SpeakLo When You Speak Love

Gathering and Dispersing Energy

2009-05-09T17:51:00.022-05:00

Recently I've had the good fortune to work on a number of website projects for some of my favorite musicians and artists.

This has always been a significant focus of my work and pretty much my favorite thing to do. It also happens to be work that does not come along frequently or predictably enough, but perhaps that's in the nature of working as an artist with artists... there is always a bit of flux.

My favorite site of late is the one I recently completed for bassist and composer James Singleton at jamessingletonmusic.com.

I don't think that James actually knows it, but I've been a big fan of his for the better part of 30 years. It was somewhere in the late 70's (right about the time I first moved to the Bay Area from Arizona to study for my "first career" as something of a clergy person). Much of the force that drove me in my "second career" engineering, producing, and promoting musical projects (and the musical element of non-musical projects) was influenced by the kind of things I was hearing from this amazing collection of free-ranging musicians from New Orleans. At the time I was renewing the love of jazz with which I had inititally been infected by the crazy old trombone player (featured performer with Kay Kyser's band) who served as my high school band (and jazz band) teacher. Finding the music of Astral Project at this time served to return me to those musical roots I had drifted away from and prepared me for the wide ranging awakening to the various dynamic intricasies of modern jazz that I was pretty much completely ignorant of. At that point in time, all I knew was that this was something that grabbed me, took control of my awareness and let me go longing for more.

I pretty much feel the same way now.

When James called me during the period when we both were trying to find a way to survive in the semi-apocalyptic environment of post-Katrina New Orleans, I jumped at the chance to work on his website.

On the evening following the afternoon when we first met (in the tiny bar of Snug Harbor on Frenchmen Street) I shot video of a terrific small trio performance at d.b.a. (which I still have to relocate and edit... film at 11, as they say) and found myself emotionally bathing in the deep thumping bass lines juxtaposed to the pattering pound of James technique. James Singleton does not play the bass in a manner akin to that of anyone else I have ever seen or heard. James plays the whole instrument with his whole being. The result is a phenomenon that I have found it hard to explain until recently reading how James describes it himself as... "gathering and disbursing energy..."

There is really no better way to describe the experience (it would seem to be a shared experience between musicians and audience) than that phrase. Unfortunately, on this particular night at Snug, the energy being disbursed by James and the band was conflicting with the energy being disbursed by a couple of bully frat boys who had more interest in being loud mouthed assholes disbursing their own chaotic energy. When I was punched from behind by one of these cretins during a break in the set, I decided to call it a night and instead of spinning around and whacking the guy over the head with a pint glass, or stepping into the street and calling to the cop just down the sidewalk, I walked away, went home and wrote a poem about the experience. I can only attribute this atypical moment of sanity and creativity to the inspiration I received from that energy being gathered and disbursed so close to me in such a tiny space by James Singleton and friends.

Unfortunately, the inspiration of that evening didn't adequately break through to my consciousness in creating James' website. Rather quickly I discovered that I was completely without any kind of design ideas that I felt even came close to expressing what I felt needed to be expressed. What this led to was a complete creative stall and a long time in which James must have become convinced he was never going to see a website, at least not one created by me. The up side of this webber's block was that I spent large amounts of time listening to James' music over and over again, searching for a link into the material.

During all this time, James was ridiculously patient with me and when I finally got to working on the new designs he was helpful, attentive, understanding and gracious. In short, he was everything anyone ever wants in a client and more than one typically expects from a performer who one has followed from a distance over a long period of time.

For the time being, even though various circumstances prevent me from enjoying the humid night air of Frenchmen Street as the thumps, bumps, twitters and groans of James' music (and that of his various collaborators) wafts on the balmy breeze, I still have the opportunity to work on his site (this afternoon I just updated his schedule listings) and to drink in the music that I have come to know like a good friend.

I am grateful for the opportunity to explore it even a little bit. I also am grateful for James, his intelligence, his humor, his spirit, his music, and his friendship.

As Long As One and One is Two...

2009-04-06T13:04:00.020-05:00

Yesterday was the anniversary of Jen and Andy's wedding last April 5 and the day brought back a whole flood of memories from that day, that weekend.

Some of those memories are images that remain in my mind as if they just happened, others are more like snapshots that I flip through in my mental memory book. Others are full flush emotional memories that draw up a visceral response from deep inside my being. These memories bring with them laughter, or tears, or laughter AND tears and when they arise I am forced to stop and sit with them for a while, because otherwise I can't even get on with my day.

I am also a very aurally oriented person (hence my business, and this blog). There a very few experiences that I have had in my life that aren't, on some level, connected to a memory of sound, usually music, and the depth of meaning that rises out of the pool of feelings and ideas that music and sound create for me.

I think that one of the reasons for this is that sound and music provide for me (and I believe for most people) a way of accessing thoughts, feelings, and experiences at a more rudimentary level, at a somewhat sub-conscious (perhaps even pre-conscious) level. This experience also sets a hook (there's a reason they call the supercharged line in any pop song "the hook") that can drag you deeper than you might otherwise be willing to, at least consciously, go. It also provides a different kind of hook on which to hang an image, an emotion, and/or a memory.

I possess many of these types of hooks with regard to the event of the year last year. Because all of the music for the wedding was selected for and played on iPods, the choices that were made for the tunes were very personal and loaded with connection.

A line from Jennifer's pick for her song stated, "This is the first day of my life. I swear I was born right in the doorway." A line from Andy's pick declared "I will follow you into the dark." On this day when they faced each other across an unknown divide they spoke to each other first, through the words in their songs.

For me, the moment I was most looking forward to as the wedding approached was the "father daughter dance." The chance to, one last time, stand with my baby girl's feet on top of my feet and whirl her around to the music like we were the only ones there. It was a moment that was loaded with old memories and new hopes and dreams. It was a melancholy rememberance of the fact that my little girl was "all grown up" and that another man would be walking with her into the next part of her life. It was also loaded with all the hopes, and dreams, and fears I have about the future: her future, their future, my future, our future... ALL our futures.

My selection for the dance was a song by Paul Simon that I have held close to my heart ever since the first time I heard it. It is filled with the typically Simonesque imagery; slightly strange pictures that hold power not only for their poignancy but also for the fact that they are unique. My favorite one of these comes in the first verse when the father declares his dedication to his daughter by stating that he will "stand guard like a postcard of a golden retriever." It's a way of saying... I will ALWAYS watch out for you and I will never give up, but it makes the claim in a strange and approachable way.

That line is the perfect example of Paul Simon song writing at its best. The first time you hear it, it sets you back. "What the hell does that mean!?" I'll stand guard like a postcard? A postcard doesn't stand guard! But a golden retriever might. And what could be more steadfast than a PICTURE of a golden retriever? There's not even a blink there... no movement... no flinching, or drooling, or excited ball chasing. Just watching.It's a verbal image that drops deeper and deeper into odd and amusing memories and triggers the longer you spend time with it (and I've spent a lot of time with it).

That's why we listen to music. That's why we listen to (and tell) stories. That's where they get their power. Like a deep lake or a great ocean, the great songs, symphonies, stories, and dramas derive their immense power for holding us and changing us from what's below the surface. You have to stop and wait. You have to dive deeply into them and stay down there a while. You have to let them settle under your skin.

As Simon says in another part of the song, "trust your intuition... it's just like goin' fishin..."

That's what music is about.

"There could never be a father loved his daughter more than I love you."

We Always Need The Leaning...

2009-03-30T07:27:00.010-05:00

A little over a week ago, I received a re-release of the album Sunday Afternoon by Ken Medema.

Something like 25 years ago I had the chance to shoot the album cover photo and do the album graphic design for this album and it's always been one of my favorites. The album as a whole presents a collection of lovely variations on a theme, beginning with the title song, which sets the scene for a soft afternoon of settled listening and then segues to a collection of classic hymns and original tunes that feel like John Wesley meets Stephen Sondheim. There is both an old school Broadway show tune feel to the tune. Lead Kindly Light, for instance, feels like it belongs deep inside scene from A Little Night Music, perhaps just before... or after... Send In The Clowns.

You can pick up the album (a remastered edition taken directly from one of the original vinyl albums) at kenmedema.com.

Yesterday, while do a bit of much needed, highly overdue, spring cleaning, I had the chance to re-listen to this album from so long ago. It was a pleasantly peaceful experience, filled with softness, a bit of nostalgia, and the memory of lying on the living room floor, my head beneath the piano, as Ken originally played these tunes for restful times with family and friends.

Then came There's A Turning, a song that flat out stopped me in my sweeping tracks, picked me up and carried me to the computer to play and replay the tune as I listened to what it had to say and what it meant, all these many years later.

It, like most of the rest of the album, definitely possesses a mid-80s feel, with Roland-style electric piano, synthesized strings, and a trippy little vibrato effect, but the sound works its purpose in the almost magical telling of the real inside the magic (or is that the magic inside the real?).

This is a song that could not be more perfect for the present reality of worldwide meltdown. An appropriate lament, and acknowledgment, of the disaster we face after our collective blindfolded meander through the Land of George and our acceptance of the largesse (even by those who pretended not accept it) that we were able to glean from false prosperity and ignorant hope.

Castles in the sand, washed away by the rolling tide

Once upon a time we rode the waves
And now they're too rough to ride

Once our walking was swift and sure
But now the guideposts are gone

Roads are ending
No signs to read to tell us how to go on.

The album ends with a reprise of the title song combined with a lovely soft rendition of I Need Thee Every Hour. It folds itself back in like a flower closing at the dusk of a spring day with that same Sondheim-like lyricality that began the album. There is a definite sense that the what and who we need in every hour is something and someone more imminent than the distant savior of a time gone by.

The feelings will not last, 'cause Monday's comin soon.
How can I hold on... after Sunday's gone?

Help me to hold on... to Sunday Afternoon.

This is the gospel of Lent; our very specific Lent. The gospel of wilderness meander. The gospel of letting go.

We ALWAYS need the leaning... but in The Turning... We Need It More.

As they say...We're all in it together.

Brand New Blog

2007-06-13T13:37:00.000-05:00

So I've been doing this blog for one month short of two years (my log says that this entry makes 415 posts). Most of the folks reading it have been reading it for the whole time and while I'm not inclined to look a gift horse in the mouth (and it is really impossible for me to express how much I appreciate your interest) it does make me wonder about the state of some people's sanity.

Be that as it may, I've been having a hard time figuring out what to do with these blog entries since it so quickly morphed into a sort of journal of my travels (physical, spiritual, and emotional) post-Katrina. One of the reasons that the blog has moved to a less frequent trend of posting is that despite my work to write more and more I've had the desire to publish less and less... I've been stuck in some sort of imaginary self-imposed theme.

SO... this morning I came up with a solution... When in doubt... START OVER!

And that's what I've done. You'll find the newest posting at Quicksilver Amusements and that's where I intend to post most of my stuff from now on (at least for the time being).

I'll be keeping SpeakLo up and running, and the archive will remain here for anyone who would like to go back and read about some of my experiences and perspectives on the last two years of chaos that started when I posted my first comment on July 29, 2005.

Thanks for reading... please join me in the next gallery.

Ladies and Gentlemen... Elvis has left the building!

Hold On To Your Life

2007-06-11T10:10:00.000-05:00

I am not generally inclined to find worldly wisdom from Madonna, but this message from the synchronicity of iTunes was particularly interesting and helpful on this Monday morning as I begin my second week in California.

I am starting this week with my standard reaction to spending an evening watching the Tony awards. As usual, my experience of the program was a sort of call to action for my subconscious. I long for greater creativity, clarity and action. I long for a fuller experience of really being alive. I long for meaning and metaphor. I long for hope and the possibility of greatness… And I feel, not all the time but often, like time is running out.

Then the concluding note of my synchronistic hat-trick came when I started the browser on my computer and got this picture/story from Storypeople, and I take great comfort in the fact that I really do believe that there is indeed enough time for “the important things” in my life.

So… on this sunny Monday on the West Coast I sit down at this desk to recommit myself to those things that I care about. It's time to, once again... hold on to my life. How this plays out with the other half of that coin - the perspective of Jesus that if you lose your life you will find it - is something that I am wrestling with at the moment. My hunch is that it has something to do with the kind of of yin-yang balance that seems to be the key to almost everything.

Perhaps it isn't possible to actually hold on to your life unless you hold it lightly.

Welcome to Hurricane Season

2007-06-01T07:25:00.000-05:00

Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem... and in this case the safety of New Orleans. It's that time of year again. Last year we were extremely fortunate and although the National Hurricane Center had predicted (as they have this year) an exceptionally active year of storms, there were actually very few and none came barreling toward the Gulf Coast to attack The Crescent City levee system which is still operating on one leg and teetering like a drunk on Bourbon Street.

Here we are again almost to the turning point of the year, heading into six months of hot sun and hurricanes, and as my storypeople graphic above relates, the tree must come down now... it's time to get to work. Last Sunday the christian church celebrated Pentecost, that moment when the mantel of power and the obligation of service was transferred from the heavens and landed upon the earth. The day when the responsibility for doing something in the world was laid squarely at the feet of us human beings. But the responsibility was accompanied by power.. audible, visible, existential power. WE... ordinary folks... could do the work of God.

Well... there's still some pretty big work out there to be done. I guess we all better get to it.

Leaving The Land of Maybe...

2007-05-31T08:15:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow I leave again for California.

I've been five weeks in The Sliver By The River trying to figure out if there's a There here and, more specifically, if I can really live here again; live here like a resident, not a visitor and a tourist. Unfortunately, these last several weeks have not really answered the question with the resounding yes that I had hoped to find, but to my joy the answer is also not no.

In New Orleans right now the answer to just about every question pertaining to quality of life, effectiveness, purpose, and future is a resounding maybe accompanied by a perpetual eventually, an ever present hopefully. There is an extremely frustrating tentativeness to everything and everyone. Even the true die hards say they're sticking it out come hell and high water while they look over their shoulder, check the weather channel and ponder their escape plans. My favorite columnist anywhere, Chris Rose, recently returned from a brief mental health vacation away and offered his version of what I call a Declaration of Faithfulness to New Orleans. My friend Mary told me that she was very glad to see him back because "... if he goes, I'm right behind him."

It seems to me though that there is an existential realism in this characteristic. As I learned as a kid (and as it was reiterated to me in seminary) nobody knows the time they are alloted on the planet, the things they will be able to accomplish, or the places they will eventually go. We like to pretend that we have everything under control and most of us live our lives creating little systems for reinforcing our personal sense of security and permanence. The problem is that it's all a lie. Nothing is solid... NOTHING. All things are tenuous and very little is known. In New Orleans people know that better than most and I think it stands us in good stead.

So... this time tomorrow (the first day of hurricane season coincidentally) I'll be packing up some of my stuff and heading for the plane, but I'll be doing it with a light heart because the one thing I was able to figure out about New Orleans (and me) on this trip is that I can't help it, it doesn't matter, I am permanently HOME in New Orleans. I now have a place in which to live here again and this time I won't stay away so long. I'll be back... probably soon... maybe... hopefully...

There Is No Fear In Love

2007-05-30T02:36:00.000-05:00

On Meeting the Less Evolved on an Otherwise Lovely Evening...

I have been in war zones, crime zones, terror zones and hurricanes.

I have been fired at by contras in Nicaragua and stood on the border of Honduras unarmed and, mostly, unafraid.

I have hung from rock ledges and muddy crags by nothing more than my fingernails.

I have faced mile 25 with blood slurping in my shoe.

I have sat down in the middle of the road while people threatened to run over me and policemen tried to make me uncomfortable.

I have awakened to paramedics on the highway after doing unconscious acrobatics in my car.

I have faced down criminals in the ghettos of Sao Paulo, the back alleys of Calcutta, the teeming markets of Peru, and the busy streets of London.

I have walked the heart of Upper Manhattan at two in the morning, and faced down three women who thought, at some point or another, that I was the devil incarnate.

I have raised a little girl into a wondrous woman.

I have walked through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, alone and with my friends.

I am facing the fact that I will not live forever and I am doing it with unanticipated panache.

I have been in jail, in court, in church, and in love… and

I am NOT afraid of you.

I'm Walkin' Here...

2007-05-24T22:16:00.000-05:00

One of the things that I love about cities, perhaps the thing I love MOST about cities (most cities at least) is the way that it is not only possible, but desirable to walk through them. This attitude helps me a lot, since I have epilepsy and from time to time I am reduced to walking and/or public transportation, and don't even get me started on the abysmal state of public transportation in this country. Suffice to say... "I'm walkin' here! I'm walkin' here!" Right now it is also the perfect time for this activity in New Orleans for, as strange as it may seem, it is actually possible for it to be pretty chilly in NOLA in the winter, and in the dog days of summer, well... 85 degrees at 6:30 am does not exactly tempt one to strolling.

But in the springtime... it's sublime. During the height of the afternoon it can still get pretty warm, and this afternoon I was walking from one side of town to the other as I sought out several people for work meetings (the first meetings in my montth long visitation... but that's another blog). In the morning I walk for fifteen minutes to half an hour to get to my coffee spot (depending on whether I go to the French Bakery or the place with coffee and chicory) and it's not only a great little bit of exercise (with a similar return trip as well) but it's the perfect precursor to my morning writing ritual. It also leads me, from time to time, to observe, and reflect upon, the state of the city.

Tonight, after my meetings, the lovely, balmy night air led me through the Quarter to catch part of this years' New Orleans Wine and Food Expo in search of a friend from California's Chateau Felice winery and then on to the Ogden museum for the first time since I got back, to hear John "Papa" Gros wail away on the piano, playing some of my all time favorite tunes, while I wandered around the museum and looked at the new exhibitions. He sang a song (sung by Colin James in this version) that I had never heard before, but which describes exactly how I'm feeling tonight. "I live the life I love and love the life I live."

The evening was capped with the delightful serendipity of a kiss offered by a very lovely young lady I had never met before who simply stopped outside the museum and said "I have to give this gentleman a kiss" before planting one on me and then telling me how much she enjoyed watching me enjoy the music. Over a year ago I wrote about my hero Uncle Lionel, from the Treme Brass Band, who is always the life of the party and receives the attention of all the lovely young women. In that post I made the comment that I want to be Uncle Lionel when I grow up. Uncle Lionel and I also share the affection for, and habit of, walking everywhere. I feel like tonight was my initiation into Uncle Lionelism, and I gotta say that I like the kissing better than the walking.

Hopefully this trend will continue, because...

I love the life I live!

A Tale of One City

2007-05-21T15:19:00.001-05:00

It is the best of times, it is the worst of times. There is a great divide in The Big Easy; one town with two (at least two) realities. In the French Quarter and along the strip that runs from The Quarter uptown to Riverbend it’s a reality that is more or less normal. Not that normal is in any way what it used to be. There are indeed shops closed and closing every day. Going out of business sales in the heart of the tourist district, boarded up apartments and storefronts along Magazine. But in post-Katrina reality this is the upside and if you’ve never been here, or if you’ve been here only a little, or if you were just too drunk to pay attention when you were here before you really wouldn’t notice much difference, and things would seem like they’re getting back to some cool, perhaps even amazing (depending on your personal experience and expectation), process of rebuilding. There’s even a real upside in some areas. The ever-present putrescence of Bourbon Street (“I love the smell of vomit in the morning! Smells like… commerce!”) has been washed away in one bold move by the creation of a new citrus based cleaner that makes The Quarter smell “april fresh” even in May (whether it can pull off the same trick during the dog days of summer remains to be seen). There are sparkling new clubs and restaurants from Canal to Frenchman’s Street, growing up like new saplings amid the rotting detritus of a clear cut forest.

The tourist areas of New Orleans don’t look like they used to, but you would be hard pressed to explain precisely what is different. If you’re expecting a devastated urban landscape, you’ll be pleasantly surprised and if you can keep yourself oriented to these areas you might even go home feeling like “things look pretty good down there.” I find myself looking at these areas like I used to look at my neighborhood in San Francisco’s Western Addition 30 years ago. Things could certainly be better, but the broken down doorframes and sagging windows add an engaging character to the place; they serve as architectural reflections of the unique bohemian human spirits that populate this landscape. If these places looked better than they do (and they will some day) the strange and glorious human spirits that they mirror would be absent as well. They too will be gone some day, but for now they remain.

Move beyond the few blocks that make up the tourist heart of New Orleans and, like stepping past the “beauty spots” in modern National Forest Service land management, you enter a whole different reality. The outlying areas of New Orleans (and even those areas at the geographic center of the city) remain nearly as bereft of life as they did 21 months ago. In the areas hardest hit by the floods, houses remain broken and askew. Many neighborhoods don’t contain a single recognizable building. Most neighborhoods, on the other hand, host identifiable, but uninhabited and uninhabitable, structures. Follow the main drag of Canal Street up toward Lake Pontchartrain (something you can now do on the newly functioning streetcars) and within three blocks of Bourbon Street you begin to see shuttered buildings and broken down homes; by the time you reach mid-city it begins to take on the eery look of a post-modern, post-apocalyptic landscape.

This is the other New Orleans. This is MOST of New Orleans. It’s an empty land of memories, hopes and desires with no place for people to live and grow and little evidence of change or improvement. And this is the New Orleans that matters most. Without Mid-City, without Gentilly, without Lakeview, Central City and the infamous Lower Ninth, this isn’t really a city at all. New Orleans without the people already exists. In fact it exists in two places, one in Florida and one in California. New Orleans, as many people seem to think it should be, resides in the every day experiences and night time imaginations of thousands of visitors to Walt Disney’s “New Orleans Square.” Without the homes, the churches, the businesses, the people… New Orleans is the same as those places on the opposite coasts (only with more crime). To be a city, to be a place that matters in the hearts, minds and zeitgeist of now and future culture, The Big Easy still needs some Big Big Help.

PLAN B

2007-05-15T23:07:00.000-05:00

Of course, we could always ride to safety on the backs of "Palmetto Bugs!"

Swamp Land for Sale or Trade!

2007-05-15T22:19:00.000-05:00

So... there's a story in the Times-Picayune online tonight (I expect that it will be in the actual paper tomorrow morning) that discusses the fact that the state and city have still not contracted for the buses they will need to evacuate people should there be a hurricane bearing down on New Orleans sometime in the coming 6 month hurricane season (which officially starts in just over two weeks). The predictions for how much this will cost run about $3,000 per bus and they expect they will need at least 750 buses (though most peopleseem to think they will need mroe than that). That's $3,000,000 just to get people out of the way, and it of course begs the question, how will they then get back? After Katrina, people were basically given one way tickets out to the hinterlands with no real sense of how they would return (which is a big reason why many indeed have not).

As someone who, for medical reasons, doesn't drive at present, this whole plan is something that I am rather significantly concerned about. The article includes discussion of commandeering school buses should the supply of fancy air-conditioned $3,000 rigs (which have yet to be contracted for, remember) prove insufficient. Well... if ya believe that one... I've got an abundance of land (most of it just down the block) I can sell ya for cheap.

You see... I remember leaving just before the last one. I remember Nagin standing up in the press conference and talking about the buses they were sending out for people and I remember seeing the people standing down on Claiborne and I remember seeing ONE... that's right...ONE... lonely school bus pulling down off the interstate as I was heading the hell outta Dodge (just me and the wonderful Roxanne).

As I have been back in town over the last three weeks, I have seen a lot of encouraging signs of recovery. Not enough mind you, but some good signs. I have also seen people who are clearly determined to do THEIR part in bringing the city back and rebuilding a life in this amazing place. What seems to be missing, over and over and over, is the same thing that was missing two years ago. The government, from the Feds through the State and down to the Mayor, has consistently dropped the ball, and is obviously continuing to do so.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't expect the government to take care of everything, and frankly it is not my experience that there is anyone (at least not anyone I know) who really feels that way. I do, however, expect the government to take care of what the government - ANY GOVERNMENT - is supposed to take care of... it's the REASON we have governments! What individuals cannot do for themselves we band together and empower (and pay) the government to take care of. Well, as far as I can see from beginning to end (and going on 21 months now), most of the PEOPLE are doing their share... and the GOVERNMENT has abdicated its responsibility.

At times like this... I am tempted to suggest that the world doesn't make sense... but then (like the cartoon above) I am reminded that the world isn't necessarily SUPPOSED to make sense.

Anybody got a hot air balloon they wanna sell me real cheap?

I've even got some LAND I'll trade for it!

Beginnings... Endings... and Beginnings Again

2007-05-07T12:37:00.000-05:00

On the first weekend, JazzFest began with a "Jazz Funeral" celebration of the life of Ed Bradley, yesterday it closed with an all day celebration of one of the true greats of New Orleans and New Orleans jazz, Alvin Batiste. In the picture here (from the Times--Picayune) Stephanie Jordan, Batiste's niece, honors him in song as he looks down over the Jazz Tent from his picture high above. All day long, from the first set with trumpeter Maurice Brown, to the closing notes of a giant brass band second line, the Jazz Tent streamed forth love and admiration for the man who was committed to his art, to his city, and to carrying the traditions forward.

At one point in the afternoon, Branford Marsalis and Harry Connick Jr.- both true sons of the city - joined Bob French and his band, along with some of Batiste's students from NOCCA, to offer up their own joyous celebration of this man's life well lived.

This is the essence of The Crescent City, a way of looking at life, and death, in the overall reality of ongoing existence. The energy and the connection in these acts reflects the dynamic life force that is struggling up from out of the mud of Katrina to bring this place back to new hope, new creation, and new life. This year's jazzfest was a microcosm of, and a symbol for, that reality.

The last week and a half have been good to and for me. Things are not back to normal, and what "the new normal" will be remains to be seen. But for the first time since Katrina, I feel a genuine sense of hope that the city is returning to life.

In the great tradition of the jazz funeral... the music leads the way.

The Wonder of Life in The Tropics

2007-05-06T00:03:00.000-05:00

God I hate these things!

I did an audio blog about "Palmetto Bugs," the name people in New Orleans, and in Florida, give to these giant frigging mutant ROACHES that are absolutely everywhere, back when I first moved here in 2005 and here they are again... two years later.

But it's one thing to find them strolling along the street and following you home as they did back then (I'm serious... these guys do not run away like normal roaches) and quite another thing to find one the size of your aunt sitting in your sink and drinking martinis when you go to brush your teeth.

There's a lot of conversation and advice about these things online, but the ultimate gist of the whole pointless conversation tends to be... well, there ain't much you can do about them.

My friend John Fohl, who plays guitar for Dr. John, referred to them as pets while we were chatting over drinks back before Katrina... and for a long time after The Thing they were nowhere to be found. Well they are here now... Half of the PEOPLE who are residents of New Orleans aren't here, but the frigging ROACHES are... believe me!

Ultimately, I desire to care for "all sentient beings" like the Boddhisatva I wish to become, but right now, as I am preparing for bed with visions of giant mutant insects crawling across my face in the night, all I really want to do is nuke every last one of them (and especially the one in my sink who escaped the wrath of my flip flop) into ex-existence. Of course, there is some evidence that suggests they might survive that too.

These things really are the Kings of the Earth and I am ready for some serious regicide.

Rain Rain Go Away...

2007-05-05T08:40:00.000-05:00

So far... the highlight of the second weekend of JazzFest was the rain. It flat freaking POURED for several hours yesterday (and the night before) complete with the thunder and lightning that you rarely see and hear in California but which does my little tropical heart good.

The primary downside of all that rain is that it once again shows the weaknesses in the pumping system that is one part of the flood protection this city so desperately needs. According to an article in the Times-Picayune this morning, the storms knocked out power to some of the pumping stations and there was some significant flooding in parts of the city. There was even flooding at JazzFest as water began to rise in the Jazz Tent, where I took refuge, but it receded eventually and it's hard to complain about the weather when its primary result is to put you inside to hear Sharon Martin, Ellis Marsalis, and John Boute for going on three hours. In addition, once the rain cleared away I got to hear a smokin' set by Judith Owen the glorious pianist/chanteuse who is married to Harry Shearer and brought him along for bass and moral support. She was also joined by New Orleans' Roland Guerin (also on bass) and Philip Manuel on additional vocals. There was a promised appearance by the fabulous David Torkanowski, but time ran short and he begged off in favor of a tribute to New Orleans written by Owen.

A few oysters, a cup of beer, Judith Owen... ahhhhhh... what's a little rain?

Too Much Love... Too Much Fun

2007-05-02T12:24:00.000-05:00

This is a picture taken of Ivan Neville from the back of the Gentilly Stage at JazzFest this Sunday while a new bunch of old New Orleans musicians played together as the New Orleans Social Club. The little yellow arrow is pointing at me (or at least a reasonably good guess at me) in the crowd. These guys (a loosely bound together group featuring, Ivan, Henry Butler, and Leo Necontelli, and including Irma Thomas and John Boute, and really just about anyone they can gather together to play together at any given time) have been a traveling band of rockin' NOLA reminders as they have worked their way across the country over the last year and a half. But on Sunday they simply tore up the stage and proved, again, one of the reasons New Orleans matters. It was a great show, and for me the highlight of the first weekend (though Sonny Landreth's smokin' version of Congo Square to close out his set in the Blues Tent on Saturday would have to be a close second).

There was also a makeshift jazz funeral/second line at the heart of the fairgrounds for a great friend of New Orleans and an exemplary party person in his own right, Ed Bradley (Times-Picayune coloumnist Dave Walker has a great piece on Ed and what he means to New Orleans that's definitely worth a read). There was a jazz mass for Ed at St. Augustine's Church on Sunday morning where Dr. John, Irma Thomas, and the Treme Brass Band played him home. I missed that one unfortunately, but that's the nature of Jazz Fest.... just too many opportunities.

And that's the difficuulty that I face in attempting to communicate what's been going on over the last week since I got on a plane in San Jose and landed in The Crescent City. I have begun about a dozen different pieces of writing and reflection, some of them entertainment based, others featuring food and drink, and of course a certain level of the on-going personal and political reality that settles on everything like the humid air.

But frankly... all of that is going to have to wait until I have some more time... this afternoon I've got a Marcia Ball concert to get to and two parties to catch!

Back to The Land Of Dreams

2007-04-25T04:26:00.000-05:00

This appeared on my computer this morning as my opening page. Another in a long series of synchronistic love notes from storypeople.

In eight hours I will be flying off into the wild blue yonder once again, Goin' Back to New Orleans. I'm leaving pieces of my heart and life in California and returning after eleven long months to pieces that I've left in The Crescent City... I'll be looking for the sunlight and listening for the hope.

It should be an interesting month.

rewind... Reset... RETURN!

2007-04-22T12:11:00.000-05:00

I AM GOIN' HOME!

I have booked my flight, and as of this morning I have a place to live; I am moving back into the apartment that I slept in only once... the night before I fled from Katrina.

After eleven months away... I am finally returning to The Crescent City.

I will only be there for the month of May before needing to return to California for work here, but I plan on going back in July and then again in August, making this some sort of permanent (whatever that means in my life and this context) residence back in the city of my heart. I've struggled with this a lot. In the ensuing months since I returned to California last June, with the plan of being here for less than a month, I have been riding a roller coaster of confusion and indecision (those who know me well know that this is not a particularly unique situation for me, but something that was instilled in me at an early age) about what to do. I'm not feeling that any more.

On Thursday evening when I finalized my one way flight to New Orleans (much like the one I took almost two years ago, and flying uncharacteristically out of San Jose, the airport to which I last returned), I clicked the button to conclude the transaction and immediately started to cry. I dashed off emails to several friends in The Crescent City and then I put on Cowboy Mouth and danced around the room... and I mean that I DANCED AROUND THE ROOM!

It's all so very trendy these days (at least in California) to ask people the ever present and often annoying question, "What's your passion?" I regularly have a hard time figuring out an answer to that (though I am having less difficulty than I used to) and regularly I grapple with trying to figure out a true and honest answer (which frankly I think is the appropriate response...but that's for another blog). Well, Thursday night... and right now... I don't have that problem.

My PASSION is New Orleans!

I want to live there, work there, play there, party there, and even grow old there. Admittedly, I have other places I love as well... San Francisco will never be far from my heart (especially as long as my DDD is there), Ireland (and probably Dublin) is a place where I plan to make a home for at least part of my life, and New York, where I actually have a job interview on Tuesday (we'll see what kind of a monkey wrench THAT throws into the mix), holds its inevitable sway... But New Orleans, and everything about her... the cultural gumbo, the musical jambalaya, the slow and often maddening pace, the racial and cultural mix, my dear friends, the heat... and even the humidity, is the place that calls me home. Even with the painful chaos of the city post-Katrina, these things have written their name upon my heart.

I PLAN ON GROWING OLD ON THE AVENUE!

A Toast to Love and Longevity

2007-04-17T20:13:00.000-05:00

My friends Elizabeth and John celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary on Sunday and I had hoped to make it to their party down in LA (that's Los Angeles by the way... the OTHER LA) but circumstances once again intervened and instead I had to celebrate with them from a distance.

J & E had sent out invitations to their party and had requested that if those invited couldn't be present in person that they would at least toast them with RED (Ruby being the proper element for the 40th anniversary). Well, I pulled out my red Keith Haring superhuman shirt, because these two friends are indeed super human in my experience, mind and heart. I went to the store and picked up a few Red Rocket Ales to toast with and poured them into a red glass for good measure. I thought about putting on my red shoes as well, but by that point I was beginning to feel a little OCD coming on so I let my feet slide. After I gave them a call to wish them well, and I gave them my absentee toast, I put on this song and danced around the living room (even without my red shoes) to celebrate their sharing so much for so long, as well as to celebrate the fact that they have shared themselves (and their family) with me for 25 of those years. My far too infrequent interactions with John and Elizabeth are some of the great highlights of my life and they are two of my favorite people on the planet. It was a great delight to participate with them in celebrating their life together, even if I had to do it from a distance.

John and Elizabeth... here's to another 40 years (let's just keep it going) of more love and happiness for you and those with whom you share your lives.

You make my life lovely.

Slainte'

Running to Stand Fast

2007-04-13T14:22:00.000-05:00

I got bad news when I woke up this morning. My application for the Dipsea Race was rejected because they had already given out all of their places before I had even mailed mine and I didn't have much luck at the lottery, but then that's not really ever been a strong suit of mine; I'm not much good at fishing either, except for this one time when I was a kid at a Catholic school carnival with my next door neighbors, the Gross's (yes, that was indeed their very unfortunate name). I went fishing in one of those gold fish booths where they hook some sort of prize on your line and I won a big ol' Pineapple Upside Down Cake (the first one I had ever seen let alone tasted) and proudly took it home to be devoured by the family. To this day Pineapple Upside Down Cake is one of my favorites and I'm sure it has to be because of that fishing booth. Now that I think of it, that entire experience might explain a lot of my concept of God, my devotion to religion for the 45 years since, and probably even my love for New Orleans, undeniably the most Catholic city in the United States, but I suppose that's really material for another blog (probably relegated to Butting Heads)... In any case, I woke up this morning to discover that I had not gotten into this year's Dipsea and I AM BUMMED.

All that said, one particularly positive thought did cross my mind and that is that I've been steadily reevaluating the wisdom of my Big Sur Marathon plan over the last couple of weeks with the thought of moving my marathon goal to the San Francisco Marathon at the end of July. This would have the advantage of both giving me time to train more effectively AND to raise more money (being that most of you people have not really been holding up your end of this blogging bargain). It would also allow me to go to the first weekend of Jazz Fest which has been grinding on me a lot. The one downside of the San Francisco Marathon has been that, being on the other side of the rather precarious Dipsea, I might have sprained my ankle or broken my leg prior to having the chance to run. So I decided to take my rejection in stride (this was aided by my daughter's suggestion that she might actually run Dipsea WITH me next year) and consider it a confirmation of my new marathon plan.

SO... here's the new plan.

Instead of running (really mostly walking) The Big Sur Marathon on April 29, I will be RUNNING the San Francisco Marathon on July 29. This holds an extra little perk in that August represents the 30th anniversary of when I moved to San Franicsco in order to attend seminary. In addition the race is three days away from the second anniversary of my move to New Orleans, and my subsequent exile back to California.

To really make this inspirational (for me if not for you) I am launching two very audacious goals. One is to run this marathon in under 4 hours which will be a significant record for me (and about two hours faster than I was imagining I could run Big Sur). The other is that I am upping my fundraising goal. I plan on raising... drum roll please... $26,200 ($1000/mile) for New Orleans charities when I run this race.

I'll be letting you know more about that here, and I will be putting up an informational website on the fund raising shortly, but if you'd like to get on the mailing list for info and updates, please drop me a note at thom@speaklo.com.

More Fun Than An Easter Egg Hunt

2007-04-10T10:29:00.000-05:00

There's a reason that "city people" live in cities. This past Easter Sunday was one of those kind of days for me. Getting a chance to catch the 7th Annual Bring Your Own Big Wheel on Lombard Street was definitely a highlight of the day. This is the kind of event that reminds me why I chose to live in San Francisco in the first place, and why despite the fact that I presently reside 45 miles to the north in Petaluma, I am always trying to get back there. It also tells me precisely why the other city that I call home, New Orleans, is so close to my heart. BYOBW is the kind of event that would take place in New Orleans if New Orleans only had hills.

The day began with a bus ride into the city to meet up with my daughter for the really big show at Grace Cathedral, a grand and glorious celebration that Jen and I have been going to together since she was in high school. When the bishop walks up to the big steps of the Cathedral and pounds on the door with his staff and they open those doors for the entourage to enter the cathedral and proclaim "Christ is Risen!" I feel like I am transported back through the centuries, joining in with the millions of believers throughout history who have pinned their lives to the tail of the stupid little donkey riding into Jerusalem on the Sunday before. To stand there with orchestra, organ and choir ringing loudly and to be there with my daughter... it is one of the highlights of my life... every single year.

After church Jen and I went our separate ways and I headed down to North Beach for Banja Calda and a glass of Chianti at The Stinking Rose. After lunch I stopped for a beer at my favorite table upstairs overlooking Columbus in Vesuvios, where I like to commune with the spirits of writers, poets, and artists from San Francisco days gone by.

After that it was back up to the cathedral for the 3:00 pm Jazz Mass, the rare opportunity to hear great jazz played in the incredible acoustic cave that is Grace. This year the performers came from the SF Jazz High School All Stars, a group of remarkable players with a true jazz sensibility. They were a great great delight, and the perfect prelude to the final event of the day, BYOBW on Lombard.

You can catch more of the Sunday Shenanigans here. If you have the time to watch, this 8:27 video is almost as good as being there. After I piled through the crowd to watch the three races, I climbed Lombard back up (and then down) to Fillmore where I caught the bus out of the city and home to Petaluma. The only grim part of the day occurred while I was making my way up the hill; a young man, looking remarkably like Lenny Kravitz (and wearing a killer pair of red and black bug eye sunglasses) stepped to the side to let the old guy pass. "Excuse me sir..." he said politely, then eyeing my suit, he smiled and said, "It looks like this is your neighborhood." I laughed and shook my head. "I wish," I said. As he passed on down into the crowd and I moved up and on, I thought to myself... yeah yeah you wait until next year buddy! This old guy's gonna grab a Big Wheel of his own, and he's gonna SMOKE YA BUTT!

Why Do You Seek The Living Among the Dead?

2007-04-08T06:27:00.000-05:00

Normally, most mornings I try very hard to be alive before I turn cyber. That can be hard to do since my computer sits right next to my bed. On Sundays I also try very hard to take a "digital sabbath" and stay away from the computer altogether.

But this morning my brain was cracking alive and jumping like popcorn and I got up early to think through the ideas skipping around in my head and I happened to pause at the computer, where I found this daily story from the story people. I had to get on and post it. What better story than this for Easter?

It seems to me that this is exactly the experience that most people have of God; it is often the experience that I have of God. Wouldn't it be nice if we could just pin that amazing formless energy down to something specific? Wouldn't it be great if we could harness it for ourselves: for our own agendas, our own prejudices, our petty arguments and horrific wars?

Yeah... it would be great! And it would be dead.

Instead God comes to us on a crisp spring morning and says... "Hey... how about we change it up?"

That's the message of Easter to me. Jesus refuses to simply lie down and be predictable... and dead.

As far as I can tell, he expects the same thing of all of us; he expects the same thing of me.

Happy Easter!

Outlaws of God

2007-03-30T13:53:00.000-05:00

These days a title like that is likely to have me answering the door to a group of nerdy little men in bad suits, brown shoes and shiny gold badges... That is, assuming that they bother to knock at all. That doesn't really bother me too much; it wouldn't be the first time.

The chosen title comes from a short bit in the little book of meditations that I've been reading almost daily for the past year. The particular selection was something that I recognized as very familiar when I read it this morning, and then when I noticed its source, I realized that I had been reading it every few months for the better part of the last 30 years. It's originally from my favorite Merton book, "Raids on the Unspeakable."

"Every plant that stands in the light of the sun is a saint and an outlaw. Every tree that brings forth blossoms without the command of man is powerful in the sight of God. Every star that man has not counted is a world of sanity and perfection. Every blade of grass is an angel singing in a shower of glory."

I can't think of a better hymn to the glories of this gorgeous spring day and the radical absurdity of finding joy in the sunlight glinting off the long green stalks of grass (which I should have cut weeks ago), the tiny buds just now popping out on the dead branches of the tree outside my window, or the twitter of birds on the fence next door. Even my cat, Milo (she's not really my cat per se, but she has adopted me), is finding peace in the sunlight next to my zafu.

In my little pocket book of meditations the quote is included in a section on "A Theology of Love." It begins with Merton reflecting on the reality of a "different kind of justice" and "another kind of mercy." A whole new way of looking at things, removed from the rigidity of our limited perception of good, and evil, and justice, and time.

Gandhi is said to have declared that one must "become the change you want to see in the world," and I have been struggling with the sense of that, the real down on the ground earthiness of it, for the last ten months specifically, and most of my life in general. Right here in front of my computer, right now on this fresh spring day, I catch a glimpse of it in the outlaws who surround me; the saints who choose to grant me the gift of today.

Life Is Good...

2007-03-28T23:39:00.000-05:00

I woke up this morning to this story on my browser from the storypeople people, whom I have been fond of for 15 years at least.

This, however, was the first time that one of their pieces was as pointed and poignant to my own life (there have been many others... but this one took the cake).

Now... it's the other end of the day and I just got in bed, like I have done so many nights over the last many weeks, and I GIGGLED... AND I SMILED... and I thanked The God/Goddess/Universe for the beauty, joy and peace that I have been given recently.

And then... I just had to get out of bed and write this... pray it...
Into The Mystery... to all of you.

What a great day!

What a good life.

Peace.

Slainte'

Kicking at the Darkness in the Grand Lake

2007-03-27T10:27:00.000-05:00

Last night I sat down and watched CSPAN (something that I'm actually doing more and more of these days as I listen to the battles mount in Washington over this illegal, immoral, evil and stupid war). CSPAN was covering the rally that took place at Oakland's Grand Lake Theater this past Saturday. I've written about it on Washington's Cousin, so check it out there.

It was an event that I wish I had actually made it to rather than watching it on TV several days later, but the fact that it happened at all, and the fact that something (ANYTHING) is being said and done to put a stop to the juggernaut of lying and murder is a good thing.

This past summer at the Baptist Peace Fellowship Camp in Atlanta I had the priviledge of being present when Barbara Lee was given an award for her courageous and solitary stand against the war... This event just makes me glad to know that there really ARE people of integrity and hope in the World and that they have the courage and fortitude to stand up and say STOP.

Running On Not Quite Empty...

2007-03-26T21:21:00.000-05:00

I got a lot of encouragement this week. I received several contributions for New Orleans charities (I also DIDN'T get donations for New Orleans charities from some people I thought would jump on it, but that's another story)and I received several emails of encouragement to keep up the run.

Yesterday, I went to church at Grace Cathedral in The City and experienced an incredibly synchronistic service. To me that's not all that strange... One of the interesting things about attending a church with a liturgical tradition (unlike the Baptist church I was raised and trained in) is that the prescribed seasonal readings open up the opportunity for a breakout of subconscious connection that doesn't happen when everything is intentionally planned.

It was sort of a Lenten Epiphany... so to speak.

Following the service and a drive through San Francisco, carried along in a basket of spiritual energy, I drove back to Petaluma and ran my 13.1 mile half-marathon training run.

It was slow... but it was great!

I'm ready to go and I am determined to pursue not only the run, but the goal of raising money for the city that America has already forgotten.

I keep hearing all kinds of soft feelings and deep hearted concerns for the poor city, eighteen months after the storm... but frankly... I want to see people DO something. New Orleans NEEDS your help.

http://www.mercurypublicmedia.org/BSIM/

STELLA!!!!!!!

2007-03-23T13:22:00.000-05:00

I just found out, to my great frustration and regret, that next week marks one of my favorite New Orleans events, The Tennessee Williams Festival. Last year I attended several panels and even got to compete in the Stella Shout Off where I received a rousing ovation, but no prize. I've been practicing throughout the year, and considering last year was my first spontaneous shot at the shout, I'm sure that, with a bit of a costume change and some serious direction, I could have TAKEN it this year... I'm sure of it.

Oh well... Next year in Jerusalem.

Running to Stand Still...

2007-03-20T09:51:00.000-05:00

This is a picture that I took of myself while in the process of running my first marathon in 1996. The Big Sur International Marathon from the center of Big Sur north 26.2 miles to Carmel Valley. It was an amazing experience and a killer run. The clearest image I remember (besides the whales off the coast) was the guy who was leaning up against a small wooden fence on the side of the road at about mile 22. He had his shoe off and was gingerly nursing his foot. As I moved slowly by (the blood from a broken blister squish squish squishing in my right shoe) I thought to myself, if I do that, I'll never finish the race.

So I kept moving and with a patient combination of walking and running (running very slowly) I made it to the end.

I ran that race that year as a celebration of the fact that Marsha had beaten cancer and that she, and our family, had made it through the 9 months of chemicals and surgery and suffering that represented the battle. As I climbed the long hill up from Bixby Bridge to Hurricane Point, I cried as I pushed myself with the memory of how Marsha had pushed herself over and over, every day, through the cancer and back to health. I ran with a mantra in my head... "If Marsha could do that, I can do this." It got me through.

Six years later, in 2002, I returned to Big Sur, with Marsha along for the ride, to run the race again. This time we stayed together at Deetjens Big Sur Inn where I had stayed by myself before, and Marsha drove the car up past the runners to meet me at the finish. It was a bit easier that year, and I ran it a bit faster. It was still tough. It was still fun.

This year, as part of my newly discovered determination to get things back on track and to move forward from this stalled position that I have been in since Katrina, I have decided to go back to the Big Sur Marathon, and Hurricane Point, and do it again.

I am really not in any kind of shape to run this race. I am probably in the worst shape I have been in since I started running over ten years ago, and my training got severely curtailed when I got the flu at the end of January and it stuck around for a month.

However... this past Sunday, after a particularly abysmal run, I came up with a plan. I am running this race for New Orleans in much the same way that I ran my first race for Marsha. The reason that I am telling you all this is because I have decided to use the race as a fundraiser for some of the causes in The Crescent City that really matter to me.

I've set up a website to explain this in more detail and to give you an opportunity to contribute. Please go there and join me. Everyone who contributes will get reports from me on how things went and how much we raised and ALL OF THE MONEY WILL GO TO CHARITIES IN NEW ORLEANS. I'm trying to figure out some additional way to say thank you, but I haven't come up with it yet... But I'll keep you posted.

Please join me! Please give!

The Whole of the Moon

2007-03-17T14:05:00.000-05:00

The morning in Northern California, where it's been incessantly bright and sunny over the last week, broke Irish grey and foggy just like it should be on St. Patrick's Day (at least that's how I expreience it in my imagination) but has since opened back up to the bright and shiney almost spring day that it is. The grass in my backyard is brilliant green (and way too long, but that's another story) and I am feeling elated.

My friend E sent me the card above and in the spirit of the day I am sending it out to you. I've spent the morning working on some new projects and compiling a 6 hour collection of Irish music (of all varieties, from Decklin McMannis with whom I share a birthday, to The Chieftains, to Sinead O'Conner, and The Waterboys).

My great wish for the day would be to spend next year in Ireland (as a "foreign born" citizen)... maybe even surfing on Achill Island, an island off the west coast that stands in the mist a sort of island Brigadoon (okay... so I'm mixing cultural metaphors here) that I found in a book a few years ago and have longed to visit ever since. Next year in Achill!

I hope you have a joyous holiday... I'm on my way to watch rugby with my daughter.

Looking for love in all the wrong places....

2007-03-15T17:32:00.000-05:00

I've really been too busy with less important things than blogging and so I really don't have anything to say here, but when I saw this picture in Huffington Post, well... what the hell is a blog for????

What's Shrub thinking here? Personally, I think he's contemplating another back rub episode. But perhaps he's just pondering... "Firing all the lawyers would just makes me SO HOT!"

Something about the look on Harriet's face reminds me of my friend Pete DeKramer, but I just can't quite figure out what or why.

Captions are welcomed.

Kid... Have you rehabilitated yourself?

2007-03-14T15:06:00.000-05:00

Marine General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had some things to say to the Chicago Tribune Monday and in this piece on George Washington's Cousin I make some observations about General Pace's theological militarism, and propose a return to one of the great tactics of the anti-war movement.

Taking some folks for granted...

2007-03-13T19:03:00.000-05:00

It hit me this afternoon that I had let International Women's Day come and go with no acknowledgment whatsoever, not here, not in my daily life, not even in my dreams.

Last year I wrote a long piece on IWD, concluding it with a litany of the blessed women in my life. That piece is here, and I went back to read it so that I could remind myself of what, somehow, just got by me this year.

Despite the fact that I allowed the day to slip by me (I've been letting a lot of things slip by me of late), I still want to hold up the women who have brought me through my life, along with the women of the world who have somehow, quite miraculously, kept the rest of us from annihilating ourselves with nu-cu-lar war, or some other vile creation of our testosterone infected brains.

Thanks "Ladies"... I'm really glad you're around... EVERY SINGLE DAY.

An Answer to a Friend

2007-03-12T17:43:00.000-05:00

Last week I received a letter from a friend of mine who was raising a rather angry question regarding why any of us (at least those of the left leaning perspective) should really give a damn about the condition of health care for returning vets. I decided to answer him publicly.

You'll find the response (along with his original email) at George Washington's Cousin.

On Reaching the 672nd Step

2007-03-12T12:17:00.000-05:00

I read last week that The Dipsea Demon, Jack Kirk, died at the end of January at the age of 100. While we're speaking of what humans can do (and I was, just below, in that time warp of blogging where things stand still until you move them along again) The Dipsea Demon was one of those amazing humans.

Jack is one of my heros. He ran The Dipsea Race, from Mill Valley, over Mt. Tamalpais and down to Stinson Beach 67 times, winning it twice. "Old Dipsea Runners never die, they just reach the 672nd step," his most famous comment about the race, is based on the collection of 671 stone steps that runners have to take on at the beginning of the run from Mill Valley. It's a grueling little start and one of the many things that makes running The Dipsea so unusual and so incredibly fun. Jack's comment is a sentiment that most Dipsea runners take to heart and it reflects the weird and wacky commitment that people of all ages, shapes and sizes bring to the race. Once you run The Dipsea (the oldest cross country footrace in the U.S.) you really are a part of a strange band.

Jack continued to run the race until he was 96, when he didn't finish, but he made it all the way to the top of Mt. Tam anyway. It was the very next year, 2004, that I first ran the race and on that day he started with the first group, but was then sped around to the finish to meet the runners as they came home. Watching him at the start of this race that begins in the bucolic little suburb of Mill Valley, heads up through the redwoods on Mt. Tam, over roots, rocks and mud puddles only to then let gravity take over as the course hurtles down the other side toward the Pacific Ocean and Stinson Beach, was a stunning experience. At 50, I was in no real shape to run the race - I had certainly not adequately trained for it - and while I stood there trembling in my red running shorts and ankle socks, the vision of Jack, nearly twice my age, slowly moving toward the line to begin the tortured trudge up and over that hill I've lived with for thirty years and that Jack had covered so many times... Well, it's why I keep running.

I had the chance to meet and talk with Jack in 2005, the one hundredth anniversary of the race, when he put in an appearance as an honorary runner and where dozens of runners, all connected to Jack in some way, wore shirts that read "Family of The Dipsea Demon." He was friendly, engaging, inquisitive and delightful and his simple presence moved me to keep running this one of a kind footrace over the mountain.

Ever since that day, I've had the audacity to imagine that I was sort of taking up the mantel of The Demon, looking to a date many years from now (when I'm 65 actually) when I too will win this race (it's a handicapped race and so with another 12 years of preparation that's not exactly as impossible as it sounds). Jack of course has plenty of other people willing to pick up his crown and run on (and I should probably point out that Jack was a lifelong vegetarian), but you can definitely count me among the contenders.

See What Humans Can Do?

2007-02-27T11:08:00.000-06:00

One of my great guilty pleasures in the film world is The Witches of Eastwick, a film based on a John Updike novel, and directed by George Miller (who happens to have won an oscar this past weekend for Happy Feet). There's a scene in that movie where the devil (played, of course, by Jack Nicholson) kneels next to his dog and watches the three witches (played wonderfully by Michelle Pfeiffer, Susan Sarandon, and Cher)floating in the air above a swimming pool. He says to the dog, with an air of total admiration... "See what humans can do?"

Well, last night on ABC they ran a show about Oprah's new Leadership School for Girls in South Africa, and all I can say in response is... "See what humans can do!?!?"

I spent the entire hour lying on the couch and crying, tears dripping down my cheeks and laughter spilling out of my mouth as I watched in amazement. The thing about it is that it's not just (or even primarily) about what Oprah did, but rather it's about the amazing girls who came to the school, the struggles they go through on a daily basis, and the astonishing determination, resiliency, and focus that they carry with them and inside them. As I watched the show I kept thinking back to the many anti-apartheid demonstrations I attended in the 80s. I thought of the Artists United Against Apartheid album, Sun City, that was one of the only times when artists across popular genres really joined together for a project with teeth in it. I thought of the day the Nelson Mandella was released from prison, where I was and how I felt when I heard. I even remembered the Alice Walker essay on Winnie Mandella that I had just read (synchronistically perhaps) yesterday morning. All combined, it made me think, again, that miracles really are possible and that they come out of the actions of people who care.

Oprah's work on this school, her dedication to the girls and the "love is in the details" attention that she pays to the task of accomplishing the work is deeply inspiring and I woke up this morning with a determination in my heart to refuse the naysaying laziness that it is so easy to fall victim to on a daily basis.

It's rare (though not as rare as some people like to claim) that television is this inspiring. The show replays Saturday evening in case you missed it... Don't miss it.

Happy Mardi Gras!

2007-02-20T13:08:00.000-06:00

My friend E sent me a card with this picture in it, and while I needed to make a bit of adjustment to the colors to make myself feel totally at home it really made me feel good and launched me into the mood of the day.

So... while I'm not in New Orleans with my body, I'm there with my heart and my head and my soul, sitting at my computer with WWOZ on the radio, broadcasting from Cafe Brazil on Frenchman's Street, and NOLA.com showing pics from the parades uptown and the drunk tourists on Bourbon Street. I'm missing my town, and I'm definitely missing the Indians on Claiborne and down at the Backstreet Cultural Museum.

If you want a taste of what you're missing (because if you're reading this you're missing that). Check out my MUSES page from last year where you can find some video of the parade and the general Mardi Gras goings on. You can also read an essay I did last year on the meaning of Mardi Gras if you go here.

All said... this is a day for remembering one thing...

THAT IT'S GOOD TO BE ALIVE!

Happy Mardi Gras Y'all!

Happy Valentine's Day

2007-02-14T13:58:00.000-06:00

It's an awfully strange day for the goddess of love (pictured here from StoryPeople.Com), but then maybe that's the point of Valentine's Day anyway... it doesn't matter if you're prepared for it... Are you EVER really prepared for love?

Clearly, our world and our country is not particularly prepared for, nor even open to, love at the moment. Bush is busily ramping up the war machine again, spouting off words like "preposterous" to describe the suggestion that he might make up "evidence." Now where on earth would anybody get that idea!?

The House of Representatives is busily debating a resolution against Bush's latest escalation of the war, a resolution that does nothing except say, "we don't like this." I suppose that's better than nothing, but it seems remarkably inadequate under the circumstances.

A tornado ripped through New Orleans yesterday, once again tearing open the scars of a massive wound now 18 months old, yet still not even beginning to heal. Last week a kid turned himself in to the police for killing another kid after HIS MOTHER gave him a gun and told him to do it because he got beat up in a fight.

And that's just the first few things that come to mind.

It seems to me that in the midst of all this, Valentine's Day really is the perfect moment to turn around and remember those Burt Bacharach words about "What the World Needs Now..." The song may have been ludicrously commercial (is there a song written by Burt that isn't?) but it still hits the spot.

We do need love... and we need it right now.

Happy Valentine's Day...

Stop the War(s)!

Throw Me Somethin' Mister!

2007-02-10T18:44:00.000-06:00

I had a strange afternoon, the rain pouring down outside my window, my brain rattling along through a whole collection of website updates and graphics tweaks and twists... but at the same time I spent several hours with the "Parade Cam" on, watching and listening to the first Saturday's Mardi Gras parades roll on by my former residence around the corner from Napolean and St. Charles.

It's a pretty strange way to experience the over the top craziness that is a Mardi Gras parade, though when you see someone get a really cool throw from one of the floats it's not quite as frustrating as when it happens to you while you're standing right there.

Mardi Gras is so much more than most people from outside New Orleans are able to grasp. It's a celebration of living, of hope, of life in all its weirdness, sadness, happiness and chaos. It's a way of shouting out to the universe, "I'm here!" and I had fully expected to be back in NOLA by now, celebrating another Mardi Gras with the hope and dreams of a renewed city and a new place to live. Instead, I'm sitting at my computer in California with rain pouring down outside and way too much work to finish before the day ends... the week ends... or this trip ends.

But it's still Mardi Gras and as weird as it seems I can even get into watching it on my little computer screen

I just can't wait until we figure out how to make it possible to grab some beads through the virtual air!

Throw me somethin' mister!!!

Ripped Out and Cleaned Up

2007-02-08T17:48:00.000-06:00

For the past three days I've been trying to figure out how to explain the feeling I have come out of my last week of sickness with, but the words (for one of the few times in my life) fail me.

Between the five days I spent in bed, horizontal 99% of each and every day, the raging fever and strange hallucinations, the meditations that pounded me with reflections on everything that has happened to me over the last eighteen months... well, I pretty much feel wrung out.

I feel... in some strange way... like I've been off in the high desert of my mind on a vision quest preparing me for the next stage of this existence.

That's the best I can describe it right now, and though I've been trying to write something clearer and better, it just hasn't risen to the surface yet. I feel new. I feel clear. I feel ready for a whole new journey

Let's go!

I'm sorry, but... I've been sick!

2007-02-02T12:43:00.000-06:00

There's a joke about an alligator and a wide mouth frog that ends with the line I've been sick, but right now after four days of lying in bed all I can remember is the punch line.

Right now, because I really can't let a whole week go by with nothing happening in my business (not to mention the fact that I need to get out and get money to pay my rent), I'm sitting at the computer with sweat pouring down my face looking like some fevered Steven King character from The Stand or some such disease ridden story.

And while I'm on the subject of disasters, I've got to pass on the lovely news that FEMA has just sent me a letter demanding their $2,000 relief money back, because, according to them, I had another "primary residence." Well... I wish someone would have told ME that back when I was trying to figure out where to land. sharing my parents' little mountain house, sleeping on the couch at friends', living at the Days Inn (money they will no doubt also be requesting that I return), sleeping on the floor in my "office" in San Francisco and subleasing everything from rooms to couches for the last eighteen months.

And the important thing to remember is that I'm still one of the relatively lucky ones. this scenario is no doubt repeating over and over, everywhere people who have been subjected to the Bush Administration's FEMA treatment are still - EIGHTEEN MONTHS LATER - trying to find their way.

What a complete crock of shit!

Oops... I'm sorry, but... I've been sick!

I've Never Felt This Way Before

2007-01-30T15:22:00.000-06:00

I haven't written in another week (YOU my friends were supposed to be kicking my butt about that. We had an agreement... remember?) and I have had several things planned to write about (from the State of Disunion to the ZAP festival), but when Mary sent me this video link this afternoon it stopped me in my tracks.

THIS is my answer to the dumbfuck who I had my unfortunate confrontation with last week.

THIS is what the Saints were all about this year and why it's the first time in my half century of life that I give a damn about a football team .

They ain't playin' Sunday... but they still won.

Thanks Boys!

2007-01-22T08:03:00.000-06:00

Well… the great football hope ended yesterday when “Duh Bears” beat the Saints in Chicago. I was listening to WWL this morning to hear how folks in the Crescent City were taking it, and I was heartened by the fact that most people on the radio and phoning in were talking about how much the spirit of the team brought to New Orleans in the last few months. It seems to me that this is really the perfect end to the metaphor. For the Saints, the team that couldn’t win started doing a lot of winning this year and they came back with a force that was strong and dynamic and hopeful. They didn’t go all the way and win the Super Bowl, just like the city remains a long long way from real recovery, but the spirit is there and the hope is there and the will to pull it off is there.

Next year in Jerusalem.

Most people I know were expressing condolences to me yesterday as I sat down at my local watering hole still wearing my black and gold, and most of them understood that I took the game lightly (I’m not exactly a football fan) but that I also held a lot of meaning in the mythological container that it provided. Under circumstances like these, like a truffle pig in the woods, you dig for hope anywhere you can find it. I wasn’t the only one who found some in the Saints and most people I know understood that.

It wasn’t until later that evening that I ran into someone who just had to make the remark that, “I’m tired of hearing all about New Orleans and how the Saints are bringing the city hope.” Well… I lost my cool and let him have it. Not physically, but verbally. Blasting him with a diatribe I have unleashed before, but which I have held at bay in the last few months. I later apologized to him for the pummeling, but while I was sincere in the apology I’m not sorry for the feelings that were raised.

There was a nice video before the game that showed the reality of New Orleans RIGHT NOW. A New Orleans that pretty much looks the same as it did last year at this time with people still without houses, or help, or hope of much assistance from the people who promised it. There was an article in the New York Times over the weekend that took a look at the reduced population of the city and the dire predictions that it’s likely to remain that way. But with those exceptions, out here in the “real world” New Orleans is no longer news. While we can continue to dump billions of dollars and thousands of bodies and lives into Bush’s desert quagmire, and we can talk that thing to death (and just for the record – withdrawal IS a plan!) news from New Orleans has, for many people, reached the saturation point. In just the last week and half I’ve had two people look at me in all seriousness and say, “Well it’s pretty much all back to normal, right?”

How many ways is it possible to say NO!?!?!

So thanks again to the boys in Black & Gold for keeping New Orleans in the news (and forcing idiots like the guy I was talking to last night to have to face into the reality of America in 2007) and for giving New Orleanians (both in and out of the city) hope, if only for a little while.

Dead Man Talking...

2007-01-10T09:45:00.000-06:00

I've spent six hours over the last three days watching the DVD of Spike Lee's Katrina documentary, "When the Levees Broke" and it has been a deeply moving experience. There have been a lot of comments about one aspect of the film or another, but like most things it's pretty important to watch the thing for yourself and take it all in. For me, it seems pretty well balanced and pretty damn accurate. Even the controversial elements (like accusations by some in the Lower 9 that they heard explosions right before the levees broke) are treated with an examination from both sides. The only people that really don't get a pass in this one are the folks from the Federal government (Bush, Brownie, FEMA, The Corps of Engineers), and that seems to me to be the way it should be.

Through it all, the most disturbing moment for me came yesterday morning as I sat down to watch Act 3 before I started my day. Right there from the beginning is a brass band funeral procession followed by Dick Shavers strolling through the Lower 9th Ward and talking about all the people who had disappeared. As soon as he came on the screen I sat bolt upright and nearly spilled my coffee in my lap. The experience was exactly like seeing a ghost. As the scene continued on, I sat mesmerized by the image on the screen a young man full of life and potential, a great player, and, at least from everything I could see on the screen, a terrific man.

Now he's gone... 16 months after Katrina, another casualty of the storm.

Afterwards, I went to the Hot 8 website and found what seems to me to be the perfect song for the moment. RIP Dick Shavers... play that heavenly snare like nobody's ever heard.

Harry Shearer's column in The Huffington Post has some worthwhile things to say about the situation in New Orleans right now, and as usual Chris Rose has his share of things to say in two columns from Sunday and from Tuesday.

As for the rest of you... get the video... watch it... and do something. If you can't find a copy of the video, or you can't figure out what to do, email me or leave a comment and I'll help you figure it out.

Enough is Enough... Damnit!

2007-01-05T14:49:00.000-06:00

This picture, taken from the New Orleans Times-Picayune, is of a man praying outside the house of the next to most recent murder in The Crescent City (there was another one this morning). The woman who was murdered at this house, Helen Hill, was not actually a friend of mine, but a typical NOLA acquaintance (which is pretty much the equivalent of a friend anywhere else in the country); a friend of a friend and someone I had met, but had not really gotten to know yet. Helen was the mother of a two year old and an animator and filmaker who, like me, was deeply in love with New Orleans. Her partner, who survives her, is a doctor deeply committed to public health and solid health care for those at the bottom of our economic reality. They were shining, bright, enthusiastic and loving people. Now... Helen is dead, her child is without a mother and her partner is set loose on a sea of confusion (and I would expect no small amount of bitterness).

THIS is the reality of my city at the start of 2007. Less than a week ago Dinerral "DICK" Shavers, the snare drummer for the Hot 8 Brass Band, the up and coming challengers for the Brass Band musical crown previously held by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and Reirth Brass Band, was shot and killed. The police chief of New Orleans likes to point out that the murder rate is down, but when you consider the fact that less than half the population of New Orleans have come home... well, per-capita, the murder rate is actually UP.

In less than four weeks, I am planning to return, but with this - and so many other circumstances - I don't know what that means. When I was living in New Orleans a year ago there was a sense of hope and progress; I'm not seeing much of that now. I hope I see it again when I return in a few weeks.

It seems to me that THIS may be the central issue of peace making in the world right now. All violence seems to be simply a highly expanded version of this "small" violence, a violence that we all seem capable of at one point in time or another, but which seems to strike too often in urban environments and in the houses of the innocent. As Gandhi said... "you must become the change you wish to see in the world." What does that mean... right here and now? How can I truly make the world, the country, my neighborhood, and my home a better and more peaceful place?

Or... to quote the Irishman with whom I share my birthday... "What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?"

On the Twelfth Day of Christmas...

2007-01-05T11:19:00.000-06:00

Okay... First off, I apologize for dumping two YouTube videos in a row on you. I promise I won't ever do it again (probably). However, this song for Christmas, produced by The Rumor Mill in NYC is a particularly poignant play off of the classic Frosty the Snowman song... a slightly twisted look at Christmas and Global Warming.

Have a look at the video and then drop by the Save Frosty site for more information. You might even consider purchasing the fundraising album of very interesting Christmas songs for next year's holiday playlist... I did.

Merry Christmas until next year.

When The New World Is Revealed...

2006-12-29T19:20:00.000-06:00

It's no secret to anyone who reads this blog with any regularity whatsoever, or to anyone who has known me for any time at all, that I am an inveterate and thoroughly unashamed fanatic for The Boss.

However... this song, which I heard him play last spring as his encore at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival just completely knocks me over the edge. When I heard him play it last spring, he introduced the song by saying something like, "there's at least a dozen people here right now who can do this song better than me..." and then he moved into it with such a soft touch and such a sincere heart (as he had played his whole set) that I just sat down in the mud and cried.

My dear friend Mary sent this link to me the other day and when I finally got around to viewing it tonight, I had the same reaction I had at the New Orleans Fairgrounds eight months ago. I simply sat down and wept.

It's my nomination for best performance of the year in any medium and with any purpose. It's the perfect way to end this horrible year and begin a new one that I hope (and I imagine you hope) will be as good as any time gets. It does what a gospel song (and really any song) is meant to do... it calls us to be better than we are right now; it calls us to be fresh, and hopeful, and new.

Take the time (even if you have a slow connection) and listen to this amazing version of When The Saints. Think on the plight of the city I love so much and the city that I hope you too hold in your heart, but also let it wash over you and disturb you a little bit; let it call you to be a better person, in a better place, with a better heart. The sixteen (that's right... sixteen) months since Katrina have remade me in a way that I never would have expected and through a process I absolutely would never have chosen voluntarily. However, the fact is I'm a better person (maybe even a MUCH better person) than I was the day I started writing this blog, and while I wish I could wave a magic wand and prevent all of the suffering that came out of Katrina, and that continues to this day, I would not wish for myself a different path.

I DO want to be in that number... both right now and in the far off unseen future.

Oh yeah... Happy New Year Y'all!

On the First Day of Christmas...

2006-12-25T16:34:00.000-06:00

The day started before midnight amidst several thousand people in the giant cave of Grace Cathedral and next to my daughter, standing, singing (and me crying through it all) Oh Come All Ye Faithful and smiling, weeping, swooning with what I experience of the magic of the myth and the grace of the story.

It really started much earlier in the evening when I had dinner at my daughter's new place and she, her boyfriend, his brother, and I opened presents, laughed, talked and ate an amazing vegetarian repast (concluded with bronzing our own creme brule'e). After that, Jen and I headed to the church.

The service, as always was a moment of clarity, encouragement and affirmation in the midst of an awful lot of confusion, a time to stop, to remember why we exist on the planet and to live out the hope that we might be able to do it better this circuit around the sun. Alan Jones sermon was especially poignant this year, the night was magical, musical and worshipful (and you can hear the entire two hour service here).

I got up this morning and opened a few really wonderful presents from friends and family (thank you so much!) and then sat down with a glass of champagne, and lox and bagels to watch the movie Scrooge, my favorite version of the miraculous (and always life-transforming) Dickens' story.

After that it was lunch time and for some reason (I don't know whether it's the Christmases I spent in Arizona, or the winter trip that Marsha and I made to Santa Fe where I discovered the dish, but Mexican food in general and stuffed pasilla chilis in particular, mean Christmas to me. My chef housemate Matt left me a particularly wonderful version of the stuffed pepper for which I prepared a black bean sauce with roasted red pepper salsa... Red & Green, sharp and spicy; whatever it is, it says Christmas to me.

Finally, in a couple of hours I'm off with a huge bowl of my Shockingly Decadent and Unbelievably Miraculous Egg Nog to spend an evening of eating, drinking, chatting and singing.

Beats a Partridge in a Pear Tree... but not Kwan Yin in a blue box.

Jen and I even caught a glimpse of Santa roaming through downtown San Francisco at about 1:30 in the morning. Jen made the observation that he must of lost his reindeer. Maybe that'd be why he showed up in the Bayou last night with eight alligator instead... well, at least that's the report I heard.

The Longest Night

2006-12-21T20:04:00.000-06:00

This is quite possibly my favorite night of the year.

From here on out the days get longer and the nights grow shorter. The sun returns to my side of the planet and the dark fading cave of winter... while actually just beginning, is already fading into the fecundity of spring.

People have lived this reality out for all of human history and I first became enamored with it when my astronomer father brought a CBS film featuring Astronomer Gerald Hawkins and his theories on the origin of Stonehenge to my Lake Worth Florida grade school when I was about 10 years old.

The Winter Solstice brings together all the things that make life real for me. The dynamics of the universe, the way the world plays out its reality in a system that remains mostly beyond our understanding, the fact that for all of human history we have been trying to explain our existence with songs, and stories, and big piles of stone.

Welcome to the solstice... Have a drink on me!

Slainte'

Yentl for Chanukah

2006-12-20T20:22:00.000-06:00

Last Saturday, for the second night of Chanukah, KQED ran Barbra Streisand's remarkable film, Yentl. Okay... so first of all, I'm a sucker for faith of just about any disposition. I'm also a sucker for brainy women; I am definitely one of those folks that believes the brain is the most important sex organ. In addition, as anyone who has spent any time reading this blog knows, I am a father who dotes on his daughter, and if there's a better father/daughter movie than Yentl, I have yet to see it. In addition, I still have memories of my DDD at the age of five or six sitting and watching Yentl over and over with me and both of us crying and laughing and loving it all (just like I did all by myself on Saturday night).

We won't even start on Mandy Patinkin or Amy Irving, okay?

Finally, I'm also a fanatic for the basic concept that you should never, never, never give up your dream, and THAT really is the point of the movie... and the point of Chanukah itself. Between the steadfast determination of the Maccabees to refuse the forces that sought to overwhelm them and the "miracle of the oil" at their triumph... Well, it's just a great great story; a story that EVERYONE should make a point to know better than most of us do, and one that I find especially worthwhile at this particular moment in my life.

So thanks (again) Barbra and thanks KQED... you made my night!

Happy Chanukah... Papa watch me fly!

Always take the drop with commitment...

2006-12-16T08:27:00.000-06:00

Well damnit! I suppose if I'm going to ask for suggestions I damn well better be prepared for them.

Hoz's link to Shaun Tomson's new book and the discussion about it in Surfline has given me the first of the thoughts for the day... "There will always be another wave." He has provided the second as well, which I found on the Surfline site when I went to read the first. It's that second thought that I feel a real need to take with me into the day. "Always take the drop with commitment..." feels like a surfer's way of relating what E's quote from the Dalai Lama was about yesterday. A way of saying that the day is out there for you to make a life and if you're going to do it... do it. This is not a trait that I am particularly adept at. My life has tended to be characterized by actions that are hesitant, confused and timorous. I have a tendency to more often ask "what could go wrong" than "what could go right." The fact of the matter is that you may not succeed at what you attempt today (or tomorrow) in fact, much of the time you can be pretty sure that you WON'T succeed, and that's where the other thought comes in... "There will always [always!!!] be another wave.

It's a new morning... a new day... time for commitment; time to get moving.

I need to get to the beach.

A Place To Begin...

2006-12-15T07:20:00.000-06:00

Okay... So I rose out of my bed this morning, awake and painfully aware; knowing that I have no money, knowing that most of my resources have disappeared, and ultimately knowing that I really know nothing at all. In the midst of this I rose up choosing to move forward with determination, and meaning... and glee.

Before I've even made coffee, I check my email (on the ancient iMac that I borrowed from a friend) to find that my friend E has sent me a bit of electronic encouragement for the day...

"Everyday, think as you wake up: Today I am fortunate to have woken up. I am alive. I have a precious human life. I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself to expand my heart out to others for the benefit of all beings."
-His Holines the XIV Dalai Lama

Stop and think about that for a minute. There is something very deep there. That fourth sentence in particular; His Holiness puts a real responsibility on the act of living in that one. "I am going to use ALL my energies to develop myself to expand my heart out to others FOR THE BENEFIT OF ALL BEINGS." Damn... all I was worried about was how I was going to pay the rent on my office and buy a couple of Christmas presents for my kid!

It's going to be a great day!

18 months and counting... Could we start again please?

2006-12-14T10:47:00.000-06:00

I began this blog just short of 18 months ago... The first post was an exciting launch into a new idea and a new plan... a way to report on a new adventure that I thought was going to be a truly new and interesting phase of my life.

Well... it's certainly been interesting, I'll give it that.

What I knew at the time, but did not expect to continue in the way it has, was that I was jetisoning much of who I had been and what I had collected over all the previous years of my life. That process has continued, unrelentingly, for a year and a half. Many of the folks I know in New Orleans lost everything they had in a matter of minutes and hours. For me the process has been more of a general fading away, a dropping off, a peeling back of layers to the point that I stand now pretty much with nothing and on the edge of a chasm that I can't see into, let alone through.

It's time to find a new road... But I seem to have lost my maps.

I expect that the journey is going to take some time, after all, it's taken 52 years to get here.

I guess I better get started, even though I don't know where I'm headed.

Any suggestions?

Would Jesus Shop At Walmart?

2006-12-14T08:40:00.000-06:00

In my frustration with the reality of corporate America and the way Apple, a company that I thought of as the best in the bunch, has personally affected me recently, I have accidented upon a couple of pieces about a company that I've never had any illusions about... WalMart.

I've written about this on George Washington's Cousin this morning, and you can find those reflections here.

It Just Works... WRONG!

2006-12-13T10:26:00.000-06:00

I've been buying Macs since Macs were created. I'm the guy who drank the Kool Aid and passed it on to everyone else. I'm the guy who made every argument that it's possible to make about how great Apple is and how smart Steve Jobs is and what a lovely, helpful, thinking company Apple is.

I have, on many occasions, made the statement that the world would be a better place if everyone used Apples.

Well... this is the moment of truth; this is the point where I realize the dark, sad reality that not only do people who you don't know steal your car and computer, and not only do other people sell you (to the tune of $1,000) a broken machine that has only been glossed over enough to pass the visual test, but the "perfect company" with the cute commercials and the smiley faces, the company that claims "It Just Works" and promises to repair a product for a reasonable flat rate fee ($326.00 to be precise) is just as crooked, greedy, and evil as the rest of them. That the holy mountain is actually populated, not by the lovely vegetarian Buddha of cyberspace, but by a penny pinching Ebeneezer Scrooge who will suck every cent out of you that he can get ($1240.00 to be precise... a sum that I neither have, nor would pay if I did).

And yeah... I'm not only feeling anger at being cheated, and being lied to, and being given the run around by the "geniuses" (did someone at Apple perhaps spill liquid on this machine???? I know that I certainly didn't). I am also feeling the pain of the betrayed true believer who finally discovers that the Wizard is just a little man behind the curtain.

Apple used to be a GREAT company... now it's just like the rest... greedy, predictable, unhelpful, unbending and uncreative (except in inventing new ways to get people to spend more money).
RIP...MAC

Who Dat!?

2006-12-10T23:27:00.000-06:00

This evening the New Orleans Saints destroyed the Dallas Cowboys, and they did it in Dallas. That makes me VERY happy!

I've never been a real [American]football fan. In fact, until I landed in New Orleans last summer, where The Dome holds the skyline and where the team is everyone's team (unlike the Bay Area where the choice of Raiders or Niners tends to be a class based choice), I never really had a team I seriously cared about. But the Saints captured my imagination and my heart before Katrina and AFTER Katrina... well, forget aboud it!

Now... the other side of this equation is that having grown up Southern Baptist and having attended a Baptist seminary, I was conditioned to the religion of the Dallas Cowboys... and what that means for me is that I pretty much feel like ANYONE beating the tar out of the Cowboys is a very very good thing.

Well... tonight the Saints not only STOMPED th Cowboys 42-17, they did it in the Cowboys' own house!

Who dat? Well... You KNOW who dat!

Slipping into Darkness...

2006-12-10T08:03:00.000-06:00

It's dark and grey and alternating between dripping and pouring... Welcome to wintertime Northern California. Right now I'm thinking that pretty much all of the suggestions from the last post (surfing... acid... nature... and holding) seem like a darn good litany of coping mechanisms, and just the fact that there are people wishing well and making proposals of the sort goes a long way to making the day work a little bit better.

We are 11 days out from the solstice when we will have the shortest day and longest night and then we start the circle again. I love the smell of optimism in the morning!

Last year on New Year's Eve I spent it with misplaced musicians and cooks from New Orleans... dancing to "I'm a lonely boy... I ain't got a home." This year I'm considering attending a "Pirate Ball." What better group of homeless people to party with than PIRATES? I mean... after all... we're a year further on, and I (along with so many friends) still "ain't got a home."

Something else I ain't got right now is a computer. My "replacement" for the computer that was stolen seemed to pick up something like the same disease my brain had a week and a half ago and so after several days of spending 10 hours working with it to get an hour of work out of it, I decided to leave the damn thing in the ICU unit of the Apple store for repairs... At this point I'm about ready to start looking for work, any work, that doesn't require the use of silicone based technology.

Topping the "good news" list this week: my bill from the hospital came yesterday and clocks in a little cheaper than I expected (though it doesn't include the ambulance charge) at just over $2,000. Maybe the pirates will help me pay it!

Regardless of all the above... it's the second Sunday of Advent, one week into the church's new year, and I still choose to believe that things have GOT to start looking up soon!

Like I said... I love the smell of optimism in the morning!

Go Saints!

Onward... Through the FOG

2006-12-05T11:38:00.000-06:00

It's been just over a week (sitting in the exact spot where I am sitting now) since I had my seizure and just under a week since I started popping Dilantin again. It took a couple of days (the half life of the drug is 22 hours) before it whacked me, but it's done the job now.

I spend most of the day in a slight haze that feels not terribly dissimilar to the hazy aura I get right before a seizure. I find my patience, something that I have been very happy about developing over the last several months, to be easily worn thin. I guess that at least some of my "progress" of late had more to do with not taking Dilantin than it did a great spiritual and psychological breakthrough. The fear of not eating, and thereby setting off another seizure is taken care of; I find myself constantly hungry and perpetually tired. I just read someone else describe this feeling as "tired but wired" and that's as good a description as I have ever seen. My brain goes ever around in circles and there is no straight line of thinking. I find myself doing the same tasks over and over again while letting other things fall by the way.

Basically... this sucks.

In the words of Huey Lewis... "I want a new drug!"

Shake... Rattle... And Roll

2006-11-29T16:35:00.000-06:00

Well... Monday afternoon about 5:00, not that long after I had written the previous post, I started to hear a whole lot of music playing in the air. It was a bit frenetic and I could understand every lyric, but I couldn't recognize the songs. I finally began to think it was a little weird for there to be music playing so loudly in the Petaluma Library, and then it dawned on me that it wasn't playing in the air at all... It was playing in my head.

I got up from where I was sitting and noticed a strange kind of fogginess that seemed to be filling my brain as gradually it dawned on me that this is what the brain doctors always call an "aura." It's a precursor to one of the grand mall seizures that I have at had intermittent times over the last 30 years. I haven't been taking my meds like I'm supposed to. They mess with my brain, which I guess is what they're supposed to do, and sometimes make it hard to think. It's also been pretty well established that they are the source of a lot of the irritability that I express in life and that I have been trying to get rid of. I also have discovered that if I'm very very careful about eating carefully and eating regularly I don't seem to have a problem.

Unfortunately for me, on Monday I pretty much didn't eat.

So, at around 5:15pm I looked around for a comfy chair that I wouldn't hurt myself in and sat down in anticipation of waking up looking at the ceiling.

And that's exactly what happened. I woke up with a couple of guys leaning over me asking if I knew where I was (like being in one of those spy shows where they blindfold you to take you somewhere and then quiz you about the trip) and when they gave me back my cell phone I couldn't figure out how it had gotten to be the end of November so soon. It took a few hours, and some serious pain killers, to clear the fog and the headache from my brain and I don't even want to think about what the hospital bill for that little jaunt is going to be. The good side, if there is a good side, is that my new computer (the one I just bought to replace the one that was stolen a month ago) was left behind at the library, but it was STILL THERE when I got back.

The bad side (besides the money of course) is that the DMV is most assuredly going to lift my driver's license for at least six months... Here we go again.

Home Sick Once More...

2006-11-27T15:42:00.000-06:00

In about a week it will have been six months since I was last in The Crescent City. At the time that I left in June I expected to only be gone for a month. After that it became impossible to return for a while and I reluctantly settled into the idea that I would have to be away from home for three months or so. At the end of summer it was still obvious that I had no way to return and no place to go once I got there, so I simply sucked it up and put my head into the wind ahead of me, seeking a way to move somewhere without really knowing where that where was.

Now we are coming toward the end of the year once more. A year ago I was in a thoroughly devastated New Orleans with very few resources but with a sense of purpose and a hope for the future. I attended one of the annual Peace Stories concerts with my friend who had only just returned from exile in Houston (the first concert this year is Wednesday night, and I won't be there... but I hope she'll go for me). Last December I spent a lot of time with people who had nothing but hope and a dream, along with a fair amount of anger at the government, to sustain them. Yet, we were making it; we knew things could only get better… Hell, they couldn’t get worse.

But in some sense that is exactly what they did.

Now, a year later, there are far fewer people who have returned to New Orleans than anyone expected, the promised money has yet to be distributed to the people who need it, people who thought they could rebuild are still waiting for neighborhood plans, and insurance companies, and FEMA; many who simply can’t wait have already given up. Harry Anderson, who ran a magic shop and a nightclub in the French Quarter, has packed his bags and left town, my friend who ran the Irish Shop on Toulouse has left for Ireland, another friend is house hunting amid the frustration of little progress and less help, and when I was in Ohio a month ago I heard the story of a woman who had just accepted $30,000 for her house (about 15% of what it was worth) because she simply couldn’t hold out any longer. You can bet that someone with the resources to wait things out is going to make a boatload of cash on that deal!

Mardi Gras season starts in just over a month (when the 12th Night Revelers celebrate on January 5th) and it seems to me that this year’s Mardi Gras is going to be far less festive than the one – so controversial in its own right – last year. Despite what many people thought, last year there was a reason to celebrate, if for no other reason than the fact that we had survived. Like it says in Randy Newman’s song of that other great flood, they had TRIED to wash us away but we were still hangin’ on. Right now it’s looking like that sentiment might have been a mite premature. Any way you cut it, the road back is going to be a lot longer (and a lot rougher) than any of us first imagined. In fact that road seems to be getting longer and rougher by the day… even the street signs are screwed up.

There are, of course, people in New Orleans sticking it out, fighting it out, pulling it together and holding on to hope, but (and for me this is the most difficult part) I am not one of them.

I miss it… I pine for it… I want to help with the work and join in the celebrations. Despite every bit of progress and every moment of hope, every day I find another piece missing from my heart.

I want to go HOME for Christmas.

Salmon Creek Sunday

2006-11-26T17:13:00.000-06:00

grey sky to grey sea
and whitecaps layout
the line as sea birds
dot the space between

shades of green and brown
accent the foreground
rivulets of mud
rain drops on the roof

north coast winter
beachside dark grey flood
a single surfer
drops in off the lip

two of us alone
sharing one moment
separated by
watery distance

SPIDERweb

2006-11-25T22:23:00.000-06:00

there’s a spider running
around my feet
in the kitchen
while i write

it reminds me
of one of the first
notes you ever left me
after we first met

i hope that none of them
were affectionately
called by the name
of charlotte

Ring Those Bells

2006-11-22T12:08:00.000-06:00

For the last few days the brass bowl/bell that I use to begin and end my morning meditation has been acting a little out of whack. By taking a wooden mallet that is part of the set and turning it around the edge of the bowl it is possible to make the bowl resonate with a beautiful tone that builds exponentially as you round the rim over and over and over. Eventually the turning around the rim is almost effortless and with only the slightest addition of speed or pressure it is possible to make the bowl ring very loudly. Or you can simply lighten up, applying just enough pressure to keep the bowl ringing at the established level. This phenomenon is something that I use regularly as an example of what the process of meditation, patience and self-improvement is really like. It takes a while to get to the point of critical mass, but once you are there the process is nearly effortless.

The problem, however, is that the bell has not been ringing as it should. For several days, no matter what speed, what level of concentration, what magical thinking, patience, emotional peacefulness, speed or muscle-heavy effort that I applied to the process, the bowl would not ring. The problem was that I had oiled the mallet a few days ago.

The mallet had become very rough, dry and a little bit ugly. It made the bell ring beautifully, but it wasn’t very aesthetic itself. So I added a little oil to it and polished it up. Unfortunately, while this made the mallet look much more beautiful than before, it also reduced the friction that the mallet creates on the edge of the bowl and no matter what I tried, the bowl simply would not respond to the touch of the new instrument. This was driving me crazy. I would begin and end each meditation with an attempt to use force – in one way or another – to make the bell ring properly and after several minutes of frustration would eventually give up and strike the side of the bowl to get any ring at all (ironically, in such situations the best, most aesthetic ring is accomplished with the very lightest touch at the round curve near the base of the bowl). Needless to say, this process was not making my meditation period very peaceful.

Finally, yesterday evening, fed up with this problem, and beginning to feel not just a little bit inferior to the bowl, I decided to roughen up the mallet. I washed it with soap, hoping to dry out some of the oil and I scraped it with an aluminum cleaning pad to roughen up the surface and bring back its natural texture. And it worked. It took a bit longer to get the bell to ring as it should, but with some attention and patience the mallet and the bowl began once again to interact with each other and the tone began to rise magically in the room.

This morning the bell rang as easily as ever.

For me, much of the last fifteen months have been a trip around the edge of the bowl, over and over with nothing to show for it (no money, no work, no place to live), while at other times the journey has been a moment by moment experience of grace, moving me forward inch by inch, giving me manna - sufficient only to the day – for sustenance and support but leaving me without anything to arrogantly declare my own. Sometimes, often at the most unexpected moments, it has been a showering down of surprising blessings when everything flows as it should and I find myself laughing with the joy of the moment and the gift of the day. These times seem to come most often on the heels (or in the midst) of the rough mornings, the days of struggle, or the sleepless nights of disturbing thoughts and dreams.

The bell rings loudest when the mallet is dry.

In The Beginning Was The Word

2006-11-21T14:31:00.000-06:00

For the last two weeks (ever since I woke up on Wednesday morning after the election) I have been buried in a life reflection (for lack of a better term that comes to mind this morning) with the purpose of finding a way out of the seemingly never ending limbo that my life has been plunged into since August 28, 2005. The reasons I picked this particular time to pursue this effort were three-fold.

The first reason was temporal, as the year winds down, as the sun recedes southward, the days grow short and the nights grow long, I am always drawn into a reflective mode in which I feel the call to self-examination and commitment as the new year gets ready to turn. It’s a behavior that is not really unique to me obviously, and it’s one of the reasons I am particularly enamored with the liturgical calendar. Observing certain seasons, and certain prescribed behaviors thereof, helps to maintain some kind of manageable perspective in the midst of the generally unmanageable reality of daily living.

The second reason had to do with missed opportunities. On that morning after election day my friend Hoz got married in Hawaii. I was supposed to have been at the wedding; nearly two years ago I declared “I wouldn’t miss it for the world!” But the exigencies of the last 15 months had so completely balled up my finances, my work, and my spirit in general that the fabulous opportunity this represented simply turned to so many grains of speculative sand in my hand. Paul was in Honolulu getting married; I was waking up in Petaluma unclear on what to do next.

The third reason was situational and practical. As I watched the slowly growing victory of the Democrats in the election it was very clear that the earth didn’t move of its own accord and while it would be nice to think that people just generally “got it” finally, the fact is that Nancy Pelosi put together a hell of an organization and marshaled her forces with the determination of a winning coach, or triumphant general. It struck me that if I was going to pull myself out of the ever-swirling spiral that has been my life since Katrina I was going to need some kind of plan. Planning, particularly over the last year (just in case you hadn’t noticed), is not exactly my strong suit.

So I began a self-imposed, self-improvement plan. 45 days (now 34) to Christmas Day with a set of disciplines, a regular time of reflective writing, and the goal of setting my life on a path that I can, once again, commit to.

What’s come out of the first ten days is the central importance of one thing that I have been working on for about 30 years: my writing. Beginning today, I am dedicating myself to a solid four hours a day of writing. A good portion of that will show up here, as I hope to return to essentially a daily blog (something that I have been clearly lax about of late) but other bits of it will go into work that I have had lying around in various stages of completion, or sitting in the cobwebbed corners of my brain, for a very long time.

I have been engaged by writing most of my life and I have made some kind of a living at writing, in one form or another, for much of the last 30 years. However, like so many writers (and would be writers) I am particularly adept at figuring out all the things to do instead of writing. Today, I am making a public commitment to change that reality once and for all. Like many of the other things I have included in this blog over the last fifteen months, I am staking my flag in this ground, on this relatively public forum, as a way of forcing myself to put up or shut up; as a way of attempting to be honest.

It’s not like I haven’t made these kind of commitments before. I’ve made them many times, but all the good intentions have almost always died in utero, generally due to a consummate lack of discipline on my part. I am posting this statement in an attempt to circumvent that one particular failing. People making changes in their lives are often advised to play their cards close to the chest. It’s a philosophy based on the idea that those who do don’t say and those who say don’t do. Well, that perspective has rarely worked for me, so I have decided to take a different tack. I am climbing these stairs and nailing my proclamation on the cathedral door (how’s that for a grandiose allusion?).

Here I stand… I can do no other.

Open Your Golden Gate!!!

2006-11-18T19:02:00.000-06:00

It’s been over a week since the election and I haven’t written a thing about it, mostly because I am still in a bit of shock.

The big words, both before the election and subsequently with the virtual coronation of Nancy Pelosi as the first female Speaker of the House, have been those three words, initially coined by Fox News hate-monger Bill OReilly, “San Francisco Values.”

All I have to say is, "Hooray for San Francisco Values!"

I moved to San Francisco in 1977 to go to Baptist seminary in order to earn a Masters degree in Divinity and Social Work (a degree that the Southern Baptist Convention has exorcised from their curriculum as they have shunned their historical roots and moved backward to become the centerpiece of the neo-cons “faith based” base). There was no mistake in my destination, either in the program or the environment. San Francisco, more than the seminary, was the real choice I was making and I have been committed to the values represented by the people and the politics of San Francisco for what will soon be 30 years. What is seen as an epithet by so many is for me a compliment of the highest order. San Francisco values are Thom Butler’s values.

So, what do I believe these values to be? You might think that is something relatively difficult, and terribly complex, to answer, but it isn’t at all.

True San Francisco values (as opposed to those coined by OReilly) center upon a reality that I learned long before I moved to San Francisco 29 years ago. They are values that I was taught by my Grandmother in the DAR and my father who volunteered for WWII while he was still in high school. They are the values that I learned in Sunday School at the First Baptist Church. They are the values I learned at Sahuarita High School when I was required to take American History as a junior and American Problems as a senior. They are the values I was taught were the values of our “founding fathers” (and founding mothers by the way). They are the values that I began to glean from the Bible when I came to a place where I could begin to figure out those mysterious stories for myself. They are the values I learned from reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Paul Tillich, Howard Thurman, and Martin Luther King Jr. and by being gifted with the friendship of people like Elizabeth Nordquist, as I evaluated whether I was made of the stuff that preachers are made of (a question that has yet to be fully answered incidentally).

Those values involve the right of all people (citizens and non-citizens alike, just as it states in the Constitution) to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, regardless of whether they agree with me (or you) or not. They include the right of people to think and speak freely, to love whomever they choose while still hanging on to the possibility of jobs and homes and health care and hope. Those values involve the RIGHT (not a privilege bought with PRIVILEGE) to food, and clothing, and safety; to free-speech, and free belief, and love and joy and hope (I said that one before... and I'm gonna say it again). They involve the responsibility of society to take care of the roads... and the water... and the air... and THE PEOPLE.

THEY ARE THE VALUES THAT SAY WE ARE ALL ONE COUNTRY REGARDLESS OF WHO WE ARE INDIVIDUALLY.

Last week Michael Moore dropped a great letter to conservatives that looks at what the “liberal agenda” is really about and implicitly compares the tactics of the two opposing political camps. It’s a good letter and I agree with him completely.

So here we are… 11 days after the election and 792 days away from a new president… HANG ON BABIES!!!!! HOPE IS ON THE WAY!

Feeling A Little Out of Sorts...

2006-11-07T14:38:00.000-06:00

I pirated this image from my daughter's MySpace page because when I saw it earlier today I couldn't think of anything that expressed my sense of how weird it is to be here at election day in The Land of the Free and The Home of the Brave feeling so completely wacked out and out of sorts. Six years ago (when Jennifer was first voting and I was holed up in Palm Beach County, Florida watching the nightmare unfold first hand) could anyone have even fathomed how deep, dark, low and lost we would become in such an incredibly short time? It's like all of those Bush disclaimers... "No one could have imagined that people would use planes as missles..." "No One could have imagined that the levees would fail..." "No one could have expected the kind of insurgency we face in Iraq..."

Well, yeah... people did imagine and those people didn't vote for Bush. What we truly couldn't have imagined (or at least I couldn't imagine) was the extent to which one man and one man's friends could turn this country into such a cesspool of greed, corruption and failure and how easily they would do it with all of us looking on.

I really want to have much more to say about what I hope will be the outcome of this election, but frankly, it seems to me that most of it has already been said.

There's only thing I'm really feeling right now, after literally dozens of conversations where people have made the comment, "it doesn't matter who you vote for."

Three words (and the above photo) to that... YES IT DOES!

A Weekend in Defiance

2006-11-01T16:58:00.000-06:00

I just spent the last four days in the little town of Defiance Ohio (the first time I have been in the state where I was born since I was six months old) and it was a supreme delight. I was on a panel at Defiance College with Dr. C.T. Vivian (my personal hero) and several other new friends from New Orleans.

One of the great things... perhaps the only great thing... to happen to me since Katrina has been the wonderful people I have met because of the storm. Something is going on in my life and I really don't know what it is just yet; I still can't figure out if the more appropriate Biblical metaphor for my last fourteen months is Jonah or Job.

What I know is that I am blessed.

I am blessed by the kindness of Old Friends
I am blessed by the kindness of New Friends
Family... Home... Presence
Peace

But seriously... Can anything good come out of Ohio?

The Little Things Mean A Lot Department

2006-10-25T18:01:00.000-05:00

I just got a notice that I have "a balance" in my Cafe Press account.

It ain't much, but I didn't expect there to be anything! As it turns out, two people whom I do not even know have taken a fancy to my Blues Routes souvenier T-shirts (logo design by PhD by the way)and bought a couple.

While I wasn't even looking!

Money for Nothin'!

You too can participate in this lovely experience and get your very own Paul Horrell designed Blues Routes T-Shirt... Be The First One On Your Block!

Be Careful What You Wish For...

2006-10-25T17:20:00.000-05:00

I actually find it kind of amusing that I put down a post entitled "Don't Just Do Something..." and less than 24 hours later my car and computer, the symbolic, as well as very real, facilitators of both my mental and physical movement are simply, casually, and without warning, lifted from my reality.

It's as if The God(dess) simply was reading the damn blog and said... "well... okay then."

Late Monday night I got a call from the Police Department to let me know that my car had been found in relatively undamaged condition and so I spent all of yesterday and most of today going through a long list of problematic dealings and relatively costly expenditures (though not as costly as it looked like it was going to be) to finally re-acquire my vehicle.

Unfortunately... the thieves evidently liked my computer and that didn't make like Little Bo Beep's sheep and come home... not yet.

So here I am, three days from a trip to Defiance College to talk about Katrina, without the tools of my trade and with no real good idea of what I am going to do about recovering them. Sitting here is not only a good idea... it's pretty much the only option.

On the other hand... I had a great "sit down" with Jen last night. When I wasn't able to get my car, we hooked up downtown and had a couple of drinks, some great almonds, and a couple of hours of really wonderful conversation that made every single bit of every single thing that went wrong worthwhile. The fact is (as sad as this reality is) I would not have had that opportunity had I not lost my car and computer.

It was - as time with Jennifer always is - a great, great gift.

Just When I Thought It Was Safe...

2006-10-23T12:26:00.000-05:00

Saturday started out with so much beauty that it was almost excruciating to behold. The sun was shining, the sky was clear; I had to go to The City for work, so I decided to take the long way around and go down Highway 1 through Stinson Beach, up over Mt. Tam and through Sausalito. By the time I got into San Francisco I still hadn't gotten the day out of my system, so I decided to make a stop for lunch at Memphis Minnie's in the "Lower Haight" (what used to be called The Fillmore when I used to live and work in the neighborhood).

I parked my car on Fillmore and went for a walk around the block, past the old Fillmore Baptist Center where I was a seminary intern, down the block of Haight where I used to get PoBoys and have a beer at Toronado. When I returned to my car (or more accurately where I had left my car), I discovered that someone else had decided that it was a good day for a drive as well.

A drive in my car... with my computer in the trunk.

I spent the rest of the day looking to see if I could find the car and then ultimately reporting it stolen at Northern Police Station. Then I caught the bus back to Petaluma and finished off the day trying to be sprightly and partyish at my friend's big fundraising Halloween Party at The Phoenix Theater in Petaluma.

As I write this now, it crosses my mind that spending the evening in a place called The Phoenix might be just exactly the right thing.

I've got to start RISING out of the ashes sooner or later... I really don't have anything left to lose.

Don't Just Do Something... Sit There

2006-10-20T09:06:00.000-05:00

Life moves slowly these days.

The picture at left is about as good an explanation of that movement as anything that I can think of. The window in the background is the window that I wake up to every morning. There's a huge tree just out of frame that makes me feel like I'm waking up in a treehouse every day.

The meditation cushion (zafu) which sits in the center of the bed was made for me some years ago by Jennifer. Because of that fact I find it both a sort of launching pad to the cosmos and a lock to the ground... exactly what it seems to me a zafu is really all about anyway. It is the place I start almost every day. It is the source of a center that has kept me whole and relatively sane during the last 18 months. On top of the cushion is a meditation bell, a copy of Thoma Merton meditations and my miniature labyrinth (also from Jen). These are the elements that make up the microcosm of my life.

The little red and black books on the right are my latest journals. One is labeled The Plan, the other is labeled The Theory. I started these particular journals a few months ago when I thought I might actually be able to figure out a systematic approach to stitching my life back together again.

It's not working very well. Those two journals are about as chaotic a set of documents as I have produced in the nearly 40 years that I have been keeping journals. I still don't know any more than I did when I first started keeping track of the meandering thoughts in my brain.

Finally, the little black bag in the corner of the photo carries my work materials, my laptop in particular. Over the last year and a half it is the black bag and the zafu that have come to represent the yin and yang of who I am. My work and my sitting and the places that those touch the lives of the people in my life. That's really all I feel right now.

The great big grandiose plans I have had at various points of my life and the big troublesome fears and worries that have plagued my nights and days. Right now... these days... they pretty much all come down to the stuff in this picture... and the invisible attachments that lead out from there.

I Could Have Danced All Night...

2006-10-12T19:17:00.000-05:00

The thing I didn't mention about the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Fest was the fact that on Saturday, Jen and Andy and Mel and a whole bunch of their friends (Stuart, and Jerry and Eric in particular) joined me at the fest and, for the first time in many many years I got to dance to Cajun music with my daughter. Her comment was, "I'm not any better at this than I was when I was eight...." well, the thing about that is, neither am I. But who cares... it's dancing and we don't have to be good.

Jen sent me the picture earlier today and I just found a copy of the John Denver song that is (yeah yeah it's embarassing but it's true)the source of her name. I was younger (a LOT younger) than she is now when I heard this song and thought I wanted to give my child this name. It's interesting to me that it's a song about dancing and Jen is definitely a lover of dance. Considering how many women of her age are named Jennifer, I'm guessing there was a fair number of people who liked the song. But I don't care... to me it's about her... and (like the song says) I do want to live forever "... in all the joy and all the sorrow we can only hope to share." If I've learned anything this last year, it's something like that.

Having the chance to dance, even for just a few minutes, with my girl... hey... it really doesn't get any better than that.

I'll Never Get Over Those Blue Eyes...

2006-10-11T14:23:00.000-05:00

It's taken me three days to really come to terms with processing the three days that I spent at the Warren Hellman / Emmylou Harris Amazing Music Fest, otherwise known as The Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. With the single exception of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, there is nothing anywhere that compares to this.

The weekend started, as I mentioned in a previous post, with Friday afternoon's Speedway Meadow concert featuring Jimmie Dale Gilmore (one of my all time favorite musicians)and Butch Hancock, followed by Elvis Costello… with accompaniment provided by the Blue Angels. Joining the roster of players was Emmylou Harris (The Goddess of Music in my opinion), Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, who all joined Elvis' set (after he had already played a 30 minute solo set, AND a 30 minute band set ) for a rousing hour long preview of just the way the rest of the weekend was bound to go. The San Francisco weather even responded when the grey fog of the previous week, broke through to clear skies (something almost unheard of in the fogbank of western San Francisco) at sunset. A glowing orange sun lit the stage with an ethereal light while the whole crew sang an astonishing rendition of "Train Train" to close the set, before returning for several encores, including Elvis' declaration of political clarity – "What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love and Understanding?"

The weather held for the rest of the weekend with bright sunny skies and San Francisco's amazing Indian Summer temperatures providing the unspoken theme of clarity and brilliance as every style of music found its way into the Hardly part of the fest and Bluegrass Legends (and near legends) held forth on the Banjo stage, the Rooster stage, the Arrow stage and more.

The constant reminder of Bush's war machine, in the guise of the daily Blue Angels flyover (it's Fleet Week in San Francisco doncha know) provided an interesting juxtaposition to anti-war tunes of every possible stripe from classic bluegrass protests about the human cost of war (written in response to our own civil war, but still applicable to the one currently taking place in Iraq) to reimagined blues tunes like Huddy Leadbetter's "Beaujois Town", 60s utopiana like "If You're Going to San Francisco," and hot off the presses esoteric protests like T Bone Burnett's "Palestine Texas."

The highlight for me though.. in the midst of three days of astonishing acts, and painful choices (I had to forego hearing the North Mississippi Allstars and Richie Furay in order to catch Richard Thompson and Emmylou Harris), was Emmylou's opening afternoon duet with Elvis on "I Still Miss Someone." Bluegrass, and bluegrass influenced music of all stripes, is nothing if not melancholy and the pain of loss (lost love, lost lives, lost opportunities) is the rue from which the gumbo of the music comes to full boil. In that sense, beginning with that lovely duet Friday, plucking at my personal heartstrings with golden voice and thoughtful touch, and concluding in much the same manner at sunset Sunday, it was in this musical reflection of the losses in my life during the last year (the loss of love, of home, of place, of purpose) and the similar (and often far more profound) losses of friends and acquaintences, that I found relief and strength and joy and hope. Obviously, these were accompanied by the frequent tears I have come to know of late and the deep hurt in my chest that never totally goes away. But it was on this weekend, saturated by this music, that I was treated, again, to the bright flower of a hopeful future that seems to be rising from the raggedy ass garden of my disconnected life.

What a weekend!

Thanks Emmy!

Thanks Warren!

By the way...

2006-10-06T13:45:00.000-05:00

I just got a new cell phone yesterday, so for those of you who need to know the number... it's 707-364-2419.

You can of course still reach my on my other numbers:

San Francisco - 415-691-6140
New Orleans - 504-273-6186

Or online at Skype. My Skypename is mercreate.

Joy Will Find A Way

2006-10-06T13:15:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, while reading a book review by a new friend of mine (and the person from whom I am renting my room in Petaluma) I read a reference to the author Mark Nepo, referring to him as a "deep optimist" and it captured my imagination. I think my attraction to the idea is strong because, in contrast to the depression I have felt over so much time, I am feeling very optimistic myself these days.

I wake up every morning with a deep gratitude for the world outside my window and the day that is ahead. I even find that days when I know there's much work and responsibility (something that I have not always been happy about) I head into the day with a sense of joy and anticipation. This is something that feels like a legacy from the last year since Katrina. So much of my life over the last year has been a wait and see, take it step by step, kind of reality that I have fallen into a sort of slot of optimism that is almost always peaceful and sometimes downright exciting. I find that I anticipate the day and look forward to finding out what I don't know yet. The experience is no doubt aided by the big tree outside my window that I wake up to every morning; it's as if I live in a tree house, my window view filled with green (now turning to yellow) leaves and the sound of birds filtering through into my slowly rising consciousness. I find myself – every day – waking up with a smile and a thank you on my lips.

Right now I'm sitting in the back corner of the Beach Chalet on the beach in San Francisco (that's my view from the window at the top there). I'm grabbing a bite to eat, a beer and some WiFi, and after I finish this, I'll be loading up some new material for web work I've been doing this week before I head out for the afternoon show in Golden Gate Park (Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Elvis Costello) opening the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Fest... three days of fun and music (as they said once about another fest). It's rainy and foggy and we all may be turned into wet noodles before the weekend's out, but it'll be worth it (particularly since, thanks to Warren Hellman, the whole event is FREE).

The music - as always - stands on its own.

And that says a lot.

Bruce Springsteen's new album features a rockin' folky version of an incredible piece of American folk music, Mary Don't You Weep. It's a song that's been holding me up since I first heard it while still in NewOrleans this spring. Bruce Cockburn used to do a song called Joy Will Find A Way, a song that always brought gladness to my heart and a smile to my face. At this point in time... quite literally by some sort of amazing surprise, I find myself feeling that kind of uplift almost every day.

I really have no idea where I'm going over the next few months (who knows, maybe even years), but damn if the journey ain't turnin' out to be fun!

But... Butt... BUTTS

2006-09-29T09:07:00.000-05:00

It's a rainy Friday morning in Northern California. It's the kind of morning that brings out a reflective attitude and thought process; it's a morning for reading, thinking, poetry writing and BIG IDEAS!

One of those ideas hit me a few hours ago and I couldn't decide whether to post it here, or on headbutts or Washington's Cousin.

It's a thought that applies equally to the topics of each, so I decided to throw it up here.

Give it a read... give it some thought.

I'm probably crazy, but it's clearly a good idea.

Like Hell It Was!

2006-09-27T13:33:00.000-05:00

I promised more to say about the Saints game and about New Orleans and about... well about everything, but I find myself speechless, still, two days after the fact.

This problem is exacerbated by the fact that the tires I've been driving on to try and get every last bit of rubber out of them, have finally decided to give up the ghost. Last night in The City (fortunately just as I turned a corner, as opposed to when I might have been on the Golden Gate Bridge a few minutes later, or on the downhill side of Waldo Grade half an hour later) my right front tire blew out. So now, I'm runnning on 4 bad tires and no spare. It's got my mind a bit pre-occupied.

SO... instead of coming up with grand eloquence about how deeply moved I was on Monday night (and how weird it was to be in a sports bar full of people who couldn't figure out why I kept screaming, or sobbing, or screaming AND sobbing), I am going to, instead, thank my dear friend Mary - who was actually AT THE GAME - for sending me the link to today's column from The God of Southern Journalism, Chris Rose.

Read it and weep!

---

P.S. My favorite line.... "Irma sang the national anthem. Jesus wept and I died. Then and there. Died over and over. Live, die, rise up. Live, die, rise up. Over and over."

Me too... and I was all the way on the other side of the country watching on a TV set in a sports bar named "Beyond the Glory."

Go Saints!

2006-09-25T22:33:00.000-05:00

I ain't got nothin' else to say except that I really wish I was home damnit!

I'll have more to say tomorrow... but right now, all I really wanna do is go to bed.

Good game boys!

Corrie's Running...

2006-09-24T08:49:00.000-05:00

An odd Race for the Cure this year, but something I still had to do.

The Sun Is Going Away...

2006-09-22T09:52:00.000-05:00

Yeah yeah... I know... it's been over a week and I haven't posted anything. It's been one of those kinda weeks, but then I guess it's really been one of those kind of years.

Thursday was the autumnal equinox, the day on the fall end of the calendar when the night time and the day time are of equal length. On top of that, there's an eclipse today as well. Those of us in the Northern Hemisphere won't really catch it, but it's out there nonetheless. From here on out to the end of the year, the sun is leaving us and moving down to warmer climes.

I feel a great temptation to follow it. To move, right along with old sol down to Brazil, or Argentina, or Peru. I would like to maintain an equilibrium of light to darkness; equal amounts sun and shadow, some sort of hope that the light at the end of the tunnel is not, in fact, a train.

A year ago I was right where I am now. I had just returned to Petaluma after having spent two weeks in exile in North Carolina. At the time, I expected my return here to be brief; a chance to pull some things together and figure out what to do while they were draining the water out of my city. By Halloween I was back in New Orleans fully imagining that by Mardi Gras we would be getting things, more or less, back to normal.

Not so, unfortunately, best laid plans of mice and men and all that sort of thing. Since that time a year ago, I've been back and forth between New Orleans and San Francisco half a dozen times and I have tried to find a place that feels like home in one of those places or the other only to continue, as before, living rather nomadically with little sense of permanence and less sense of direction.

I do like living by the seasons though. There's something that intrigues me in the feeling that I am tied close to the earth, connected with the shifting elements, tucked into Gaia's arms and floating with her rhythms as she crosses the heavens, hurtling through space.

It is certainly an interesting reality of the universe that while it seems we are making no progress at all, we are at the same time moving so fast, so furiously, through space and time. We are at one and the same instant incredibly important and totally insignificant.

Still looking for a place to call home

2006-09-14T14:06:00.000-05:00

My friend Mary gave me a call this afternoon to let me know that one of my favorite singers in the world, Judith Owen, was on WWL radio New Orleans and that I could listen to it online. Judith is in New Orleans to play at my favorite venue anywhere, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art for their Thursday night concert. I checked her website and she'll be in San Francisco at The Makeout Room in two weeks and I'll be there to hear it. Judith, and her husband Harry Shearer, live, like me, in two places and, since Katrina, have been back and forth many times. In their case it's NOLA and Santa Monica. Thanks to the Simpsons they have resources to live in two places that I do not at this point possess, but the draw and the catch that moves them to be in both places is echoed precisely in my own experience.

This little interlude from New Orleans comes at the peak of several things that have been going on over the last few days. I've been working hard to complete material for the Churches Supporting Churches website (complete with fabulous Flash opening created by Hoz) and discussions with folks near and far about a trip I'll soon be making to New Orleans and then on to Ohio to speak to people about New Orleans. It all comes back around, like happens so often, to the sense that I am still deeply out of place. I have been in California for just over three months and I've been thinking I might stay here for another three months before heading back to The Crescent City, but there's no way I can hold out that long.

This is who I am... My heart lives in San Francisco AND New Orleans. I keep trying to delineate some kind of separation but it's never going to happen. I am of two minds, I possess two souls, I have two homes (and no home at all).

Now, I just have to figure out how to survive it.

A Tale of Three Cities

2006-09-11T13:25:00.000-05:00

September 11 is what it is. Knowing that the date was coming, feeling some difficulty in knowing how to respond and some quandry at the way our government has used the suffering of our people to justify creating untold suffering on others, I have been waffling all week with what to write on this day, or whether to write at all.

Then I received an historical note from some friends at the BPFNA and I realized what I needed to write.

This is of course a day of historically trying circumstance, a memory for us as U.S. citizens that does not easily go away. What is maddening about the commemorations, and the justifications (and things like tonnight's show on ABC) is that the suffering of people has not been given its proper attention by the people who claim to be giving it attention. Instead they are simply using it (as they always do) to justify the machinations of their own power mongering and war making.

On another day, 28 years earlier, the U.S. took the occasion of another 9.11 to initiate the attack, and ultimate destruction, of the democratically elected government of Chile. Our president at the time, Tricky Dick, was behind that one as the CIA and the military joined together, much in the same way as today, to overthrow a foreign government with as much violence and disregard for human life as those guys on the planes five years ago.

On still another day, 100 years ago today, a different kind of overthrow was initiated when on September 11, 1906, Mohandas Gandhi convened a meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa, to mobilize his community to oppose racially degrading legislation. On that September 11th, more than 3,000 people solemnly pledged to disobey the proposed law. this was the begining of the "Satyagraha" movement of organized nonviolent action, and the rest, as they say, is history.

As you remember the day, and those who died, please take some time to remember the others as well. The folks who died in New Orleans because our government was too busy in Iraq, the ones who have died in Iraq itself (our soldiers as well as Iraqis), thos e who were killed by us 30 years ago in South America and those who died at the hands of the dictator we installed.

Remember too... Gandhi and his peaceful revolution. The fact is not that non-violence CAN'T change the world. The fact is that it's never really been tried.

My Darling New Orleans

2006-09-04T16:23:00.000-05:00

It's been three months since I was in the Crescent City, but just in case anybody has doubts on where my heartstrings are tugged, I want to make some things perfectly clear.

New Orleans is, and will forever be, my home.

I am currently, and will probably be for a long time, a resident of San Francisco. As most know, before moving to New Orleans last summer, I had been a resident of the San Francisco Bay Area (a term I really detest by the way) for nearly 30 years and there was a time when I felt like San Francisco was likely the only place I could ever live. That changed a few years ago when I first experienced New Orleans tugging – consciously – at my heartstrings for the first time. I later became aware of the fact that the city had been tugging at me since I was 15 (maybe even earlier) and I was just a bit too dim to notice.

Now… as I have mentioned here on several occasions, I feel a somewhat divided loyalty. There are some things that are very important to me about California in general, and San Francisco in particular. First and foremost, my daughter is here. She's one of those rare people who was born and raised in San Francisco (probably a species that is even more rare than the person born and raised in NOLA). Secondly there is the ocean and to prpoerly discuss my relationship to the ocean would take a much longer posting and perhaps an entire blog of its own. Thirdly, there's the City itself – the food, the wine, the art, the music, and the theater – the entire aesthetics of the place I have loved and been at home in for so long that it feels like it’s a part of my body and my soul. Fourth on the list, there's Northern California in particular (Big Sur especially, but that's another other story) and the whole state in general. Lastly, but by no means leastly, there are the people whom I love throughout the state. These days – because of the people, and even because of the place – I'm even in love with LA, and that's a real challenge to admit for a diehard San Franciscan like me.

But… it's interesting… I have a very different reaction to both of the places that I love to call home.

San Francisco, with my history and my daughter; with the conversation and the politics (and the beer… oh my god, the beer) and the deep sense I possess that I have been here before, is a home for me in a completely wholistic, connected, and interesting way.

New Orleans, on the other hand, with her people, her food, and the ubiquitous, effervescent music that I love, has captured my heart in a way that I have never experienced before and which I certainly never expected. I love New Orleans like no place on earth. Over the last year – and particularly over the last three months while I have been solidly back in California – I have had people engage me and ask me point blank if I'm actually planning to move back. It's such an unbelievably odd question I can't even be polite about it any longer. Yes, I say. Then I just go on (or off, depending on your perspective on my particular commmunication style) about how I can't get Louisiana outta my blood. On a day like today, when I've spent a number of hours listening to New Orleans music and thinking New Orleans thoughts, it fills me up so completely that I can hardly stand it. Like some sort of strange shamanic force, New Orleans pulls at my soul, lifting it from my body and drawing it through space and time on a journey that lands me, fully awake and aware, in the middle of St. Charles Avenue, across from Popeye's, and down the street from Cooter Brown's.

I am in love with My Darling New Orleans more than I have ever been in love with another place or (with the exception of a handful of dearly loved folks)most people and I want to be there so badly I could scream (in fact, sometimes, I do scream). My challenge right now is to figure out how to bring something to the New Orleans table. There is so much needed and so much to do, but there is little business, and even lesser resources. When I moved to The Crescent City over a year ago, I was prepared to work and dig and scrape to find the work and the resources that what I do always requires (especially in a new location). After Katrina, it's another story entirely. Everyone – or nearly everyone – in New Orleans needs help, and as a wet behind the ears newcomer I don't feel that I have the credibility, or even the right, to go after what others need to persue as well. My calling, on this side of The Thing, is to find resources to bring back to my city. To add to, or hopefully even MULTIPLY, the resources available in order to help more than just myself.

New Orleans really is my home and I am sure that I will ultimately live out the last of my life, "On the Avenue." For now, I am content – in fact there are days, sometimes even weeks, when I am significantly more than content; when I am downright happy – to be living on the western edge of the continent, looking out at the ocean and planning a way to go home.

One more for the year...

2006-09-02T17:39:00.000-05:00

Bob Geiger at the Huffington Post has rerun a column that he wrote last year after Katrina and if you haven't read it, you should. If you have read it, well... read it again. It's a commentary on the picture here, which is of a kid in the Superdome a few days after Katrina.

The picture itself, and Bob's reaction to it reminds me of the first time I went to Nicaragua in December of 83, when my daughter was just about to turn two. It seemed like every kid in that war torn country was "dos anos." They were all just cute little terrors that reminded me, several times a day of the little girl I had left safely behind in California. The problem was, these kids weren't safe. Their houses were being shot at, their farms were being burned, and their parents were being murdered, by people who, at the very least, were being encouraged by our government, or were being paid by our government, or, worst of all, were American soldiers sent to fight against the Sandinista government and the people of Nicaragua. When I got back to the U.S. a fortnight later, I was forced to face into my own complicity in their horrors, sickness and death. I had to face the fact that my little girl was safe, while they were in danger, and I was responsible for both situations. That realization led me to take a number of actions that I'll have to go into some other time on some other blog, but some of those actions are still affecting me today.

The little boy in the picture, and Bob's beautiful column in response is the same situation all over again, only this time it's all happening on our "home ground."

The fact remains that, whether it's a kid down the block , on the other side of the country, or on the other side of the world, we are all in this damn life together, and somewhere, sometime, pretty damn soon, we all better start acting like it.

In the meantime... read it and weep.

It's Hell Without Brains

2006-09-01T22:42:00.000-05:00

I'm sitting on Petaluma Boulevard using the WiFi from a real estate office across the street.

In front of me just pulled up a big gas guzzling silverado pickup with a smiling fish sticker (looks kind of like a Jesus Shark) on the tailgate.

On the right side of the rear bumper is a sticker that states "It's HELL without JESUS" (along with attendant cheap graphical rendition of hell fire), on the left rear bumper is a sticker that states "fucbinladen."

I don't know what it's like without Jesus (though I'm pretty sure that I'm not interested in this guy's version of him), but damn if it sure ain't hell without brains!

42 Reasons Why!

2006-08-30T20:21:00.000-05:00

That's Fred LeBlanc of Cowboy Mouth (and the rest of the band as well) over there on the left... He's got a song that you have hopefully played off this blog before, but if you haven't well, then you should right now. He/they get the award for best band/artist in Gambit Weekly's Best of New Orleans issue. Printing the pages off the website will cost you 42 pages of recycled paper, but damnit... trust me... It's a great freaking list!

I was going to start listing my favorites (including two, count them two, listings for Bruce Springsteen's mind boggling jazzfest performance... in NEW ORLEANS, where they almost never give an out of towner a music or a food award).

So... here's the plan... go to the website, print out the list, then go to JetBlue, or Southwest and book yourself a cheap flight, and head on down.

Then write back and let me know what YOU LIKE!

If you're already there, then you already know... so what are YOUR favorites?

Nothing To See Here... Please Move Along

2006-08-29T21:48:00.000-05:00

Okay... enough of that. It strikes me that it's time to start getting things done around here (wherever "here" might actually be).

Here's a piece from the stellar NPR series "This I Believe". It says a lot about why people are drawn back to New Orleans even after, and perhaps even a little bit because of, what's happened.

I feel very much the same way.

Use Me While You Can

2006-08-29T16:15:00.000-05:00

It was a year ago this morning that I sat next to M on her bed in Hattiesburg as we watched Katrina pass over, around, and through us, and I put my hand on her leg. It was a non-verbal way of trying to say, "thanks for taking us in," an expression of tenderness and connection, of despairing fear coupled with a modicum of hope leftover from our 17 years of loving each other. That really was the point where we were finally over. It was a moment that will remain indelibly carved into the granite spaces at the deep center of my memory.

It's taken an entire year for me to get that, to figure out how complete and permanent it was; I've flopped backward and forward in my lack of understanding, my hurt frustration, and my desperate need to be loved still, and more. But we were done that morning just as surely as the folks in New Orleans, who didn't know how hopeless the situation really was, were doomed to be left and lost and forgotten.

What I didn't know at the time was that I was one of those people too.

I did not suffer in any way like they suffered for I had the resources and the opportunity to escape the worst of that storm's fury. I had only lived in New Orleans for a month and my roots were only just beginning to grow down into that bayou dirt. Nonetheless, in that moment, with my reality divided between two, even three places, with no home and with all that I had collected over 51 years of living given away, lost, or about to be; life as I had known it, was ending.

I wake up this morning in the place where this journey started 390 days ago (the day before I moved to NOLA) and it almost feels like nothing has happened, like this morning's awakening was simply a normal rise from sleep and the close of a strangely disconcerting dream. As if the last year – the last 18 years, in fact – has been a sort of Wizard of Oz experience where everything that happened was simply an unconscious drama played out on the cinema screen of my nocturnal perambulations.

Even now, as I write this, tap tap tapping on my laptop keyboard, I look up through the kitchen window to the view of fog shrouded trees and brown dried grass, Bruce Cockburn's music wafts passed my ears, and I feel an odd disconnection of body and mind; I struggle, literally, to grasp for the straws of maya that pass for the previous 365 days of living. They are vanishing before me, even as I reach to snatch them and pull them in, placing them in a shoe box, securing it with tape and tucking it in underneath all of the other junk in the back of the car that currently passes for the closest thing to permanence I possess. Maybe… if I'm lucky, or wise… some day I can open the box and sort through all the scraps and figure out what the hell happened.

For now, what I have to help me make it through is the anger I feel at the callousness, incompetence and veniality of those who could have prevented that other disaster and who could have, in the ensuing year provided the kind of help necessary for a true new beginning for people I know there who have nothing, or nearly nothing, still. Could have, that is, if they were not otherwise distracted by their grasping, greedy, misguided quests for fortune and fame.

I am also sustained by my connections, new and old connections, to people who love me, root for me, and support me just as Dorothy's friends took care of her as they meandered through Oz. Without each of those (you) folks, without the prayers, generosity, thoughtfulness, hopefulness, humor and encouragement I have received, I really don't think I would have made it this far. In fact, I am CERTAIN that I wouldn't have. Honestly.

I really have very little idea where I am going from here. I feel nearly as lost this morning as I did surrounded by the snapping trees and pounding rain of Katrina's fury and this day feels like starting again, again. On the other hand, maybe that's the point of every day.

As it has done for all of my adult life, Bruce Cockburn's music reaches across time and experience to describe this moment perfectly; it sets me, at least temporarily, back on the path.

"I've had breakfast in New Orleans, dinner in Timbuktu
I've lived as a stranger in my own house too
Dark hand waves in lamp light
Cowrie shell patterns change
And NOTHING will be the same again…"

Lucky

2006-08-28T13:49:00.000-05:00

My birthday (I promise this is the last post on this subject) started with a song on my car stereo - one of those perfect song moments that make it feel like someone is composing a soundtrack for your life – just as I started the car the song came blasting from the speakers… Melissa Etheridge starting the whole weekend's theme with "I wanna see how lucky, lucky can be… Ride with me." On those notes, I headed out of my little side street and into the rest of my life.

For some strange reason the song kept finding it's way into my consciousness over and over again throughout the weekend. Another significant moment being when I got in the car after going to Glide Memorial yesterday and being treated to a Katrina weep fest (half an hour of choir music and Katrina photos) that was purging and aching and powerful all at once, combined with a pep rally sermon from Pastor Douglas Finch that majored on the idea that you must take your own power into your life and neither give it away nor expect others to do the work of living for you. It was a strong message and absolutely perfect for the day. Returning down Ellis Street (thoguh the crowds of hookers and homeless) to my car, I got in, turned the engine, and got walloped right between the eyes with Melissa's Lucky Song (it wasn't until this point that I noticed that when programming the album sequence she had the perverted sense of humor to make the song cut #13).

Now… heading into a new week and a new year, on the anniversary of my escape from Katrina (at this very moment one year ago I was filling up Pat Jolly's van and looking for a way out of town, a 100 mile journey up to Hattiesburg that would wind up taking eleven hours), I am ready to put a new shine on this journey. If last year was the "year of leaving dangersously" this next year must be the year of returning to life.

There's another line, from another song on the same album, in which Melissa sings that "I am still learning the lesson, to awake when I hear the call…" I think that's my new image for this new year. It's that sense that the central image of Buddhism is "Wake Up!

So… here we go. I'm ready… I hope…

What's Next?

-------------------

And while we're on the subject of LUCK... it's looking like Eduardo is going to be nice to New Orleans and go blast the poor folks in Florida this time. I hope those Okeechobee levees hold!

It's My Party and I'll Blog If I Want To

2006-08-26T10:46:00.000-05:00

I had an absolutely great day yesterday!

It was probably, on an emotional level, the best birthday that I have had in years. I heard from all kinds of friends, I completed a series of work plans that I had been working on for the past week (really much of the past four months, but it all came to a head in the past week). I spoke with one "old" friend, who has his birthday just a month before mine and heard stories of how he is in very much the same place as me; starting new work, moving forward in ways that he never imagined... It was a true reaffirmation of new life right at the anniversary of the events of a year ago that turned so much of my life into chaos.

Some of my big plans (dinner and the theater with my kid for example... a big party for all the local late August birthday boys) got put aside, but I ended the day with a load of friends hanging out drinking, laughing, and talking. I even had creme brulee with a candle on top!

Now that's the way to close out a birthday.

Leaving the Waters of Babylon...

2006-08-24T21:15:00.000-05:00

There is really no reason for this flag at the left, it just happens to have come in my email from the New Orleans Neighborhood Rebuilding Plan and I like it... I like it a lot.

So there... I realized earlier this week that not only is tomorrow my birthday, this whole week has been sort of a symbolic closure to not just one year of unmitigated disaster, but ten years of turmoil, frustration and creative enervation. Ten years ago this week, I had a seizure on the freeway that should have killed me, but I got away with a seriously smashed up hand, and a new neurologist. The point in and of itself was the culmination of a long process that included a major personal depression and a full year of the roller coaster nightmare that was my partner's cancer diagnosis, treatment, surgery, and further treatment. I have always attributed the particular timing of the event to my body - with Marsha safe and also out of town - finally declaring, "OKAY... my turn for a breakdown!"

These thoughts came to me during my attempt (relatively unsuccessful, but valiant nonetheless) to force myself into a sort of year end reflective retreat. As I urged myself to look back on decades of achievement (and un-achievement) I became keenly aware of how fallow my creative ground has been over the last ten years, as compared to times before. I could go on and on, and some of you who read this know exactly what I mean... but I won't. The exile is over.

I decided to take that as a signpost... a new direction... a way out and a way home.

I hereby plant my flag... August 2005 - August 2006 has been a transition year of chaos in the same way that the year of August 1995 - August 1996 was a transition year of chaos. The decade in between I have decided to give over to the gods and goddesses as time sacrificed for love, learning, growth, heart, hope and new direction.

It's time to start again... It's time to retrieve the harps from the trees, to recall the songs forgotten and look to the journey ahead.

As Fast Eddie (played by Paul Newman) says at the end of The Color Of Money...

I'm back!

Time Travel... There and Back Again

2006-08-17T14:47:00.000-05:00

I've had the picture at left on my desktop for the past couple of weeks and it always brings a smile to my face. It's a picture of my daughter on a trip through Ireland that she and her sweetie made last spring.

What I see on the top of it all is the delight on her face and in her life in the midst of that beautiful country at a happy time in life.

What I see below the surface is four generations - well, really five - from my grandmother (and her parents even) who began in Ireland before making it across the ocean, through Canada, and New York City, and Philadelphia, and New York City again,and Miami... and on and on through my mom's life, my dad's life, my life, and now Jen's life lying out ahead of her.

It's all there in that one picture of Jen on the side of a lake in the Irish springtime.

After all the weird places I've been in the last year and the strange, sometimes very hard experiences I've had, I find a really great joy in looking back through time as I gaze at this picture... It reminds me of how everything moves forward... and how all of us move on.

That's something worth remembering a week away from my birthday and just 12 days away from the anniversary of The Thing.

Some Cats DON'T Know...

2006-08-11T14:52:00.000-05:00

A few months ago I wrote a piece on the wisdom and life of William Sloane Coffin and how it affected me. I used a title from a song by Leiber & Stoller that I first heard done by Liza Minelli but which has also been done by many others, including Peggy Lee... It's a great song with all the right innuendo and I can't ever listen to it without taking a sort of self-delusional pride in the sense that I am myself one of those "cats."

But that's another story and NOT what this column is about.

[For another tidbit of something that this column is NOT about (namely the flag patch on the Lieutenant General's right arm) go to George Washington's Cousin... Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.]

What THIS column IS about is a guy - one of a never ending governmental list - who is definitely NOT one of those cats who know. He's one of those cats, like Mike Brown, or Michael Chertoff, or Fearless Leader... oops I mean THAT Fearless Leader who have so much to say at the beginning but are foiled in the end by their very own material.

The facts are... as they were, continue to be, and will probably be in the future... that the work on the New Orleans levees by the Army Corps of Engineers was, is, and will most likely continue to be, substandard, dangerous, and downright immoral in its inadequacy, incompleteness, and ineptitude. Therefore... Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, head of the Corps, is doing what every good soldier throughout history has done; he's falling on his sword... Oh wait... no he's not! My mistake... he's taking early retirement and will no doubt find a way to parlay his post-Katrina experience into consulting and speaking engagements at astronomical rates. Of course it also means that he removes himself from the scene of the crime before another storm takes it out on his latest handiwork.

The only people even more clueless than this bunch would have to be these folks buying ads through Google that point to this blog.

Some cats... are dogs (and not in a good way).

I Might Static Out At Any Moment

2006-08-10T23:38:00.000-05:00

And I might reassemble in Tibet...

There's a song on the new T Bone Burnett album (it's actually an outake that made it onto the iTunes version), and that line wins my nomination for the best lyric of 2006.

Staticing out feels like the perfect description of the reality I experience on a regular basis.

There's an article from AP this morning about the mental health problems being faced by folks trying to bring back their lives in New Orleans. It's a story about a Times-Picayune photographer who just flat out lost it the other night and wound up in a major altercation with cops, begging them to kill him.

The article provides an interesting juxtaposition to the conversation I had two nights ago in which someone, safely ensconced in his northern california sanctimonious cluelessness, expended a great deal of effort explaining to me why my experiences post-Katrina have been somehow less significant than those of others who lost more than I did.

Like there's a competition and someone's going to be declared the winner of the most to suffer award.

I really might just static out at any moment...

At times like this I really find great comfort in the strange, sometimes painful, regularly profound and always mind altering lyrics of T Bone (and a few others who definitely show up on my desert island disc list).

This album closes with a live version of an old T Bone song, "River of Love" that is so packed with brilliant lyrics that it's not even possible to isolate one as singularly special. It's just one of those songs that hits you on every chord change.

For example:

The first step was hard
but I've had trouble with them all

Or how about... Oh forget it.... Just listen to the damn song.

As for me... I've never been closer... and I've never been farther away.

What's wrong with this picture?

2006-08-04T16:37:00.000-05:00

Could it be that while these lovely gates look wonderfully dramatic, they don't actually have anything to do with accomplishing anything? That's just one of many stories coming out of New Orleans this week as folks had a little trial by fire with the (still) possible incursion of Hurricane Chris into the New Orleans bathtub.

WWL had a whole slew of stories about how the much talked about bus evacuation was really a pipe dream. C. Willy had a lot to say about whether or not he thought that they could require RTA bus drivers to actually stick around and help evacuate folks without transportation. This being a central part of the BIG PLAN that Reverend Wonka rolled out just in time to win the election back in April, everyone was oh so careful to point out that National Guard Troops would be available to help out.

In other news, the Army Corpse of Engineers started back to work on several items that were on the agenda, but hadn't been quite fully addressed yet (after eleven months) and Michael Chertoff, using the old state's rights excuse (wasn't there a war fought over this once?) made it very clear that, when it comes to help from FEMA, New Orleanians are as SOL as they were last year.

So... the BIG question that everyone out here in the hinterlands has been asking is finally answered... "Is New Orleans ready for another hurricane?"

In a word... HELLNO!

Blow Satch Blow!

2006-08-03T20:33:00.000-05:00

Satchmo Summerfest started today and, as usual, I'm jonesing big time to be back in my Crescent City where they're servin' up red beans and rice while Kermit and Irvin are wailin' on they horns.

Last summer on Friday night, I met Pat Jolly and hit the Satchmo Club Strut on Frenchman Street. I found Tom Morgan who told me "welcome home" and I met Chuck Siler for the first time.

I didn't know what the hell I was gonna do, and I sure as hell didn't have any idea that the year was going to turn out the way it did, but I was indeed home and now I feel oh so far away.

Have a good weekend Big Easy... I miss y'all so much!

Here we go...

2006-08-02T12:10:00.000-05:00

The third tropical storm of the season, Chris (is that a male Chris or a female Chris... or is this storm transgendered?), is poised off in the eastern Carribean preparing to become the season's first hurricane.

Right now it's looking like he/she could head almost anywhere and if the people I know in Florida and Louisiana are holding their breaths like I am here in California we could all die of asphyxiation before we find out. I've already pulled out the little paper hurricane map I picked up when I was last in New Orleans, taped it to the desk where I sit and have begun tracking this storm like I used to do when I was a kid in Florida.

The Hard Floor of Day...

2006-07-31T17:53:00.000-05:00

This past weekend marked the one year anniversary of this blog (next weekend marks the one year anniversary of my move to New Orleans and my break up with ECKS).

There really isn't a lot more to say about that... you can read it for yourself... if you aren't sick of it already.

The thing is, as I've said many times before, this anniversary tells me it's time to start again; it's time to to learn something new, to explore the new doors that were blown open by the winds of Katrina, to head down some roads I've passed by in my journeys. There are a goodly number of people who think me just a bit unstable and relatively insane (and that's being kind) but this year has taught me (more completely than I really wanted to know) that the path reveals itself as it rises in front of you.

So... the carousel is about to take another twirl, and here we go again.

As for me... I've got this thing in my heart I must give it today....

Happy New Year.

Blindsided Again...

2006-07-27T09:32:00.000-05:00

Back in February I said to Jesse Moore that if I could hear "It's Gonna Be Okay" and not cry, then I would know that I was on the way to recovery. A couple of months later it happened and I thought that I was getting better.

Then… a relapse. I heard the song on another day and I wept like a baby (actually it was much deeper than a baby's weeping… baby's cry… a lot… but it really isn't weeping. At least not as I've seen, or as I've figured it. Weeping is reserved for big, old, weighty grown up pain). It was then that I realized I wasn't as "better" as I thought.

Yesterday was one of those kind of moments. Moving along, stumbling toward Bethlehem, not feeling great, but feeling alright, when BAM (as Emerial would say) I was hit right in the side of the face with a book… And I lost it… again.

I didn't really need to pick the book up off the shelf (frankly I find it distressing that it was ON the shelf at all, I would prefer it be one of those books that is immediately grabbed up by the first person passing by, but it didn't happen that way) and I certainly didn't need to open it up in order to see what was in it, but that's what I did anyway. Looking at those pictures (of everyone on their roofs, and Nagin with his washcloth on his head, and Bush standing there looking as clueless as ever, and Michael Brown and on, and on, and on…) it all came back; the whole last year of my life and I realized that I'm really not over it, and won't be for quite some time.

Sooner or later, it really IS gonna be okay… but, clearly, it's not okay yet.

No Direction Home...

2006-07-26T17:23:00.000-05:00

I am sending this post from the Petaluma Public Library (great WiFi and good air-conditioning), where I just passed by a book on the shelf of new books; a book about Katrina.

The book is called "The Storm That Changed America" and while it's a nice title and all, I really don't think that it has any relevance to anything, because as far as I can tell in my year of meandering (and even in my most recent trip to the heart of the south) I don't see much CHANGE in America.

One of the things I DO see is the daily sense that comes up in one of the later chapters in the book. It talks about the "Katrina Diaspora" and titles the chapter, "No Direction Home." THAT... out of everything in the book... is exactly how I feel. I am not where I want to be, not where I am supposed to be, and despite all of the best efforts of my life for the past year, NOT WHERE I NEED TO BE. What I learned a couple of weeks ago in Atlanta, from a few other members of the disapora, is that I am certainly not alone in that reality. There are a lot of us, scattered all over the country, trying to get back to where we belong.

But the country... for the most part... has forgotten that we exist. The number of times I describe the CURRENT situation in New Orleans, to the collective blank stares of all those around me, has become almost boring in its repetetive predictability. This is OBVIOUSLY the same feeling almost anyone who has been in almost any disaster at almost anytime in history has shared... But that doesn't excuse it this time, in fact it calls us - as a national collective - to even greater account. This has happened enough! Damnit!

There's more I have to say about this... but you can find it here.

In the meantime... just... REMEMBER... It will very likely be YOU next time.

Never... Never...NEVER GIVE UP!

2006-07-23T20:20:00.000-05:00

Nobody (except maybe his wife)REALLY expected him to win...

He's only the third American to win it...
He's going to have a hip operation in a month...
He tanked - horribly - on Wednesday...
But THEN...

He showed tremendous heart and took it all in.

He rode a BLAZING ride on the hardest day of the Tour...
And he kicked it on the last individual race to win back the lead...

And he was raised a Mennonite... not exactly the most AGGRESIVE tradition on the planet.

TODAY... Floyd Landis is my HERO!