 Relativity |
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I love this shirt. New Orleans IS for lovin'. Felicity Huffman's speech last night was one of the best things I've ever seen. I cried and cried. And I don't even like Desperate Housewives.
 It was the little gasp/gulp of emotion at the end that got to me, along with the look of sheer enraptured joy, love, and pride on Macy's face. I love her. I love them. I am so, so, so, so, so happy that she won. Don't even get me started on how Ian McShane lost or that Lost beat Deadwood. Don't get me wrong, I watched every episode of Lost and really enjoyed the show for the most part, but how is it even in the same category as Deadwood? It isn't. Nothing is. But then, The West Wing has beaten The Sopranos every year, so I don't know why I'm surprised. I thought that the Star Trek opera theme song was fantastically funny, and Jon Stewart was clearly the most brilliant part of the evening. Aside from Felicity Huffman's win and speech, obviously. This is a screwed up category because it pairs nightly performers with someone who does one show, but I was delighted to see Hugh Jackman win for his hosting of the Tonys last year. He did an amazing job. This year, eh. Last year, fabulous beyond measure. I'm trying to work on my presentation for class. It's coming along slowly but surely. I am feeling kind of strange today. My house is quiet and empty for the first time in three weeks. I miss my favorite houseguest to my core, but otherwise the quiet has been welcome. I looked at this picture today and started crying. I felt like I was going to throw up. The shop with the striped green awning just celebrated its 100th anniversary. My boyfriend and I went there on our second date. We talked about scars and strange and scary medical experiences over our cones. Since then, we've gone back regularly because having a pint of mocha or hazelnut gelato in the freezer at all times is just important. I just ate dinner at the Vietnamese restaurant next-door a few weeks ago with my girlfriend. It's where my boyfriend and I went on our third date. I don't know why this one photo out of the legions of devastating ones out there hit me with such a blow. Just in case you're not familiar with hurricane photos, those stripes along the side of the buildings are the water lines. That's how high the water got. I'm sitting here thinking, damn. All that gelato. I keep talking with my girlfriend, the one I enjoyed spring rolls and wonton soup with a few weeks ago, about her childhood home and her dad's store, both with water up to the roof. I tell her my heart breaks for her and her family, and it does, and I wonder how she feels. Her parents have been living with her for three weeks now, and she has had to be strong for them. When does she get to break down and cry? I don't know. She says it happens sometimes when she's at work. How does a home they've lived in for all their lives not exist anymore? Why did their twenty-seven-year-old bird have to drown in his cage? Why did her dad own a business for forty-seven years only to have it fill up with water and float away? What in the hell are her parents supposed to do now? I think about how sad they are and how still they're so much better off than so many people. They have the family support and monetary resources to recover in the practical sense from this in a way that so many people don't. The spectrum of grief and suffering is so vast that it just blows my mind. You can have lost everything in a mucky, toxic flood, in that the floodwater came through a broken levee and covered your entire house and filled it with ick and goo and ruined every damn thing in it -- and still have to think to yourself that there are so many others worse off than you. So where do you put that? Do you not allow yourself to grieve just because you're relatively lucky? How can you consider yourself lucky when your home and business are rotted from the inside out? Do you take comfort in the fact that you're only one in thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands? Do you consider yourself lucky just to be still alive? It's like, even those who are in the worst conditions right now or suffered the most in the aftermath of the storm -- but are not dead -- are they supposed to be thanking their lucky stars that, hey, the Superdome fucking sucked more than anything has ever sucked before and there was piss and shit and vomit everywhere and people being raped and killed and dying in the heat with no food and water, but at least we're not dead so praise the Lord and pass the iced tea? I can't even think about the psychological and emotional effects of all of this without starting to feel truly insane. It's like there needs to be some kind of cosmic grief counselor sent down from the heavens to come and wave a wand and make everyone feel okay again. I try to think about this when I find myself getting aggravated about traffic and crowded stores. Sure, my phone bill and electricity bill spiked pretty high for a few weeks there. Whoa. Big whoa. Sure, I walked in on one of my houseguests sleeping naked and almost went blind. Whatever. Sure, I'm probably not going to Mexico anymore because there is work to be done and my boyfriend is doing it and I am so proud of him I could just burst from the heartseams, so I'm so sure I'm going to feel sorrow about not being able to go on vacation right now in the wake of all of this? How can I ever complain about anything ever again? I feel stressed about my presentation, but then I think about all of the little damn kids who are marching into strange schools in strange uniforms with strange teachers and rules and other students who are having to do homework and study for tests and make presentations when living in a strange city with strangers or cousins they hate or in a shelter on a cot and bathing in a community shower and possibly no damn house back at home or God even knows what going on in their wrecked lives and I am going to worry about making a presentation about vaginas and feminism in a class that I paid for with money out of my own pocket just to have some fun because I can totally just TiVo the shows I'll miss on class night? No. No, I don't think I can be complaining about that. I sincerely just have felt on the verge of puking all day long. Maybe it's the vitamins I took at lunch. Maybe it's these pictures. Maybe it's my boyfriend being away. Maybe it's reentry into the city being suspended because of Rita and probably because it was just all happening a little too quickly. Maybe it's the half a bag of mini-100 Grand candy bars I ate yesterday while watching the Emmy red carpet show. Maybe it's because it would be abnormal to not feel a little sick right now. Today, tomorrow, and probably for a long time.
About this time in ...
© Copyright 2005 elb |
I bought one of Jette's shirts. Don't you want to? A faraway friend and longtime reader named Colleen has set up wish lists for children who have been displaced and are being cared for here. She wants to make sure that they have things to make them feel comfortable and also to allow them to have them a little fun as well as to have items that are their own again while they are away from home. The list for games is here and the list for books is here. Thanks, Colleen. |
