I tried to post an entry from my iPhone over the weekend, but it got hung up and, I see, never posted. May try to recreate it later. For now, something else.

I don't know of anything that captures how long some New Orleanians have waited to be back in their homes, and how grateful they are for that return, than this: "'And listen!' said [Earnest] Hammond as he reached into his bathroom and flushed the toilet, successfully." (I wish you could see the picture of Mr. Hammond embracing the director of Unity. He is black, bald, bushy-bearded like a Biblical prophet, 71 years old but as thin and straight as a sapling.)

The sound of a working toilet flushing in your house can be a miracle after four years. This man was not helped by your tax dollars they tell you they're sending down here, or by any arm of the U.S. government. In fact, FEMA was threatening to prosecute him for continuing to live in the trailer near his moldy, flood-ravaged house in the Seventh Ward (note: we're glad that the Lower Ninth Ward is imprinted on the public consciousness now, very glad, but it's far from the only New Orleans neighborhood where homes were destroyed on a mind-numbing scale). He initially began rehabbing his own house by collecting cans, then got help from UNITY of greater New Orleans, a Catholic group that helps the homeless, and the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana's Rebuild Program. I can't blame people who have no use for organized religion, but as I've said before, the church volunteers were down here feeding people while the Red Cross and FEMA were still trying to find its own ass, and volunteer groups continue to do, in my view, far greater work for the individual than the government will ever do. I hope you'll keep this in mind if ever again you're considering a donation to help south Louisiana.

marquisdd's 8/29 entry makes me remember writing the last paragraphs of Soul Kitchen days before we evacuated: "How the hell did we ever end up with so much good luck? Rickey wondered. What if something bad happened to balance it out? Then he thought of everything that had happened over the last few months, and he began to laugh. If the balancing hadn't already happened, the world was a crueler place than he was willing to believe."

It sure was, Rickey (I miss you like a brother). One of my silly but self-amusing little conceits of the sort writers tend to cultivate, unremarked upon by anyone as far as I know, is that all three of the extant Liquor novels end with the characters laughing together. Even if I manage to write another someday, I don't think I'll be able to end one that way again.

This anniversary of the federal levee failure is hitting me harder than either of the previous two. Last year I was hunkering down for Gustav, and I guess kind of in shock that it was coming. In '07 I was lying sick in bed from the pills I was addicted to. And of course the first anniversary, '06, was beautiful, then horrible: we went out to the dedication of the St. Bernard Parish memorial in Shell Beach that morning, and that afternoon one of our most beloved cats, Nathan, suddenly collapsed from undiagnosed/asymptomatic diabetes and died early the next morning.

The truth is that I will never like this time of year. There was never much to like about it, especially for someone who has always lived in the hot, humid south and hated school since the seventh grade. A confession: Chris and I had to change our anniversary, because neither of us was sure, but we thought it might be August 29. (Like many queer couples I've known, lacking a formal marriage date, we date our anniversary to the first time we had sex.) On the one hand, it was the best thing that ever happened to me; on the other, I was being unfaithful to another man, confused about what to do, and on the brink of the scary decision to move out on my own and fully support myself for the first time. (I say "fully," but during some of those lean times, it sure helped having a boyfriend who was a chef and would feed me.) So it wasn't an entirely happy time then, either. We moved our anniversary to November 5 because it would be a good time to travel and I've always been fond of Guy Fawkes' Day.

Anyway, I have no idea what I'm doing to observe today. I thought we might go to the N.O. Museum of Art events -- there will be a reading of the names of New Orleans' flood dead, and a showing of When The Levees Broke -- or some memorial Mass, but Chris doesn't want to get up early and I can't blame him, as he had to deal with restaurant drama (a cook/waiter quitting) until 4am last night. Maybe I will find some fucking sack and read my signed copy of Josh Neufield's A.D.

There's a new graphic novel out, A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge by Josh Neufield, who has previously done artwork for Harvey Pekar's great American Splendor. (I usually include Amazon links because it seems to be easiest for all concerned, but in this case I ask you to support an independent New Orleans bookstore, Octavia Books, if possible. Amazon does have A.D. in stock, though.) The three panels reprinted in today's Times-Picayune made me lie down and bawl for twenty minutes, so I don't know if I will be able to read the comic, but I'll certainly buy it. Neufield is signing locally this weekend: Friday, 7pm, The Canary, 329 Julia St.; Saturday, 1-3pm at Maple Street Books, 7523 Maple St.; Saturday, 3:30pm, Octavia Books, 513 Octavia St. (I'm going to try & make this one); Sunday, 1pm, Beth's Books/Sound Cafe, 2700 Chartres St.

And when I got back, the city and my street and my house and everything were right here where I'd left them. This sounds like an obvious statement, laughable even, until the alternative has happened to you. I am glad to know I can travel. This trip was very much a baby step but still scary, and I'm not planning to go jetting off on a regular basis, but at least I know it's possible.

Ah, but I do love Chicago. Apart from the food, which I believe to be as good as anywhere in the country, I never seem to hear anyone talk about what a beautiful, welcoming, walkable, generally user-friendly city it is. Obviously that changes some in the winters, which I have not yet dared since Neil says I would need special clothing to avoid death or at least severe frostbite.

I want to extend a special thank-you to Elyse Marshall, Neil's publicist at Harper Collins, who took the incredibly generous step of arranging to stay with Chicagoland friends so I could have her room for the night. She looked very much like most of the publicists I've had over the past several years -- young, female, and gorgeous -- but, unlike the majority of them, I know she must be better than competent or Neil wouldn't have her. In addition to the hotel room, Elyse, you have given me a shot of new hope for the publishing industry.

A few years ago now, I made a bet with Neil that I could build him a helicopter that wouldn't crash. I lost. Thankfully, Neil survived the disaster, and ever since then I have owed him dinner at Alinea. It turns out that he will be at some big book thing (American Library Association? I think that might be it) in Chicago this weekend, and I'm not busy, so I am flying to Chicago to pay off my bet. I'm greatly looking forward to seeing Neil and eating at Alinea again, but aside from that other little trip to Chicago when we were still in post-K exile, just to see civilization again, this will be my first trip outside Louisiana/Mississippi since 2005. I'm certain I'll have a good time once I get there, but I'm also certain that the only thing that will compel me to get on that plane will be the thought of my dear friend's disappointment if I don't show up. Scared. I'm really doing it and I am flat-out dead-eye Jesus-praying scared, even though I'm only staying overnight. Oh well, it will be good practice for the Amsterdam trip in November ...

(By the way, anyone who wants to see an actual display of courage, as opposed to my whining about a four-hour jaunt, should go to Alinea's press page and read the second story from the top, "Burned" from Chicago Magazine. It's a grueling and fascinating account of 33-year-old Chef Grant Achatz's battle with stage 4 cancer of the tongue, of all things, his insistence on individualized treatment, how the experience has changed his already complex food theories, and his journey back to taste, which is still in progress. May God and all the saints bless him.)

I am turning into such a fucking hippie. I just signed up for the local paid recycling plan, since Nagin's wonderful recovery plan for the city hasn't managed to include the resumption of curbside recycling in nearly four years, and I bought a copy of Mother Earth News today. Well, dammit, I want a decent gardening magazine, and most of the ones on the market seem geared toward either morons (three different stories on How To Water) or yuppies more interested in landscaping than gardening per se (Planning Your Perfect Pergola). Not all that impressed with Mother Earth so far either, though. Any suggestions, txtriffidranch?

So I went to see my doctor about the Cymbalta's troublesome habit of fucking off to the corner bar three or four days a week. I thought she'd increase my dosage, but instead she convinced me to try some new "mood stabilizer" called Abilify (who gets paid to think of these names?). When I picked up the prescription, I learned that, were I to work up to the recommended daily dosage, it would cost $426 a month. CONTACT YOUR DOCTOR IMMEDIATELY if the fact that your crazy pills are costing your family the price of a dinner for two at the French Laundry causes you to experience violent mood swings, feelings of worthlessness, or thoughts of harming yourself. God damn my stupid brain anyway. I am utterly respectful of mental illnesses and emotional disorders in others, but when it comes to myself, I am practically a Scientologist: "There's nothing wrong with you that a good kick in the ass wouldn't cure! Why can't you quit whining? If you just make up your mind that you're going to be OK, you will be. You make me sick, ya big pussy."

Alas, my inner Scientologist has failed to convert me.

Seriously, there is a history of depression in my family and I have certainly struggled with it before, but I wasn't on any psychiatric drugs before the failure of the federal levee system, and I was doing OK. It seems to me that things in my brain should have returned to that level of OK-ness by now, and it pisses me off that they haven't. Can catastrophic events permanently change your brain chemistry?

I hate even talking about this shit, but I decided in 2005 that I would try to maintain a certain level of candor in this journal in order to give readers a realistic picture of one New Orleanian whose life was torn apart by Katrina and its aftermath. Other than some very nice cucumbers and mint currently being served at The Green Goddess, that picture is really all I have to offer the public world right now, so there you go.

I took this picture to post to longhair (which I joined when I realized my hair was actually long enough to wear in styles, not just in a ponytail, braided, or clipped) and will probably do so eventually, but for now, I thought people here might like to see how long it has gotten.



It hasn't been anywhere close to this length since I was, like, 8. For reasons I'm not entirely clear on, I haven't cut it (except for trims) since the post-Katrina failure of the federal levee system, and I have no plans to do so, since it has begun to take on that weird pet-like quality that long hair sometimes gets (especially when you don't process it or use heat on it, so that it actually feels nice -- a novelty for me after all those years of bleached, Manic Panic-ed hair!).

After taking this picture, I realized it was a little longer on the right side than the left. I think I have remedied this with my clever scissors, but it could require professional intervention.

I'm home, have been home for a few days but haven't felt like posting, in part because I wasn't sure what I wanted to say about Grand Isle. We had not been down there since Hurricane Gustav made landfall very close by last September. Couldn't go for a while because the island was closed except to residents and service personnel; then you could drive onto the island but none of the hotels was back open yet; then the hotels began to reopen but Chris was unemployed and we were broke; then, finally, we went.

We saw Grand Isle not too long after the double whammy of Katrina and Rita, and the structural damage was appalling. This was worse. This changed the shape of the island, changed the configuration of the beach. I had read that much of the beach sand washed into Highway 1 and they had to bulldoze it back. Reading about this and seeing it are two very different things. They bulldozed what they could, but a lot of the sand is just gone. A lot is gone in general. Chris and I have been going down there for, what, five or six years? In that short time -- infinitesimal time, climate-wise -- much of the grassy marshland that flanked Highway 1 between Leeville and Port Fourchon has been replaced by vast stretches of open water. A little more land is gone every time we make the drive, but this time, the loss was dramatic and soul-sickening. I didn't take any pictures because I didn't have the heart to and doubted I could capture the scale of the loss anyway. You'd need satellite views to even begin to communicate it.

By no purposeful design, but simply because I'd begun to start thinking about Dead Shrimp Blues, the book I happened to be reading when Katrina hit was Bayou Farewell by Mike Tidwell. This book describes the possibly unsolvable problem of Louisiana's wetland loss -- a loss that will impact the entire country in more ways than I can list here -- in the best, most readable detail I've found. I'm less than thrilled about some of Tidwell's post-Katrina writings, but I do believe he is in our corner, and Bayou Farewell should be required reading in schools across America.

Anyway, yeah, the fact that we didn't get the relaxing vacation we'd hoped for is kind of beside the point. We were happy to make our little contribution to Grand Isle's economy, and we still love it, and we will return. But I'm beginning to wonder if we might actually be the last generation that gets to treasure this beautiful, wild, demanding place.

Since our somewhat subdued return, I've kept busy nurturing cucumber and tomato seedlings and making this hangy doodad for the garden:



The lines, by Dylan Thomas, read "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower / Drives my green age." I've always liked these lines and their imagery, but just lately the green fuse is right up in my grill every day and I'm reading them in a whole new light. The slate is from the roof of our old house, the one that got destroyed when the levees failed. I'd like to make more pieces like this, maybe even do some custom work if anyone was interested, but I only have a couple more pieces of our Napoleon Avenue slate and I'd like to hang onto them. It may be time to start haunting salvage yards.

Also, mainly because I'm still amazed to know photography has advanced to the point where a genetically crappy photographer like me can now capture an image like this, here's a shot of the Mabel Orchard Spider who has set up housekeeping between my foxgloves and my red salvia:

Cymbalta works by restoring the balance of certain natural substances in the brain (serotonin and norepinephrine), which helps to improve certain mood problems. -- drugs.com

I've been taking Cymbalta for maybe eighteen months. It definitely helped, but I feel I'm at a point where my brain should be able to handle a little more of its own balance. I'm not on sick-making painkilling drugs; I'm not in crippling pain (most of the time)*; I'm doing creative work; I'm active in the world. While I am still subject to anxiety attacks on occasion, I am no longer a whipped and whimpering ball of PTSD. There is no generic Cymbalta yet, and the drug is ridiculously expensive. More important, I don't like taking antidepressants, I only agreed to try this one during a period of crisis, and I don't want to be dependent on it anymore. So I'm tapering off, slowly and (at least according to medical advice) safely.

Now I just need my brain to back me up on this.

Assuming that my brain-chemical imbalance was caused by extreme stress and depression (and I think that's a fairly safe assumption, given that I was not a particularly broken person before the levees failed), it should be able to rebalance itself now that I am no longer living in those conditions. What I am worried about is the period -- if there is one -- between when the Extra Bonus Serotonin fades out and the Natural PZB Serotonin kicks back in. I'm sure that is a gross oversimplification of how the process actually works, but I do know from past experience that there will probably be a period of danger during which I am likely to become bad-tempered, cry for no reason, make dire predictions, and eventually convince myself that I really am just crazy and will have to be on this drug forever. There is something very negative in me, something that wants me to hate everything and myself most of all. I've gotten pretty good at shoving this thing back down into the depths where it belongs, but as the Cymbalta wears off, it will doubtlessly show its ugly head more often.

One thing that helps me is the St. Francis prayer. I often say it in its entirety, but I don't have it memorized, so when I realize I'm acting like an asshole to someone else or myself, I just repeat in my head like a mantra: Make me an instrument of your peace. Make me an instrument of your peace. Make me an instrument of your peace. It does help. Sometimes. Even when it doesn't, it serves to remind me that I don't want my life to suck. You wouldn't think a person would need reminding of that, but over the past three years, there have been times when I genuinely believed that having a non-sucky life would be some kind of betrayal of all we have lost. Teh mental illness, it is fun.

Anyway. Not asking for advice (though I wouldn't mind hearing from others who've stopped taking Cymbalta how it affected them), donations, or affirmations of any kind. Just wish me luck, if you don't mind.

Two new blank books are up on eBay. One has a Royal & Divine Birds theme; the other has to do with Lost Souls? at the Sacred Yew. (Oddly, I feel perfectly comfortable revisiting characters and settings in this medium that I'd never consider writing about again.) If you bid on them, I promise to spend the money on something more fun than Cymbalta ... like maybe Shaq's teeth-cleaning and dental work next week.



See that fang poking out so cutely? That means his body is rejecting it, so the fang and probably a few other teeth will need to be extracted.

*OK, so a more accurate choice of phrasing might be, "There are frequent times when I'm not in crippling pain." I was trying to look on the bright side, but if I paint too rosy a picture, people will start wanting me to do signings and conventions and stuff again, and I just don't feel my health is predictable enough for that.

Confidential to my tattooed New Orleans-area friends, or anyone who spends time in the Lower Garden District: Is Eyecandy Tattoo ever actually open? I've gone by and called there repeatedly over the past few days, but no one is ever in, and their phone message, which was funny the first couple of times, is starting to get on my nerves.

Admittedly, I haven't tried e-mailing them. I have lost faith that anyone you e-mail through a website will ever answer.

I haven't been able to locate my former tattoo artist since the federal levee failure, I desire a little inkage, and I know these guys are good, but apparently I need them way more than they need me.

[ETA: Never did get in touch with them. I have an appointment with Walt at Nola Tattoo, who comes highly recommended.]

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.

The Times-Picayune's Inside Out section (real estate, home design, gardening, etc.) has been following the stories of various New Orleanians restoring homes devastated by the post-Katrina failure of the federal levees. James Perry received homeowners and flood insurance payments for his home on N. Miro Street, but they were insufficient to repair the damage. He has received a letter from the Road Home program (intended to close the gap between insurance payments and actual repair costs) saying he will receive money, but he has no idea when and is unable to get in touch with anyone who can tell him.

"I am torn between getting appliances for my kitchen and installing insulation in the attic," Perry says. "I don't even mind cooking. It's the cleaning up I don't like. If I had a stove, I could cook breakfast. If I had a dishwasher, I wouldn't have to wash dishes. And if I had a refrigerator, there's a lot I could do."

... bold type mine.

THREE YEARS, folks. After THREE YEARS, the man cannot afford a refrigerator, and speaks as longingly of one as a teenager might of the latest iPhone. Call me crazy, but I think this is fucked.

Yes, well, when I found out Livejournal had not only a tiki theme but a purple tiki theme, what else could I do? I've also started using tags, which appeal to the part of my nature that enjoys alphabetizing, making lists, and such. So far I've tagged my entries back through June of this year. Eventually I'd like to do as many as possible, but given that I've been keeping this journal for five years (!), it's going to be a big task. I've set it up (I hope) so that people on my friends list can add the tags I've already created to my entries, so if any of y'all feel like helping with this, I will be most appreciative.

We recently had a piece of very good news, which I didn't want to mention until it was finalized (money --> bank). Back in 2000, when we lived on Napoleon Avenue, the Army Corps of Engineers and the New Orleans Sewer & Water Board began a huge construction project along several blocks of the street, including ours. They basically removed the neutral ground (the median to non-New Orleanians) and dug two huge canals underneath the street, each big enough to drive a city bus through, which were meant to improve the notoriously poor drainage in Broadmoor. Unfortunately, as well as making everyone's life a hell of filth, ugliness, and insanely loud noise that often started as early as 5:45 AM, the construction severely damaged most of the beautiful old (mostly circa 1920-1930) homes in the neighborhood. Our foundation collapsed and our house developed several large cracks in the interior and exterior walls as well as a couple of major roof leaks. Another family's house actually split in two, rendering it uninhabitable. I wrote Liquor during this chaos, working late at night and grabbing moments of silence wherever I could find them. By the time the construction ended in 2004, most of us in the neighborhood were involved in a group lawsuit against the Corps and the S&WB. Not a class-action lawsuit, but along those lines. I never expected to see a penny from it, especially after the federal levees (you know, the ones built by that same Corps) failed, but the suit was recently settled, and last week we received a very nice sum. Not hundreds of thousands or anything, but enough so that we won't have to worry for a while, enough so that we can take our twentieth-anniversary trip next year, and (most important at the moment) enough so that Chris can wait a bit longer for a good job opportunity to come along instead of taking a job just to bring in money. He is restless and misses cooking and his customers, but there has been a dearth of decent chef jobs recently. (He's already had two offers; unfortunately, one was in Lafayette -- three hours away -- and one just looked like a worse fit the more we thought and talked about it.)

We owe a vast debt of thanks to Linda Harang (isn't that an excellent name for a lawyer?) and her associates at the Murray Law Firm; they certainly earned their big slice of the pie.

So that's where we are now, and it seems like a pretty good place to be. I know that some people who read this journal are kind enough to worry about us, so I just wanted to let folks know that -- financially, at least -- we will be OK for a while. Thanks for caring.

I finally talked to Dale, my friend from Galveston. He is fine, as are his sturdy little Victorian house and his collection of art and antiques. He's staying with his sister near Dallas, but hopes his mortician's license will help him get onto the island soon. Unfortunately, they'll probably need his services more after they have searched the island's West End.

Speaking to him gave me a small inkling of how the friends who managed to reach me by phone in early September of 2005 must have felt. I have no idea what I said to them then, or whether I made any sense, and I never look at my blog entries from that time. Dale sounded tired, but not particularly upset given that the place he loves has sustained a severe wound. If not for their flood wall, it would have been almost entirely destroyed, as the lovely, fragile-looking Bolivar Peninsula is now.

According to the excellent local blog Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans, my birthday was also the 1000th day since the federal levees failed. I did not know that. I'm not entirely sure I wanted to know that, but whatcha gonna do? ("Prob'ly get a flat driving home," as the Saints fan said after an especially tragic home loss to the Falcons.)