us just fake with our fake faces

single girl sunday. this was not a bad day. i
-- had lunch with karen, paul, and clay
-- spoke spanish with this transient guy at highland
-- finished that fucking martin amis novel
-- learned a new song
-- had dinner with katie, paul, and adam

this was not a bad day.

so i don't know why intermittently i sat on the sofa stare-at-the-walls lonely. i tried to piece it out:

-- is it living alone? though when i lived with rikki and reid, towards the end, neither one of them was ever home and i just went straight to ross and paul's to hang out.
-- is it because barrett is out of town? sunday night is usually cartoon night. and barrett is leaving for california at the end of the summer.
-- is it because breton is in new orleans? but i didn't hardly ever see her even when she was living down the street.
-- everything's all rearranged. my go-to friends. i look at my cellphone and think about who i can and can't call. can't can't can't.
-- breton, barrett, karen. it will only get worse. by january will it even be tolerable.
-- and what about if i move away. and it will always feel like this. will it. how do you meet people anyway. without built-in friends. which i hate, i'd rather be alone.
-- except not.
-- this looks like a depressed person's apartment. my desk and my dishes.
-- i want to work on my prague scrapbook, which will make me happy, but i don't feel like working on it. and i don't feel like sewing.
-- i feel like working on my scrapbook and watching reality bites with my girls.
-- and they're not here.

-- and really what i think is that this is an issue primarily of hormones

-- so i walked to blockbuster and i rented matchpoint, which will probably annoy me, but will also pass the time. and i will eat popcorn and chocolate simultaneously. even though i'm not hungry.

-- and tomorrow will be better, if only because i know exactly how to fill the time.

sundays.
hormones.
single girl estrogen apartment sunday afternoon wall staring cellphone hell.

dinner at sunray

mom says how her best friend called furious two weeks ago
i said why was she mad
and it was because she didn’t know that mom’s boyfriend had been living at our house for the six months after the hurricane
she said: i think she’s a little jealous of my relationship with him
my jaw hit the table
i said: or it's because you lied to her.
she said just because i left something out doesn’t mean i’m lying. i don't consider that a lie.
i said it’s a lie of omission
i said she’s hurt because she’s supposed to be your best friend and you left out a huge part of your life
she said well i don’t tell her anything because i don’t think it’s any of her business and she doesn’t have a right to know
i said and this is why your brothers and sisters are hurt, that you leave them out of your life, that you cut out large swaths of your life and don’t talk about them at all
this is why they don’t take you seriously, because they know you’re lying, they know they’re never getting the full picture
this is why people are hurt
this is why people don’t believe anything you say
because there’s a kernel of truth
(they will judge me)
and then the rest of it is you don’t want to tell anyone because you don’t trust them
not because they don’t deserve your trust
but because of your own issues
not because your best friend is jealous
but because you shut her out.

so the issue becomes you’re just not friends anymore.
unfortunately it’s not so simple with your blood.

michael was there for it, this time, and this time i wasn’t the crazy one.
i wasn’t the crazy one because this time i was able to keep my voice under control. i don’t know what the difference was. maybe because it’s shit we’ve been over before, or maybe because of marcia. but this is the first time i’ve really had a handle on myself.
it’s also the first time i’ve seen how it affects all of her relationships, and how plainly and totally she denies what’s actually going on. to say that her friend was angry because she was jealous. and mom said she didn’t see what this, or the stuff with her siblings, had to do with what’s going on between me and her.
michael broke in and said: mom, it’s exactly parallel.

we talked it around
the busboy cleared the table 
the waitress asked coffee or dessert
the busboy refilled the water glasses
the waitress brought the check

i corrected her: it wasn’t just the fact of the relationship that was denied. even when he was living in the house we were expected to pretend like nothing out of the ordinary was going on, even when he was sleeping in the living room, in the most public room in the house, and we were literally tiptoeing around him, and you didn’t acknowledge that maybe we were put out a little or that it might have been hard

she said: you weren’t even there.
i said: i was there more than michael was, michael was in natchitoches

she said: i said thank you a million times

i leaned forward: you said thank you once. and it was when we had that fight about me sleeping in the house without you there, how you didn’t want me to because it would make him uncomfortable, and then you changed your mind because you knew it would upset him if he knew you’d told me not to.

only now am i remembering that while all that was going on, she was still denying that they were even in a relationship. he was living in the house and she was pretending he wasn’t living in the house and they weren’t in a relationship.

we talked it around, the same things i’ve said a hundred times a hundred ways, you think she gets it and then she drops another one on you worse than the one before, and you realize she’s not with you, she’s coming from some other planet,

i dreamt last night that she met clark from highland and they were going on a date, it was fine fine fine and then she said she was going to sleep over at his house and i lost my mind, it was in front of everyone, the whole family, i was the crazy one, they were laughing at me, she had a new name: tara: and i was yelling my head off she stopped me she said i have to tell you something
i said just say it say it
she said i have cancer. every kind that they thought i might get, i have every kind of cancer, aunt kay will take care of it, she’ll clean it all up,

i felt the back of my neck go hot
the bottom falling out of my stomach
real-time, the visceral response to a nightmare, i knew i was dreaming and woke myself up

except it wasn’t a nightmare. that conversation happened. it all happened exactly like that.

i realized when i woke up that what we’ve been talking about as anger: why can’t you just let it go, i mean i said i’m sorry, how long does this have to go on, why can’t you get over it
and i say i’m hurt, i’m angry, i’m resentful
what i really am is scared.
i don’t want to be in the house, i don’t want to deal with it, i don’t want to talk to her because i don’t know what to expect. i don’t know the next thing that’s going to come out of her mouth, and you think it can’t get worse and then it gets so much worse.

she kept saying crying i feel like you’re punishing me, i feel like you’re punishing me way more than what i did to you, i feel like this is abusive, i feel like you’re abusing me

and today when i woke up is when i remembered
that’s what i said, not to her,
never to her, i can never say it to her
but what she said that sunday, what she did,
it was punishing. it was abusive.

and how far down deep that accusation goes.

$198.77

is how much i spent tonight at the grocery.
i'm not sure when i last went and bought actual groceries. as opposed to a single frozen dinner + deodorant + cat food.
i think it was february.
march april may june july
five months.

two hundred dollars.

i suppose i should feel bad about spending two hundred dollars on a single grocery trip. i do not. here's why:

i eat out for every meal. the only time i don't eat out is when i have leftovers from eating out.

although my social life often seems to revolve around eating out (because this is southern louisiana, we love food, and we are all lazy twenty-somethings with generally non-functional kitchens/empty fridges/no cooking ability), eating out as much as i do is expensive and unhealthy.

i am semi-horrified at the condition of my body: consequence of a haphazard exercise schedule and a retarded diet of whatever-is-available-and-doesn't-overly-disgust-me.

there are way stupider things to spend two hundred dollars on.

the only thing i maybe regret is going grocery shopping while both hungry and hormonal. i'm pretty sure the latter explains why i purchased four kinds of ice cream and three kinds of pickle.

specifically:
a pint of häagen-dazs rum raisin (it makes me nostalgic for that summer at ailey.)
a pint of ben & jerry's cherry garcia (it reminds me of dad, who lately has taken to gently microwaving a little bowl of it for me when i go over to his house.)
a pint of häagen-dazs triple chocolate something something (because, uh, i have to have chocolate in the house or.......or nothing, there's no alternative, i just have to have chocolate in the house at all times. and lately i've been living off spoonfuls of nutella.)
a half-gallon of bluebell's strawberry low-fat frozen yogurt (it didn't come in a smaller size, it's fucking delicious, and i don't feel like a bad person for eating it. not that i feel like a bad person for eating real ice cream, since i never eat much of it in the first place. i guess what i mean is that the strawberry frozen yogurt makes me feel like a good person.)

as for the pickles, it's mt. olive jalapeño dill strips, sweet relish, and banana pepper slices. yeah, i know banana peppers aren't pickles, but categorically, i mean, it's the same weird hormonal impulse, so. it counts.

also i don't know what my deal is lately with the sweet relish. i find it so appealing. it started at barrett's house one night, i was staring into their (perpetually impressively stocked) fridge and had an overwhelming desire to eat a spoonful of sweet relish.

i'm pretty sure i went ahead with it.

.

mid-afternoon i realized that even karen was out of town this time and i had absolutely nothing to do for the rest of the day. instead of staring desolately at the walls, though, i managed to think of a few things i wanted to do and a few things i needed to do. then i did some of them: started a new book, filled a prescription, balanced my checkbook, got rubber cement for my prague scrapbook, wrote the rent check. went into the grocery for frozen dinner and lightbulbs, left with two hundred dollars worth of reasons to keep living.

it's really like that. the same way that this journal is a barometer of my mental health, not in terms of my mood when i'm writing, but whether or not i'm writing at all. i'm starting to feel in that good place again. it's been a long time. i'm paying attention. there's food in my fridge. there's flowers in the bear-mouse.

at some point in my life, a frozen chicken pot pie dinner-for-one will sound terribly sad.
right now it feels like some sort of achievement.

.

PJs, clean face, fed cat.
i could have gone to chelseas tonight.
instead i'm going to sit on the sofa and re-watch in good company. because it feels good and topher grace is cute.
and i have four kinds of ice cream.

maybe it's irrational and impractical to buy four kinds of ice cream for one person.
or maybe i should go grocery shopping shot full of crazygirl hormones more often.

what was the point? what could the rain say but rain, rain, rain?

i called paul yesterday around 5:30 to see what he was doing. he was hanging out at his apartment and said to come over. i said can i bring a book? and he said yes. he was reading vonnegut and i was wearing a brown dress. him on the sofa and me on the bed. it was hot and i sat not very much like a lady.

he said i'm starting to really like this apartment. it's like a treehouse.
i said it's exactly like a treehouse.
he said it's everything i've always wanted.

i wanted to make iced tea but the huge mint plant by perky's apartment on carlotta seems to have disappeared. i don't know where it could have gone to. it was so big. this means i have to buy a mint plant.

much later, i smoked a cigarette. i decided i should know how to smoke a cigarette. paul sat on the railing outside his door and told me to breathe. he had to light it for me because i'm incompetent. it took a while to figure out how to inhale, and then i coughed, and then i figured out how to do it without coughing. my lungs felt coated in slime for the rest of the night. cigarettes are disgusting.

much, much later, i told paul the whole story, from top to bottom. he doesn't read this so i didn't have to skip parts or worry about being redundant. even though he's a boy and boys usually try to fix it when i tell them things, he didn't try to fix things, or at least he didn't try too hard. when they try to fix it it means they don't understand. mostly he listened and said small things that meant he understood. i told him everything in order, it must have taken two hours, and when i got to the end he said "of course. it's your mom."

it was the simplest affirmation, and the most on-point, and the one i needed exactly to hear.

i'm so tired.

the last one sings in me

i feel like writing this down.
i am having a nice sunday.

i woke up around 11, put on the trrrr album, did not put on pants. yesterday afternoon i straightened up the whole apartment, so today it's all tidy. i made myself breakfast: turkey-egg-and-cheese on a whole wheat english muffin, and plain yogurt with chopped black cherries, raspberries, and blueberries. i ate and went back to sleep. then i woke up again and played piano for an hour and a half. not totally full-out, because i'm shy about the neighbors, but more so than usual. it was sweaty, which means i meant it. then i sat on the sofa and fred sat on my stomach and looked at me lovingly and i read some of bird by bird.

friday night breton called to say she was in town and i cried on the phone. for no particular reason. just cried. and she said she'd be at my apartment in an hour and i went to the rec in the meantime because endorphins are good for this. we sat on the sofa and i told her everything, so that makes six, and i told her how i was doing laundry at home last week and my mom offered me storebought cookies to take to baton rouge, and i said no no i just went to the grocery, i just bought two hundred dollars worth of food. and i paused, and said "i hadn't bought groceries in five months." and i paused, and said "i've been a little depressed. for the past year and a half."

i've said this a couple of times, and i've said it to her, and i've always only been half-serious. and i'm still only half-serious. but i can tell by the looks on my friends' faces that they know it, better than i do, because i still feel like me but maybe i seem different. and michael says he's been worried and he says something totally offensive about how he thinks baton rouge is sucking my soul and draining me of all passion and ambition. as if i would let that happen. as if i would ever be fucking complacent.

friday afternoon, sitting on the sofa, breton looked at me with that same distantly worried look and said "yeah, actually. i think you have been depressed. i don't know what to do about it."

i told her i didn't think there was anything to do about it, beyond what i'm doing already. which is to keep going and stay self-aware and try to respond in healthy ways until it passes.

i mean i don't think it's a big huge deal. i think it's largely, if not entirely, circumstantial. it's been a hard year.

before, i'd hung up the phone and quit crying and got dressed for the rec and got in the car and tried to figure out why the fuck i'd been crying, i'd cried off and on all day, and sort of all week. and i remembered out of nowhere, sophomore year, telling jesse i felt inexplicably drained of all joy and purpose, i'd never felt like that before, and it lasted a week and then it went away. it wasn't a big deal but it was such an unusual feeling for me. the only way i could explain it to jesse was that i felt like i'd lost the joy of living, which is a silly way to put it, and i didn't mean i was suicidal. but i couldn't think of how else to say it. and years later talking with ross about his depression and telling him that i'd felt it, briefly, but a terrible feeling, and i couldn't imagine feeling like that all the time. and i'm driving to the rec friday afternoon and it occurs to me that i do feel like that all the time. no. not all the time, but the days that are good are the ones that are noteworthy now. i never thought it consciously back then, but to say i'd lost the joy of living implied that usually i felt joy in living. that was the baseline feeling. these days the baseline feeling is something i fight against. i have to find ways to stay up.

i can't believe how long it's been.

and i will think of this like a cloud and i will tell myself that i've been crying because i'm coming out of it, like how with my mom i'm telling myself that it's about to get better.

i half-believe it.
like i told michael, nothing's actually different, it's just i bought groceries.

at any rate. i had a nice afternoon. and now i'm going to drive to new orleans in the rain and see a show and take care of becca.

a pack of wet letters

i cried a little when i read them.

then again, i also cried watching budweiser commercials on youtube the other day.

but really it was because of the new year's one. because sometimes all you can hope when you're feeling totally alone is that someone is thinking of you. and i was. and you were.

i laughed at party gras.
you drank a lot.
mom finally let my subscription--that subscription--run out, after five years. the thought of no more magazines sent to doody glanano filled me with a sense of loss that is hard to contemplate, much less describe.
i liked this because it's true and everyone knows it: i knew i had the Rentals on CD because i had borrowed your copy after we had broken ^[up] -- trying to rebuild that half of my CD collection that i had lost (although not actually mine) as one does after a breakup.
i laughed out loud for a while at this: so the thought i've had while rereading this letter is actually a question: "Do I always leave out so many words in my letters?"
you've done that as long as i've known you, and the whole time i was reading i was catching them and smiling.
i don't remember sitting in front of the lavilles.
i still listen to them. i take pauses so that i forget what's on them and then i listen to them and they fill me with delight, that's the only word for it, because all the songs have reasons and i remember. there are a few that are badly scratched but i've written down the track listings.
i knew why you were shaking, jackass.
i mean, to an extent.
you're not really a jackass.

i cried when i read the new year's one because i was overwhelmed with the feeling that nothing in life makes any sense. i don't care if it sounds trite. that's exactly how i felt. like the sky split open and we're falling through the cracks: nothing makes any sense: and everything i write and everything i think is towards trying to make sense of things: and, failing that, putting sense on things: which is not as naive or pointless as one might assume.

but you're just you floating around with what you want and need and think and feel inside of you; and i'm just me floating around with what i want and need and think and feel inside of me; and how this intersects or doesn't kind of blows my mind.

the sending doesn't matter.
the sending was a gift and i accept it.
what really matters to me is that you got what you needed out of the writing.

i hope you did. if i could serve you that way i would be glad. that's the most i could ever hope to do for anyone.

my fat children are actually turkey sandwiches

i called barrett at quarter to nine to see if he wanted to get izzo's with me. he called me back a while later and said he was in new orleans visiting his brother. he's coming back up to baton rouge tomorrow. i said i'm working in new orleans tomorrow. he asked if i was going to be back in baton rouge at some point this week. i said wednesday night and thursday night.

he said oh.

and it occurred to me that we're having this conversation because he's leaving on friday.

i said well i have to see you.

he said we'll figure something out.

and my throat is suddenly full of tears and i said i can't have this conversation right now and he laughed a little and said bye and i hung up fast.

oh god. i am not ready for this week to happen. i have been refusing to think about it all summer and here it is and i am not ready.

because goodbyes are so awfully unremarkable

and i cried all the way home.

broken city

my friend tommy is in law school at berkeley but spent the summer working in new orleans, and he posted something the other day about the people in berkeley constantly asking him 'how it was' to be in the city.

i was going to write about the anniversary night but didn't.
i was going to tell you about the maple leaf, how it was packed and sweaty, and i waited at the bar for a cup of water, rebirth was playing and how impossible it is to keep still, sitting or standing, and i'm standing waiting for water, watching the people waiting at the bar and dancing to themselves, watching this girl at the corner dancing and i kept grinning at her, and something in the music changed and suddenly everyone is bouncing, even the bartender as he pours the drinks. and bliss rolling down my back. there aren't words for it. joy that makes your hair stand on end. revival-meeting ecstasy, the people are fanning themselves or holding their hands up. they're standing on the walls. i was telling barrett about it--the whole anniversary thing and whether or not to acknowledge it with some big-deal event--seeing as we're forced every day to acknowledge that it happened--it's not like you can live in this city and not notice it. and that night breton wanted to see rebirth, she thought it would be fitting and i agreed--though i was tired and not in the mood for partying. so i didn't drink except the water. and mostly i danced by myself and didn't say much. and i told barrett that it felt good, like church, like church would be if it were cool and led by a nola brass funk band. and what i meant was it felt restorative.

today i woke up and took my temperature and it was 101.8. so i went to the doctor. my doctor's office used to be on robert e. lee; the new office is on vets. i figured he moved because the old office got water. i asked him and he said twelve feet. then he said i probably had strep, but he couldn't test me for it because they'd run out of the tests. so he wrote me a prescription for amoxil. then i went to CVS and there were two pharmacists working and five people waiting, the pharmacists looked like they were about to tear their hair out. my mom said it's been like that ever since. i hadn't dealt with the medical sector of the city. i didn't know.

it's like this: you think you've got a handle on the situation--then you come into contact with a different part of the infrastructure--and it's a new perspective--and it's always worse.

and these are just the petty surface details.

i went to the blockbuster next to dorignac's at quarter to nine. there was a cop car in the front and about seven people standing by the doors. they said the door was locked because the store just got robbed. some dude had run out with a stack of movies and some other dudes chased him and then the robber's friend drove up and pulled a gun on them. eventually the blockbuster people let us in. the movie i wanted to rent was checked out, so they sent me to the store on clearview and w. napolean. the girls working the counter were really nice and i was like "ya'll know the vets store just got robbed?" and they said yeah, we got robbed at about 3 o'clock this afternoon.

at the vets store, waiting to be let in, the women standing with me were chatting about how stupid it was to rob a video store--and how busy the vets store was--and how not-busy the metairie road store was--and i said was that old metairie cc's open?--and they said yeah, it just started staying open after six--and one of the women said she drives out to the vets blockbuster even though she lives on st. claude--and the other woman was like oh my god, the parish--and the first woman said she used to get movies mailed to her house but she can't anymore--and the second woman said you could get them mailed to your work--and the first woman said you're right, i do that with all my other mail anyway--she said, we're living at this one house while the other one is getting fixed up, it's the first time we've lived alone since the hurricane--and this other woman was like, yeah, i love my FEMA trailer--

meanwhile i'm thinking:
-- you can't drive more than five blocks down a main road in the city proper without seeing a cop car.
-- and we've had three bikes stolen in two months from outside our oak street office.
-- but this is metairie.
-- even while they're waiting for a video store to be secured post-robbery, new orleanians will chit-chat about goddamn anything.

right above from where you are

but now we must pick up every piece
of this life we used to love
just to keep ourselves
at least enough to carry on

i drove in to nola with josh last night and we sang all the way there. and we saw a show and i drank too much.

it was a proper new orleans evening:

two jack and cokes / tv on the radio at the republic, where i saw jeff, jessica, becca, eric, patrick, sully, natalie, peyton, and p.j.;

a pint of blue moon / ryan's on decatur with breton, jason, peyton, natalie, anson, matt, and that guy from my milton class whose name i never can remember;

a shot of soco (which was disgusting) / one-eyed jack's for 80s night with breton et al.

i'd told josh earlier that breton was leaving for paris on saturday--we were sitting at ryan's and he was like, "so when do you get to see breton again before she leaves?" and i said, "i don't." and he was like "what? this is it?" and i said yeah. so he and francis went to visit their friend derrick and he left me with breton to hang out for an hour or so. it was awesome. i thought i was only going to see her last night for a few minutes and hug her goodbye. and instead we got drunk and a little lost and then we danced for a while.

then josh picked me up and we were starving. so i directed him to bud's on clearview, where we ate food which was both cheap and delicious. and i was really happy. and i fell asleep on the way home.

after the show ended at the republic, i was talking to becca and eric and their friend patrick came up to say hi. i met him last friday--he ate dinner with me and becca and eric at reginelli's before we left for the beach. he got his master's in english lit, or something, and we talked about english-dork stuff over dinner. it was nice to talk to another english nerd. i'm never around them anymore and i forget how nice it is, such an easy connection--i feel like i'm so starved for book talk.

anyway, he was friendly at dinner and i got the feeling that he was also glad to be talking to an english nerd. so at the republic he comes up and says hi and how was the beach. and i say, "well, i got pretty sick," and he says oh no, and i say, "but we had a lot of fun. we bought a lot of underwear." and he says oh really. and i say yeah. and he says what kind of underwear. and i say tiny underwear! and he says, with raised eyebrows and concern in his voice, "but are they uncomfortable?" and i say oh no, they're very comfortable, just tiny. they're hot. and he might have asked if i was wearing them at the moment (i was)--but maybe he didn't--but i had to leave so i gave him a hug, and he said as i was walking off, "we can talk more about your underwear later"--which was funny--

mostly it was funny because i haven't flirted with anyone, like actual unabashed flirting--it's been a long time. like six months. there aren't any boys in my social circle who i can flirt with safely and/or appropriately. the guys i would flirt with are off-limits for various reasons, and the rest are my friends who i snuggle up to, but i don't mean anything by it--i'm just a snuggly person.

so it was refreshing--kind of a stupid conversation but still. it reminded me that it feels good to meet new people.

sea change; cycles; circles; gravity pull; 
draw me out
closer
(further away)

there's a you-shaped hole in my dancing heart

oh i don't know.
i cried at dinner, i feel like no one takes me seriously, i feel like my dad and my mom and my grandfather don't take me seriously, i feel like i'm not doing anything that's worth taking seriously. there's no structure in here for me to be an overachiever. there's no up or forward. there's just digging straight down. there's just moving in place.

they look at me like it's my lack of motivation.

i don't know how many ways there are to explain fear to people.
i don't need you to push me.
i can push myself.
i'll figure it out.
that's kind of the whole fucking point.

hari said, well, when you walk up to a cold swimming pool, how do you get in?
she was asking rhetorically.
i said, not rhetorically,
"i go to the shallow end and i walk in really slowly, making terrible noises all the way."

and she laughed
and i said seriously.

tonight my dad actually said,
i was telling him about being afraid, about holding back, about not taking risks,
i said something about being pathologically obedient
and he snorted and said come on, if anything, you're pathologically disobedient.

i mean
i don't know.

i mean.

independent-minded, maybe, stubborn definitely, unconventional by the most conventional standards maybe.

he also said some bizarre something about how the reason i want to go to grad school is because all my life my mother has wanted me to go to grad school--and that she wanted to be a writer, which is presumably why i studied writing--(he made a similar argument a long time ago about louisiana school)--

try to explain to him that frankly i don't give a shit what she wants me to do--it's always struck me as irrelevant--because she's never projected or pushed any career choice onto me--and in fact, to counter his claim, she has within the past six months intimated that she doesn't understand or even approve of anything i'm doing--though i suppose she only said it at that particular moment to be spiteful, because she was being out of her mind, again.

reason number one i can't leave yet.
not in order. but that's one unresolved thing.
also the city.
and marcia said what about the holidays
and i said oh, the holidays
and she said so january then
and becca said but not till mardi gras
and then i remembered michael's graduation
it goes on it goes on
at some point there's a cut-off
you people
please.

it's hard enough.
paul said what i was thinking.
he said it's like if you wanted to go sky-diving
but you were really scared of sky-diving
and not only are you really scared of sky-diving but there's six months of impossible paperwork bullshit to fill out so you can go do this sky-diving thing that you half want to do and half are terrified of doing.
like it's hard enough to work up the nerve to actually go sky-diving,
much less force yourself through a bunch of bullshit so you can do this scary thing that you're barely able to screw up the courage for in the first place.

but that saturday, the first home game, i'd agreed to sit on the rooftop of the tallest dorm and monitor a time-lapse camera for a fox sports documentary. i regretted it all the week before and woke up saturday morning irritated at the impending disruption of my weekend routine--of sleep late, do nothing, sleep some more, read at highland, find something else to do, find a bar to drink at.
and i sat on the roof with the tar and a cellphone-tower headache and i could see forever, in every direction, the best view i've had since prague. i sat alone on a rooftop in the sun for hours. it was beautiful, quiet, hot, there were wasps, i took a nap in the shade of a giant air vent. it was a total disruption of my weekend routine. it felt like somewhere else. i was grateful and ready.

and the next day i go to visit my family for labor day, and ryan is three and gives me a huge wave because he knows me, i won't be the grown-up unfamiliar at family gatherings, grateful i kiss him and sean comes up to me later, he taps me on the shoulder and grins at me, he's seven, he says i didn't know you were here! and i kiss him too, on the cheek, i say i saw you playing basketball, you looked good.

try to explain to everyone who matters how you want to go, with your whole heart, and with your whole heart you want to stay.

and you know already: you can't do anything with half a heart.

self, i am so sorry.

i am so sorry
self
i have not written you
i don't know what
i don't know what's the matter.

i did write a poem.
it was not very good.

a while ago
i wrote the beginning of something
i'll finish later.

i have not read a decent book in
god knows how
long
i can't finish the ones i bought
they are flat and long-winded
and written by men

but i ordered 'revenge of the lawn' for forty-nine cents
anyway because that's what has coffee in it
and that might make it better

no good reading, no good writing,
i miss all of you

and

i don't feel like leaving the house right now
i can't see past tomorrow or the end of the week or the end of the month
i don't care
which scares me a little

caught in the middle,
i guess i'll start moving
when i'm either very happy or very sad
one way or the other.

the local economy

a new gelato place just opened down the street from my office.

this makes me anxious.

it's called the pazzo gelato cafe. the tagline: "italian ice cream made daily; italian ice cream made crazy!"

they've been doing construction on the place (oak street between carrollton and dublin) for nine months and everyone in my office has been anticipating the grand opening, not only for the "crazy" gelato but also for the potential hot lunch offerings.

currently our lunch options include:
oak street cafe (mostly basic sandwiches and breakfast, with a delicious daily lunch special, cash only)
the rue de la course coffee shop (cold sandwiches, damn good potato salad, cash only)
mona's (lebanese food, around the corner on carrollton)

a longer walk or short drive will take you to:
cafe nino (pizza by the slice, a few blocks down carrollton, cash only)
ninja (sushi, a few blocks down oak towards the river)
fresco (mediterranean-style with a broad menu, maple at hillary)
refuel (fancy sandwiches, closed on mondays, dublin at hampson)

camellia grill is still not open and anyway the cash-only thing is sort of a pitfall, since i rarely have cash and never more than twenty bucks on me at once. i generally only get cash so that i can buy my daily iced tea at the rue.

so this means i usually eat at: fresco, oak street, rue, nino's, mona's. i eat out for lunch every day i'm in the office. i'm in new orleans three days a week. i've been commuting to new orleans regularly since march.

three days a week times four weeks times ten months is one hundred twenty days divided by five restaurants is twenty-five lunches per restaurant. except i've really only eaten at nino's five or six times, so you can distribute the other twenty lunches to the other restaurants. that's more than a month of lunches at each restaurant over a short time period (less than a year).

anyway, a month of eating lunch at one restaurant makes one pretty eager to have new dining options. and so now we have pazzo cafe, which is nicely painted with bright furniture accents and more than ten gelato flavors (including tiramisu, an old favorite) and, indeed, paninis for a hot lunch.

today i went to pazzo for the first time and a young-looking italian-looking guy with scruffy facial hair and an apron took my order. perusing the panini menu, i asked him what capicollo dolce was. he said, in either a ghetto new orleans or italian accent, that it was a kind of meat. i asked what it tasted like and he gave me a sort of helpless look and ran to the kitchen and came back holding a small piece of meat, resembling ham, between his fingers. he said it was good with the salami and provolone on the panini. i got it with sundried tomatoes too.

it cost ten bucks, which is a lot of money. it came with grilled squash and zucchini and some type of spicy pickled olive-looking thing, all of which was tasty. the whole plate looked beautiful. also they sell mineral water.

i mention all of this because i'm sitting there at the silver table with bright chairs and sunlight flooding the white walls and i'm hoping fervently that this place will not go under. there's three people eating and an old woman walks in to place an order and i hope this restaurant makes it. every time a small business opens an angel gets its wings. not really. but this is vital not only to the city's economy but to its heart. and these people are brave to open a restaurant on what at first glance looks to be a dead street. i want these people to stay and sell gelato in the dead of an undead winter, like the sweet ladies across the street who opened a snowball shop in november and painted the whole damn thing bright pink with polkadots, and i want more like them to open in the abandoned shuttered storefronts all along oak street or carrollton or canal and

(i don't even like the snowballs that much but i feel guilty every time i walk past that place and don't stop in.)

i want my city back.

here's what never left: a guy in an old-fashioned newsboy cap asked another guy in an old-fashioned newsboy cap what size hat he was wearing. the old lady with lipstick like a firetruck ordered gelato. on her way out she ogled my plate and declared, "what a beautiful sandwich!"

i said it was beautiful and also delicious (with the bit of meat the young cook had offered me with his ungloved fingers) and yes it was a panini, yes there's a menu up on the counter, and what kind of gelato did you get?

"pistachio," she said, and smiled broadly in bright red. she said, "i'll definitely be coming back."

hello, potential employers

i checked my typepad visitor stats this afternoon. there were a few google blogsearch hits, per usual (i would love to know who you are, Person Googling Me On Blogsearch), and a few google hits for random phrases like "brown chicken brown cow." there was also a hit from someone googling my first and last name.

and i thought, oh crap.

i'm trying to move back to baton rouge full-time. i've decided that my current nola/BR schedule is not working for me. the back-and-forth thing is mind-numbing. my social obligations have doubled (two cities with friends and family to visit) while my time to fulfill them is halved (only three days in nola to see everyone, only four days in baton rouge). then there's the whole new relationship thing. i end up with virtually no time to myself - until i find myself sitting on the sofa at my mom's house or under the covers at my BR apartment, unwilling to answer the phone or do much of anything besides checking the same three websites over and over again or staring at the walls. at this point reading only makes me want to sleep. reading is something i used to do in my downtime - i more or less scheduled reading self-dates to highland around work/social stuff. lately i only read on my lunch breaks in new orleans or right before bed if i can keep my head up. this makes me unhappy. (also i've hated the past few books i read. i've got a good one now, though. i kind of want to bathe in robinson's prose. all the time.)

anyway, breton emailed me from paris on her newly-functioning laptop and asked for an update. i told her my reasons for wanting to live and work in baton rouge:

if i were in baton rouge full-time, i would
a) take more dance classes
b) read more
c) hopefully write a damn short story or something
d) study for the GRE
e) take the GRE
f) start researching grad schools
g) figure out spain
h) have a way more relaxed social life
i) not feel like i have to spend every spare second with my boyfriend because i'm always gone for half the week

in general i think it will be a vast improvement in my quality of life. i think i will be significantly more productive in terms of figuring out the next step. The Next Step. the way things are right now, i feel like a hamster in a wheel.

so on monday i sent out four resumes - three to the LSU library and one to LSU Press. the library was actually advertising for positions; LSU Press was just a cold call. i think i would really enjoy working at both places. i'm drawn to on-campus positions, both because the location is incredibly convenient and because working in an academic environment is vastly more appealing to me than working pretty much anywhere else. i've had a lifelong love affair with libraries, of course, though not so much with librarians. librarians did not seem to have a cool or interesting job. mostly they seemed to shelve books. i didn't understand the appeal until my senior year at lsmsa, when i did my civics research paper on censorship and learned about the ALA's manifesto-of-sorts advocating intellectual freedom. now librarians are pretty much my heroes. i don't think i would go to grad school for library science but libraries still make my heart swell a little bit. when i do grant prospecting for the BR city-parish, my favorite grants to send out are the library ones. of course, the EBRP library contact is the coolest of all the grant liaisons. she's the only one who ever writes back to let me know if they're following up and how their grant stuff is going.

anyway. and a job at LSU Press, though a long shot, would be awesome, since it would help me get a sense of how publishing works. i don't suppose i need to explain why learning about the publishing industry would appeal to an english major.

so. the google hit for my name reminded me of the whole employers-google-their-prospective-employees issue. at the moment, this blog is the first thing that comes up if you google me. this displeases me. it was not always the case, though. the main culprit is my facebook badge, which i removed this afternoon along with a mention of my full name in an october 2005 post.

here's the email i sent a few weeks ago to a facebook higher-up, regarding badges, upon receiving a dissatisfactory response on the same topic from a "customer service representative":

subject: because you seem like a smart guy and the responses i get from customer support often border on asinine

hi james,

forgive me for this random facebook message, but for the past few months, every time i shoot a question or suggestion to customer support, the responses i get totally miss the point.

here's my question, if you have time to answer it, or if you could direct me to someone who could give me a good response:

i like the fact that i can put my facebook badge on my blog. however, i also like my blog to be a little bit under the google radar. i noticed that i got a blog hit from someone googling my first and last name, and when i did a google search on myself i realized that it was picking up my name from the facebook badge.

so i took my name off the badge and figured that would keep google from finding me.

however, the badge image is entitled "ann g____'s facebook profile" - at least this is what pops up when you mouse over it. and that's what google is reading. now when you google my name, my blog is the first thing that pops up, with "ann g___'s facebook profile" (the badge image title) being the key words found in the search.

is there any way to get around this so that i can keep my badge on the blog without it making me so easy to find to google? it seems like the point of making your name a removable item on your facebook badge is so that you can modify the amount of personal information being posted in the badge. the fact that the badge title is automatically generated with your first and last name undermines this privacy setting.

here's what the customer support person said:

"Your name will only be picked up if you post your badge in a public place. If you do not want your name to come up in a google search, please resist from placing your badge in a
public site.  Your name will not be found on searches if you remain within facebook."

-- your name only comes up if you post your badge in a public place? well, isn't the badge meant to be posted in a public place? why give us the option of removing our name from the badge if it's going to be on there no matter what we do? is there any way facebook could change the way the badge titles are generated so they're not so explicit?

thanks,
ann