Saturday Night at the Myrtles

This past weekend I spent a wonderful evening and morning with some amazing women out at the Myrtles Plantation in St. Francisville, Louisiana.  In addition to being an absolutely gorgeous property, the Myrtles is chock full of fascinating history, and is really, rather, quite haunted.  Now, this was, in fact, a bachelorette party.  But I'll let someone else immortalize the randier details.  I want to talk about the spooks!

We arrived at the Myrtles just in time to check in and deposit our baggage in the Coco House, a spacious cottage brought over from the Coco Plantation, and head across a wide lawn to the courtyard amid the main buildings for the mystery tour.

After a brief history of the building's construction and the lives of the first two owners and their families, our tour guide Zach began leading us through the rooms.  First he led us into Mrs. Stirling's day room, where the third lady of the house would conduct her day to day business and take her daily nap.  This is apparently the favorite room of one of the house's more active haunts, a slave girl named Chloe, who was mistress to the second owner, Mr. Woodruff.  Zach told us of a time when re-enactments were staged on Halloween, and a young woman hired to play Chloe was so terrified by the apparition of a woman confronting her as she paced the room rehearsing her lines that she turned to flee to the safety of... the adjoining bathroom.  The door slammed itself shut before she got there, she ran smack into the door, and fell to the ground screaming, swearing she'd never set foot in the house again.

From there we visited the haunted mirror in the foyer.  The custom in Victorian times, as Zach explained, was to lay out the dead for viewing in the comfort of their own homes instead of in funeral parlors.  While the body rested in the house, all mirrors would be draped with black cloth to prevent the soul of the departed from being drawn into the mirror and trapped there.  But someone must have missed this mirror at some point, because you can clearly see the image of what looks like a face trying to get out on one side of the glass.  Along the other side are what appear to be a child's fingerprints, and an eerie weeping or drip pattern in the middle.  These very same markings have reappeared multiple times, within weeks of the mirror being disassembled, thoroughly cleaned, and re-silvered.  This mirror is the only area of the house were photographs are permitted, and I got some good shots of the markings.  Others did as well.  More on this later.

From the foyer with the mirror, Zach led us to the dining room.  Here it was that some of the other active presences suffered the hurt that parted their restless souls from their earthly bodies.  Remember Woodruff's mistress, the slave girl Chloe?  Chloe had been brought into the house as a nanny for the Woodruff children, but fell suddenly out of favor when she was caught eavesdropping on her master's important business meeting.  As punishment, he had her ear cut off and banished her from the house.  But Chloe had an absolutely fool-proof plan to get back into the family's good graces.  She intended to win back their favor by nursing the two Woodruff children back to health from severe illness.  And not one to wait for chance ailments, she made them a cake infused with oleander.  Sounds like a snap, right?  Well, Chloe misjudged, and the cake ended up killing both children, along with their mother, while Mr. Woodruff was away on business.  When he returned and learned the truth, he had Chloe hanged from a tree on the property.  Today many visitors have reported seeing a dark, young woman wearing a turban, with a fold of cloth draped over the left side of her head, just the way Chloe wore her head scarf, to hide her missing ear.  Such a figure has even been photographed on the property, along with the shadowy images of two children.

From the dining room we were taken to the ladies' parlor, where the ladies would withdraw after a meal.  Zach reported that every medium that visits the Myrtles finds this to be the psychic center of the house's mystical energy.  The bedroom above is known as the doll room because of the antique dolls that have adorned the mantle piece over the years.  As if dolls weren't creepy enough on their own, there have been stories about them, as well.  As we listened to these tales, I felt something brush along the back of my arm.  I turned to see that the nearest people behind me were strangers standing over a foot away.  I gave a mental greeting to anyone who might be a bit closer than them, the gesture was not repeated, and all in all I'm proud to report that I was not actually wigged out.  It really wasn't very dramatic.  I might have simply been in the way, or maybe someone was feeling friendly to their visitors.  The room was really too lovely and comfortable to feel creepy.  I have to say that the few encounters I've had with the departed have been domestic and soothing, and that's really how this felt.

From there we were shown the gentlemen's parlor, where the... fourth? owner (or possibly the third) was shot in the chest by a stranger who rode up to the porch on horseback one dark night.  Legend says that he reeled back into the room, turned, and with his young son, with whom he'd been playing in that room, fled deeper into the house.  He made it up the first seventeen steps of the central stair, where he collapsed, just short of the top, into his wife's arms, and died.  To this day, visitors sometimes hear his faltering steps on the stairs.

In the final showroom, the children's dining room and later the game room, we were shown the photo of Chloe between the general store building and the main house, and the shadows of the children on the room by the dormer window of their room, and our tour was concluded.

As we were enjoying a relaxing dinner in the Carriage House Restaurant on the grounds, a woman who had been on our tour came to our table to show us a photograph she'd taken at the haunted mirror.  I was unfortunately away from the table, so I didn't get to see it, but she promised to e-mail it to us, and I can't wait.  Apparently she'd caught Natalie, one of our group, in her shot of the mirror, and, clinging to Natalie's side, was the apparition of a small child.  I think it's significant that Natalie is the member of our group who has a little girl of her own.

After an evening of nuptial talk, bachelorette games, and wedding cake vodka, we all went to our beds for the night's repose.  Only one of us, though, had anything like a restful night.  I dreamed all night that I was lying awake in bed, afraid that the haunts were coming.  At one point in my dream, a small, ghostly white puppy came over and wanted to play, and I reached to touch it.  It felt so real, and when I looked over at Nathalie, she said she could see it, too, but I knew it must be a ghost puppy, because it was playing tug'o'rope while hovering a foot off the ground.  Then I dreamed that I was laying stock still under the covers, knowing Chloe was in the room, but if I stayed still, she'd let me alone.  In all of these dreams, the details of the room itself and my sleeping arrangement, on my back or on my side, and Nathalie on the other bed, to the left of mine, were exactly true to reality.  I only knew they were dreams because I'd wake up from them, realizing I wasn't actually afraid, and didn't actually sense any presence.

Jayna reports that she dreamed of ghostly figures materializing around her, coming nearer and nearer, while she was unable, in spite of every effort, to reach over to wake Ellen, her bedfellow, or even move or speak at all.  Ellen, in turn dreamed several times of turning over to look at Jayna, and seeing a corpse with shining blond hair.  Nathalie's dreams intrigue me most.  She dreamed that the little girl came to her, and that she spoke soothingly to the child, telling her what a happy place this home was, that the owners took beautiful care of it, and that this was a good place for her, and she did not need to come home with Nathalie, but should stay here!  The girl in her dream, she says, was around six or seven.  I had thought the Woodruff girl was younger than that when she died, but when we questioned our guide for the history tour the next morning after breakfast (Zach again), he told us that the boy was nine and the little girl seven at the time of the tragedy, a detail that had not been in his tour the night before.  Eeeerieeeeee!

The history tour had more info on southern, antebellum customs and architectural details of the house, which was wonderful.  Afterward, as we lounged in the row of rocking chairs on the front porch, we called Zach over and got him to tell us more stories of the ghostly goings on.  In spite of the terrible night sleep we all of us except for Jeanne had, the ghosts are much more playful than terrifying here, by all accounts.  This place is very most definitely worth a visit and an overnight stay.  If staying in the main house is too potentially scary for you, there are cottages like the Coco House and Caretaker's House, as well as a block of rooms in a new building behind the Carriage House Restaurant.

But I'd definitely like to come back myself and stay in the main house at some point.  In... any room but the doll room, though!

Meditation on 100 Untitled Works in Mill Aluminum

Image borrowed from The Chinati Foundation Website. For more information, visit them at www.chinati.org.

Over the holidays I visited the Chinati Foundation, in Marfa, Texas, to see Donald Judd's 100 Untitled Works in Mill Aluminum. Housed in two abandoned artillery sheds in the vastness of West Texas, each work fits into the same outer dimensions and is crafted from the same material: sheets of aluminum about three quarters of an inch thick and polished to a satiny shine.

The works fill the glass-encased space of the bunkers, airy above the concrete floors and amid the brick pillars. The tour for these spaces is half an hour, total, which didn't give me nearly enough time to give each work the attention I wanted. I found them fascinating and soothing and compellingly contemplative. Not nearly enough time to examine each of the 100 works, but enough time to write a poem upon them, penned into my little notebook as I wandered around and among them. I hope you enjoy it. I think I'll send it to the Foundation.

Meditation on 100 Untitled Works in Mill Aluminum

Fleeting glimpses of

Endlessness encapsulated,

Caught in the corners

Of light and shadow

Where sharp hard sheets

And obdurate joinings

Flicker, fade, evanesce,

Boundaries flooded, washed away,

In a spreading sprawl of mirrored time...

Time arcing though blue sky with the sweep of

Planets slanting over ageless mountains swept by

Shifting sunlight, shimmering, in the metal mirage and

Then, with a millimeter sideways slip of focus, suddenly

Edges,

Lines,

Planes,

Solidity,

All endings

Coalesce into prismatic space,

A single moment...

Infinity inverted

One hundred times.

I call this one... Egg Poem. Not much ring to that...

Break, heart, and be done.

Crack like an egg, expell your gold,

Be barren, empty, dry.

Don't grieve, for what never really lived

Can never really die.

Don't look for the tiny, featherless bird;

If you see it, close your eyes.

The little love that was never born

Was never meant to fly.

Break, heart, and be done.

(I know it sounds a little angsty. There's nothing really new going on. It came to me as an image, though, a new way to look at some old things I've been working on.)

Another New Orleans Just Like in the Movies Moment

This one is right up there with the time I met a guy with my same rainbow umbrella, and his iPod was playing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" (see Silver Lining) But this one is better.

Some time during the day last Wednesday, February 2, I realized I still hadn't paid my rent. I think i have a three day grace period, but I am RARELY late on rent, and I pride myself on that, so this initiated a minor panic attack. Still, I recognized that I had options. I would just have to act fast.

Normally on a Wednesday, I'd drop the check off on my way to Rock'n'Bowl for Swing Night. Only there was a private party last Wednesday, no Swing Night. Now, I avoid moving my car at all costs, since I have street parking in the Quarter. But there's always the St. Charles streetcar, which runs right by my office building, and has a stop two blocks from the realty office where I drop my checks.

So that's the only reason I got on the streetcar that day, and ended up sitting a few seats back from a young man in a fedora who sat down on a side facing seat, pulled out his Macbook, and started typing. A few stops later, and old blind man was helped onto the car, and sat down next to him. They began talking about the Superbowl, how Green Bay was going to win, historic football games of note, it was just one of those wonderful moments of incidental acquaintance where everyone within earshot becomes a friend.

When the old man reached his stop, the young man mentioned that he'd left behind some stuff he need to work on, and he helped the old blind man off the streetcar and across the street as if they'd been friends forever. I was pleased and touched to be reminded that there are such effortlessly NICE people in the world, and I texted a good friend about what I'd seen, as one of those made-my-day moments.

But that's not the end of this story.

Last night I decided that there were too many distractions in my apartment, and that going down to the coffee shop for a few hours to finish my book would put me in just the right frame of mind and environment to do some writing afterwards. So I packed up my things and headed down to Community Coffee, on the corner of Royal and St. Philip. (I love living in the French Quarter.)

I was waiting at the counter when he got into line right behind me, the young man with the Macbook. With all my usual finesse, I turned to him and said, "You were on the streetcar. You helped the blind man across the street."

And somehow, with a smile and a laugh, it wasn't weird and awkward, and I was able to tell him how much I had appreciated seeing someone doing something so nice. He thanked me and held out his hand, and said, "I'm Bera, like Yogi, but only one R." So I introduced myself, then it was my turn to order.

I got my coffee, and sat down at a table (with other empty tables nearby). He did come to my area at first, but he needed a power outlet and couldn't find one, so he walked away. Looking around, I realized I was sitting right in front of one, and had been hiding it, and since he was still hovering at the other end of the coffee shop, scanning walls, I went over to him and told him I'd found one.

I offered to move to the next table, but he said the cord would reach, and I didn't have to move. Then he saw my book, Sandworms of Dune, the last of the Dune sequels by Bryan Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. He asked me how Bryan Herbert's Dune books were, and that launched a discussion which also touched on Greek tragedy, PTSD, and Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. Then we both subsided into our respective work for the next hour or so, until CCs closed down.

Standing outside the coffee shop, we talked about Clash of the Titans, both the old one and the new one, other movies, Greek epics, aural poetry, Middle English literature, Steinbeck... and where I was headed next. I said I was headed home, but I'd probably stop at Lafitte's to see if anyone I knew was around to say hi to.

"What's Laffite's?" he asked.

"Laffite's Blacksmith Shop? How long have you lived in New Orleans?" I returned.

"A week and a half."

So I told him to come with me, and I explained a bit about Jean Lafitte and the blacksmith shop and bar, and brought him to read the information they have posted on their doors. We went in and I bought him a drink (a Coke, because he doesn't drink much). He let me pay, but said that I needed to let him buy me a drink in return soon. We sat down near the piano in the back and talked for another hour about, well, life and everything. It was that sort of evening.

When we left the bar, he gave me his number ("In case something comes up. I'm really good at lifting things.") and I texted him back with mine and my name ("Ah, Berwick, that's the English/Scottish you mentioned.").

So I had a great evening, just out of nowhere, and I've definitely made a new friend...

And all because I was late with the rent. What kind of lesson is that?

Big Bend ~ December 29 ~ Driving and Packing

What with an entire day spent sick in bed and miserable, this trip has been a bit of a disappointment, but still, not completely so. Today I was well enough to drive from one end of the park to another, reading all the exhibit plaques along the way, stopping at all the overlooks. When I start home tomorrow, I’ll go up through part of the park and drive the leg from Panther Junction up to Persimmon Gap, picking up the only leg I’ve missed so far.

Today I felt again a sense of the spirit, the energy of this place. In a swamp, so very many things are alive and teaming that there seems to be a life-force that’s an aggregate of the multitude, that all the interconnected lives breathe an eerie spirit that stirs the murky waters and the Spanish moss. Here the many lives are thin and dry and brittle, and the essence that stirs in the wind whistling over the rock and sand is the breath of the land itself. Here, where the earth has heaved and gasped and bared its bones, its essence seems to pervade one as though it were resonating from the rock itself. One vast entity, not a myriad, a singular minimal power binding the elements together under the thinnest film of animal and vegetable.

Maybe the best part of this trip has been that for once it hasn’t been too cold to go out and enjoy the stars. Just now I packed up everything I didn’t need for the morning and didn’t mind leaving in the car over night, and I sent and loaded it in the trunk. I glanced up and was instantly captivated.

In sneakers without socks and wearing my nightshirt under my jacket and knowing I should really go up to bed to get an early start tomorrow, I found myself instead wandering away from the lights, into the darkness of a gravel sideroad. The desert grasses rustled around me with the wind, with water from hidden sprinklers misting the putting green, with Javelina, who knows? And me, sleepy and still sick, I only wished I could wander farther, leave the human lights altogether, and see only brilliance of the stars.

The stars! How could I have lived so long without picking out Cephus and Scorpio and the Pleiades and Cassiopeia, along with Orion, who moves me to tears whenever I catch a glimpse of him dimly in the city lights. And how do I not know more of them? How have I forgotten? And how long has it been since I actually saw the faint gossamer trace of the Milky Way? Why do I live so far away from where I can see them all? The only thing that’s ever made me want to go honest-to-goodness, middle-of-nowhere, no-shower-no-toilet camping is the idea of a perfect darkness on earth around me so I could see and know the millions of lights above.

My eyes have been turned down to this surface world, and that isn’t a bad thing, but I was touched, moved, almost broken by longing in those brief minutes I spent looking at the stars. I remember I used to do it all the time, when I lived out in the country. I forgot, fortunately, how much I miss it. Tomorrow, back to civilization. Tonight, soon, to bed. But the moment of this trip will be the starlight of tonight.

Big Bend ~ December 28 ~ Sick

One of the worse things that can happen on vacation has happened. I got home last night feeling exhausted (to be expected) and chilled (not quite expected). I took my temperature and found I was running fever. I felt a little sick to my stomach, too. That resolved into hunger at one point, so I ate some bread and cheese. That turned out to be a mistake. I was fevered and nauseated all night and most of today. I’m mostly glad it didn’t hit me on the Ward Spring trail. I only met two people coming back ans I was headed out, and no one on my way back.

I didn’t even make it to the end, to the spring. I’d thought it was just my usual hard time with the thinner air, and the fact that I’m really not very in shape. I’d climbed down and back out of one wash and almost fallen asleep when I stopped to rest. When I saw the next downhill stretch, the tall cottonwood trees around the spring already in sight, I knew I just couldn’t do it. I’d already frightened myself by the nearly drowsing off.

It’s a real danger, hiking by myself. If I’d slept until sundown somehow, I’d have probably still found my way back to the car, since I had a flashlight and the Garmin. But I’m glad I didn’t have to find out, and I’m REALLY glad I didn’t start throwing up out in the Chisos foothills. The ravens perched nearby must have known something, but I disappointed them.

Tired as I was, I didn’t want to quit after Ward Spring. I drove up into the Basin and walked the Window View trail. That one is a sidewalk, pretty much, and I’d have to be pretty badly off to not be able to manage it. Then I stopped at Terlingua Ghost Town, but the inverse sunset on the Chisos wasn’t very dramatic and the porch of the store was pretty crowded. I saw a man in a number 8 Manning Saints jersey, and thought about striking up conversation, but I didn’t feel like it. I came here to be alone, after all. And when I got home, I found myself sick.

So today I’ve been all alone indeed, shut up in my room, away from the mountains and the desert I came here for. And even if I feel well tomorrow, I won’t be doing any more hiking. I should be able to drive and walk a little, which will be nice, but I’m sad to have missed so much of my time here.

I am, at least, feeling mostly better now. I walked around Lajitas some while the sun set. I’ll probably eat some bread and honey in a bit, if I keep feeling hungry. Here’s hoping that doesn’t ruin tonight!

Big Bend ~ December 27 ~ First Day in the Park

I think I’ve done more driving than walking today. I’m definitely a flatlander from below sea level now. A two-mile hike to Burro Spring is worlds away from my two-mile walk to and from work. The sun and breeze and thin air make me so sleepy so fast! I did finally catch a second wind on my way back, after a sit and a drink.

I had just started thinking about how ridiculously soft I am when I heard children’s voices and was passed on the trail by three Suburbans’ worth of people of all ages. ( I saw the trucks when I got back to my car.) One of them, a beautifully-coiffed older woman in pristine and expensive hiking gear asked me with a laugh if it “was worth it?” I didn’t like to say that if she was already tired, after less than half a mile, then probably not. Her family probably wouldn’t have liked me much for that.

After my late start and slow progress, I’m thinking I won’t make it to all three hikes today. Maybe I’ll save the Blue Creek fragment I had planned for some time when I’ve either planned better, or might have more than one vehicle, so I can start in the Basin and go downhill the whole way. That leaves Ward Spring, which has lighter traffic, and which I wanted to do last year, but never managed. It’s almost 1:30pm. I’d better get started if I want to get through the 3.6 mile round trip before dark.

Big Bend ~ December 26 ~ Of Morning Frost and Drowsy Owls

Today’s odyssey began at roughly 6:30am just outside of La Grange, Texas. I packed up my belongings, grabbed the muffins and juice my hosts at the Big Tin Flag bed and breakfast had provided for my dine-while-dashing convenience, and stumbled out the door into the dim pre-dawn light to find my car sparkling with frost. I loaded my bags and breakfast, turned on the defroster, pulled out an old gift card, and scraped away as a dim avian shadow, high in a leafless tree, silhouetted against the brightening horizon, hooted at me sleepily.

With visibility adequately improved, I drove to my grandmother's to launch a brief hunt for my missing sunglasses. An abbreviated search in the dark front rooms revealed nothing, and I didn’t want to turn on lights or hunt in earnest, because two of my cousins were crashed on couches within my search perimeter. I also just didn’t have much time. I dug through the suitcase I stowed last night in my sister’s Tahoe, full of the gear I wouldn’t need for Big Bend, until I came up with my old French Market Jackie O shades. Non-optimal for rugged terrain, but better than nothing. Then I hit the road for real. (I later found the missing shades on the floorboards in front of my passenger seat. Mystery solved.)

I’d forgotten about that time of day, early early, before the sun is quite awake, where every passing instant brings a change to the light, and the world looks completely different after a blink. The dry tawny fields were silver with frost, and as I crossed the Colorado, I caught a glimpse of the pearly wreaths of mist rising from its still-seeming waters. I’ve got my favorite book of all time, Jane Eyre, on my iPod now, and the miles slid by as I listened, driving through fields, past farms, churches, agricultural equipment repair shops, in the strengthening day, racing the sun as it rose.

I made excellent time, in spite of stops in Austin for groceries, Fredericksburg for a snack, and a handful of other towns along Interstates and lesser highways for gas, breaks, and additional supplies, shifting from westward to southward to westward again across the biggest state in the lower forty-eight. (It helps that the speed limit on I-10 is 80 miles per hour out west.) The road seemed to jump over the rolling hills like a kitten running through tall grass, peak around the shoulders of more rugged heights, curve in a long stretch playing with the horizon like a narrow string, then finally sprawl tired and flat for long stretches.

Around 4:15pm, during the golden hour, when the sun droops gracefully toward setting, my heart jumped to my throat as I topped a rise and recognized the Chisos Mountains and Casa Grande Peak ahead. I have so many homes these days, but the few weeks I’ve spent in the park have been so unbelievably rich that this particular horizon has been etched into my heart like the profile of an old love.

I pulled up to my hotel, cut my engine, and opened my car door to absolute silence. No traffic on the nearby roads, no people walking the surrounding gravel paths, no birdsong and not a breath of air to rustle the dry grasses. Just utter stillness for several heartbeats, until I climbed out, swung my door shut, and headed for check in. I’d found my room and was starting to unload my bags when the soft call of an early owl drifted from a nearby grove of scrub, like an echo of the cold central Texas morning I left behind.

I went for a walk after sunset, and remembered how the deepening of twilight mirrors the early dawn in that every blink brings new stars to view. I sprawled out on a park bench on a putting green in the middle of the Chihuahuan desert with the blossoming night all to myself, ignoring the cold for as long as I could just for the joy of seeing six of the seven Pleiades. I’ve been told the seventh sister just cannot be seen by the naked eye these days, but I may try again tomorrow when I’m better prepared to outlast the chill of desert night.

Now I’ve unpacked and am enjoying one of my favorite indulgences: Summer sausage and cream cheese on sesame rice crackers and a glass of sweet red wine. I’m also enjoying the broken and sporadic free wi-fi here in the Badlands portion of the Lajitas Resort. On the agenda for tomorrow: Burro Spring, Ward Spring, and the Blue Creek trail to Cedar Spring. A few relatively short hikes (one to two miles one way) to get me warmed up and to figure out just what I’ll be capable of this year.

On the agenda for tonight, coming soon: sleep.

New York, New York ~ The Voyage Home

Sitting in La Guardia now. Mental note to self. Driver’s license is not enough to self-check in at a Delta Kiosk. My flight is delayed, and won’t take off until about 1pm instead of noon. But that’s okay. It just shortens my layover in Atlanta, without making it so brief as to be worrisome. It’s funny, I’ve been out of the loop a little, traveling and playing tourist. Getting back to the airport and news on television always seems to be a shock. I remember getting into the Spokane airport after a week in Glacier and finding out that back in Houston, Ken Lay had died. Right now I’m hearing that George Steinbrenner is dead. Wow. And tonight is the MLB All Star game. Very sad.

But it looks like they’re working to cap the well in the Gulf, and there’s some hope that this new plan could get things contained quicker than waiting for the relief wells. Fingers crossed!

I’m a little confused, because there’s information for a delayed flight to Atlanta up on the screen, but it’s a different number than my flight. The delay keeps moving later and later, so I should probably check this out.

Well, it’s not quite 1:30pm, and my flight through Atlanta has been cancelled altogether. There’s a flight direct to New Orleans leaving at 8:40ish PM, though, and I’m now booked on that. Here’s hoping that the weather has cleared and that everything goes well. It gets me home pretty late (11 something pm?) but it gets me home tonight. Work tomorrow is going to be decidedly unfun.

Of course, La Guardia is a zoo, because my flight isn’t the only one that’s been cancelled. A lot of people have no option but to go home and try again tomorrow. So I’m not so bad off. The point at which I was connected to a representative, and couldn’t hear her and asked her to speak up, and got hung up on, and then called back and was told that the call volume was so heavy that no calls were being taken, THAT was a pretty low point. I’m feeling much better now.

But it really just means that I have a whole day to sit in the airport and organize my photos and proofread my journals and meditate upon a very fun trip. I saw everything I really wanted to see, while leaving enough unseen for another trip some day. And exciting as it all was, I have to agree with the sentiments of the friends I made on my flight over. New Orleans is MUCH more fun! Definitely glad to visit Manhattan and live in NOLA! Love you, my city! Coming home soon!

New York, New York ~ Day 4, July 12

The last days of a vacation like this always do seem to be like a test of will between me and my feet. My feet have hurt so much, but I’ve still walked as much as I’ve subwayed. There’s just too much to see to spend all my time underground. But I really appreciate the subway. I navigated it more today than any of the days before.

First, I took it down to Rector Street stop to see Trinity Church. I’ve been reading Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, and I believe it appears in the fifth book, which I finished last night. I’ve always enjoyed it when my travels interweave themselves with literature. I read The Da Vinci Code on the way to Paris and Angels and Demons on the way to Rome. I hadn’t known that Memnoch the Devil was set partly in New York, but it’s an apt coincidence, and since the church was said to be at the foot of Wall Street, and I wanted to look around down there anyhow, Trinity made a nice focal point for that wandering. When I got there, it was additionally AWESOME to find out that it was the resting place of Alexander Hamilton. How cool is that? I did not know!

It was a beautiful, ornate Episcopal church, and it seemed fitting to offer a prayer there for the souls that passed and the families bereft through the destruction of the World Trade Center towers, which was where I was headed next.

There’s not a lot to see at the site of the towers themselves right now. It’s off behind fencing and banners because of the extensive ongoing construction, but it does make an impression to see nothing but cranes rising into the sky, so empty compared to the rest of the city. There’s a memorial and a preview for the planned rebuilding set up in nearby offices. The weeping of people around me in these rooms as much as the exhibits themselves were sobering and moving. There are things I will always remember, as those before me remember hearing about the death of John F. Kennedy. I will always remember the Challenger and the shuttle Columbia, and I will always remember watching the towers fall. I couldn’t stay for long. I didn’t want to cry. I cry enough as it is. But it was important to me to go, and I’m glad I went. I will come back when the permanent memorial is finished, and pay my tribute there.

After that I had just enough time to catch the subway back up to Times Square and meet some friends at a really great little Italian restaurant called Sofia’s, a block off of Broadway. The food was wonderful, the restaurant virtually empty, and it was great to catch up with Jeremy and Cindy. (They’re doing well and staying busy and return the hellos everyone sent through me.) After lunch, they joined me in my wanderings to FAO Schwarz, Max Brenner’s for chocolate, eaten on a park bench in Union Square, the Strand bookshop, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and finally Lombardi’s and Ferrara’s in Little Italy for pizza and cannoli, respectively. They walked me to the Bowery subway stop before heading back to their car after a very fun and busy day.

But it wasn’t over yet. My friend Jayna, from New Orleans, was singing at a bar in Brooklyn, at the foot of the Bridge, so I took the subway over to see her. I’d hoped to walk the Brooklyn Bridge, but my feet were just too sore. The 68 Jay Street bar is a wonderful little community place. The bar tenders knew everyone there, and everyone there knew each other. One patron’s dog wandered from person to person for attention, and the little toddler daughter of another climbed in and out of laps and arms all around.

And they all LOVED Jayna and her band. One bartender, who seemed like he might also be the owner, took a break during one song to dance with a lady there, another man began singing along and was cheered up to the microphone when Jayna invited him to join her. It was pretty much the ideal Monday happy hour. I could feel the hurry and go of the city draining from me in the relaxed and friendly atmosphere, even before I started my slow way through a glass of sangria. I headed back to Manhattan early so I could get most of my packing out of the way, but it was really the perfect end to my trip, quiet and relaxing. Tomorrow is all about the journey home. Tonight, with my packing done, I will rest.

New York, New York ~ Day 3, July 11

Today I thought I’d jaunt across Central Park and finish the Metropolitan Museum of Art, then come back and do the Natural History Museum. Well, I set off across the park, munching on some rolls I’d bought for breakfast and sipping a tasty, low calorie, caffeinated beverage. I walked for about the time it should take to cross, and I saw buildings up above. I came up out of the park and found myself… on West Central Park Drive. Somehow I’d looped around and ended up about seven blocks south of where I’d started, sweatier and dustier, and ready to just forget the art museum all together. So I went to the Natural Science Museum. It’s on the west side.

And I actually saw ALL of the regular exhibits and two special exhibits!. I didn’t end up reading many plaques or looking at everything in detail, of course, but I did scan a lot, and I looked more intently at things that interested me. I was excited about the Lizards, Snakes Alive exhibit, because I hoped it would be interactive and informative, but it ended up being a zoo reptile house with some pretty poor habitats, so that was disappointing. I felt especially bad for the huge python who had nothing but a ten foot by ten foot concrete floor to curl up on, and seemed to be trying to sleep his way through the entire ordeal. I can’t blame him. I intend to write a disappointed letter. I’m not much of an activist for any cause, but we can and should do better.

Other halls were much more interesting, though the taxidermy animals are always a little sad to see. I enjoyed the halls of indigenous artifacts much more, especially the displays showing art, clothing, and tools of the Tlingit and Haida of Souteast Alaska. After my cruise there, I’ve felt a nostalgia for the huge trees of the temperate rainforest and the bold native iconography of eagles, ravens, bears, beavers, and whales. The halls of fossilized skeletons of dinosaurs and prehistoric mammals and such were fascinating as well. I took photos of a lot of things from reading Jean M. Auel novels. I’ll have a much better frame of reference now for some things I was having trouble picturing from the textual descriptions. Still, it wasn’t as awe-inspiring as the art museum, to be honest.

In spite of my poor feet, I tried again to walk across the park and finish seeing the Met. I stuck to a cross street this time, and it worked. I spent the two and a half hours from arrival to museum closing finishing out my photos of things I saw yesterday and seeing a few more new things. I’m glad I managed it. Then, to get back to my hotel on the West Side… I took a cab. I definitely needed a break. I soaked my feet in hot water and sorted through my photos some. I was debating a quiet dinner close to home, but after a good hour’s rest I felt much better, and decided to go find Café Lalo, recommended by a friend.

After a first glance at the menu, I was disappointed. The food seemed lighter and healthier than the substantial portion of beef I’d be hoping for. That’s how I get when I’m tired. But then I found the rather mouth-watering cheese menu. I ended up with a dinner of toasted bread with herbs, three delicious cheeses, and a tiny cordial-sized serving of cranberry wine. It was the sort of place your expected to take your time, so I read and looked out the window and ate my cheese and drank my wine and had one of the most relaxing and delicious dinners that I’ve ever had this side of the Pond.

I decided I was rested enough to see if Midsummer Night Swing was on at Lincoln Center, but apparently Sunday night is not a dancing night. Still, I got to see Lincoln Center at twilight. One of the halls has paintings on the Mezzanine level by Chagall, the same artist who did the new rotunda mural in the Opera Garnier. It was lovely, and I wished a little that I’d arranged to see a show, but, really, I could sit inside a concert hall for three hours and see one thing, or I could walk around a museum or the city streets and see hundreds of things. I think I spent my time wisely.

After Lincoln Center, I went to Times Square. For the first time I saw the New York I’d anticipated with just a little bit of fear. People, lights, ads, cars, sound everywhere, waves and waves of it all. I had to laugh, there were signs that said “Subway” and I couldn’t see why they needed a sandwich shop on every corner, until I realized they were actually entrances to… the subway! I went by Birdland see if I could have a drink there. But there was a show going on, and I couldn’t go in, though I could hear a little from the vestibule, and it was wonderful. At least I tried, and got a tiny listen.

But mostly today was the day of friendly New Yorkers. I didn’t really expect anyone to be rude, but I didn’t expect so many people to be friendly! One older man I passed on my way to Birdland saw my red hair and said, “You’re just like orphan Annie! Hah! You’re beautiful!” Two people spontaneously complimented my hat, one of them a docent in the art museum who also very patiently gave me directions twice when I got lost trying to exit the museum at closing and ended up back in her hall, and the other a young man at a snack cart near my hotel when I stopped to see if he had any bottled sodas. And in the subway outside Times Square, an older gentleman joked about cooking an egg on the sidewalk down in the stifling tunnels, which started a conversation about Houston where he’d worked once and New Orleans where I have a friend who once did cook an egg on a black car hood.

The subway tunnels were warm, for sure, but about like any of the outdoors back home. I was really fortunate to miss the triple digit heat from last week. The weather has been gorgeous, and I hope it keeps up tomorrow, because I’ll be out wandering in it all day. Better get some rest now!

Remissness

Just realized I never finished posting New York trip journals, and now I have Big Bend journals on the way. Also Just realized I haven't been posting much at all.

New Year's resolution... be a better blogger.

To that end...

New York, New York ~ Day 2, July 10

I am completely exhausted. I am beyond exhausted. I am utterly spent.

Today I saw the Statue of Liberty (after a two hour wait in line to catch the ferry over), Ellis Island, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That last is what did me in.

For one thing, the two hour wait for the ferry threw off my schedule, so my meal time was squeezed away, and I ended up subsisting on a Milky Way bar and a 20 oz Diet Coke until after 5pm, when I finally grabbed a terrible hamburger at the museum (the cafeteria at the Louvre was SO much better). So much for all the wonderful food I’d planned on enjoying today! But I found a European bakery with a pizzeria in the back just down the street from my hotel on my way home, so now I’ve got a slice of pizza with pepperoni and sausage cooling over there, and some delightful looking tiny cookies next to it, just waiting for the moment when I’m no longer too exhausted to chew.

In addition to the physical exhaustion, my brain is… absolutely full. Part of me wants to go back and spend all day in the art museum tomorrow, because my camera battery died in the hall of musical instruments. Another part of me is still just so overwhelmed by the epic scope of the art on display. Grand halls designed as courtyards to display Italian marble architectural elements. An entire medieval choir screen, from floor to vaulted ceiling, surrounded by medieval art including carved boxwood rosary beads that seem to take the question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin as a challenge. A vast room, with one sloping wall entirely of glass and fronted with a reflecting pool, containing, among other relics, several small rooms that were part of an Egyptian temple, which you could actually walk partway into. Suits of armor for four equestrian knights, mounted on four mannequin horses, also in plate mail, with every facet covered with intaglio, and that was just the centerpiece of a network of galleries devoted to armor and arms from at least a half a dozen cultures.

The three hours I spent there weren’t nearly enough, but I’m not sure I wouldn’t need three weeks. I was awed, overwhelmed, and finally almost browbeaten by the magnificence of it all, and I think the only way I could see it adequately and maintain my sanity would be to see one exhibit at a time, and only spend four hours at a time, for as long as it took at that rate. Imagine a Faberge egg the size of the Superdome, but with the level of intricacy and detail multiplied, not just enlarged, permeating the whole. Now imagine trying to see it all. I feel almost literally stupefied, and I may leave the remainder unseen on this trip and go only to the Natural History Museum tomorrow as planned, purely out of self defense.

It’s amazing, though, how much repair work can be done by consuming the necessary calories. I didn’t really feel hungry, but after the first bite just now, I consumed that pizza pretty much involuntarily, and now I think I’ll go soak my poor feets and completely unwind. No matter what I do tomorrow, it will be another long, full day.

~~~~~~~~~

Note: Two photo albums are up at http://leberwick.smugmug.com/Travel/New-York-New-York-2010. Got pics from my travels and wanderings around town, and from the Statue of Liberty.

New York, New York ~ Day 1, Friday, July 9

Ah. Yes. Even here it’s still Friday, though only barely. And soon I’ll sleep, whether the city does or no. I brought ear plugs!

A friend once called New York City the pinnacle of civilization. Maybe he’s right. All I can say for sure right now is that Manhattan Island is the most intensely urban area I’ve ever been in, and I’ve been in Mexico City. Traffic saturation in the La Guardia airspace kept us on the ground an hour and a half in New Orleans. Think. A city so bustling that the fingers of its business extend invisibly throughout the country and perhaps the world, holding planes gently but firmly to the tarmacs in airports hundreds or thousands of miles away. Yet for all that, my luggage appeared on the conveyor only a few minutes after I got down to baggage claim, so they apparently run a tight enough ship. And I didn’t really mind the delay. After all, I’m on an adventure!

The adventure did start on the plane. I sat a seat away from a friendly woman who lives in Connecticut along with her friend who was across the aisle from her. She quickly drew me into their banter, and we chatted about what it was like to live in New Orleans. Pinnacle of civilization or not, they both agreed that New Orleans was a far superior city in terms of fun to be had. I can’t imagine they’re wrong, but then, I’m in love and biased. Because this is a cyber-age, chance meeting need not be an end as much as a beginning, and we exchanged names with the intention of becoming friends on Facebook. God bless Facebook.

A guy outside the airport offered to take me to my hotel for $49, but that seemed high, so I headed over to the bright yellow cab stand. It was the right decision. My cabbie was silent for the entire drive, but turned out to be incredibly nice when the hotel wasn’t where I expected it to be. He turned off the meter so we could go another block looking, while I called to verify the address. I’m glad that we found it within half a block. But for the half-block that I felt incredibly awkward and troublesome, he was incredibly kind.

I wish I’d asked him all the questions I was wondering. Like what, if anything, the beautiful old bridge beside the one we were on as we crossed over to the island was used for. Its stonework was heavy and ornate and it was a lovely structure, along completely different aesthetic principles than the ethereal trellis of the suspension bridge we were on. It seemed almost gothic, and certainly grand, in spite of the graffiti on its thick columns and its heavily-rusted girders.

It made me realize how much New Orleans complements or has shaped my sensibilities. In New Orleans, we would treasure this sort of bridge, and keep it maintained if we could, at least for foot traffic. Maybe they’ve done that here, though I doubt it. The lamps weren’t lit and the whole thing was in heavy shadow. But in my mind I could see horse carriages crossing a bridge like that, with lanterns swimming in murky, mysterious bay fog. And out the other window, buildings. Buildings. So many tall buildings. Until we reached the oasis of Central Park, that’s all there were… buildings. I caught myself wondering how people could live in so many buildings. But they do. We passed wrought iron railings around areas and flanking stoops while above climbed flat after flat, into the sky. Stoops that people sit on. People were sitting on a few, talking, just like in movies or on Sesame Street. I must sound like an absolute yokel. Maybe, for all my fairly adequate international travel experience and my 15 years resident in the nation’s fourth largest city, maybe I am.

And that’s the secret to why I didn’t chat with the cabbie, like I’m normally inclined to do. For a rare moment, I find myself utterly and thoroughly intimidated. It’s similar to the feeling I had at the doors of St. Peter’s in Rome, when I felt small enough to fit through the eye of a needle. But this is a crucible of a much different sort. Tomorrow I will leave this snug little hotel room I find myself in now, and I will step into whatever weekend traffic one finds on Broadway on the West Side. I expect it’s fairly epic. I will skitter like a small insect along the streets and down into the subway, probably brushing shoulders with hundreds of strangers and not making eye contact.

And for all the excitement I feel to be here, I’m afraid.

But I don’t really have time for fear. I need to sleep soon, because tomorrow is going to be a big day. I only have three days here, and spending them eating take out Chinese in a rented room and looking down on Broadway on tiptoe, peering over the window unit air conditioner because I’m too terrified to go out on the streets isn’t anywhere in the schedule.

For heaven’s sake, Laura, you’ve wandered Rome on your own. You can do this.

Remember. It’s an adventure!

The Price

I took my car in for service today, and since the service station was only a couple of blocks from the National World War II Museum and I've been meaning to go there... I went.

It seemed the fitting thing to do.

I'll have to go back, I only got through the exhibit up to the campaign to retake the Philippines, and I didn't listen to any of the two-minute personal accounts. Still, I found it incredibly moving.

In fact, I spent the entire time holding back tears.

I suppose I don't know too well the men who have touched my life personally who were in those battles. And now I never will. They've all passed on. But I saw them. In every photograph, I saw them. Most especially, I saw Popo, over and over.

My mother's father was a Czech dairy farmer in central Texas. He had two sisters who were nuns and a brother in the priesthood. His accent was sometimes so thick I had a hard time understanding him, but I remember early mornings, before sun-up, helping him in the dairy barn, and I remember riding shotgun or in the back of the pickup, checking the cows.

He died on the land he was born on, and I of course never really thought about it, but it certainly never seemed to me like he'd ever left it in his life. It was his home. Where he belonged. Then one day I saw a photo of him...

In front of the pyramids.

A friend gave me a rosary from Rome, blessed by the Pope, and mom told me that Momo had one, too, that Popo had brought back for her, when he'd been in Italy during the war.

And he came back. Thank God. Or I wouldn't be here.

But seeing the photographs of what those boys went through, seeing them glassy-eyed with exhaustion, or, almost more chilling, seeing them smiling and bright on their way to D-Day, seeing the articles they carried with them or wore, reading their stories... It brought home to me what my Popo lived through, the man who always seemed so simple. I never even thought about it, that he was in the war, until he went through a bad time, and Mom said he'd have flashbacks of the fighting. Of climbing cliffs while the enemy fought to knock him off. I remembered that again and again today, and choked on the pain I will never have to feel.

Because it's a different world now. We don't have the draft and we don't have rationing and we no longer send so many of our men off to war that we have to fill the factories with women. Men and women both can and do choose to be part of the most powerful military in our world, and the vast majority of us can leave the worry and the suffering to them and their families. I'm sure all of us know someone serving, but how real is it for so many of us? How invested are we individually in American military action overseas? How much do we sacrifice, day to day? No one asks us to cut back on our use of gasoline, drive slower to preserve the rubber in our tires, use margarine instead of butter, recycle our used cooking grease.

All that war stuff is the business of the military, and so many of us have the luxury of approving or disapproving without really being touched. With the exception of one September day almost a decade ago, war and its devastation happens... on the news far away. Not here. Not to us.

It's trite to say that freedom doesn't come free. But it's true. Some of us, like my friend Emily, have been paying a price for months, while her husband is in Korea. My friend Nuance and her family have paid an enormous price, but, thank God, not the highest one, with her brother's injury. And me? I... I pay so little. So little.

There's no moral to this story, only my own reflections. Take away from them what you will, or take nothing at all. But today, among the black and white photos and the scratchy recordings of radio broadcasts and the written remarks of those who served from the lowest to the highest ranks, I was sobered, chastened, humbled. I owe SO MUCH, and I may very well never be asked to pay anything back.

Other's have paid and continue to pay that price for me.

They have all of my gratitude and respect.

Unconditional

I've been pondering. No, it's never enough for me just to feel a feeling and leave it in peace. Sometimes I can do it for a while, but most of the time I have a... need? No... a THIRST to understand. What is it that I'm feeling, why do I feel it, what are its limits, if any? What are its depths, if I can even reach them? I dive into myself and begin to tease apart the water weeds, comb through the Lorelei's hair, insinuate fingertips into the oyster and root out the pearl. Then I can put it back and resurface and just be. The rest when the quest is complete.

My idea of unconditional love has been a bit simplistic. Not that the feeling itself isn't radiantly elegant in it's simplicity, but the words I reduced it down to in my mind were, "loving without wanting anything back." Does that seem right? It used to, to me, but now it seems... subtly wrong. To miss truth by only a slight shift. Maybe it's more loving without needing anything back? Or maybe even closer, loving without needing anything else, anything different. Even God, it's not that He doesn't *want* to be loved back. It's that not loving Him back does nothing to change His love.

So if a person loves and you don't really feel like you deserve that (and really, who of us *does* deserve it? who of us will never hurt, never disappoint, never fail in some small or large way?) but if you don't feel like you're worth that love, maybe it's tempting to think that the person doesn't really love YOU. They must really love the person they *think* you are. They don't know you, really, who you truly are, and if they did, they surely wouldn't love you. Because obviously they want something different, want something back.

Of course they *want* something back. But the full knowledge that they will never get that something isn't necessarily the cure-all you think it will be, the magical silver bullet that will kill this unwanted feeling and make the world a safer place for them in spite of themselves.

If that love is unconditional, it is what it is. No matter how you hurt, disappoint, or fail them, that doesn't stop it. Even if they can't honestly say they want nothing in return, the lack of return won't change what they feel. And if you try to prove them wrong about you, about their feelings, you can hurt them well enough without proving or changing a damn thing.

I've never been the sort to try, and I'm arrogant enough to think I deserve the best of most things, though in all honesty, I'm humbled at how many of the best things have come my way. Humbled by the people who love me deeply, even when I turned away and flew out on my own. Even when I was sure I had failed, and could only hurt and disappoint. I've never been so low that I would dispense with the people who cherished me, though sometimes I would wish some feelings for me different, for the good of the people who felt what I couldn't return.

Still, something in me always knew better than to try to change that feeling through actions of my own. I could never hurt someone any more than necessary, and I think it's the respect I tried to show and the care I felt that allows me to still be blessed with the friendship of those people today.

These are things I'm only starting to think on seriously. Maybe it would have come to my mind sooner if I'd had a child, because I'm beginning to see and feel the depths more and more when I see my Dylan friend. Those depths are glowing, and I hope I reach the light some day, feel the very utmost of all I can feel for a little someone of my own. There are other depths that are darker. But if I keep going, and keep untangling, maybe I'll find the light there, too.

This has all gotten far from the point, and it's time for bed. And for once I haven't made any more sense in my ponderings than I had when I started. Thanks for bearing with me.

Indulge! ~ The story of my first ever Mardi Gras.

The carnival crescendo has been building, it seems, since Thanksgiving. First came the lightly racing rise in pulse of the holiday season, travel, festival, wassail, and the splendid fireplace warmth of yuletide. The serene peace of the nativity and diamond stars in a blue velvet night was a breath of respite before the joyous chorus and cry, welcoming in the New Year with masquerade, champaign, and fireworks. With the air cleared, and all that out of the way, we began Carnival in earnest, excitement mounting with every play-off victory that led our New Orleans Saints to the...

SUPER BOWL OMG!!!!!

With the Vikings in town, the streets teamed with Mardi Gras purple against our black and gold, purple that quickly disappeared in the minor explosion in the French Quarter, as fans erupted shouting from every bar when we won. The pause over the next two weeks was like the still surface of a giant river, belying the roaring currents beneath. We love our Saints, and would celebrate their glory, win or lose, when they came home from Miami, but when they went all out and won, we went all out, too, and PAR-TAYed. The Quarter was packed, and even my quiet street saw it's share of revelry in the early hours.

Now, with THAT so delightfully settled, New Orleans got down to the REAL business of partying.

Mardi Gras.

I have never seen anything like this. The air is electric with the wild-running energy of our passion for life. I wandered the streets this weekend past with a friend, and was almost overwhelmed by the force of it all. I wondered how any mere Tuesday could ever compare.

Then I stepped outside today.

I have to say, one can't enjoy Mardi Gras at it's best when one is not at one's own very best. And I'm not at my best. My head has been stopped up for days and the weekend has me exhausted still. But on a day dedicated to indulgence and license, even I have done my poor best. :-)

I first celebrated Mardi Gras by sleeping until noon. That was over twelve hours of sleep, which just goes to show that my reserves are pretty low. After getting up and readying myself to face the day, I went to pick up a prescription for my sinuses from the CVS across Canal Street and caught some beads thrown from a balcony on Burgundy.

This outing could have been much more of an adventure than it was, as some of the days parades could have cut me off from that CVS completely. I was able to cross Canal right after the end of Zulu past, and just as the beginning of Rex reached Canal and Baronne. I got my medicine and skittered back across Canal, ready to put my own personal Mardi Gras plan into action.

My favorite indulgence in the city is, of course, food. To me, Mardi Gras felt like a day to dedicate to rich and delicious tastes and treat myself to some really great food. Once I slipped back up the streets of the Quarter, I wandered slowly towards a restaurant that I knew could serve me both steak and sweet potato fries, approaching this goal slowly, savoring the anticipation, whetting the appetite, and photographing the bizarre, the absurd, the beautiful around me.

I enjoyed my steak and fries slowly while reading a good book, and decided my next stop should be the new cupcake shop I'd found a few weeks ago. I made my way there slowly through the milling crowds, and met a friend on a street corner, a masked pirate, who bowed as I curtsied, and greeted me with a kiss on both cheeks and a warm embrace. This little delight made up for the fact that the cupcake shop had run out of cupcakes and closed.

My reserves of energy were getting low, and I remembered the rock-slide brownies at the Community Coffee House on my street, and the praline crunch ice cream at Matassa's, so I decided to round off my day of indulgence with some sweet treats I could take home and enjoy while indulging in some movies or a season of X-Files on my couch.

Fortunately both of those shops were open, and my sweets await me downstairs. My very first ever Mardi Gras has been SO much fun, and I hope the next one will be even better. I will wear a costume. I will enjoy the parades. I might even have a drink. I will hopefully not be sick.

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, and I have a lot to reflect on seriously this Lent. There's a noon mass at the church downtown. Tomorrow I imagine the streets will be empty and quiet, compared to today. Tonight the bars close early. Everyone will go home, and life will slip back into a comparative stillness and calm.

But there are a few hours left, my friends, so eat, drink, and be merry!

Indulge!

Hard Lessons Pondered During Morning Shower and Walk to Work

Everyone… Feel free to laugh at my naïveté. I just learned that sometimes just because someone says they really do want to be friends doesn’t mean they have the same expectations of friendship that I do. I feel kind of stupid. When I put it like that, it seems like it should be fairly obvious. I’m normally pretty astute when it comes to people, and aware of and able to negotiate of this sort of disconnect.

Generally speaking, there is a lot I will personally do to maintain a friendship. Not all friendships are effortless. People can be hard to understand or engage with and still be good people, well worth cultivating. So it isn’t always easy to foster that sort of care and loyalty. Sometimes you have to go through some rough patches, but it seems like I’ve always managed when I wanted to. And I think it’s totally worth it to not lose a friend. My friends are good people, and I hate letting good people go out of my life.

But now I’ve come up against someone that doesn’t play by the same rules I do, and the cost is finally too much. If it were the sort of friendship I’ve come to expect, due to the many wonderful people I am blessed to call my friends, I would make the effort. But this isn’t friendship on those terms. I don’t really know what it is. All I know is that I’m no longer willing to pay the price to perpetuate it, now that I know what it isn’t.

Fortunately, I have many, many people that I care for, who care for me, and between us friends means the same thing. It means a lot. I am so blessed. But I wanted to be that kind of friend for someone, and I can’t any more. I know it’s not all my fault, but it does feel like a personal failing. I love my friends. But this has to stop. I’m only hurting myself, and I’m not benefiting anyone by that.

Still… I hate that this is so quantifiable. That the cost benefits analogy is even relevant.

And I really…

… really…

hate losing a friend.

Silver Lining

I carry a bright, rainbow paneled umbrella. When the sky is gray and gloomy, I do what I can to keep the day bright. One panel is red, and one is orange. One yellow, one green, one turquoise. Blue and indigo and violet. I bought it somewhere like Walgreens, I think, so it's not like it's all that rare. But I've never seen another like mine out on the streets, and I've always thought it was a shame.

Today on my way home, through the wind and the rain, I saw three.

We'd pass each other, see, and smile. We called compliments and laughed. Finally I stood at a crossing, waiting for the light to change when a guy crossed over to stand beside me, holding the very same umbrella. We laughed and he said, "You'll never believe it, just as I saw you, this song started playing..."

He reached over and held an ear bud to my ear so I could hear.

It was Somewhere over the Rainbow

Quandry

A man I know died last week. We hadn't even known he was sick. Then the day after we found out he was in hospital with terminal liver and kidney failure, we learned he was gone. We weren't close. I didn't know him very well. But we were friends and there were certainly things I admired about him.

There were also things I didn't admire as much. Now, I know I'm not very worldly, and might not be a good judge, but it did seem to me that he drank an awful lot. During one period of his life, he lost a LOT of weight, which was something he really needed to do for his health. When I asked him how he'd done it, he laughed and said he went on a gin diet. He didn't eat much, but he sure drank his gin. I don't honestly know how much of this was joking overstatement. But now that he's gone, it's instinctive for me to think this might have played a part in his final illness, or at least to think it didn't help.

It reminds me of Daddy, who had high blood pressure for years before he was killed by a heart attack, and how his doctor warned him again and again to stop smoking. It's easy enough to say that if he'd listened, he might still be here. And part of my grieving when I lost him was sheer fury that he *didn't* listen. That he didn't give up smoking for our sake, his girls, whom he always said he'd do anything for. That he didn't do everything in his power to preserve himself for us, if not for himself.

I've come a long way from the more intense grief, though I still miss him every day. And I'm not angry anymore. At the end of the day, it's easy, *too* easy, to say, "If only...." It's glib to think we have any answers. It's presumptuous to think we know better than another how they can best live their life.

To me, smoking was irrelevant to who my father was. But I'm not a smoker myself, so I'm no judge of how hard it is to quit. To him, smoking was something he did every day, as a matter of habit, as a matter of course. Maybe it was more. Maybe it was part of his self-image, a lifestyle choice made glamorous in his youth by people on television, on stage, on the big screen. Maybe if he could have seen the future with certainty, he would have quit. But without that foresight, it may have been a risk he was willing to take to live his life on his own terms. And I can't fault my father for his terms. My father lived life with a zest and joy and pleasure that few manage, and that was his greatest gift to me, the thing that makes him my hero, in spite of his flaws.

It seems to me the same could be said of my friend. Good food and good drink were part of his joie de vivre, and maybe if he could look ahead, he would have changed his habits if there was a chance it could have saved him even days or months. But we none of us know the future, and it's so easy to blame in hindsight what we can't change in the present.

I have other people I love, still living, that make choices that give me cause for concern. I am so proud of them when they make an effort to change. I worry when they don't. I want them in my life for always. I don't want to lose any part of them and their health and their joy. But when all is said and done, it's their life, not mine. If they don't want to alter it for their own health, I certainly don't expect that they'll alter it for my benefit, and if I start asking them to, I could easily be seen as intrusive, presumptuous, a nag, and lose what I have in their friendship already.

And now I've made choices of my own. A doctor wanted to put me on a medication to adjust my hormone balance. She said if I didn't address certain levels, I put myself at much higher risk for high blood pressure and heart problems in middle age and beyond. But the medication was something I would always have to take, and wouldn't cure the underlying cause, just force things into balance. And it made me sick as a dog, no matter what we tried. I currently have excellent blood pressure, so I made the decision that I would rather risk these issues in the future, since I feel the risk is reasonably small, than be guaranteed sick every day of my life in the present. It's the right decision for me, but it *is* a calculated risk, and I know it might catch up to me some day. Knowing what I now know, how can I blame someone else for doing as I've done?

I still feel helpless, though, when a friend tells me about actions that seem to me hurtful. I want there to be a change. I want them to take and be able to take the steps I don't or feel I can't. For their own sakes, and for mine, because if anything ever happened, I would miss them, and I don't want to hear that "If only" whispering in the back of my mind.

But we can't change people. We can only change ourselves, and sometimes not even that. We can suggest, but if we really love them, we have to, in the end, support them with our friendship even if we don't agree with their choices. It's their life, and their life is a gift they share with us, not an obligation.

We can only love them for who they are while we have them. And if we lose them, we can grieve, and grow past blaming, and love them still. That's all we can do.

I wish, of course, as always, that I could do more.