Last week: Alan Moore had written a comic in which he himself shows up at the narrator's door and escorts the narrator on a bizarre walking tour of London, sort of like Dr. Gull and Netley's ride in From Hell. Robert Burns (yes, the dead Scottish poet) wrote and drew a hilarious parody in which the part of Alan Moore was played by Hello Kitty, complete with long hair and wild beard.

Last night: John McCain was manning a booth at the Our Lady of Prompt Succor Tomato Festival, and I was chatting with him. I wanted to ask him about getting tortured, but I figured he would know my interest was only prurient.

1. A dream a couple of months ago. He kept following me around going "Hi! HI! Hi!! HI!! Hi!!! HI!!!" in this booming voice, and would not leave me alone. It was scary.

2. Last week I was half-listening to news on the car radio. The announcer said " ... president ... " and some guy who didn't sound like a total asshole started talking. I thought, "That can't be the president; he doesn't sound like a total asshole ... OH!" I remain skeptical that the great colonialist power will ever help us third-world bottom feeders much, but that was kind of cool.

I dreamed of Hell. I don't really believe in Hell, but I'm afraid of it anyway. In this dream, I was back on painkillers and sick from not having any, and Chris was out of town for days, and I realized (in the dream) that my Hell would be junk-sickness and loneliness with no hope of reprieve.

On that subject, may I just remind the gentle reader that I have not touched opiate painkillers in months, feel sick at the thought of them, and hope never to take one again? I keep coming across references -- often fake-sympathetic ones -- to my "addiction," and while I certainly was an addict, and pretty much asked for that kind of shit by openly discussing it here, I am telling the truth when I say that for the first time in ten years I don't feel like an addict anymore. There's no attraction there, and no way I can adequately describe the sense of relief I feel at being out from under that awful attraction. The physical pain is still there, and it's a separate issue, but at least I'm no longer caught in that trap. I have no idea what caused the turnaround -- theories range from the OLGC prayer list to near-liver failure -- but I am grateful for it and pray that I stay this way.

I also keep getting asked, by old friends and by people who have only recently heard that I am a writer, what I'm working on. It's too complicated to explain that I've spent the last two years tearing myself apart (with a little help from incompetent governments and publishers) and am now, well, working on putting some semblance of a human self back together. That's my work in progress ... well, that and the garden. I can only hope it leads me back to writing something, someday. And I guess I can feel glad that some people still want me to.

Why, O why does the Amsterdam of my dreams always include a fictitious museum district between the Red Light district and the outer canals? And why, in my recent dreams of the place, is my mother always there? (I like traveling with my mom, but I don't think either of us would much enjoy a trip to Amsterdam together.)

The paper didn't come again this morning. I had to cover a 9am-11am shift at the church, so I was up too early to notice the quality of my coffee. I did manage to compose this ditty, with deepest apologies to Dorothy Parker:

O life is a comforting, cushioning pad
Whose days seldom offer much drama;
And love is a thing that can never go bad,
And I am Michelle R. Obama.

Oh, and happy birthday to Neil. Take me birding on your Jet-Ski in my dreams again soon, OK?

I dreamed about the Overlook Hotel all night, the newspaper didn't come, and my coffee sucks.

For anyone still interested in the Wikipedia mini-drama, please get therapy I just posted the following message on my entry's discussion page:

After yesterday's tempest in a teapot, I've gone over Wikipedia's guidelines and cannot find anything prohibiting the sort of basic information I've been adding to or correcting in this entry. I've also been advised by a senior Wikipedia administrator that I have done nothing to violate policy. Thus, I don't think Rimbaud 2's "request" is valid, and unless Wikipedia decides to ban me to prevent me from doing so, I will continue editing my entry when and as I wish.

In other news, I can't get an appointment with my orthopedist until July 29. That's what being a loyal patient for 12 years does for you, I guess. No word yet on whether he will call in an emergency prescription without having seen me since February, but I'm betting not. I know some folks wonder how anyone can be "stupid" enough to buy drugs on the street. I'm not considering going back to that -- it compromised my privacy beyond belief; besides, I hardly see any of those people anymore, and good riddance -- but I'm remembering very vividly how and why I allowed myself to be that "stupid."

Most of my dreams lately center around leg pain (I'm never sure if I am actually feeling it in my sleep or just conjuring it up very vividly) and trying to make doctor's appointments. Last night, though, I had a detailed (and, I must admit, extremely hot) sex dream involving a dear male friend, someone I have no business dragging into such dreams. Yes, he is as handsome and charming as they come (so to speak), and we love each other, but that's not what our friendship is about. Besides, I am a happily married man. So fie on that! Away with it! Luckily (I suppose), he is thousands of miles away and not likely to be closer any time soon. (Oh, but that moment in the mall fountain, with the silk blanket ... all right, I'm shutting up now.)

My Personality

Neuroticism	99
Extraversion	1
Openness to Experience	83
Agreeableness	75
Conscientiousness	19

You are sensitive about what others think of you. Your concern about rejection and ridicule cause you to feel shy and uncomfortable around others. You are easily embarrassed and often feel ashamed. Your fears that others will criticize or make fun of you are exaggerated and unrealistic, but your awkwardness and discomfort may make these fears a self-fulfilling prophecy, however you feel enraged when things do not go your way. You are sensitive about being treated fairly and feel resentful and bitter if you think you are being cheated. You tend not to talk much and prefer to let others control the activities of groups. Familiar routines are good, but sometimes you like to spice up your life with a bit of adventure or activity. You are tenderhearted and compassionate, feeling the pain of others vicariously and are easily moved to pity, however you are not adverse to confrontation and will sometimes even intimidate others to get your own way. You are not an overly cautious person. You will think about alternatives and consequences but make up your mind fairly quickly.

Take a Personality Test now or view the full Personality Report. The best Buying Pet Gifts.

99% neurotic. Very nice. I suppose this is borne out by the dream I had last night. It was an active night all around -- Chris reported that when he got home, I woke up enough to accuse him of sitting next to a pregnant woman who'd started to go into labor. I don't remember this; as best I can recall, I spent most of the night in my father's hometown of Whitesville, Kentucky. My father didn't want to do anything but lie around and watch the football game at my deceased grandparents' house, and for once in my life I wasn't in the mood for football, so I decided to go out and walk around. Unlike the real Whitesville, there was a small downtown area with shops, restaurants, and even boutiques. No one was shopping in any of them and I wanted to buy something to help them out, but I'd left my money elsewhere. Then I found myself standing at a bus stop across the street from an abandoned pink house, holding a novel manuscript I'd written. The pages were in reverse order and I was trying to collate them. A well-dressed young European guy (yeah, you see LOTS of those in Whitesville) came up and started asking me about the manuscript, then about the house.

Suddenly (in the way of dreams) I had knowledge of the house. It was a Bad Place. A couple who'd leased it before it turned really bad -- I think they might have been my friends R.J. and Julia Sevin -- told me they'd let Stephen King tour it, but the landlord found out and punished them by increasing their lease to 11 years. "I can get us in," I told the European guy, and led him across the street and up the porch steps. The house was an Acadian cottage with broken windows, loose porch boards, tilting roof supports, and a hideous, soul-sucking dirty, almost fleshy pink color, like the pink plastic used for some appliances back in the '50s. We walked through the living room, which wasn't too bad, though there was a sad, dirty feeling. I went into the kitchen and immediately knew that's where the badness was. The pantry had a curtain hanging over it, and I saw a tiny, deformed paw come out from behind the curtain. Then, abruptly, I found myself hanging in midair, about halfway between the floor and the ceiling. I could feel a huge but invisible mass of squishy stuff between my legs and didn't know if I had been yanked into the air or if stuff (invisible guts? ectoplasm?) had come out of me and was holding me up. The European guy was staring at me in horror. "You better not run off and leave me, you fucker," I yelled, even though I knew he was going to. I realized my manuscript was gone; I'd left it somewhere. And then I woke up.

All morning and afternoon, whenever I've thought of the pink house, I have had that "1408" feeling: "Even if you leave this room, you can never leave this room." Chris urged me to stop thinking about it, but I said no, Chris, that filthy pink house came out of my mind and I have to own it. If I refuse to own things like that, I'm never going to be creative again. He nodded, seeing my point but (I think) glad his own creativity centers mostly around food and he doesn't have to own things like pregnant women and bad pink houses that make you squish out invisible guts.

My sainted former landlord, Joseph, had organized a lovely dinner party for me and Chris. But as things were getting started, I saw Jack Leonardi, the "chef" from Jacques-Imo's, coming in with a case of beer. "I'm not going to break bread with that motherfucker," I thought, and made to leave. Chris wouldn't come with me. The house had grown several extra levels, and as I descended to the last one, a bunch of cool kids and Goth girls began to mock me, calling me "heroin kiddie" or "Heroin Kitty" (a play on Hello Kitty?). I realized I had a machete in my hand and began to attack them, making several bloody slashes in their backs and shoulders, but they only kept laughing at me. Then Chris and I were at the beach and all the people from our current neighborhood were standing out in the water, looking toward shore, as scores of dead fish floated in. We wanted to go somewhere else, but I was afraid the people would drown as the tide came in; however, I knew I could do nothing for them.

Have fun with it.

To the love of my life: Thank you so much for bring home every plague and disease communicated to you by the patrons of the Delachaise. I do so enjoy having squinty eyes, a scratchy throat, and a nose so snotty I feel like I'm getting a free plate of oysters every hour or so (sorry, blame that one on my dad). And thank you further for sending me out in the thousand-degree-below-zero weather to look for leis. The costume shop on Magazine Street was closed, so I decided to have lunch at Casamento's and texted you about it, and you texted back that I was a squirrel.

I've been wanting to check out that costume shop anyway and see the hula possibilities for my Nixon costume this Mardi Gras. Trouble is, it's early (Feb. 5), and if I'm flitting around out there in a coconut bra and a grass skirt, my Nixon mask may not be enough to keep me comfy.

I told a table of Hawaiian kids at Casamento's that I was sorry they didn't win, New Orleans was rooting for them, thanks for coming, and please tell their friends we are open for business. They were very gracious about my interrupting their lunch.

TALKING IN MY SLEEP DEPT.: Last night when Chris got up to pee and then came back to bed, I said to him, "Living along the canals ... " He thought maybe I was dreaming of Amsterdam, but I went on, "Delcambre ... Dulac ... Cocodrie."

You read the paper every day and see the articles about people who got killed, and maybe you feel safe in your little cocoon because you think, "Oh, that's not my life," and then you read one that's partly about someone you knew, and you see how much isn't in the story and how easy it is to make someone sound like a common criminal, with no mention of his religious work or how he was trying to help the neighborhood in spite of his own problems, and you're reminded that there is a human story behind every one of those articles.

We're getting along. Putting flowers on the telephone pole by the corner where it happened. Talking to the Rev's son and daughter who came to get his things. Waiting to find out if there's going to be a funeral.

My typing is very bad right now because, having received a $337 electric bill and a $1300 property tax bill today, I am trying to do without having the heat on. I think I am going to give in.

I should have mentioned this sooner, but chefcdb's computer is out of order and he won't have it back until after the holidays, which is why he hasn't been blogging. He asked -- yes, asked -- me to share these pictures of his work outfit today. He thought of this all by himself; I am responsible for none of it, except that I bought him the Saints Santa hat for the Delachaise Christmas party last week.





Dress in style, go hog-wild, me-o-my-o.

I'm so glad he is a big fat man. I slept poorly last night; my dreams weren't so much bad as they were unpleasantly vivid. For instance, I dreamed that the universe was testing my love for him by putting my soul in his body and his soul in the body of a skinny, hot little black chick. He was adorable, but I knew that he had a vagina and sooner or later I was going to have to deal with it. Around 7:30 this morning I finally got up, took a Xanax, and slept dreamlessly until 12:30.

Many lovely cards and presents have arrived, including a copy of V.S. Naipaul's Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples from Rachel Keane, to whom I cannot send a thank-you note because her address didn't come with the package. So thank you, Rachel; my Naipaul reading has fallen off and I look forward to this. Here are a couple of pictures of our living and dining room mantels with the cards all hung up:





All we do for Christmas these days is go to midnight Mass, then drive up to my mom's for a nice meal. No shopping, no hassle, no last-minute frenzy. I went to a store today just to look at the people flailing around in search of that final perfect thing and felt smug. I am a smug bastard in general and shall endeavor to work on that, along with taking fewer pills, in the New Year.

I'm astounded by the fact that some people actually seem to think "Elizabeth R" is a good poem. I didn't think I was capable of more than solemn doggerel. Because Chris didn't understand why my salvation lay at the tomb of Edward the Confessor, I've added another quatrain (is that the right word? Poet I am not) just before the final one:

I'm not a killer nor a thief
Nor yet a brutal rapist;
My single sin is in my faith
For which she calls me Papist.

I'm currently being traumatized by the fact that Ernest Hemingway is a good writer after all. I've spent most of my life disliking him without having read very much of him. Recently I noticed an anthology of short stories from the 1940s on my shelf and was unwillingly impressed by "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber." About three years ago I found a collection of Hemingway's short shories in a restroom at LAX (the airport) and begrudgingly brought it home thinking I might want to have a look into it sometime. Well, now I am, and they're damn good stories, dammit.

Apparently I woke Chris up early this morning to tell him that I was crow-footed. I don't remember why.

I leave you with this very weird dream about my characters from Jenn M:

Hey Poppy,

You're not the only one having bad/weird ass dreams, I guess. Now, I wasn't drunk, but I do seem to have the flu or some other bug, and have been getting massive amounts of sleep lately, so maybe it was too much, but here's the dream.

The weirdest thing of all may be that it appeared in my dream as a sort of lost chapter to Lost Souls. Like I was reading Lost Souls and all of a sudden I was like, "I don't remember THIS from the other 5 million times I've read this book..." Which is also weird because I'm not reading Lost Souls right now...I've been wandering through Antediluvian Tales, rereading it since I got it last week.

At any rate, the dream involved a scene with G-man's folks, who were apparently partaking in some sort of domestic discipline relationship for fun. I don't remember what had happened to make Mary Rose at fault, but she was made to strip by her husband and whipped somewhat moderately with a rattan carcass beater as seen here.

So, I don't know what any of it means, but I felt compelled to share that with you...

A high old time was had by all last night at my mother's 70th birthday celebration* at Commander's Palace -- well, all except possibly "local" "food" "critic" Tom Fitzmorris, who was at the next table (it's beginning to seem as if he is at every next table, everywhere I ever go) and who cut me dead as he always does, to the point where we've started doing juvenile things like waving, pointing, giggling, encouraging each other to go get his autograph, and trying to frame him into our snapshots. (He did greet Chris in the foyer later. I guess in some people's worlds it is acceptable to call someone "a thief and a freeloader" one Christmas season and greet him with a hearty "Hello, Chef!" the next. That must be the same world where you can vanquish all post-K sorrow and loss by "acting like nothing happened."**)

Large quantities of champagne may or may not have given me an endless night of horrible dreams, which I will list in imitation of tjcrowley:

- I was walking along a swamp boardwalk that often appears in my dreams, and William came out and started walking with me, but soon he raced ahead and I couldn't see him anymore.

- I was at some kind of writers' colony or workshop, but the directors kept us locked up on campus, made us address each other as "Miss X" and "Mr. Y," forbade members of the opposite sex from conversing, and forced members of the same sex to shower together in long prison-style shower rooms. There was a coffee-and-aromatherapy bar, but when I decided to try it as a distraction from the general fascism, the aromas you could get were "FLOOD," "MILDEW," "YOUR BASEMENT," "DEAD REFRIGERATOR," and "KATRINA." I decided not to try aromatherapy.

- I had to edit a manuscript that contained long, detailed descriptions of cats being vivisected.

- I was smuggling a bearded dragon home from Japan by tying it to my leg beneath my pants, but after I got on the plane, I saw that it had turned into William and the bonds were choking him.

- faustfatale and I were working as interns at WWL, the talk-radio station I listen to, but one day she had to pee and she saw Rush Limbaugh going into the ladies' room. She was scared to go into the men's room because she thought he might come in there next, so she darted into the control room where I was and hid. Suddenly we were transported to the Oval Office, where it was announced that we must write a sequel to a novelization of a terrible horror movie. Later, I saw Alan Alda pushing a shopping cart on the street, and I knew Rush Limbaugh had destroyed his life and forced him to live as a bum.

I kept slightly waking up from these dreams and wanting to take a Xanax to make them stop, but I couldn't wake up enough to make myself get up and go to the bathroom to get one. I just lay there in the dark drifting from nightmare to half-awake panic attack and then back into nightmare. I awoke this morning with the bedclothes in a sweaty snarl around me. I don't think I like drinking anymore.

[ETA: Forgot to mention that all our street "charges" -- Milton, David, Tomato, and the Reverend Jesse -- dropped by over the course of the day to wish my mom a happy birthday, since I had mentioned to them the day before that she was coming to visit. It was very sweet, really, though Tomato did ask for $3.]


*Despite having read Shirley Jackson's biography about five hundred times, I somehow never realized until this morning that she and my mother share a birthday. I've always felt that Gemini was clearly the mightiest sign (when a guy I vaguely knew once said to me at a party, "You're a Gemini? I thought maybe you were a Virgo or a Libra," I never spoke to him again. Dumb fucking fucker), but what with Shirley Jackson, John Kennedy Toole, James Booker, and my mom, Sagittarius is really creeping up on me.

**Tom Fitzmorris' actual post-K advice. Why acknowledge that there was a tragedy? Everything will be better if you just "act like nothing happened." I always wonder how the families of the 1600+ victims of the failure of the federal levee system are making out with that little pearl of wisdom.

LINUS, in an old Peanuts strip: "I’m aware of my tongue ... It’s an awful feeling! Every now and then I become aware that I have a tongue inside my mouth, and then it starts to feel lumped up ... I can’t help it ... I can’t put it out of my mind. ... I keep thinking about where my tongue would be if I weren’t thinking about it, and then I can feel it sort of pressing against my teeth ..."

Have you ever had this happen? I have, but I don't find it all that terrible. However, for the last two days I have been aware of my heart, which is quite unpleasant. I'm not having chest pains or anything like that, but I can just feel it in there -- the shape of each ventricle and aorta, the pumping (which feels/sounds like PA-KOOSH, PA-KOOSH, PA-KOOSH), the blood rushing into and out of it. It disturbs me the way watching a large, dangerous piece of machinery do its job sometimes disturbs me.

In more heartening (HAR!) news, I e-mailed Peter Straub last night, and he replied to me, as he always does, with tremendous kindness and sound advice. I won't go into details because the conversation was very personal on both sides, but basically, he pointed out to me that the events of the past two-plus years are facts, that my life really has been squeezed into this shape, this terrible vortex, and that it's not all my fault; also, that it's hardly surprising that those events should be so deeply inscribed on my soul that I'm not all shiny-better yet. I can't control the weather. I didn't break the levees. Despite my guilt and sorrow about evacuating, I couldn't have done much good if I had stayed, because we were in no way prepared. (Next time [please God, don't let there be a next time] we will be.) I didn't do this -- it's as if someone knocked me senseless and then gave me a huge, ugly permanent tattoo that I didn't want.

This all seems so elementary, but somehow I hadn't grasped it until I got Peter's e-mail this afternoon, and I guess I had some kind of breakthrough -- I started crying and wailing at Chris that I didn't do it, I didn't do it, my life has been permanently altered by forces beyond my control, I did not make this awful, distorted shape. In a four-paragraph e-mail, Peter somehow made me realize things that neither Chris, shrinks, my other friends, the news, nor anything else has been able to do. I'm not, like, magically healed or anything, but I feel a little stronger from realizing these things.

Today Chris and I had lunch at Casamento's, then the first Cajun Eggnog daiquiris of the season. (Every year I get somebody asking me what a Cajun Eggnog daiquiri is, so let me go ahead and tell you right here and now: it's an eggnog-flavored daquiri with bourbon in it, and no, it's not spicy, and no, there is nothing remotely "Cajun" about it, but that's just what the daiquiri shops call it.

Last night I dreamed that William walked into the bedroom, pure white and strutting as he always did. My heart leaped up when I realized we must have made a mistake somehow and he wasn't dead -- but then a black coloration started at the tip of his tail and quickly traveled all the way up his body, turning him into a different cat.

I have done it! I am mighty! I, in my weakness and crippledness and anorexia, have made the groceries for Thanksgiving, which we are having at my house for the first time in my life (on Wednesday, for reasons too complicated to go into)! I put my hair in a tight braid, prepared myself for battle, and set off to take Chris to work and then hit the supermarket.

CAR CONVERSATION:

PZB: Look, I forgot my necklace, I forgot my bracelet, I forgot everything ... I guess I'm stripped down for battle.

[Pause]

PZB: Oh, oh, I've written a song!

[singing]

She forgot her notebook,
And she forgot her pen,
And she woulda forgot her pussy,
If they hadn't a' sewed it in.

CdB: You have lost your mind.

PZB: THANK GOD! I had no further use for the filthy thing!

Life continues surreal. Last night I dreamed we had moved into a really crappy, ramshackle house and Chris had turned into an angry lesbian who chased me around with cockroach egg cases and squished them in my face. So I ran away to visit tjcrowley, with whom I got piss-drunk, and then officialgaiman, who took me out into a marsh on a JetSki shaped like a magical horse. We saw all kinds of fabulous birds. A little owl turned its head to look at me. "Neil," I said, "do you think I can put a bird on my life list if I only saw it in a dream?" (This is an issue that has come up in my dreams before. I wonder if other birders experience it.)

Then, just before I woke up, I dreamed I was reading Reader's Digest and they had a tip that if you were about to die in a fire and knew all your soft tissue would be burned away, you should try to find a coin from the year of your birth and press it to your forehead so the date would be seared into your skull and you could be identified more easily. I think this had something to do with hearing about Failure of the Federal Levee System victims who scrawled their names and Social Security numbers on their bodies with permanent ink pens before they died.

And after I finished making the groceries today, I went to reward myself with a protein smoothie (I'm trying, I really am) and in the Smoothie King was an exact doppelganger of my first real boyfriend -- but at the age he was when I dated him. His hair even grew the same goofy way when he let it get too long. I'm going to have to e-mail him and see if he has any kids he knows of.

I guess protein really is good for you, because last night I got on an editing roll. I made it about three-quarters of the way through a manuscript I felt I'd been moving too slowly on, and had what I think were some good ideas for improving it. I was one badass editing motherfucker. You didn't want to get in the way of my red pencil.

But then ... oh, then ...

I went out to pick up Chris at about 3:30 AM. I'd been dozing when he called, but after we got back home, I couldn't sleep. Couldn't sleep. Couldn't sleep. Took an Ambien. Didn't work. Turned the light back on and read a little more of The Talisman. Turned the light off and stared into the darkness thinking of doom. Took another Ambien. Don't remember falling asleep.

The next thing I knew, Chris was shaking me awake. He said I'd been singing --or rather, sort of moaning, in what was apparently a very creepy voice -- Led Zeppelin's "In My Time of Dying," getting louder and louder and LOUDER. "Don' wan' nobody to mourn ... carry my body home ... so I can die eeeeeeasy ... oh my Jesus ... oh my Jesus ... carry my body home ... OH MY JEEEESUS ... " I have no memory of this.

What a treat it must be to share a bed with me! Ah, well, maybe it's balanced out by the morning back in the apartment when Chris was up and I was still asleep, and Colm was walking around my head maowing loudly because he wanted his breakfast, and I was dreaming I was Rickey on the line butter-poaching Tasmanian salmon, and a customer had sent his order back claiming it was raw in the middle, and I said it wasn't, it was perfect, and Tanker came over to my station, grabbed a piece, pinched it in half, said, "It does look a little raw to me," and walked away eating it, and as I was staring after him in fury, the damned plate came back again, and Colm was still hollering in my ear, and I rose up on my elbows and screamed, "HOW MANY TIMES IS HE GONNA SEND IT BACK???" I think that gave Chris as much joy as anything I've ever done in my life.

I'm having another egg-and-soy-protein smoothie now. Who would have ever thought it would come to this?

The last St. Joseph altar at St. Augustine Church in Tremé, as well as some other pictures of this fascinating church, an irreplacable piece of New Orleans history in general and black New Orleans history in particular that is, of course, being closed by the archdiocese. If this closure goes ahead, as it looks to be doing, it will be possibly the greatest disgrace and worst mistake New Orleans has ever known. At least the worst since they ran the I-10 overpass through the heart of the black business district on Claiborne, taking out dozens of ancient oaks and destroying the soul of a thriving neigborhood. Anyway, I helped set up the altar today. It's been an interesting three days:

Thursday: frantically making cookie bags with tough, hard-bitten St. Bernard Parish survivors in a cramped trailer

Friday: chopping vegetables and cooking casseroles with genteel Catholic ladies in Metairie

Saturday: assembling an Italian altar at a black church with my freak friends

And of course tomorrow I shall spend all day visiting altars, at least nine unless I hear that Bobby Hebert has decided to fulfill his promise of running naked down Poydras Street if his alma mater, Northwestern, wins its tourney basketball game, in which I may skip a few in order to second-line behind him. (Purely in the spirit of a parade, of course!)

For those of you who are sick of altars, it will all be over soon. For now, I can only offer this dream I suffered last night, my version of a work nightmare:

New Orleans had, apparently, washed away entirely. I had written a Liquor novel in which Rickey was the manager of a hotel restaurant in Amite City, a small town on the North Shore. (Amite City was quite different in my dream than it is in reality, the dream version having many cosmopolitan cafes, glass-fronted high-rise hotels with revolving restaurants, etc.) I was also in Amite City, as was my editor. For the next novel, I had planned for Rickey and G-man to move to Lafayette, where they'd be back in some approximation of a big city. My editor was unconvinced that Rickey was ready for this great career move. "I just don't feel his confidence," she kept saying. "I think you need to do another Amite City novel first." And I cajoled, and I pleaded, and I told her she must trust me, and finally I told her there just wasn't another Amite City novel, much as I told my former agent back in 2001 that there wasn't another horror novel, no matter how much he might rather have one than Liquor.

Writing that exhausted me. I am going to go gloat about LSU's basketball win over Texas A&M. I honestly don't know when I became an LSU fan. It happened when I wasn't looking. If they were playing UNC, though, I'd go Tarheels all the way. Tar is thicker than blood. Or something. I will never buy a Chevy because Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski is advertising them. Duke is puke, Wake is fake, but the team I hate is N.C. State. If God is not a Tarheel, why is the sky Carolina blue? Shut up, Brite. You're not making sense anymore.

Things are looking up, way up. I don't know why dreams should matter so much -- I guess they are a type of therapy where you don't have to talk to (or pay) a doctor -- but the ones I had last night were vivid and deeply comforting.

First, I was standing on the Crescent City Connection, the bridge that spans the Mississippi River from New Orleans to Algiers. I looked down and saw blue whales swimming slowly down the river toward the Gulf of Mexico. I had never thought whales would be particularly beautiful -- in those "whale-watching" photographs and videos you see, it's always just a vague barnacled hump or a fluke obscured by spray -- but, twisting with the current, these were breathtakingly beautiful.

Then I saw New Orleans artist George Dureau picking up Hurricane Katrina, just scooping it up between his palms. In his hands it became a beautiful, sparkling thing full of light that reflected a multicolored glow onto his face. He set it gently in a box and closed the lid, and I knew it wouldn't be able to hurt anybody ever again.

Last, I dreamed of Nate, my favorite character from Six Feet Under. As an angel, ghost, or whatever, he was distressed that some people die stupid and meaningless deaths; he was convinced that everyone's last hours should have meaning. I woke up crying, saying, "Nate, you can't fix it, you can't fix it. Nobody can fix it." And, having told him this and dreamed these other dreams, I somehow felt better.

Then, this morning, I awoke to the news that Our Lady of Good Counsel will not be closing on March 15 after all. It will remain in operation as before, with Father Pat as pastor, and will be reevaluated by the archdiocese in eighteen months. This is a huge load off my heart.

Apropos of a comment on prime_liquor earlier today in particular, and a great many political attitudes in general, I'm getting really sick of having Louisiana's corrupt politicians used as an excuse for holding up the money. It's our money. The government owes it to us. To use a not-very-good analogy, if you find out that your doctor is raping his teenage daughter, you still owe him the money for your gallbladder surgery; you don't get to withhold it because you found out he's a criminal asshole.

As well, I don't think Mayor Nagin and Gov. Blanco are corrupt. I think we might be doing better right now if they were, and I am no fan of theirs, but "corrupt" is one of the few unflattering adjectives I don't find applicable to them. Besides, the sleaziest, most corrupt politician ever to exist in Louisiana is a small-time piker compared to Bush and his posse.

I went out and bought myself an Elisabeth Kübler-Ross book, On Grief and Grieving. We've all heard about those five stages; let's run through 'em. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. Check, check, check, check, um ... It would be nice to think there was imminent Acceptance in my future. But no matter how neatly the little boxes fit and how intelligent the writing may be, I've never had the gift of gleaning useful information from psychobabble. I suppose it's the same reason I can't sit still and talk to a therapist, or something very similar: "You don't know me. I am not the Universal Patient. Hell, people pay me to talk to them." And, sadly, most therapists I've encountered (though I've not visited one for twenty years now) did treat me very much like the Universal Patient, Crazy Teen Version, complete with platitudes and sanctimony and warnings about how if they thought I was hurting myself (with drugs, razors, etc.), they'd put me in the hospital, with no apparent inkling that the only effect this had was to better hide the fact that I was hurting myself.

Razors aren't my friends anymore, haven't been for ages; however, I still take too many drugs, particularly pills of a calming nature, particularly in the past six months. Ms. Kübler-Ross has done little so far to convince me that her book can provide a different kind of help; in fact, with all its talk of loved ones dying, it's having the effect of half-convincing me that I'll suffer some even greater loss soon. That magical thinking again: "Don't think about your loved ones dying, or they will!" And despite people telling me I am strong, daily life in southeast Louisiana shows me that I am not. I endure so little. I have a place to live. I did not lose the majority of my belongings. I did not lose a relative. My husband and I are both working. I have the luxury of angst. I'm tempted to remind myself of that old hammer adage -- When you say you have a headache and somebody says, "You think YOUR head hurts? That guy over there just got hit on the head with a hammer!", it doesn't make your head stop hurting; it just makes you start looking around for a hammer -- but this time I think it would only make me feel I deserved the hammer.

I appreciate the kind e-mails I get when I post entries like this one, but if you write suggesting that I reconsider therapy or SSRIs, I will ignore you. I've already made clear that these are not options for me. Whether or not you agree, please respect this.

On a more cheerful (?) note, I have finished the Chronicles of Narnia and reread Neil Gaiman's short story "The Problem of Susan" that got me started on the whole thing in the first place. I'm still not certain how I feel about it all. Deeply unsettled, but that's life as we all know it lately. Is C.S. Lewis really suggesting that ( spoiler ) In Neil's story, was Susan given the chance to be redeemed, or was the journalist's dream true? And why did she need to be redeemed; what had she done that was so awful? And it's hard to contradict the professor when she says any God who would put her through the experience she endured was having a bit too much fun. I have the feeling I'm going to read this story again and again, and be jabbed awake by it in the dead of night, and maybe have a nightmare or two. (Of course, that would be nothing new; last night I dreamed of (A) having a bellyful of segmented red worms; (B) being a beautiful lesbian high school teacher who seduced one of her students and was arrested for it; and (C) Bobby Hebert baking a football-shaped lemon tart frosted with orange ganache and chocolate lacings. I defy The Rapists to make anything of those three.

I've been doing too much partying and not enough writing. I woke Chris up this morning mumbling dire imprecations, apparently channeling Rickey bitching out a line cook: "You've fucked it all up. Bunch of fucking shit. We gotta do the bones all over again." (The hapless cook was supposed to be making stock, I guess.)

However, I did finally manage to put up some parade photos.