20 more boxes, un año más

I'm taking another break. I've go another 20 boxes packed and I'm still not done with the books! My brain is trying to hurt my back.

I put on an old Mecano album. I was packing a box when "Un año más" (One more year) came on. It's probably Mecano's best known song, and it always makes me think of the innocent kid I was when I decided to go live in Spain. I put down the box I was carrying and just started crying. I hate having to pack everything up one more time. I hate being here and knowing that hundreds of people died less than half a mile from here. I hate not being standing at my desk designing data models. I've only broken down like this once before since Hurricane Katrina: when I heard that the house I grew up in in Texas had been destroyed by Hurricane Rita. The fact is that I'm the luckiest hurricane survivor ever-- I ended up with a better job, a nice house, and undamaged possessions. Somehow that doesn't help.

Katrina's wake/packing up

I just got Blackberry coverage here in New Orleans, so I can blog a little. I'm in our old house, packing up. I've finished 25 boxes, and that's just about half of the books! I wish we would have gone to the library more.

Yesterday I landed at MSY airport at about 10 AM. I had left my car in the parking lot, so the bill was $670 dollars, but the airport waived all costs incurred after Hurricane Katrina, so I only paid $10! God bless Louis Armstrong International Airport.

I found that a ready way to strike up a conversation here was to ask how people's families had fared in the Hurricane. I've heard a little of everything. One fellow was just quiet for a while, then said, "Bad. We lost everything." Others were living with friends, or had managed to clean up the upper floor of a two story enough to live there. Some were sleeping at work. And some were like me: no damage at all, just a lot of hustling to get things back together.

I had lunch with my coworkers from East Jefferson General Hospital yesterday, since it's on the way back from the airport. It was nice to see them. Everyone had evacuated. One was living with a friend because his house was flooded, but the other three were in their houses. I didn't realize how much I had missed them until I saw them. They're a good bunch of guys. Life goes on at the hospital without me.

I was reunited with my computer manuals (you don't really know how well you program until you have no reference materials!) I said goodby and drove towards New Orleans.

One of the guys suggested that I drive through Lakeview on the way home. In Metairie, I saw some roof damage and garbage on the streets, but Lakeview was horrible. I drove down one block where I was the only living creature on the street. There was a pile of garbage at least 20 feet high occupying the entire median. Everything was uniformly grey-brown, the color of dust. Trucks and cars were abandoned in the middle of the street, no one able to move them inover 60 days. I saw a house with a waterline just under the roof-- then I looked around and saw the same waterline on every house, every light pole, every abandoned vehicle, about 9 feet up. It must have been hell.

I drove back through the French Quarter, the part of New Orleans that people most associate with New Orleans. It had not been so badly damaged, but there were a lot of houses that were completely destroyed, or had the roof caved in. There was a fine dust everywhere. It felt like a ghost town, or maybe an old mining town. It seemed like most of the people I saw were from out of town: carpenters, FEMA inspectors, Acupuncturists without Borders volunteers offering their services for free. There were also several large makeshift campgrounds set up, tent cities for the unexpectedly homeless.

I drove on to Algier's Point, our neighborhood. By this time I was delirious from sleep-deprivation (I had been awake since 2 AM central time) and was having trouble negotiating traffic. People drive terribly here anyway, but people are all driving around like zombies, distracted as I was. I passed a bad accident just past the Fisher housing project. The projects themselves were empty. I wonder where all those people went.

I drove down our old street and parked in front of our house. How very strange to see it. It was as we had left it-- no damage at all. The DirecTV dish was still on the roof. The palm tree in front was perfectly fine. Our garbage cans were where we left them. It was a bizarre contrast to the total destruction I had seen in Lakeview.

I caught a quick nap and started packing boxes.

On my way to New Orleans to get our stuff

I'm in the back of a taxi, bumping along to PHL airport. It's early, 4 am. Aside from being very tired, I'm looking forward to being reunited with my stuff, a few friends, hitting a couple of meetings, and some alone time to think.

I'm a little apprehensive about what I will find. A lot of our friends tell us that New Orleans looks like a war zone. Of course parts of it looked that way already. But apparently there is a lot less vegetation, and the city has always been quite green.

I'm almost at the airport now. This driver is about to jump into hyperspace.

22:35 - Independence St to Italian Market - Alanis Morissette/Jagged Little Pill

This was a nice, fast little run. Surprisingly, these streets are not so crowded at lunchtime. I went pretty fast-- racing cars and such. Nice.

If my body were a car, there would be a rattle coming from my right knee. I blew 75% of my ACL and crushed the back half of my miniscus about 10 years ago practicing Tae Kwon Do (I muffed a landing after a flying side kick). It hasn't troubled me much, but now it's doing funny little things-- it hurts to kneel (I am daddy, therefore I kneel) and now I'm just noticing a little pop along the right side. Yipee.

Alanis Morisette is surprisingly good. Even more so for having been a little girl when she made this album (which makes it even cooler when she sings, "you're thinking of me when you fuck her", l'amour! l'amour!). There is a guitar bridge (2:29-3:05) on You oughta know that sounds a lot like the intro of Aeroplane by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The beginning of You Learn sounds just like part of Sexuality from K.D. Lang's album "All You Can Eat. Both of these are surely just coincidences (if I'm not mistaken, Morissette's album pre-dates both of these), but the similarities were striking.

Anyway, a solid album. I'll be listening to this one again.

By the way, I just ran up against the censor in my blog software. To turn off censoring in Geeklog, edit the config.php file in the blog directory and set this line to "0", not "1":


$_CONF['censormode'] = 0;


33:03 Ben Franklin Bridge - Nirvana/MTV Unplugged in New York

It was a beautiful, sunny, chilly day here in Philadelphia, and I couldn't help but go for my favorite run. It's straight, long, featureless (except for the jail you run right over on the New Jersey side)... wonderful. I mean, I like running on a forest trail as much as the next guy (maybe more-- I used to hash after all), but failing that, I want something that won't interfere much with my train of thought.

Nirvana performed the concert captured on the MTV Unplugged in New York album in November 1993, 12 years ago. I reckon I got to the age where I listened to popular music regularly when I was about 13 years old, in 1977. So kids these days are listening to Nirvana with the same time lag that I had then when I listened to The Beatles or The Hollies or The Beach Boys. It's pretty old school for them.

I have to say, I never really got much into Nirvana. I had a personal interest in Kurt Cobain because he (supposedly) blew out his brains just a half a year before 15 Jan 95... which is special.

After having listened to the album, I understand why I never really got into them. Really, I just don't like their music very much. If their songs sum up any kind of angst that I may be able to relate to, it's all a lot of angst I stopped thinking was cool on, well, 15 Jan 95.

I found myself breathing a sigh of relief when I turned off the MP3 player at the end of the run. Sorry, that one comes off to free up some space for something else.

25:12 Ben Franklin Bridge into Camden - Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts ClubBand

What did people think about before the Beatles? Really, think about it-- one day, no one in the USA had ever heard of "Albert Hall" and the next day any kid on any street corner could tell you exactly how many holes there were in it (4000).

It rained today, which was actually just fine by me. Running in the rain makes me think, "yeah, I'm really a runner, I'm soaking wet". Thank god for thermoplush. Rain makes me go faster-- let's face it: run fast = shorter run.

I happened to have Sgt. Pepper's queued up on the MP3. The Beatles really were the limit. Sure, there was rock and roll prior to the Beatles. Sure, they ripped off Chuck Berry (hey, Picasso copied Miro and Dali, too). But Sgt Pepper's just hangs together so well... it's not a story, really, more of a continuous feeling. The Grateful Dead gets it, too, and some Dave Matthews. But The Beatles did it so well that it feels like they invented it.

I heard this album the first time when I was just five, two years after it came out. My brothers saved up and bought it, and we sat on the floor and listened. I really liked When I'm sixty-four and Good Morning, but got embarrassed at the heavy breathing at the end of Lovely Rita.

Thirty-six years later, my favorite tracks are Getting Better and She's leaving home. Also Within you without you whicj must have been a pretty different sound in 1967. I think what I really like about them is the instrumentation-- what is that high, repeating guitar note on Getting Better? And She's leaving home has no "Rock" instruments that I can hear.

I finished the run just as A Day in the Life came on. I thought about when I played this for some friends when I was in Peace Corps (it is surprisingly hard to play on an acoustic guitar). I got a little sad thinking about John and George being gone now. The thought occurred to me that someone, somewhere, is thinking about the Beatles, always. Someone is listening to one of their songs, or reading about them, or wearing a shirt with their faces on it. Would that I were as alive in life as John and George are in death.

Exhaustion

Yesterday I talked with a moving company about setting up our final move from New Orleans for the 2nd of November. I have to get plane tickets, etc. Then New Orleans will essentially be done for us.

We also got the good news that our car that is parked in the Louis Armstrong Airport in New Orleans is safe and we are only being charged for the days leading up to the hurricane.

Last night I stayed home with Daniel while Sonia went to her English class. He was sad because Bebe and Ricardo had gone back to Spain after a two week visit. Eventually he cheered up and we played with his cars a little. We took a bath and told fart jokes, and ate dinner together.

After Sonia got home we put Daniel to bed and chatted. It was a quiet moment. I was preparing my lunch for work and suddenly was just overwhelmed by a sense of exhaustion. Exhaustion from something always left undone, something always wrong, some last phone call to make before going on to the next task in an endless series of tasks. I just want all of that to be over, to get back to a life that is more or less okay.

28:00 Through the city - Nick Drake/Bryter Later

This was about 28:00, because I forgot to turn off my dang stopwatch. Down Arch and Cherry towards the Ben Franklin Parkway and back. I don't know why I try to run in the city so much, because I have to stop all the time and dodge cars. Although dodging cars can be a little fun. And I guess it's always fun to blast off from a street corner at top speed and see the people say, "wow".

I was listening to Nick Drake's Pink Moon on my MP3. My buddy Bill from New Orleans turned me on to Nick Drake. It's some beautiful stuff, really weird, tortured, wistful. You listen to it knowing that the man who made this music was a genius but that something was very Wrong about his life. It's no surprise to find out that Nick Drake killed himself, albeit possibly accidentally, by overdosing on anti-depressants.

I think my favorite Nick Drake song is From the Morning from Pink Moon. It sounds like someone who has reached acceptance that maybe he won't be making it to the next morning, but that's okay, too.

33:00 Ben Franklin Bridge to Camden, NJ (85 bpm cadence)

A nice day for a run, a little too hot for my running jacket-- on the other hand, I like to sweat some.

I ran with my Finis Tempo Trainer. It's a little metronome beeper that clips to your clothes and helps you maintain a cadence. I think it originally was designed for swimmers, but it's good for running, too. I got it off of the http://www.chirunning.com page.

The ChiRunning book suggests that you try to run with a cadence (i.e. step frequency) of between 85 and 90 bpm. That's faster than most runners do, although apparently 90 is what a lot of professional runners run at. The idea is to minimize the time your foot spends on the ground; this helps you avoid injuries. It also forces you to shorten up your stride, which is also good, because it keeps you from over-striding and actually pushing back against your calves and knees.

The one thing that is a little bit of a drag about the metronome is that you can't really listen to music while you're using it. I felt that today, because when I was heading home, I started tiring out a lot and was really having to concentrate to keep my cadence up and my form good. I started getting a little negative self-talk (that happens when I'm tired), which I usually can get out of by turning up my MP3 player.

So probably I won't run with the Finis Tempo Trainer every single run, but it seems good for reminding me to watch my form when I'm tired.

32:19 Ben Franklin Bridge - Miguel Bosé, Velvetina

A beautiful day in beautiful Philadelphia. Cranked up the headphones on my MP3 and listened to Miguel Bosé's Velvetina album.

I like Miguel Bosé. You have to hand it to him, he started out as the Spanish equivalent of David Cassidy and turned into the Real Thing somewhere along the way. He was relevent to la transición and la movida, appeared in a Pedro Almodóvar film as a transvestite judge, and just when you weren't sure that you could take him seriously, he started reinventing himself on every album and producing music that made you wonder about why you weren't thinking about such things.

To top it off, the guy come right out as a proud bisexual and went on to date Ana Torrojas to sweeten the deal. Is there such a thing as too cool?

It was encouraging and strangely validating as a father to see that my three year old son's favorite song was the first track on this album, Ójala Ojalá. He would not let us turn it off. He asked a lot of really uncomfortable questions about the video (is there a war, Daddy? Why does he have a cross but no one else does, Daddy?). Daniel can sing parts of the song, even the bits that drift through Italian, English, French, and back to Spanish.