The Night After: Surviving beside the devastation of Katrina

Like so many others, I spent most of this day with my ears or eyes turned to the radio and TV. Straining to understand the particulars of the hurricane as it came ashore. Glen arose earlier than I this morning. And when I awoke, he was in his office clothes and ready to go. My first question was, "Where is the hurricane?"

Just knowing it was a terrifying night and day for millions of people not so far away is daunting. Early reports are beyond belief. Our own regional "tsunami." The disaster continues. In New Orleans, they're running out of water, despite all the water. Blown-out high-rise hotels downtown resemble the work of the Oklahoma City bomber. Seasoned reporters are breaking down when reporting what they have seen. We cannot yet understand the scale of this catastrophe.

In Tallahassee, we've had feeder bands all day. Glen has just returned from a coffee shop. He wanted to escape his cabin fever and took his book to the All Saints' Cafe, near my studio. The power failed, sending him home. We are the lucky ones. This has been our only inconvenience. We dodged it this time.

I've been working night and day to prepare for 10 art shows. Two of these shows are slated for the Gulf Coast. One is for Daphne, AL, on Mobile Bay. I am hopeful that Daphne and Fairhope still stand. The eastern shore of Mobile Bay has a high, natural bluff providing a seawall. When Mobile floods from surge, these little towns across the bay tend to survive.

The other show is in Pass Christian, MS., which lies between Gulf Port and Biloxi. I'm not sure the town exists tonight. I am sure its infrastructure and economy no longer exist. My plan is to to let them dig out and get beyond Labor Day, and then to try to call them to see if they can be reached. I speak, not from selfishness, but because my work requires travel in my region with hard dates, and I have to pay attention to the weather. It's almost impossible to ply my trade in a region so controlled by weather all of the time, and by extraordinary weather some of the time -- unanticipated difficulties that were never part of my fantasy when I started in this trade.

Last year, Hurricane Ivan came in over Pensacola and Gulf Shores, AL. It went north through Alabama, hit Tennessee and turned eastward into North Carolina. I followed it up, listening to my storm radio whenever I could get a signal. I didn't want to run into a trailing tornado. My show was in Dalton, GA, right under Chattanooga. Miraculously, the storm missed the NW corner of Georgia, but it devastated the Franklin and Highland, NC, areas and moved on to the Asheville, NC, area, flooding the Biltmore area of that city.

----------------

How much can our society stand? I ask this question almost every day. How much can I stand? I think my post-traumatic stress began during the election of 2000. It certainly repeated as I watched the planes plowing into the World Trade Center on 9/11. It repeated again as we went to war with the wrong country. And again when the American public reelected the Bush administration. At my age, I was just starting to think that I understood the world. Now the world is a different dish. Everything on top of these traumas feels like just too much. The follies of nature, the accidents of man, and all the personal toe stubbings serve up a world that has become confusing, with agendas quite foreign.

How does one make sense of tsunamis and hurricanes?

Katrina will pass into legend. Whether the damaged areas can ever recover remains to be seen. It's hard to assess the damage at this point. People still need to be rescued tonight and at least fifty-five are dead in Mississippi. The airwaves will be filled with these stories. Our lives will change and yet we will find a way to go on. Let us have the wisdom to rebuild appropriately to the new reality we find ourselves in, and not merely replace what we have lost. Only this would be an appropriate response, an appropriate memorial, to the losses of our sad region.

The Shadow of Katrina: Musings on the Eve of Destruction

By the time we wake up tomorrow morning, New Orleans as we have known it will likely be gone. Say your goodbyes tonight. The city is emptying. Under mandatory evacuation, the city has been militarized. Armageddon bears down upon this precious city. It has withstood everything until now. We shall see what remains by day after tomorrow.

Barring a miracle of biblical proportions, the Category 5 hurricane has New Orleans directly in its path. There appear to be no forces at work which can alter its path. Doomsday has arrived.

Okay, cliches aside... My dear friend, Brad, sent me emails all last week. He was concerned for us over here in the Big Bend of Florida, inviting us to feel his loving support as we contemplated the exhausting work of hurricane preparations and evacuation. Alas, yesterday morning, I awoke to a phone call from Brad, fumbling for the right words to ask for similar refuge here with us. Before he completed his request, I said, "The answer is yes." Yes, come now. Drop everything and come now. The interstates are already crowded with evacuees. The Panhandle is already running out of gas. Sooner is better than later. Got a cat? Bring him. Got some elders you're concerned about? Bring them. Discussion of the purchase of his first-ever cell phone and how to stay in touch through the oncoming tumult.

Brad said he had some more hours of work to do before he could leave. Boarding up houses that might blow away or float away. Natural human instinct to do so. Figuring out which, of the millions of papers we all generate and store, to pack. Convincing elders to get into the car. I understand, I said. But come.

He drove instead to Baton Rouge. The roads east were already too crowded. Maybe he'll come after the storm, if he can't go home again.

..............................

Calling my other New Orleans friends, David and Vera, at 10:00 p.m. (their time) last night, I reached only their voice mail. Come now, I say. We'll fit you in. And fretting because I know David well enough to know he'll want to make a last stand there, or go down trying. I received an early-morning email today explaining patiently that they'll be boarding up and hunkering down. Okay, I think. At least I don't have to wonder what they'll be doing. I don't like it, but I do feel a sense of certainty in their decision. They have two yachts in Lake Pontchartrain, a new home in Mid-City, a vast collection of papers and records.

But at 10:30 a.m., my time, I watch their mayor and then their governor at a press conference. They say that the 175 m.p.h. sustained winds, with gusts of 190, will take out the levy system. The surge will come. Building will fly apart. The Superdome will become a shelter of last resort for the elderly and sick who cannot evacuate.

I call Vera and ask if they are still staying put. No, she says. They've decided to board up and run, but it will be hours before they're ready. They do not know where they will go. Just away, wherever they can.

---------------------

I lived in New Orleans for two years in the late 1980s. It was a decade in which Louisiana felt an oil bust. Texas felt it, too, unimaginably now. But Texas began its recovery quickly, while Louisiana lagged behind. In those years, I could have bought a string of large mansions for a song. The yuppies had abandoned them, along with the city and its depressed economy. When I moved from Tallahassee to the Big Easy, U-Haul gave me an incredible deal. Two years later, when I wanted to move back to Florida, I found I could not afford a trailer. They gave deals only in one direction because they needed to get the trailers back to New Orleans and all the traffic was running the other way.

When I moved there, I was really quite clueless about almost everything about the city. It seemed like a time warp, a big city stuck in the late '50s with a depression like the '30s. Although liberal and relaxed around issues like parades and partying, it was quite conservative and unenlightened about the progressive issues I was familiar with from my life in Florida. And Florida has never been all that progressive itself.

I made a good living there for awhile. I plied my trade as a graphic designer/art director and worked in a printing house. But then the city spit me out. My son was diagnosed with a neuro disorder. I lost my job in a major downsizing event. And my relationship with my then-partner failed to sustain me. I moved back to Florida and experienced the roughest years of my life.

I remember being told that I would miss New Orleans if I left. It took years for this to be so. When I finally began to return for short visits to do business, I got to experience the city and its culture from a much more satisfying perspective. And it was then that I finally fell in love with New Orleans.

--------------------------

And so it is strange, tonight, to try to wrap my mind around what Katrina probably holds for dear, dear New Orleans. The expected devastation will be awesome. There could be a million homeless people by tomorrow. The ground could be covered in a mixture of unimaginable toxins and filfth. The historic pumping stations -- which even the Dutch come to study -- could be anihilated and rendered useless for many months. Buildings which have seen almost 300 years of history could be twisted off of their foundations. They've certainly not been made stronger by the Foromosan termite, the dry rot, the rusting nails, the humidity.

So much care has gone into preserving the French Quarter. It is a living city, and not merely a museum; not merely a gentrification project in which only yuppies and lawyers can reside. When the area now called New Orleans was only swamp, the earliest settlements were placed on the highest and driest spots. This is true of the Quarter. But height in that region is only a relative thing. They're predicting a possible 28-foot surge. I can't imagine that the Quarter -- nor the levies along the riverfront, for that matter -- can hold back the tsunami that will rush in when the eyewall comes ashore.

The Mississippi River is mostly a north/south river that snakes and oxbows. It's been interfered with and channeled until it behaves unlike itself. They say there are over 100 known carcinogens in the river, from all the industry upstream. In the days before steam engines, barges were floated down river to the city, where the produce was loaded onto sailing ships. The barges were made of some of north America's finest woods. These barges provided only one-way trips down to the city. The wood was recycled into the bones of the growing city.

To the western edge of New Orleans proper, in a place known as Riverbend, at Carrollton, the Mississippi stops its mostly southward course and makes a 90-degree turn to the east. And through the city, the river flows in a west-to-east direction. Just east of the French Quarter, at a point of land known as Tangiers, the river again bends abruptly to the south and flows many miles to the Gulf of Mexico.

Brad said he took a Louisiana geography course recently and learned how quickly dry land in the southernmost region of the state is disappearing. To the rate of a football field every 30 minutes. At this rate, the loss of land must be visible to our eyes. And as this land becomes water, it also provides less and less protection against storms from the Gulf. Katrina will surely race across this flat and watery world to the front door of New Orleans.

Mary Landrieu calls this area the "energy coast," in her effort to remind of us her state's current worth to the nation. It is an advance call for emergency funds from the larger society. And this is to the good. Millions of working class people live and work in this region, which has given us an incredibly overlaid culture of food and music. They work the oil rigs, fish the waters.

But it is also a region that has played its own role in the birth of our nation. New Orleans won the battle for port supremacy over Apalachicola and provided the Gulf coast with a then-protected port that today brings in a large volume of gas and oil as well as coffee and other products from around the world.

But it is also a dream region. Years ago, I flew over this region in a light airplane. From the air over Louisiana's famous swamps, I saw brown grasses with large spirals of water spinning across the plain. Spirals everywhere, as if water could only organize itself into this most powerful of metaphysical symbols. Mother Earth. Dream mother.

---------------------

The mighty Mississippi itself is unbearably strong. I'm amazed that the French and Spanish could sail their vessels against its current, once they found the true mouth of the river. In the river lies a long, narrow island known as Vella-Ashby Island. Its southern tip played host to the first French explorers to find their way into the river from the Gulf. They made it up that far, set up anchorage for their vessel, and camped on dry land. Only that night did they realize that it was Mardi Gras, and they celebrated this French/paganistic/Christian holiday in the middle of the river. Although Mobile claims its Mardi Gras as the first in the New World, this forgotten story is the true story of the first Mardi Gras in North America. And it was celebrated -- properly enough -- in Lousiana, in the Mississippi.

I know all of these bits and pieces of New Orleans history. One doesn't live there without learning a lot of bits about the place. The city is so real to me -- all of the intimate spaces there -- that I cannot imagine it gone. It cannot be put back in order. Its sweetness and un-selfconciousness will melt away like a dream, upon awakening. I fear that, like the oyster houses in East Point, near Apalachicola, once the surge has washed away the authentic bits, only corporate representations will rush to fill in the gaps they have left.

-----------------------

One more thing... Today in my studio, Harry Shearer's "Le Show" focused for awhile on Katrina and New Orleans. Up until that moment, I had been caught up only in the pragmatics of whether my friends would leave New Orleans safely. But when I heard Randy Newman singing "Evangeline." I fell apart. Oh yeah... that's what it's about. A mournful lament about the loss of a sweet, sweet little historical zone by a natural event we cannot negotiate with. "Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline... they're trying to wash us away..."

Waiting for the Hurricane...
[This entry was written late at night on August 26, 2005 -- before it was known that Katrina would barrel toward New Orleans... Look for a 2nd posting on this storm.]

We always feel like sitting ducks as the big storms cross the lower portion of Florida, spit out into the Gulf, and choose a path north, or west, or both. Who will it be, who gets the terror and destruction this time? Wishing it away from you only wishes it toward others. And then we reawaken to the fact that our wishes (or not) are not controlling the storm.

These storms seem like angry beasts floating on the wind. Watching the hysterical media report on them, we embue them with consciousness and personality. The fact that each hurricane is different encourages that illusion. The ultimate in anthropomorphism (of which my scientific friends might not approve).

Don't let the categories they ascribe to hurricanes fool you. Even Category 1 storms can kill, can flood the land and surprise their victims. Always expect the unexpected with them. They'll never go exactly where the forecasts say. There's no justice in a hurricane. And yet every time one hits our state, there's always someone quoted in the news saying, "We thought it would go north of us and then it came here. Sure surprised us..."

We native Floridians have been through a lot of these storms by the time we reach middle age. We've heard all the stories. We've watched media technology improve over our lifetimes, until they can present virtual hurricanes 24/7 and talk themselves blue in the face. My special favorite is "Storm Tracker," on The Weather Channel. There's just something so ridiculous and yet endearing about that guy. When a hurricane is coming in somewhere, he's always there. Always in his dark navy "storm tracker" shirt and parka, wearing a dark baseball cap. His long oval face is so earnest. He has a tan from the elements and he obviously works out, features he'd not get from a desk job. And he's so on it about these storms. They must be his passion. He reports them like the World Series or the Olympics, which, to him, hurricanes most surely are. The queen of storms, a hurricane has everything, except snow.

I remember when I was young and we lived on Davis Islands in Tampa. Davis Islands is a 1920s boomtime land development. A barrier island was dredged and enhanced and a middle class and owning class community was built. The "Island" is about three miles long, from the bridge to the seaplane basin and yacht club at the far end. When I was three, my parents and I moved to our new house on the south end of the Island, near the yacht club, the small airstrip and the bay.

Whenever a hurricane threatened our area, we always evacuated the Island very early. We usually drove out to the then small town of Brandon, and stayed with my grandparents. I remember being allowed to stay up all night -- we were sleeping on palletes in the living room -- and watching the news coverage of the storm. Back then, the storm was represented by a static symbol resembling a squashy spiral. As the storm progressed, the TV station would move the symbol around. I read Life Magazine and Readers Digest and National Geographic as we waited to see what the storm would do to our town, our home. Like waiting for a nuclear attack, we were always hopeful that we and our abandoned home would survive.

As we would prepare for our evacuation from the Island, neighbors would rib us. Few of them ever evacuated, choosing instead to hunker down comfortably in their houses. When I questioned my father, he always said that as an architect he'd studied the effects high winds had on buildings. But his worst fear was that a major hurricane would arrive at the mouth of Tampa Bay, near the Sunshine Skyway bridge, and stall. This, he feared, would send a deadly storm surge up the bay to the city of Tampa, especially to Davis Islands. The bay is very shallow and there is historical precedent for such a thing happening. Tampa is only a few feet above sea level. And so we always left.

This year, when Hurricane Dennis came ashore, its epicenter was miles to the west of us. Inland, where we live, there was little damage beyond some fallen trees and branches, some downed power lines. We were inconvenienced for part of a day until crews got the power back on. By the next day, though, we began to hear reports of what had happened to the coastline to our south. Panacea and St. Marks were hit hard with storm surge and waves. Pictures of the famous Angelo's Restaurant, at the mouth of Oklocknee Bay, were graphic. It's amazing the photographer could find a perch to take those pictures. Angelo's is still closed, still condemned. The oyster houses of East Point, near St. George Island and Apalachicola, were taken by surge. The Living Dock in Panacea was again damaged. Dennis was only a weak storm, but it came in on a high tide and was a powerful illustration of what surge can do to coastline.

And now we learn that almost all of Wakulla County is low. A powerful storm riding a super high tide could send a surge almost to Tallahassee. It's all coastal plain, with a low rise. The mother in me has commanded my son and his girlfriend to always evacuate their home in the woods near a wild sinkhole in Wakulla when a hurricane is coming.

Despite earlier predictions, current National Weather Service models show Katrina eventually hitting west of here, near Gulf Shores, Alabama. This is where Ivan hit last year and where Dennis hit, too. Alabama has a sliver of land reaching to the Gulf. On this land lie both Fairhope and Daphne, two small towns where I do art shows. Perched on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay, this sliver is charming, one of my favorite areas in the South. I'm not sure I'd want to deal with its assuredly Republican politics. But the people are charming and I have a favorite sleezy motel in Fairhope right on the bay, where an East Indian family makes its living and surprises me constantly when they speak in southern Alabama dialect.

This great little area is again in the center of the cone of possibility, projected for Katrina's landfall. It's weathered these storms before and it'll do it again. I shall be in Daphne, the next town north of Fairhope in two weeks for a show. And people will be there, even if they're digging out from the storm.

That area of the coast was fought over and traded back and forth between Spain and France, until the "Americans" finally took over. Mobile, right across the bay, claims this country's first Mardi Gras. Southern Belles float around in antebellum gowns promoting their school and community, and have not yet reevaluated the meaning of their garb or their feigned plantation accents. It's all very surreal. All so very Southern.

I am a daughter of this region. My father's family was here by the early 1800s, ekeing their living in "West Florida," in Gadsden County. Massacred at home by Creek Indians, only one survived to carry forth the DNA that runs in my cells, in the cells of my son, making him a sixth generation Floridian. At one time, the Florida Parishes did not end at today's Florida state line. They extended all the way to the eastern shore of Lake P0ntchartrain, bordering New Orleans. This sub-region, connected to my own, is familiar. Saltwater, coastal plain and bayous have a way of stamping its claim on everything.

As the seas warm and the hurricanes strengthen and become more frequent, the northern Gulf coast is vulnerable to any hurricanes making their way into to the Gulf. So many precious zones along this coast, so much to lose. Someone said, "Send it to Texas, all the way to Crawford," and I fantasize just that.

....................................................................................................................................................................@

Popular Culture:
Or why Shakespeare never grows stale...

It's hot outside, even at night. Some days, we get buckets of rain, and if it comes late enough in the day, it acts like both sunshade and air conditioner for awhile. At least it boosts the efforts of our actual ACs. I'm not a fan of heat and humidity, as anyone who knows me will tell you. I prefer to cancel all outside activities from about late June until mid-November.

But on these hot, hot days, my mind turns to Shakespeare's works. Perhaps because so many of his most famous plays have been remade as modern movies in the last decade or so. One of the most fascinating things about the Bard's works is that they can be staged in many eras, with period costumes or not. They can be called by other titles. And yet the bones of the original works hold up.

So, instead of running yourself ragged, or watching too much junk TV, consider hosting your own Bard-a-thon with this list of Shakespeare movies. Even your teenagers will think they're cool because it is young adults playing many of the key roles. And Shakespeare is just controversial enough to be eternally modern.

Interestingly, the uber-cool Julia Stiles has acted in a great many of these movies, all before entering college. You'll see her name turn up a lot in this list:

Ten Things I Hate About You... Julia Stiles as the elder sister who must quit hating boys and get into a serious relationship before her precocious and boy-crazy younger sister will be allowed to date. Julia is wonderful as the acidic boy-hating teenager; great power in her role.

The Lion King... "Hamlet" in animation form.

Hamlet 2000... With Ethan Hawke as the Prince himself, and Julia Stiles as Ophelia. This is a fascinating rendition of Shakespeare's most important play. Hawke is driven and ambivalent at the same time, morally torn, angry, distracted and hurt by events that caused his father's death and his mother's marriage to his father's brother... "Something rotten in Denmark..." The background technology of the set is terrific, conveying a nervous but truthful support system for the main action.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead... This movie is not by Shakespeare. It is by Tom Stoppard and it focuses on two minor characters of "Hamlet." Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are minor cronies of Hamlet's. As the main play drones on, their important diminishes and they show up at the end of "Hamlet" only as traitors to the prince. In this movie, they are jittery, neurotic creatures buzzing at the periphery of the main action on center stage, confused as to why they exist at all. Hilarious, but you should see at least one version of "Hamlet" first so you'll get the jokes and asides...

Romeo and Juliet... Both contemporary versions are good. The Leonardo DiCaprio/Clare Danes version is uber-modern, with gangs carrying automatic weapons and referring to them as "swords." The version with Olivia Hussey from the 1960s is a classical version, sexy and romantic and tragic. See both.

West Side Story... Broadway musical version of "Romeo and Juliet." Parallels the feuds of Shakespeare's story with the gang violence of NYC's culture; features Natalie Wood.

"O"... "Othello" writ as high school drama, involving a star basketball player as Othello and Julia Stiles as Desdemona. Iago is, as ever, full of villainy and the master of manipulation, goading Othello into acts of treachery and murder. Also explores themes of race, jealousy, and the loss of a once-close friendship turned to hatred.

...............................................
Two other movies that fit with this list:

1. Shakespeare in Love
2. Stage Beauty

Both of these films are gorgeous and sexy, even if they are faux biographies. They are similar to each other. Shakespeare in Love came first and got much more attention, and was more about Shakespeare himself. But don't miss Stage Beauty. Both films explore the moments in Shakespeare's time when young males acted in the female roles and it was illegal for women to act on stage. Both films aim their lenses at the exact moment when women were beginning to show up for women's roles; the moment of transition. Lush and romantic and interesting.

3. The Prince and I

This films parallels the way Shakespeare's plots were shaped. In this modern romance, Julia Stiles plays a college student who's not artistic or literary, but instead mathematical and scientific. As luck would have it, a true Danish prince has escaped his destiny and castle back in Denmark and happened upon her college campus, where he intends to hide out so he doesn't have to play as heir to the throne. Their paths cross, and after some initial hostility, they begin to help each other with coursework. Of course, the prince is well schooled in things literary. The best moment in the film, to me, is when Stiles announces that Shakespeare is stupid and no one should have to study him. As you can see from this movie list, Stiles' irony is extreme. A fun, cute movie. Not deep. But definitely belongs on the list. It's summer, after all.

....................................................................................................................................................................@

MOVIE MUSINGS... "Broken Flowers"

We saw "Broken Flowers" over the weekend. It's a truly strange little movie that doesn't seem to say anything, nor resolve anything. It's an anti-action movie, but not quite a chick flick. A movie in which the often-animated Bill Murray barely moves most of the time.

I actually liked it, because it seemed to me that it was much like real life, and not so much like a movie. It begins with a near-catatonic Murray being dumped by his latest live-in girlfriend right at the moment the postal carrier has dumped a stack of mail through the door slot. A myterious pink envelope portends new developments, but the mail is forgotten for a time while the girlfriend leaves, the dumped man sleeps on the sofa, and time slithers on in excrutiating slowness while nothing happens. This reveals the state of Murray's character's soul.

Finally, a phone call awakens Murray, inviting him next door for coffee. He grabs yesterday's mail in a distracted way and carries it with him. Next door lives an African-American family, and the house is abuzz with five kids, vibrant colors, good smells, bead curtains, beautiful adults. Murray is friends with the husband, and it is this character who structures Murray's next actions. Sitting in the husband's den, Murray finally opens the pink envelope and learns that he has fathered a child 19 years before, with one of several women he'd had relationships with, and that his son might be on his way to find him. The son is "shy and sensitive, but also imaginative and resourceful" and will likely be able to find him. But which woman is the mother? Murray and his neighbor cannot glean this from the note or the envelope. No signature, no return address, a faint and obscurred postal mark.

It is the friend's notion that Murray must depart immediately to visit each of the four possible women on Murray's list (a fifth has been killed in an accident). This action is clearly outside of Murray's personality footprint, but his exuberant friend prepares a how-to package of airline tickets, hotel and rental car reservations, and MapQuest maps leading to the front doors of old girlfriends' homes. And so, reluctantly, he takes off on a strange and lonely odyssey find the women he'd been with, whatever their current circumstances might be -- to unnamed cities and hillsides where each woman now resides.

And this is where the story gets interesting. Four different situations and women's lives to dip back into, each receiving this old boyfriend with varying degrees of interest, attitudes, and cooperation. In each situation, he has to find a way to learn whether he is talking with the woman who sent the note -- who bore his son. Some are amused to see him again and some are edgey and one is definitely hostile.

At the end of the movie, the viewer (and Murray's character) know almost no more about anything than when it all began. This is a pretty interesting achievement: to go on such a journey and come back to Square One. This drove Glen crazy. But I thought the experience of the movie was fascinating. I think that if anyone with multiple relationships in his or her past were to dredge them up again, this would be pretty much their experience.

What makes this movie unique is that Murray's character is in his early to mid-fifties when he seeks an answer to this note. How many stories do we get where the protagonist is this age? In "About Schmidt," Jack Nicholson also makes a road trip to learn something about life again and having a series of misadventures. But Nicholson is older than Murray and plays that role from the point of view of an even older man. Other road trip movies focus on hip, young adults sowing their wild oats. Murray's oats have been sown, and his life is the result of the process.

But Murray is not at the end of his life. He has the vulnerability of someone who would be an empty-nester. Except he's not had the marriage and kids to make him so. He has reached an early retirement from a lucrative career in "computers." He has no known purpose to himself or to anyone, and has not the energy to reinvent himself. His sexual magnetism rocks on, despite every other factor in his life and almost beneath his own radar. You see even younger women respond to him, almost despite themselves.

And I see a man who has not and cannot reevaluate what's happened in his life to now, and has gone numb as a result. He only knows how to repeat what he's always done, and now that even he can see it's not working any more, he still has no other options. Despite financial security, a beautiful home, an able body, and some intelligence, his life has come to a stop. Sylvia Plath's bell jar has been placed over him, an airless chamber. One hopes that this whole adventure shakes something in him, makes it sloppy for awhile -- since even sloppy would be preferable to airless.

Murray's acting is changing. On this new trajectory, it's becoming stiller and quieter; saying less and less. And yet something is happening before the lens. I am one of those women who responds to Murray's vibration, no matter how faintly he makes it operate. It reminds me of how I worked with color a few years ago -- with color becoming less and less present in my stones and glass -- so that the eye would search for it instead of being inundated and violated by it. How far down can you divide "molecules" of color before it isn't color anymore? Before it is merely transparent? Down to the atomic level?

And so, ultimately, "Broken Flowers" is an existential movie where the big questions are asked but not answered. And one question, surely, is: when one finds oneself standing out in an intersection in a confused state, where does one turn? Certainly the antithesis of the "purpose-driven life" so popular in Christian mythology these days.

.....................................................................................................................................................................@

This is the start-up for a series of letters and mini-essays about life, politics, and culture. I'm a working artist in a college town in North Florida -- politically speaking, a dollop of blue in a sea of red. Check in from time to time for leters and short essays on life, politics, culture - whatever catches my interest.

I'm tired of being an apologist for the South: its history, its current politics. But, for me, escape to other regions is not possible at this point. And so, instead of escaping, I'm turning to face the culture I find myself cemented to. Without making it gothic, without using zany-ness to explain a deeper reality. It is possible to be a Southerner and yet sane.

Got demons? This idea for a new bumper sticker occurred to me when suddenly in my life I saw several friends acting on their distress and making impulsive choices instead of turning to face the demons pursuing them. It was clear to me that they were doing this, and that I do this, too. So, instead of letting my own demons furnish the jet fuel that runs me out of town, I am staying put this time, breathing deeply, and activating my own analysis of things.

Hopefully you, gentle reader, will be interested in the observations I make, from the perspective of a 52 year old. I know everyone has heard quite a lot from the 'boomers for about 40 years. I also know that political movements' leaders have been heard from. And I know what the 24/7 cable news networks are pumping out. But I'm more interested in the thinking of those in the "heartland," even if the heartland is in the South.

--------------------------------------

Posting: 8/21/05


By way of introducing myself, I'll explain my name. It is Tana and it is my given name. My parents "invented" it when they were first married and lived in a garage apartment behind a larger house where a young girl lived. Her name was Lana, and they loved her. They toyed with names rhyming with hers when I came along and settled on the version beginning with "T." For many years, I was the only Tana anyone had ever heard of, but as I go through life, many others are showing up all the time. There's even another one with my exact surname, though she received the surname in marriage. Now there are two of us. I am about 13 years her senior, and her politics are conservative while mine are progressive, and so we try to not "ruin each other's reputation."

When I was in my twenties, I decided to get to the bottom of the mystery as to why "Tana" shows up in many languages and all over the globe, becomes prefixes and suffixes to many other names and word. The bottom line is that "Tana" is the ancient Teutonic form of "Diana," goddess of the moon, a huntress and protectress of women. When I learned that, I decided I could live with this unusual name that had brought some teasing and unwanted attention. Such an exotic name, I'd felt, tagged onto such a completely un-exotic little girl... Discovering its true roots in my most radical feminist phase, I grew into the name. And now that I am older and see how the world operates much more, I am more relaxed with such a powerful moniker, in terms of how it sounds and what it means. The goddess has a quiet way of surviving and mailing herself down through time.

TanaLunar refers to Diana and the moon, and my connection to both. My art business bears this name and I have applied it to to my blog.

....................................................................
The following are the major friends and philosophical players in my daily life. It is with them that the dialog of life transpires. You'll see reference to them often in postings to come. Please note that I also have two living parents in their 80's and in their original marriage of 55 years, as well as one sib, a sister, who lives with her husband. These relatives all inhabit the Tampa Bay Area, and they will be mentioned again, I am sure...

Glen -- my spouse; 7 years my junior; another "native" Floridian; a lawyer; a trail biker (cyclist); father of 16-year-old Phillip; my intellectual partner in life as well as my love

Phillip -- Glen's son and my stepson whom I've raised since age 6; a tall, handsome, quiet, good person

Kevin -- my 24 + -year old bio-son; also tall and handsome; talkative, brilliant, musical; philosophical; still in college; lives with his girlfriend, Kelly, and their Siberian husky in a wild place in the woods near our town

Larry -- my ex-husband and good friend (also good friends with Glen); has been a great co-parent for Kevin these many years; lives nearby

Melanie -- best friend since 9th grade; has journeyed and struggled through life with me; is currently moving from St. Petersburg, FL, to Fairlee, VT; is married to Terry and is the mother of 21-year-old Bridget; has 4 cats and 1 dog; great smarts and intuitions, and, in Phillip's estimation, "Cooks like she means it."

Margie -- best friend from age 3; can't remember a time without her in my life; an oncology social worker full of brilliant strategies for people; a nurturer and strategist for the sick; also an incredible sculptor of the human figure in clay (following her maternal grandmother's footsteps); married to Steve; mother of Ian (25) and Jeremy (21)

Sharri -- best friend over the past 4 years; lives in my town; an extraordinary beadmaker in a process she pretty near invented; brilliant and savvy and lovely; married to Gordon and mother of Cory (26) and Dara (24)

Sherry -- best friend over the past 28 years; a journalist/reporter; lives in my town; a deeply spiritual person who reads deeply; a fellow feminist in nature; strong and wonderful sense of humor and poignancy about the world; co-mother of 3: David (16), Noah (9), and Jenna (3); married to Terry, her female spouse; Sherry is currently suriving breast cancer, has just finished chemo and will soon begin radiation treatments

.........................................................................
Beyond these names lie many others I am close to. These are the ones in my daily life, in constant discussion with me. Not a Ya-Ya among them, nor a Sweet Potato Queen.


Next issue...

• Why Shakespeare matters
• Musings on Bill Murray's "Broken Flowers"