re-discovered

It's funny how deeply our habits and rituals influence us, leave their intaglios on the shore of our lives. I always look to the fresh start, the new day, the beginning. Inspiration comes in a rush of knowing that the horizon will be different tomorrow, or Monday, or in the new year. I'm always prepared to shuck off the old and bring in the new in the name of innovation and progress. It's the way that I feel renewed and phoenix-like in my rebirth.
Sadly, I'm not as good as continuing on the enlightened path, and the brave new world seems to fizzle and morph back into the bemoaned one of yesterday. It's difficult to make new habits, carve new pathways, and believe you can live in the brigher light. But I feel like the last few years of tectonic shift have finally led to a breakthrough. The light is coming through, the clouds are clearing. I've developed a newfound appreciation for my family, for my health and body, and for love. I think that my engagement was the first step to a lot of this release. Love makes you vulnerable and strong enough to face yourself , and allows you to begin to peel back all of the layers that have kept you numb and safe from any real life experiences. It's funny, you can travel, you can have a child, you can have so many amazing friends and lead this whirwind social life and still be completely cut off and barely conscious. I think after my pregnancy I annihilated my sensitivities, I ate drank and smoked them away, I used anyone who seemed intruiging to distract me from the depth of my sorrow and to shield my from the requisite pain of living. Anything to relax and be cool and shrug off the stress. And it was some stressful, make no mistake. It was a heap of troubles. And I think I bought into the idea that ironclad strength was to be valued above anything; that armoring my body and soul, keeping them cloaked in layers of impermeability, was the only way to succeed. I lost so much of my soul along the way, so much of my passion. But lost is the wrong word--it's never lost, it's just out of touch, buried inside, beneath all of the rubble of the massive destruction you've waged against your own life.
So now I'm an archeologist, and it's compelling and exhausting :) I don't believe there's anything as vital as unearthing your true self. That has to be part of the reason we are here, anyway. I love Abraham-Hicks (google it) because it's beautiful to believe that we really do create our reality by knowing what our pure desires are and using them as springboards into possibility--endless possibility. Thailand taught me that nothing is impossible. So many miracles occured there, on so many levels. I know that all I must to is release what I do not want and call what I do want to me, to my soul. I did it with love and now I must to it with life. Nothing is too much or too hard or too far. Nothing is out of reach.

A man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?

time and place

life is so sanguine lately. so calm, it's bemusing. I've been reading so much about pure consciousness and the illusion that is reality, I think I've almost transcended any sense of urgency. Life has that lovely haze; that feeling that you got as a child when things were hushed and fragrant and sunbeams playing with dust motes was enthralling, and hours were spent in the contemplation of clouds and mirrors. I miss that so much, I didn't realize the hole that wondrous awe left behind inside of me until I started having moments of that again. It's amazing when you don't need a place or a drink or a lover to transport you--when you can get your own adrenaline rushing, your own endorphins fluttering in your bloodstream. We are full of biochemical possibilities.
a small part of me knows I need to integrate all of this relaxation and enlightenment with some vigorous creative endeavor. I do, after all, have a 100 something page thesis to write on Creole women. and I best hurry up vite vite because more and more people are appropriating the term creole for any and everything so it may lose a bit of that freshness that I need it to have for publication. I need to approach this as a book, an ouevre, and not a required task to slog through. been thinking I need a little Nola river road trip to refresh my mind and excite me. Pics to come on the places being featured-it really is all very intruiging. I've always admired these "vestiges of grandeur" and wanted to weave the spirit of history and romance into my own little life. these places are almost indescribable in their preternatural calm and beauty. when I take my friends they are always enthralled...the ancient trees, the crumbling bousillage brick, the murky swamp. transporting...
anyway all of this daydreaming and cat napping isn't very condusive to academic pursuit and an intellectual life but after the stress of the summer it helps to balance and clear things a bit. I resolve not to worry close to my former level ever again-I see why people age, with all of the modern ways in which we allow stress to conquer us. I have to believe that things can be different, that enough cooking and loving and pottery and books and puppies and gardening can keep one indefinitely balmy and youthful. On that note, I will soon be baking fall bread and re-creating my grandma's gumbo and daube, as well as my aunt's stew. this will be the autumn of creole cooking, to celebrate my book. I won't use the term thesis anymore...my great first work. I've come a long way from teenage romance mimicry-love that this is a topic I can respect. mad props to this fantastic laptop, because I've learned so much (and played too much, too).

life is but a dream, and we are the dreamers of dreams...such a fantastic day to be alive and to discover a million and one fantasies...it's raining warm here in the deep, silent south.

my little savage

this kid rocks my casbah. he's wily, and pretty eloquent for a four year old. not that I'm biased, or anything. heaven help me when he starts reading in a couple of months and starts asking the really big, difficult questions. there are no words that can adequately explain the sheer terror and ecstasy involved in being someone's mama. it still dumbfounds me when I wake up in the morning and his huge melted chocolate eyes are staring into mine. he has my mouth-my grin-wry already in spite of his lack of years. he makes me want to bake cupcakes and hula hoop. such a fresh soul. then he makes me want to rip every follicle of my hair out. the hardest part is that I'm no longer with his dad-I won't really give him the title of father- and I don't get to control that part of his life. I would never cop to being a control freak but there you go. It makes me want to inhale guacamole by the pound just thinking about it.ha. or wine. lots of pinot noir. live and let live is so simple to say and so terribly hard to do. I was looking at the stars the other night thinking that there were women all over the world with this searing conundrum-their hearts no longer reside in their bodies, but instead are ambling about in the free, dangerous, exhilirating world with a propensity for scarfing down goldfish and jumping off of sofas. he looks just like a little boy, but really he is the personification of every single desire I've ever possessed distilled into the essence of sweet chubby feet and brown sugar smooth skin.my little dark peach. my creme brulee.

so I didn't want to be another blogger....but.....

cliche, cliche, the words keep running through my head. but a new laptop and the realizaiton that these words might rot and turn my soul septic have me-yep, blogging. maybe its the word that repels me. it's not a very rythmic sound. my linguist brain divides words into good, bad, and ugly, I'm afraid-not a causist, exactly, or anything so specific or technical, but just the impression words leave on me. I'm pretty impressionistic, after all.
so, levee walking, yep, I'm a Louisiana girl, from the state that suddenly found itself in the news with Katrina, then again with the fabulous Saints shocking win (fan since birth, and YES it was a shock) and lately with the BP fiasco. Nice. I guess life is always a mixed bag, a box of chocolates. But things really are different here, and not just in NOLA-this place has a different patina to the air, different tastes and sounds and smells. I don't think I could ever be at peace anywhere else. I've traveled a lot, but this is home, in every sense of the world. My son is creole-of mixed blood, the most intense translation of the original portugese criolla-beautiful in every way and a complete joy. Well, except for last night when he decided it was sleep with mama or scream the night away. Sometimes I walk oustide with him at dusk (our favorite time, all that lush periwinkle and blood orange sky) and we look for the incoming moon and howl at it. He's a little untamed, that boy. A little heavy on the native american, really. He always makes me laugh, or cry.
I figured this would be a good way to get the creative juices (cliche again) flowing, as I have to write a thesis on women along the Mississippi river (worked at a lot of plantations along the river road and there were some fantastic females, as well as devilish ones) and I'm pretty burnt out. I imagine this is epedemic, with all of the working moms going to school out there. Props to ya'll, really. Sometimes I can't pour the bourbon down my throat fast enough at the end of another long day (haha-well, only when I'm not already asleep in the tub). So here we go, allons y. Hope my words resonate with someone out there, but even if I am the only reader, they will be free from the confines of my imagination and that is a good thing, yeah! (I'll keep the cajun sayings peppered throughout) ...there truly is so much to be happy and excited about, it is high time to wake up and thrive again. Welcome to my life, I've just recently renovated the place.