I can't remember if we've already talked about the futility of words. It's been on my mind so much in the past few months; that what I never thought would happen has happened, that words would be inadequate. I didn't realise how much they mattered to me until they failed me utterly. Every explanation, every description, every attempt to show you has borne little relation to the reality or truth I was trying to convey. To be fair, this may be more a reflection of the confusion in my mind and life than of the deficiencies of words themselves, but shouldn't the words be able to untangle and reorder my confusion? What else are they for? It has been quite a shock to me. Perhaps that is what Katrina has taught me.

Last night I was driven from my home by hosts of Flying Termites. They covered every surface of the house, inside and out, obstreperously burrowing into my clean laundry, crawling over the contours of my pillow and drowning in a glass of pomegranate juice in the kitchen. According to the 150 people I spoke to later, it is Swarming Season. Of course it is. Which comes right after Killer Caterpillar Season. I abandoned my house for the safe havens of Alberta, and then Dani's and when I came home the next day, like Keyser Soze....poof, they were gone, leaving only a few transparent wings scattered on the ground and me to wonder if it had all been a dream. Like J.R being shot, only not really. 

The book has come out. Let us hope for every one involved that it will do well.

The tenuous connections that we make and that are so hard to not be overwhelmed by. I wish I were twenty years away from myself so that I could better decipher my motives. I wish I knew how I felt about you. I wish I knew why I felt about you. But words are inadequate and actions can be so cold. Still, I'm always surprised at how easy to bear this all is.

I have lost the ability to enjoy free time. But today was the closest I've come in a while.

The overwhelming feeling is one of happiness, with a light sprinkling of confusion, a side of guilt and a topping of anticipation. Even when things are happening to me, they seem more like portends of things to come.

In the past week I saw both Dave Matthews and Paul Simon, both of whom are so bound up with my youth that I'm having a hard time bringing myself back to the present.

This week has been largely defined by Smashing Pumpkins and The Clash. I'm angry with all of you who knew about them and didn't tell me.

The New Orleans renaissance is still in full swing. I know I will leave here, but I become increasingly concerned about where I will go next. Nothing will be like this.

Please, please, please, check out the Two Chinese Boys on Youtube.com. They are easily the best interpreters of Pop Music that I have ever seen in my life.

Just when I think I've conquered my miserable track record on truth, I haven't.

This is rambly, but I'm feeling very blank and directionless today. I'm done boring you. I'll bore you again soon.

I have wanted so badly to post for days and days now, but life has been hectic and there has been no time. It started a week ago last Thursday and has not stopped since then. A few themes upon which I will hopefully expound in the future:

Kermit Ruffins playing "Cruisin'". A stolen chair in Cafe Luna. A chemical spill. A gospel choir singing "Hold On, Be Strong, It's Only a Test". An impromptu Puccini aria sung to a hushed crowd in a restaurant. Hugh Masakela impressions of a train. "Honey, Honey, Come and Dance With Me". The music is lifting me up and carrying me away. Happy moments with Alex reliving happy moments. An innate sense of style and the word 'malingering'. Andrew's articles. A new ring. Washing the sand and dust out of my ears. High heels, green hats and red pants twirling on a dance floor. Sweetbreads and crab salad. Am I glowing? "I will never grow old, I'll go to heaven tonight because I love you." We do what we can in the time that we have.

I spend much of my life apologising. It's discouraging. Without blinking I can, right now think of about fourteen people to whom I am sorry, to various degrees. I think Katrina has been bad for me in that it gave me free license from all my friends and family to act without consequences. In someone as selfish as I am, that is dangerous and now I'm trying to crawl out of it.

Last night I evicted a cockroach from my apartment. It was the first time in my life that I have dealt in an adult manner with such a problem (in the past, either someone else has dealt with it or I have simply ceded control of the apartment to the cockroach).

I'm in Starbucks and they are playing the incredibly awesome (Wilson Pickett?) song from 'Coming to America'... "someone to kiss, someone to miss...to be loved, to be loved, oh what a feeling."

Vaughn's is everything it was cracked up to be. Men are a strange and inexplicable breed. Alcohol has a strange sense of humor.

According to Justin's Six Rules of Life, You are not worth sleeping with unless you own a Barry White album, a Marvin Gaye album and an Al Green album. Check, check, and check. Well, that's a relief. How many of you can say the same?

I jammed both my second toes quite viciously hopping a fence and now they have swollen up and turned black and angry purple. While painful and inconvenient, part of me is enjoying this. As a non-athletic person, it's rather exciting to be (mildly) injured and this is as close as I've come.

Last night drinks at Le Bon Temps with Lauree. Tonight dinner with Stacey. Strange twists and turns.

There are potholes the size of Buicks in the road. They are very deep and abrupt, with steep sides, so someone has painted their rims with bright pink spray-paint. They look like concrete-grey conch shells.

During the day, the St. Francis of Asissi Church bells play tunes every fifteen minutes. At night, someone a few doors down practices their trumpet. And when the traffic dies down, you can hear the sirens for miles.

My electricity has been turned off, which resulted in a night of Walgreen's candles, chips and salsa and silence. Robert McNamara continues to provide good company.

In New Orleans, we are all poor men who live like kings (except for the wealthy who live like kings). I eat well and drink well and live well, and my heart is not withheld from any joy. All for a very reasonable fee. How many people in the world can say that?

A couple of nights ago I finally, finally spoke with Nick Roth. He sounds well, grown and old and mature and serious, but clearly still himself as I knew him. He is in D.C. and it turns out that Feurey, Marissa and Matt Nichols are all in Manhattan. Literally everyone I know from school is in the Northeast, Boston, New York and D.C., with a few kooks out in San Francisco, Ellie in Colorado and Josie in Chicago. It makes me really happy to have you concentrated, but it also makes me happy that I went somewhere else. It would have been so much easier to stay with you. Hopefully, Nick and I will be in New York at the same time soon.

I have begun to see the world in terms of "What Not to Wear." Which is good and bad.

Doesn't it seem as though if you worked for the Department of Homeland Security and therefore you understood how surveillance works that you would think twice before sending your (real) name, current photo, government office telephone numbers, and sexually explicit instructions over the Internet to a 14-year old girl? Just a thought.

I've been watching too much children's television here at Doug's... enough to know that I despise the Doodle-Bops with every fibre of my being. The Wiggles are okay, but the Teletubbies and the Pooh-Bahs are clearly signs of apocalyptic decay.

I would have given anything to have had you with me yesterday. How will I ever explain to you what it was like to walk around the Treme, following the Mardi Gras Indians? In brief, there are several tribes of Indians, of African-American men who spend an entire year making costumes out of beads and feathers to commemorate and celebrate the Native Americans who helped the slaves escape. These costumes are brightly colored and made up of panels depicting Indian life in string and beads. The headresses reach up seven feet in the air and the chief's tribe follows around him, banging on tambourines and chanting. Sometimes the tribes run into each other at an intersection and the chiefs square off and dance around each other in a mock fight. There are Wild Men and Spies and Scouts and little kids who will train their entire lives to be a chief. The costumes weigh between 50 and 100 pounds (in feathers) and cost thousands of dollars. Words are so pallid to explain to you how hot it was yesterday, how good cool beer tasted, the rhythm your feet acquire after walking with the Ninth Ward Indians for an hour and a half, the unexpected smell of mold wafting out of boarded-up abandoned stores on Claiborne, the knowledge that you live in a large city that will shut down main intersections and provide police protection for a bunch of black men dressed up as Indians, banging on drums and brandishing cardboard spears. How would I explain the difference in the way a man walks when he is just a man and when, for a few hours, he is a chief? The authority in his voice, the look in his eyes, the deference shown. I wish you had been there.

After the Indians, we went to Jackson Square and watched a Stella-yelling contest for Tenessee Williams Day. One man threw his head back and howled to the wrought-iron balconies above "FEMA!". Then mint juleps at Patty O's and Flava Flav and Popeye's at Paige and Dani's. A perfect day.

The two new best things I've discovered about my apartment:

The view looks out over the angles and triangles of roofs, so the impression is that of Mary Poppins looking over London. Also, there's a church bell nearby that rings out the quarter hours. I love it. Come by and see me, y'hear! Little by little my apartment takes shape. For those of you who knew me then, this apartment is the spiritual heir of my room on Turner Street, when it was tidy and the Christmas lights were on.

A sign that spring is in the air:

I had my first legitimate Mutant Minesweeper Caterpillar sighting the day before yesterday. Some of you may have heard me mention these; they fall from the skies and inflict pain, they are spiky and either green or black, depending on their mood, and they carpet the ground for about three weeks in the springtime. The one I saw was puny and had clearly fallen from the sky before fully ripening, but still... it's nice that the caterpillars are still here.

A sign that New Orleans is okay:

There were young men playing basketball on the court next to the police station, across the street from Ms. Mae's. It's been so quiet recently, maybe just a father and son, or a couple of college kids... it's nice that the basketballers are still here.

The other day I drove my Bobe's automatic car and couldn't figure out why it was broken. It wasn't for two blocks that I realised that I was driving it with two feet. I admit that my mother was right and I prefer stick-shift. I can't believe it, but I'm that much closer to being the kind of woman I want to be.

I had a dream last night that my mother was angry with me because I'm always lying to her. I kept trying to tell her that I haven't lied to her in years, but the words got stuck in my throat. I can't remember if I was upset because she was accusing me fairly or unfairly. Now that I'm awake, I'm still not sure.

Since I began writing this blog entry, on and off all morning, we have finished the book. I love that phrase. We have finished the book! Rejoice! Expect phone calls.

I'm off to move.

"When the book is over..." has become my refrain. One day we'll all be free... Just a few more days to tote the weary load... Everything is on hold. I can't wait to start living my life when nothing ever happens. It's tough being an adult!

"In New Orleans you dream. You suffer. Then you celebrate.. It's a strange and unusual place, and it makes you strange and unusual if you're from there or live there... It's been the ace in my back pocket - New Orleans. It's a mark of distinction." Said Nancy Lemann.

The weather is beautiful, so people are out on their porches, playing checkers, braiding each others hair, hanging on gates, chatting with neighbors.

When everything else has faded, humiliation goes on and on. Maybe there wasn't so much else, after all. This is what you get.

The ideal of saying little and meaning much, instead of my big mouth.

An orange, a shower, and "Better Things" in a hotel room. A glass of champagne in Tribeca. A glass of milk and an apple fritter in Starbucks on 59th St. Rebirth Brass Band singing "don't worry, be happy; it's later than you think." The way my hands look coming out the sleeves of my mother's coat. A friend who came to Boston because she dreamt it. A taxi ride with Ging and Ella. Ghostbusters. My ipod. Oasis. The moment that the imcomprensibleness of the situation almost knocks you down. The moment right after that when you realise you've always known. A phone message from a good man. Sitting on front steps on St. Charles, with the hibiscus and the cockroaches and the stars, wiping away the sweat, knowing that you will never trade your life for anything else, because it's exactly the life that you would have chosen. Because all I want is to be here now.