Forecast: Sunnier Days

More Sun and Less Clouds

Monday’s weather: Well it was supposed to be a day of sunshine – big orange ball with the little triangular flames and no clouds in the newspapers – but it is overcast and drizzly. Heading up to around 60. I don’t mind so much; Saturday was humid and hot, and Sunday was dry, warm, sunny. Enough sun for me to plant my Impatiens and get a good red on my back, enough water now to give all my plants a taste.

Monday’s drink: Bleah. Sunburns make me shy away from booze. Note to self.

Monday’s links: #1: Help Find Berdina!

#2: I have two new girlfriends: Alexis and Jennifer.

I do have sun. Sun on my face, my arms, my shoulders and back. Less on my chest and legs – those seem like places that get sun only if you’re not doing anything other than getting sun. When you’re working – planting, watering, digging – seems like you generally have your face, shoulders and back to the sky. So I guess I’m sportin’ a workman’s tan.

Not like it’s a ‘tan’ in any sense. And not like I go sportin’ sun often. Mostly I keep my white white skin shielded; both to keep from burning (which I do faster than garlic in a hot pan) and because I’ve often never really felt like the world wants to see my body. Meaning: I often haven’t wanted to see my body.

That’s different this year, as I’ve alluded earlier. I can work in front or back, even with friends over, in just a pair of shorts and not feel…frankly, grotesque. I don’t feel Gyllenhaal yet, but at least I don’t feel grotesque anymore.

So maybe it was the sun on my back, or the accomplishment of tasks, or the lack of gin, or all of that and something else, too, that led to a sunny mood last night. A welcome one, given how overcast I’ve been this year. It can’t have been easy living with a black cloud like I’ve been for so long.

Maybe it was the swimming. At the “J” this Saturday, it finally all came together. I was paddling back and forth, “…not yet having maximum fun,” I said to my coach. “OK, let me know when it is.” And then, somehow, everything made sense. Push off, head down, arms out, stroke, stroke, roll, breath, stroke. I could feel myself moving through the water like I was supposed to; this is what swimming must feel like, I thought. "Hey, I'm swimming!" I lapped the pool, got to the end, and my coach high-fived me. “Now I’m having fun,” I said. It was awesome, and I think I understand why people like swimming. (Well I say that not having to run 20 laps every morning.)

So that could have been it. Or maybe it was the ‘prom’ parties in DC this weekend. Both going to them, and then feeling stronger than any previous year how profoundly silly and self-inflated these things are. In this case a “…high-profile…” afternoon pre-White House Correspondents Association party.

Urp. We arrived around 1p to find gobs of sweaty, lonely people crowding under the tents like ants in seersucker. The number of people every year has gone up, and as that’s happened the party has become much less fun. You certainly can’t just strike up conversations with people you don’t know as easily. There’s really only a few things you can do: push your way to the booze table, squeeze your way to the food table, try and find the magic spot where there’s a tiny breeze and you’re out of the sun, and swivel your head round and round, looking for faces you recognize. And not stomp all over the plants.

By recognize, I mean ‘as seen on TV’. We both ran into a few people who knew us, but this is a crowd that loves seeing other TV faces recognize seeing them on TV. Which is not a judgment on any individual there – I don’t know them, don’t know their hearts, don’t know if they tend to be better than worse people. But if yours isn’t a TV face, they don’t have time for you.

Greta van Susteran, for example. Sure, she didn’t know us. Sure, she was busy squiring Todd Palin around. And no, you’re not supposed to talk business at these events, although everyone does. We spoke to her for about thirty seconds – long enough for two intros, two handshakes, a quick pitch, a few comments from Greta as her eyes darted past, and goodbye. Her entire body was turning away before even saying goodbye – which was really more of a “…I have to go over here and talk to anybody but you now.”

Fine. You want Chace Crawford and Matthew Modine to meet Mr. Palin, fine. That’s why you’re there. Increasingly I wonder ‘why am I here?’ It certainly isn’t to have fun in the traditional sense. I guess it’s really just become more tradition, and traditions are hard to break. Especially when you share them with your boyfriend.

So while the party didn’t do it, leaving it behind me – both in real time and in the larger events-of-the-year sense – might have also helped improve my mood. Maybe putting up the shelf in the kitchen on Sunday. Maybe having mostly clean clothes for work and the gym week. Maybe the last slice of home-made smoked mozzarella lasagna for dinner last night. Maybe some unspoken barrier I’ve crossed regarding my entanglements of earlier this year.

And maybe I don’t really need to know. At the moment it seems enough to see that I was in a sunny mood last night, and I was able to share that with my boyfriend.

Busting Concrete
Removing the hidden and buried to open up the fertile earth

Monday’s weather: Day two of a steady soaking rain; cool and damp and dark. Everything green outside is flourishing, including the herbs, enjoying the constant mist. The Siberian Iris have just bloomed today, and soon I shall plant the Impatiens.
Monday’s drink: A Heineken (we have 18 left over from the Derby party) and perhaps the last of the juleps.
Monday’s quote: This one from Walt Whitman:

“Character and personal force are the only investments that are worth anything.”

I’m not sure I understand it fully, but it seems worth a little thought.

The backyard is two steps closer to being something other than a muddy garage, although it’s still mostly just that. Good thing this year’s Derby party wasn’t a packed house, as people would have ended up standing around outside in a gooey, jumbled dirt farm that doesn’t look like anything sensible. Of course when I look out back I can see what it will be but isn’t yet. But I’m not everyone else.

As a side note – and one of an unusually self-accomplished tone from me – I was genuinely pleased how many people commented on how fit and trim I look. And younger. People felt compelled to reach out and touch me, almost to check if the change was real or not. After years of wearing clothes too large to cover my body too large, it was a victory of sorts, and I enjoyed my lap.

That said, my real victory this last month has been the backyard. Specifically, the concrete.

Several weeks back I took some time off, telling C I wanted to build garden beds in the back. While a few days seemed a rather ambitious time line, I launched into it Friday after spending an idle Thursday moping and fussing over my personal dramas. I filled the car with dirt and ferns and Impatiens and other greenery, and started digging. Not that I got very far.

Quickly I saw that the old concrete walkway – years forgotten – was right where I wanted to build the bed. I started test shovels, poking here and there, trying to figure out just how much was buried and where it ended. Turns out: it was all still there. The walkway to the alley, the concrete pad the old porch and stairs used to rest on…it was all still there, covered by years of dirt and disuse, sealing off my garden bed. So much for the time line.

Saturday morning I went out to show C just how much was there, convinced the only solution was to call someone to dig it up and remove it. He had a different idea. “I bet this will just bust up…” he said, grabbing a shovel. We started digging; finding the edges, digging underneath, prying it up. Shovel by shovel, it started to break up, but that was just the easy stuff.

Hours later, armed with neighbor D’s sledgehammer, we were whacking and digging and hauling slabs of concrete anywhere from 1 to 6 inches thick. That afternoon a “we haul your dirt” guy showed up, chucking the slabs into his truck. Somewhere between ‘we’ll never be able to do this’ and ‘this should be easy’, C and I finished the job. The hidden concrete was gone, and the ground was open for the first time in decades.

Talk about self-accomplishment. Not only did we surprise ourselves, we worked together seamlessly as a team. And it was genuinely a pleasure to do it. Damn hard work, but at the end…well, I’m still impressed with ourselves.

The earth is still open there. I’ve got some plants in the ground, but haven’t yet built up (or even found) the wood to build the borders; that’s to come. But this was something that just had to happen. Sooner or later, someone was going to have to face the slog of digging that shit up and getting rid of it, and now it’s done.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this. Even discussed it with CV, my therapist. For me, at the surface level, this felt like a way for C and I to do some healing after a long, difficult, at times painful start to this new year. For CV…well, of course he wanted to dig deeper.

“Think about that, Doug. Something old and formerly useful now forgotten, blocking growth, hidden by years of work to forget about it. If anything was to grow there, it had to come up. And the only thing for it was for you to dig, lift, break, toss…over and over again. Hard work.”

Like the work I’ve done in therapy. The analogy just works…and keeps working. Old, useless, blocking, buried, forgotten, digging up, sweat (and even a little blood), breaking up, carting away. Even the point of it all works: I’m building a new bed for C and I. Uh-huh. Even I get that.

So the work will continue through the Spring, but a lot of difficult and necessary stuff is done and over. And now I’m ready to use my strong body to build and grow new life in the back yard.

Humility
Lessons Learned Over Again

Tuesday's weather: continued mild, as it has been since Friday, although not as warm. Upper 50's probably, slight haze in the sky and low sun. Still, bulbs are well on their way to coming up, and I must get the garden ready.
Tuesday's drink: later tonight, at our block meeting with the developers trying to build a monstrosity on 13th and U, no doubt some crummy white wine. When everyone goes home, perhaps a beer. Pretty pedestrian stuff.
Tuesday's link: to the newly re-launched team blog that's been taking some of my time: www.whomurderedrobertwone.com. Much, most, credit goes to my co-editors.

I've missed you all. December 21st was the last post...six long weeks back. Without looking at a calendar I can tell you the day: a Sunday. I can tell you it was cold, hardly surprising for the end of December, and there was a brittle sun. I knew Christmas was just a few days away, then New Year's, then an inaugural. Even still I had no idea the size of the events and emotions that were ahead of me.

There's a brief coda, perhaps, to this memory of Scout. Just the other day I opened the mail to find a bill from the vet's office, detailing the charges for her euthanasia. "Euthanasia, $151.00; Catheterization IV, no charge; Ketamine, no charge; Beuthanasia-D 100ml and Mass Cremation; no charge. House call, $80." This in the category of bills you just never think about. Bills you can't imagine paying until they come, and then...well, you can't quite bring yourself to writing out the check. Just not yet.

"Not yet." If there is a more impotent, futile expression in English, I hope someone will share it with me.

"Life's quirky," my friend M told me today, as we sat on my couch and traded stories one to the other. He was being both truthful and kind, as my quirks have, of late, all been in the same direction. A bad run of cards. Although, as when I'm sitting at a Vegas blackjack table, I forget that I'm lucky just to be at the table, rather than focusing on the loss, the loss, the close loss, the push...and the always hoped for next hand sure thing hot cards coming my way.

Work, for instance. In three months time I've gone from boy wonder to wondering if I have a future there. See, while I bet most of you know what I do, few if any understand how controversial it is in-house. I know: hard to believe, looking at it, for such an innocuous thing. But because what I do is different, hasn't been done there before, and is such a personal creation (rather than the result of the giant grey collective blanding machine), it draws arrows. It, and I, am a target.

Now while my advocates and allies were in positions to help, I took the arrows in stride; they helping me up along the way. However very rapidly my allies have left or been moved aside, my adversaries have filled the space, and now I am just a target for arrows, nothing more. The bleeding has left me near dry and sapped my spirit. "Personally I think you've gotten a bum rap," is how a new boss put it to me...my eyes hopefully not popping while I tried not to choke on my tongue. A bum rap. That's how I'm seen? A bum?

Clearly I have taken a major fall. Several, actually. At work, and at home. The grief of Scout's loss did not approach me until very recently, and I can now see neither I nor C are through it yet. Far from it. (And why, it strikes me now, should it be otherwise?) The fall of position and power at work doesn't near the fall of favor and grace I imagine we both are feeling at her passing.

This should be enough. For a sensible man, it would be. But you know me better than that. So yes, I have taken one more fall. A very large one, a very painful one, and one solely of my own making.

A fall of pride, perhaps, and maybe of self-importance. Of selfishness, too, and fantasy at some end. And to be charitable, also of hope, longing, and affection. A fall that has re-educated me on lessons I learned long ago and yet, for some reason, continue to need schooling in. To be as clear as I can without making things worse: I don't regret what I've done (to do so now simply because of heartache would be shallow - and at least I know that's something I'm not) but I am sorry for the hurt it's caused.

As I told C Sunday night, this is not a hurt I will quickly get over. This isn't just a tumble and fall and spring back up. This is a lesson in humility. In being truly humbled - not being falsely modest or hiding one's virtues. Humbled: holding in my hands all my good and bad and recognizing that I am but one of everyone else in being responsible - alone - for all that I am and I do. Seeing once more that we all possess shades and potentials and cruelties and...and love. Love, most, above all else.

And it is love - love that lasts, love that grows, love that endures and renews - that has brought me, humbled, back into my life. And back to this blog. Somehow, I will take these last two or three months of turmoil and create with it something even better. I don't know how or when, but I do know why.

Because I know I continue to love, and always will, and that seems to me the ultimate triumph of living.

Goodbye to Our Lady

Sunday's weather: a veneer of freezing rain last night has given way to wintry sun dancing with dark clouds. Cold and blustery, a day for staying in and eating beef.
Sunday's drink: a glass of Chimay at Saint Ex 'round the corner, to be had soon over dinner.
Sunday's thought: those important who come into our life, be they human or animal, come with lessons for us to learn; the best that can be said is that when they leave, their lesson has been learned.

There's very little of art in today's post, but very much heart. This is the weekend C and I said goodbye to Scout the greyhound.

The details of what preceded her leaving us, curled up at her favorite spot on her favorite couch, surrounded by her guys and her docs, are as a million other similar stories. Several months of declining energy coming with increasing signs of discomfort (soon to become pain), uncertainty as to its cause, various treatments including pills, diets, and surgery failing to cure the problem, and a report on Friday from an oncologist of a large sarcoma in her throat. Prognosis - at best - detailing major surgery, a difficult recovery, and likelihood of a return in the future. C and I, faced with the only certainty of prolonged suffering for our Scout, came to our decision fairly quickly.

Mostly. There was of course discussion, choked at times, of uncertainties. Of quality of life vs. seeing an option through, of doing what had to be done vs. doing what needed to be done. Strangely, it was while C was on the phone with his sister M - a vet herself - that Scout again began crying out, as she had been with increasing frequency. She did it because she hurt. But in it I heard it as my answer: I cannot bear to let my greyhound suffer anymore - or watch C's suffering at her pain.

The decision was made. And we began a 22-hour sit with impending death. Strangely, not nearly as morbid as that sentence makes it sound.

Her eyes had grown dim. While happy to see me at the door, she could barely muster getting up and giving a couple wags. Treasured hallowed walks no longer held any appeal. Even food was rejected. Scout was clearly saying goodbye to us, closing up shop and pulling down the curtains.

I carried her downstairs and we ate pizza. Watched a little TV. Cried some more. Our and Scout's best friends - D & F & M & M - came over to sit and share stories. Everyone seated on the couch (but me, I had to sleep), Scout too. She always loved company.

I woke to hear C and Scout come upstairs. He sat with her, she eeped a bit but loved her goodnight time with her Dad. We held each other that night, and I was the first to wake. As much as her goodnight time, she loved her good morning time with her Doug. Almost always in silence, as I had for years, I got down and gently rubbed her snout, scratched her head, gave her long strokes down her back to her haunches, gently tugged from her chest down her legs to her paws - holding them as you would hold a hand.

She managed, somehow, to eat some breakfast - a slush of her favorites: chicken, scrambled egg, rice, a bit of cheese. We had an unusually long and sniffy walk, letting her choose just where she wanted to go as we had so many mornings before. She stopped twice, again in pain, and we held her close on the street until she trotted off again to home, undoubtedly for the last time.

Once home, she jumped up on her couch, spun around twice, then sat down, laying her head on her favorite pillow. And there she stayed for three hours, not inclined to move at all, curled into a greyhound ball. And we sat with her, for three hours not leaving her side. Sometimes petting her back, sometimes crying, sometimes laughing at how improbable this fuzzy thing was and what she had come to be in our lives.

At 1pm, Doc K and an assistant came over. We thought Scout might want to lie on her favorite bed, but she had clearly chosen her spot. Non dog owners will scoff, but she knew. A dog's principal function is to live with us, and they read us and our emotional states more clearly than we do each other. And, in cases where you really bond, you come to read them. You communicate - the most basic things likely, but clearly and meaningfully communicate. Even if we weren't ready, she was.

The four of us sat close around Scout for a while, trading stories and even laughing some. She was never more safe or more loved. A quick sedative administered to help ease any potential jitters, a pink needle was inserted into her right rear ankle, where the veins are large. I couldn't watch what Doc K did, but sat together with C - holding him and Scout. Watching her face...breathing, looking up. And then there was a final, deep breath in, and a long...long exhale. The exact same exhale she gave her first night home with C when she finally decided she was safe and could sleep; the same exhale she gave after a long day of travel and hubbub and doctors and could finally relax. The very same exhale should would give some nights upstairs, all of us in bed, the room dark and quiet except for a long breath in, and then pronounced exhale that said "goodnight, guys."

So it was she gave us her last gift - a goodbye and, perhaps, a thank you. Moments later Doc. K placed her stethoscope here and there and said simply, "she's gone."

And that was it. So very very fast. Her eyes still looking upward, just as fuzzy and warm as she had always been. There, but gone. And gone for good.

The 26 hours since have been difficult, but different. Good moments and bad. Never any looking back, though, so that's a blessing. Now, mostly the emptiness. No one to scoot upstairs at night, no one to play the "bone game" with, no one to wake up and carry down the stairs in the morning. There will be a thousand emptinesses that haunt us both for some time.

And yet, if anyone reading this should ever think "I could never go through that," my only response - written now with eyes again blurred with tears - is that I wouldn't have changed one single thing. Not a one.

She made our lives immeasurably richer, and that you never have to say goodbye to.

I guess our dogs - our loved dogs, our members of the family, our special ones we bond with - are only ours on loan. The point is to value and love and enjoy them as much as possible with every moment possible before we have to return them. And maybe, learn a thing or two from having them in our lives as well.

Writing My Friend's Obit

Monday's weather: moderating after Friday's arctic blast; winds are down but there's moisture in the air. Probably rain tonight, and mid-temp blahs to follow for a week. Basil dead, sage hanging on, thyme OK, rosemary healthy. Who knows what's up with the oregano.
Monday's drink: I'm not drinking save for today, and stress, and my choice. Vodka and orange juice. Healthy and deadly. I don't really care.
Monday's link: The topic of tonight's post.

Look, none of us are immune to loss. Sitting on a bar stool this Saturday, wedged in between drunken Georgetown students cheering on Lord knows what, I learned that my friends JM, JB and B aren't friends by choice. We're family - whether we knew it or not - of the Gigantic Fantastic Green Plastic Travelling Family Love Buggy. One of us has had several divorces, one of us is adopted, one of us is plowing through a disintigrating relationship, and one of us lived mostly as a vagabond in our youth - staking our tent in this yard and that. There's a reason we're all so smart. And attached.

So there I was, watching my Spartans go down in brave and decisive defeat, picking up free Georgetown clothing that was scattered on the floor, jostling with collegiate-sized chunks of drunken testosterone, watching the younger Hoyas fade...fade...fade into alcohol stupor. And having a great time. Trading notes on who's seeing who, what's provoking what, where what the who came from. And sharing things I shouldn't.

Things about the turmoil in my life. Not that any of this is bad. But turmoil, whatever the result, is what it is. I promised myself I wouldn't say a thing. I promised myself again at the bar. This, clearly, was not a promise, as I spilled the beans. About the great forest I find myself happily lost in, again, after many years.

There was an elevation from said bean-spilling, although short lived. Before DrinksWithHoyas, I met with DG...perhaps one of my closest of chosen family. He's as smart as I am...and I'm confessing a lot with that. The message of our lunch: we age, we understand more. A loving man with HIV, DG said it most clearly when he heard my story and said: "You know, most gay men are afraid of aging, it's the terror that ends life. For those of us who have sat on our death's bed...well, we look forward to aging."

End of life means something else entirely. So it was when I went into work today that I knew I would have to deal with a friend's life ended. Brent Hurd, sometime *** employee, sometime journalism teacher, always optimistic bulldozer in my life. He died on a bike, hit by a bus. Apparently just coming home from the swim club he frequented in Bangalore. The news reports say his death was instantaneous.

I don't know if that gives me comfort or nightmares.

Brent muscled out into the world in a way I haven't. But weirdly, he never gave up hope that I might join him along the path someday; that I, too, was worthy of adventure and courage and striking out on life's razor's edge.

And today, I had to write his obituary. Write it, gather the video, edit it, time it all out, then deliver it on camera.

Fraud. That's what I'm saying to myself while I deliver this item on camera, if you watch the video. And you should. Oh, not him. Me. Fraud.

"You had no intention of going out on an adventure, fraud," it says. "You never believed in the rightness of journalism, did you?," it pokes. "You're all about comfort and complicity and stuffing dollars into your stockings," it mocks. 'It', my therapist would remind me, would be 'me.'

So I did my level best. I tried not to inflate him beyond his measure, nor tap him as a salestool for our company. To listen to him - through the years, and through his videos - and try to relate why his loss is important to my audience. If they care.

Who knows. But today, I wrote, edited and delivered my friend's obituary. He was alive and how, and now he's not. But I am.

And we are. And if anything is to come of this it's what I make it. So here's to being alive:
*to all the random meetings that grow like tropical fruit in the sun,
*to lifting a tankard, or a hand, with those you were meant to be with,
*to cherishing those who are your true family,
*to rebirth and renewal and everything that Shiva tears down.

Goodbye, and peace to you, Brent. And for the rest of us: goodness and no rest until the end.

Don't Dream It's Over

Friday's weather: moist and unusually warm in the air. 68 today and the hound is on her toes, taking me on super walks. Trees across DC now at peak; this town is lovely in autumn. Pumpkin on porch, not looking so lovely anymore. Oh, and my fall crocus are up and ready to bloom while the basil is all gone.
Friday's drink: again, water.
Friday's crush: on Joel McHale, star of "The Soup" and now doing live shows - C and I are going tonight to see him.

(ed note: most of what follows is basically copied from something I wrote and posted on another blog I write for. But as that's a private group thing, I wanted to offer this to friends here at the bar. Sorry, JR)

Hey everybody. I wish I could say this is going to be something smart, but I feel the need to be current more than smart right now. And smart was never my trump.

In these weeks leading up to the election, we all must have felt - whichever candidate we were supporting and whatever our ultimate goals - a tingle passing through the body of America. That feeling like nerve stimulation: awake aware, but what is it?

Each of us, no doubt, has our story to tell. Mine is two-fold. Quick, but two fold.

First: I was the primary anchor for ***'s live radio/tv simulcast for this event. Being ***, everything was fucked up, but we stumbled through. Election night is always the same: spurts of news, filling in between. I was filling in between when the bulletin crossed the computer/wire at the desk. I glanced up to my trusted colleague Jim, he saw it, caught my eye, and jumped right in.

"Doug, I think you have some important news to report."
(geez, I'm getting teary writing this. press on...)

So I had the great honor of announcing to the world - well, that tiny portion of it that was listening or watching to us, but still...millions of people - that Barack Obama had won the presidential contest and was now the next President-elect of the United States.

Of course the blah-blah and what-not and screw-ups continued: to McCain's concession, to Obama's valedictory. Only at the very end, as I queried all our guests/contributors about the evening, and turned finally to Jim did I really get it. Jim's comments - as always - were crisp, poignant, and, rare for him, at the very end, shaded by the emotion of the moment. He turned to me and said: "Doug, tonight we have not only witnessed history, we've had the unique privilege to be its clarion." As he did so he looked me hard in the eye, and I heard that unique signal only broadcasters hear: "help me out here. I can't talk anymore because I'm going to get choked up."

I, too, began to choke. But I had a job in the moment. "And there's no one I would rather have joined me to chronicle this moment but you," I said. Or something like that. Who knows. wrap! wrap! they're yelling in my ear. I wrapped and was out.

Which leads me to my second story. This has been a long ... very long ... campaign for me. At it's end I felt something best described as exhaustion. This is due in some measure to the big changes I'm going through, and instabilities and hopes and questions I have. To have them in such a profound way about your nation at the same time? It's like nausea.

The newsroom was popping corks as I left the studio. I came in and everyone (generously) gave a big hurrah, slurped a tiny bit of champagne and was out the door, as I had to be in early next morning.

Driving home I wondered. What just happened? Horns were sounding all throughout Washington. People on the streets waving, lights flashing, fireworks going up. I made it home through to discover perhaps the biggest crowd was at my feet. The U Street center - 13, 14th streets - was over-run with people. DC police just blocked it off: no cars, just revelers. Still, horns everywhere. Strangers embracing. The din of a crowd that has just won a World Series; oh, but even more. Cameras flash flash, whoooo's! rising and falling. A mob of joyous abandon.

I wandered in the mob for a while, still in my now slightly wrinkled tv suit and tie, makeup still caked on. No-one cared. "WHOOOO!" they'd say before just grabbing you by the shoulders. "YES WE CAN!" as they planted a kiss on your cheek. Is this what it is to win a war, I thought?

Yes, it is. I am very very tired now. Exhausted physically and emotionally. Just keeping myself from crying jags at inappropriate moments. To be clear: crying mostly for what this moment is, for where we may go, for belief in hope, and for the dizzying position of, perhaps, having been the voice that first broke the news to someone living in Nigeria, Indonesia, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Brazil, Kenya.

Tonight I had hoped to come home, make some tea, shut off and uplug every TV and just sit in the quiet of my house. And I expect break down sobbing. That's not a bad thing. It's just, I guess, what you do to process a moment of history. However there's comedy to hear tonight, and friends to meet tomorrow fresh off the campaign trail with their own stories to hear.

So I'll just say that I am very, very proud to call myself a citizen of the United States, and to number so many of you my friends.

The End of Days

Sunday's weather: Seasonably cool and cloudy, but not in keeping with the last several days of sun and warmth. No rain in sight, making next week dry. The maple out front is about 1/2 turned; all leaves edged in orange, yellow and red, with a few leaves keep crimson in the center.
Sunday's drink: water, as per keeping with the new regimen from personal trainer Will.
Sunday's link: To a new documentary made by my friends Simone and Rich. Labored over, more like, for several years of their lives. An enviable accomplishment - everyone take a peek.

Our friend - social friend - JJG threw a masquerade party last night. He's got a wicked cute house with a double-sized backyard, and the evening was, as always at his place, well done. Everyone enjoyed themselves.

Well, except not. Again and again the economic train-wreck that is our nation at present kept coming up. Unbidden - people were just volunteering comments, policy prescriptions, blame, and worry. Double up on the worry.

Mind you, this is a fancy Arlington house, on a lovely evening, sitting among friends in the landscaped yard amid the firepots and ponds, wine glasses in hand, lights strung overhead, all of us decked out in the adult game of masks. A decidedly privileged experience in a world of so much want; but the kind of privilege people have come not even to notice. Like the sky: always there, but rarely seen.

Last night I saw a level of nervousness in people that I've not seen before. The phrase "the end of days" came up on several separate occasions. One friend (who I don't think I should even tag with initials for privacy) who I care for greatly (though have fallen somewhat apart from in years) admitted to losing 20 pounds in two months - all because of worry of how bad things will - not may - get. This has been an unusually clear-eyed person; to hear such fright knocked me for a blow.

C has taken to using the subtitle of this blog - "...the capital of a crumbling empire" in conversations and I'm quite fine with that. I chose it for a reason: I have for sometime believed ours is a largely economic empire that is unspooling and we - we have neither the will to acknowledge this and disengage from it nor the ability to control it to our favor anymore.

OK, lah-dee-dah. But what the hell do I know, right? So when friends with more experience and wisdom of the world begin agreeing with me, without qualifications...well now I'm starting to worry.

This comes at a bad time. Like there's a good one. Nationwide people are just tweaked out by the election. Washington has a ginormous case of the jitters because whatever happens, this town will be a swirl of job-changing over the next year. And me? Well, 1 1/2 years in therapy have put me on a path of openness to change and emotion...neither of which can be controlled. Opening up to some change is often an invitation for change in other areas you didn't ask for it. Opening up to emotion means that they will arise as their own force - whether you want them to or not. After several years asleep I am a jangle of movement. I just can't predict where.

So you can see: not really loving the "end of days" meme. But it's coming up again and again.

Where are we at, and where are we headed?