Fresh, Hot Wastes of Time

I’m wondering if the horrible situation in New Orleans is going to be the first news event that Jo remembers. She and Caroline have been talking about it a lot – asking what a hurricane is, what’s going to happen to all the houses under water, what would happen if a hurricane comes here. She’s been adding the Gulf Coast to her prayers at night, too.

As for me, I’m numb. We were just there three months ago. Now I’m wondering if there will be a New Orleans to go back to.

New Orleans photo album, May 2005.

I told someone earlier that I felt like I was at a bedside vigil with a very sick friend, watching all the New Orleans coverage. Y’all stay safe, and I’m praying for you.

The series finale for Six Feet Under, the only TV show I am religious about watching, was last night. I feel like I’ve been clubbed over the head with a bat. It was 75 minutes of television drama at its finest. The worst part is that I just watched the end sequence again to see what happened with some secondary characters and ended up sobbing once more.

Man, I’m gonna miss that show.

I used to play games with people, face to face, all the time. Endless amounts of Gin Rummy with my friend A. Frequent bouts of Trivial Pursuit. Darts. Rummikub at the ranch. Constant unending sessions of Spades (or Hearts when we couldn’t get a fourth). Poker. I really really miss that. Until tonight I didn’t even remember how much I enjoyed it – now I have, and have a real urge to interact with people in the real world.

I’ve owned two houses in Austin, both next to very big hills. At the last house, kids used to daredevil down the hill on their bikes. One time a boy lost control and I heard his tortured “YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!” as he flew into the neighbor’s yard.

The house we’re in now is on a much busier street, so we have seen 2 or three car accidents in the last four years. Relatively mundane, no real injuries.

The strangest thing I’ve seen on the street just happened half an hour ago. There was a prolonged squealing noise of tires on rubber. I glanced out the dining room windows in time to see a white VW Rabbit slowly promenading down the hill, like a grande dame making an entrance into a party. It came to a stop just beyond our driveway. The car was locked, not running, nobody inside of it. Not in gear, handbrake set. Just ooched down the hill all by itself. Surreal.

Update: The car in question. Click picture for larger version.

For the past few nights my dreams have been riddled with… riddles. Puzzles, rabbitholes, cryptography, trails. I’m not sure if I was the player or the puppetmaster.

I’m having one of those days full of pent-up energy and can’t seem to find anything which pleases me. I thought maybe I could submerse myself in a good game of Civilization 3, but I think I’ve discovered that I only like discovering the local terrain, and I get pissed off when I find out I have a neighbor in close proximity. I feel like pacing.

I had avoided reading Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar because for some reason I thought only pretentious people read Sylvia Plath. I finally decided to get it since I’ve been enjoying female authors so much lately (Shirley Jackson, Joyce Carol Oates, Rebecca Wells). I read it on the plane today. There was a passage in it which moved me to tears.

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story.

From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professtions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out.

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

I felt like she was writing about me when I was the same age of the protagonist. Now, 15 years later, I realize that fig trees blossom and fruit every season, and even if you miss one harvest, there will always be another. Sadly, Sylvia Plath took her own life at the age of 30 – her fig tree, as it were, chopped down.