When the Levee Breaks

I've never been much of a Led Zeppelin fan. In fact, every morning, when my favorite classic rock station does a segment called "Get the Led Out" at 8AM, I cringe a little. Not that it's bad music, but wouldn't that regular feature be better served by something a little less, well, anti-morning? My vote would be for the Beatles, of course, but even the Stones or the Who both have enough diversity of mood in their tunes that every damn morning wouldn't feel like a funeral waiting to happen.

Zep seems somewhat of a dark way to start your day. I guess the coveted advertiser demographic of males 35-44 prefers to get dressed to "Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You" or "Your Time is Gonna Come" rather than something a little more optimistic, like "Good Day Sunshine" or "All You Need is Love."

That being said, the other morning I heard a Zep tune that stopped me in my tracks. I literally had to sit and listen. Because "When the Levee Breaks" both sounded and felt like the way this month has been going: like everything's been systematically crashing to the ground, destabilized by a force of nature that no one and nothing can control.

The message of the song: shit happens. Nothing you can do about it, except bitch (sit on the levee and moan), and then decide if you're going to tough it out, or up and leave for Chicago.

I do have a Chicago story that relates somewhat to this. It was what I would refer to as my "Lost Weekend" more than 15 years ago, ranking up there among the freaking stupidest things I've ever done. Having broken up with not one, but two guys back in New York, I flew halfway across the country for a blind date, set up by a friend of mine in California. Got to Chicago, ended up seriously not hitting it off with the guy, and out of a sense of total and complete despair and loneliness, got more wasted than I have ever been in my life. I can tell you straight up that my only memories of that fair city are 1) falling out of a cab 2) waking up on the couch in the lobby of the hotel I stayed in, whose name I can't remember and 3) a queasy, hungover brunch the next morning with my dear friend Frank from grad school, after which we harmonized on Beatles tunes in his car, all the way back to the airport.

After that performance, I don't think I'm welcome in Chicago. But I get it - I know what happened that weekend. The combination of hopelessness, disappointment and jetlag simply got to me. I'd had enough. The levee broke.

But anyway, back to the song. I couldn't help but think that these past few weeks have felt like a levee breaking, an overwhelming, devastating flood of sadness and destruction taking everything in its path. I've witnessed the dissolution of relationships, ravaging illnesses, financial ruin. Worst of all, my community has buried two of its children in the past three weeks.

So I could really understand that one lyric: all last night, I sat on the levee and moaned. It was so easy to picture, standing at the precipice of water and land, screaming your outrage at an indifferent sky, knowing that the structure beneath you is at its breaking point, that in the morning it may in fact no longer exist. I hate that so many people I care about have gone to sleep in peace and have awakened to total destruction. It is so hard to find blessing in any of this.

And yet, even as I sit here typing, the young, earnest voices sing out from my computer speakers: Hang on to your hopes, my friend - that's an easy thing to say, but if your hopes should pass away, simply pretend that you can build them again. Or the song that's on my iTunes right now - this whole damn world can fall apart, you'll be okay, follow your heart.

I don't know whether letting oneself wallow in the songs that mirror your mood is the right thing to do - if I should give in to getting the Led out. Is hearing the message, "Going down, going down now, going down" what you should be listening to when you're trying to lift yourself back up? Or is it OK to acknowledge that downward direction for a while, knowing you're not alone, knowing that yours is not the only brokenness?

I guess every "mean old levee" teaches us how to weep and moan. Essential life lessons, but at some point, it has to break. It has to end. And G-d willing, soon.

her equinoctial tears

The above phrase is taken from one of my favorite poems, Sestina, by Elizabeth Bishop. One of the reasons I love it is because it describes a scene of some unnameable sadness - one that is continually present but goes unmentioned among the everyday tasks that make up our days.

Anyway, that's how I'm feeling at the moment. Today is my dad's yahrzeit - it's already four years, which is sort of unreal. There's not a lot I can say about the emptiness that I haven't said before. I just can't believe that it's been four years and three days since I last spoke to him. The last conversation was when he called me to tell me to be careful coming home from work in the snow. I wish I hadn't made it home. I wish I'd never had to go through the next three days and four years.

When does this get easier?

As an added bonus, the equinoctial tears that I'm holding back today represent the exactly six month distance between today and September 11.

Given the pain of today, given the knowing that a very similar, scary emotional context awaits exactly six months from now, cycling on and on and circling back for all of the years going forwrd, I'm fascinated by this sort of calendrical balance and the balancing act I've undertaken to try to get through them.

These two dark, still incomprehensible days stand as perfectly poised and equidistant as dancers who mirror one another's movements but never touch. And between them there is the same chasm of time, endlessly full of that same unnameable sadness.

Really, nothing else to say today. It's just been a sad, sick, horrible week, full of tragedies that I don't even have the words to talk about. I know those things should give me some perspective on today, but unfortunately the flawed and sad human being I am is winning out over the spiritually evolved one I hope to be someday.

I had originally intended to end this with some sort of blessing, but honestly, I just don't have the stomach for it.

Philadelphia

Sometimes I just need to run away. For the past couple of years, however, the options were limited, since - let's face it - running wasn't realistic. Neither was walking, for that matter. But having hit some sort of watershed - whether it's the loss of 50 lbs, or the fact that the damn methotrexate is actually doing its job - I have the energy now, if not to actually run, then to just get away for a bit.

Too much is going on here. Another friend got laid off this morning. Too busy at work, grateful for my job but nervous about my issues with time management. I'm not writing, and not really exercising, which means my nerves are kind of shot. I've got some friends and family members in very stressful situations; facing divorce, caring for sick parents, looking for jobs, wondering if they're going to have jobs tomorrow...all those things, ironically, leave me wondering why I'm the lucky one right now. Is it because there's an unbeknownst shoe about to drop? Or have I already been through my craziness?

So I ran away this weekend. To Philadelphia, where I used to live. Where I had my first apartment, a huge, light-filled 2 room studio on Pine Street, with a big homey kitchen and a fabulous great room where I slept for 2 years on a pull-out couch. There was a lot going on then too - full time grad school, writing a book, exploring religious life, full time job, and two major transitional relationships...I was dating a real jerk who was never going to be the one and simultaneously hanging out with my so-called "best friend" - with whom the chemistry was painfully evident, a relationship so full of love and longing and questions that it nearly drove us both insane, which was, of course, half the fun.

It amazes me that I probably had even more going on in my life then than I do now - certainly some of the same elements are there. But now it feels like things are different. I'm sure part of it is the illness piece - looking back then I had no idea what I was in for now. I look at the cobbled streets and brick-lined sidewalks and remember the girl I was, the one with two parents, the one who walked with a quicker stride than anyone else, whose bag wasn't filled with seven different kinds of medicine for various nonsense. Back then, I had never taken a painkiller, never worried about getting through the day. My big worries were about the viability of source texts of female religious mystics, the suitability of certain Berenstain Bears titles for "story time" at Borders, and whether or not my best friend was going to let his unhappy, ill-timed, passive aggressive relationship go so that we could be together. (Answer? Religious mystics were not on the comps; the book "Berenstain Bears and the School Bully" ends with a trip to the school psychologist's office, and yes - he woke up - and yes, we were very happy for a while. but that's another post.)

In the meantime, I went back for the weekend. And I walked the streets of my old neighborhood again. I looked for that girl walking back to her apartment, looked for her coming from the direction of the Chef's Market, or from Rittenhouse Square, or the parking garage on Spruce Street. But I didn't see her. I wonder what I would have said to her if we'd run into each other. Would I have put a hand out to touch her arm, sat her down on a bench and tell her what was coming? Or would I have seen that million-dollar smile, the honey-colored bangs swept back from her forehead, the gleam of a novel-to-be in her hazel eyes, and just let her keep on walking?