Out of a great need we are all holding hands and climbing. Not loving is a letting go. Listen, the terrain is far too dangerous for that. --Hafiz

It's an age-old story. Girl meets Boy. Girl likes boy. Boy appears to like girl. Boy must return to his home in New Orleans for work etc. but gets detoured to Georgia on account of the Gulf Coast being eaten away by a massive hurricane. Perhaps that last part is a new 2005 twist to an age-old story. Not very romantic, is it?

What do you say to someone whose life has been upended so suddenly? This is not just about uninhabitable houses. The media seems preoccupied with peek-a-boo rooftops. These cities looks like war zones. People have not just lost their homes and their contents, they have lost family members, pets, employment, food, water, transportation and banking access. All bets on human behavior are off, at this point. New Orleans is not only under water, now it's burning, as well. The topography of the United States will be permanently altered. Words like I'm so sorry and Somehow it'll all work out are beyond inappropriate. I realize that deep down we are supposed to be thankful for our very lives, and that stuff is just stuff and stuff doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. But my heart breaks when I see a young woman rummaging through the pile of soggy splinters that used to be her home searching for the photo album containing the only pictures she had of her mother who was killed in a drunk driving incident. Some stuff does matter. A lot. Photographs, artwork, music, mementos. It's devastating.

And there's that feeling. That feeling that creeps into you--it's almost clammy. Like a damp sweater. That the world simply Will Never Be The Same. That calamities will just keep piling up, natural or otherwise; we will have benefit concerts accordingly, the news cameras will find something new to chase and then we will just move on to the next disaster. This clammy feeling kept me awake last night. I remember this feeling after September 11th. And the tsunami. And the invasion of Iraq. The world seems very off-kilter; as if we are rolling slowly down a hill. I suppose we've always been rolling, and I've only recently noticed it because we are gaining speed and momentum. I'm a little afraid of what is at the bottom.

"So she was considering...whether the pleasure of making a daisy chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies..."-L. Carroll

I have become an iSlave. I finally joined the digitized music world and bought an iPod, and now my life has been completely taken over. All I do is eat, sleep, work and feed music to the Podbeast. It is my master, I have to obey it; its hunger knows no bounds. I did not realize how long this was going to take. I'm trying not to be bitter about the work involved; if you had told me ten years ago that I would be able to carry my enitre record collection in my back pocket I would have laughed at you. It's like some sort of sorcery. Musical Voodoo. It may as well be a car that folds into a briefcase. Having a fairly large music collection, it has taken me a solid two weeks to load it. Every spare moment of my life is Pod related. Do some dishes, load a CD. Walk the dog, load a CD. Commercial break? Load a CD. Pedicure drying? CD.

I have finished the rock/pop/soul portion of my stuff and am now up to "V" in Soundtracks--I'm keen on alphabetizing ("Velvet Goldmine", a fabulous mix of talent and glitter reverence on the knife-edge of Glam pastiche). 1797 songs and counting. The Pod spends way more time on my desk being loaded up than out an about the streets of New York, which is a little ironic, given that the whole point of this venture is portability. I also suffer from iFear. My littlewhitemusicalwonderbaby was expensive and I now find that I clutch my purse on the subway like a tourist biddy from Peoria. I'd rather not get into too much detail on the Pod paraphernalia I've also invested in. Cases, straps, protectors and whathaveyou.

The decision making process concerning which songs get to go to Pod Heaven and which do not can be agonizing. You find yourself wondering "...how much do I like this song really..." By the time I got to "F" I was concerned that there may not be a single whole album in my collection that gets fully uploaded. In the same manner that even the choicest city blocks have one crappy-looking apartment building, and every restaurant menu has one item that absolutely no one orders, every album seems to have at least one major musical clunker. What a sorry state modern music must be in! Even some records that I had previously classified as "perfect" turned out to be merely "near perfect". Thus began the quest for The Perfect Album. An album on which every song would meet it's final destination on the iPod. Best-ofs, soundtracks, whole albums purchased on iTunes and compilations do not qualify. I have stumbled upon only three such Perfect Albums in my collection. The quest will continue, the list will be published.

Three more CDs and then I'm off to work. I'm iPooped.

"Why?"-- Annie Lennox

Why? Why do this? Why am I doing this? Why does anyone do this? I suppose I need a new project. I have an unusual amount of free time and frequently this time is squandered. What I really need to do is get out of the house more, not stay inside and write observational snippets and click them into the void. I live in New York City. Shouldn’t I be out all the time; art galleries and shopping at trendy boutiques by day, enjoying the hottest clubs and the coldest drinks by night? I should be milking this town for all it’s worth. Instead, I’m a third of the way through a needlepoint of dogs playing poker, and I stay up late playing Internet canasta with strangers in Tennessee. Truth is I really hate clubs, and I buy everything from eBay.

But I will do this. I want to. I’m really not 100% certain why. Does it matter? Nope. I didn’t think so.

I’m going to milk this town for all it’s worth AND click it into the void!

Sweet action.

What, you've never seen a dog dressed up like Madonna?

Bear with me while I experiment with uploading pictures. I'm still trying to figure this all out. But admit it: The dog is funny.

Congratulations!!!!

...it's a blog!!!

Awww. It's so cute!