Shake... Rattle... And Roll

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...

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.