 Emily Dickinson Dreams |
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I'm sitting down to write this entry because I don't really know what else to do with myself. I feel kind of paralyzed by Rita even though it's only supposed to bring tropical storm-type weather around here tonight. I keep watching my neighbor's dead tree swaying menacingly, and it makes me feel like barfing. The tree men who were supposed to be cutting it down but didn't finish their job before the rains came left their tractor in my backyard. I just walked the dogs back there on their leashes in my flip flops with rain pouring all over us and Zuko peed all over the tractor. Twice. That was satisfying. Today I got off of work early and went to an old downtown pizza joint/bar for lunch with a couple of old friends. We came back here to watch the weather for a while and got so nervous about the whole thing that we ended up watching this week's episodes of The Daily Show saved on TiVo. Then my friend left and I baked some oatmeal pecan cookies with butterscotch, white chocolate, and semi-sweet chocolate chips. Yeah. I don't know. I didn't even feel like eating them; I just wanted something to do. I talked to my sister for a while, which was long overdue. I talked to my friend in Houston who drove for twelve hours yesterday to go seventy miles. Her aunt siphoned gasoline out of another car into theirs. Through a hose. With her mouth. She sucked too hard and swallowed a mouthful. They called the Poison Control people, who told her not to throw up because it could end up in her lungs. Of course, she was already vomiting profusely and continued to do so for the next several hours. She seems to be okay though. My friend's grandmother pulled over in a Walmart parking lot with about one hundred other cars, all out of gas. My friend was trying to get the National Guard to find this Walmart and rescue her grandmother in a parking lot. It's almost too much to even fathom at this point. I see on Mary Chapin Carpenter's tour schedule that she has four dates coming up in California called "An Evening of Words and Music: Mary Chapin Carpenter and Anne Lamott." I do not even think I could contain myself if present at such an evening. I fear I would just lie on the ground drowning in my own tears. I am sitting here weeping just thinking about it. Maybe it's because "Grand Central Station" is playing as I type. (The faces of the missing all I see...) Maybe it's because I'm in the middle of reading Operating Instructions. The thought of these two women teaming up in one place with their music and their words is just enough to send me over the proverbial edge right now. Apparently they've done this before. How did I never know this? Two years ago, I wrote about Anne Lamott. One year ago, I wrote about Mary Chapin Carpenter. I think about these women so often that it's really just unbelievable. So, those in or near Santa Rosa, Redwood City, Los Angeles, or Santa Barbara, I hope you'll go, you know, for me, and tell me all about it. All that ran through my head as I read about their teaming up together was "oh Jesus, oh Jesus." I think it's the bowling ball in my head. For the past couple of days, my head has been invaded by a very heavy bowling ball which rolls around and pulls my head down. Like, when I bend down, I feel like there is a weight in my forehead or a magnet that is pulling me down towards a magnet in the core of the earth. It does not feel so good. People tell me this is a sinus headache brought on by the low pressure systems. I have no idea. I just know that every time the word Rita is uttered my head feels a little worse. I can't even believe that this is all happening again to so many other people. My friend sent me photos of her parents' house. I wanted to puke. My aunt is evidently glued to Rita news and is just not taking it very well. Her school and home: largely destroyed during Katrina. She is a school principal. Her home is where we've had Thanksgiving every year of my life. I guess we will not be having Thanksgiving there this year. From Seattle came gourmet sauce from my saucy saucy pal. Thank you, saucy pal. One of my displaced roommates is back. The place she found to live was gross. She saw her own house this week for the first time, saw the mold and the ick, and she cannot go back to a place that is dirty and gross. So she is back. Probably she never should have left. I am really not such a good samaritan. Perhaps one night soon we will eat ice cream and smother it in sauce. I can't stop thinking about all the people who left Louisiana for Texas who are now having to leave again. Where are they going to go? It must be terrifying and awful for them. What if all of these people are still on the road when the hurricane hits? Are these cars going to be able to get out in time? I am so scared; I really feel insane. I don't know what is wrong with me. My mom and I were supposed to go the football game on Saturday night. Ain't no game Saturday night. It's been moved to Monday. I told my sister this and she started crying. Even though she's far away, she said, "But ... I've been counting down the days." That killed me. I did my presentation for class. I am glad it's over and done. I think people liked it even though I said "um" a lot and didn't know how to pronounce Camille Paglia's name. I tried to sound like I knew how to pronounce it, though, and no one corrected me. I think they liked the V cookies. I got an A on my first paper. So it's me, two dogs, and three cats here tonight until my roommate gets home from work. I am feeling a little lonely but it's that kind of lonely when you don't even want to talk to anyone or it makes it worse. Clearly all I can do at this point is eat some more peanut M&Ms until I pass out or until the tree falls and I have to somehow load up five hopefully not squashed animals who pretty much all want to kill each other into my hopefully not squashed car. I realize that I am being histrionic and everything will probably be okay, at least here, at least for me. But what about everyone else? I am actually sitting here considering playing Scrabble by myself. I want to go somewhere, to my parents' or to a friend's, but I'm scared to get out on the road what with the gusts and squalls and such. So here I am. Posting this before the power goes out, which it pretty much definitely will. This is what a horrible person I am! Feeling sorry for myself in my intact house just because the lights might go out and not even being grateful that I still have a house at all. I should feel fortunate to be able to bake cookies in my own oven and to have the luxury of being alone when so many others are crammed into houses full of relatives or shelters full of complete strangers. And my God, the bus on fire. It's too much. It's too much. I am going to stop now before this self-indulgent angst spiral continues. I hope you are all safe and dry tonight. If anything good comes out of this, surely it's that the new Amy Grant show about wishes might be preempted by news reports. I mean, one can hope. Nobody needs to see that kind of wish granting Amy Grant shit right now. Come on. Americans have endured enough lately. Spare us, Lord. Spare us the Amy Grant wish show. It's really times like this that I could really use thirtysomething on DVD. I could watch Hope and Michael scream at each other about how they want to celebrate their fortieth anniversary one day and Elliot and Nancy dance when they decide that he should move back in and Ellyn get proposed to in the elevator by Billy Sidell (who ended up being Felicity's dad, and that was truly a little weird) and Melissa show up with the menorah after she and Michael get in that awful screaming fight and the World War II / diary / "Stardust" episode when Hope says something, "Tonight is the night that I write my first words, I'm leaving them here to leave something behind." And how whoever reads it and whenever it's found, here's something she wants you to please keep in mind: that once someone lived here who tended this garden. And I could watch Gary dream about Emily Dickinson.
About this time in ...
© Copyright 2005 elb |
I bought one of Jette's shirts. Don't you want to? Colleen's wish lists for kids displaced by Hurricane Katrina: games and books. Thanks, Colleen. |
