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What's about to happen to New Orleans is nearly incomprehensible. Maybe that's why the city has been so vibrant, because somehow deep in its foundations it knew it was doomed. vicissitude, I am glad you are safe in the dusty dry Playa and I hope that the people you care for are safe. I know these news stories would not be affecting me as much if I had not been reading the story of a man falling in love with this city over the last several months.

I feel the muggy tropical air outside and I am annoyed by it after the last few days of relative cool, but then I realize that my annoyance is only the soggy outer edges of somebody else's devastation, and the humidity feels like it will choke me.

(as an aside, I noted at cnn.com a report which mentioned that 16 to 18 percent of the country's oil supply comes in through New Orleans. The price of oil is expected to jump to $100 or more a barrel by next week.)

(no subject)

As some of you know, I was feeling dreadfully unprepared for my performance last night at the Middle East. I was using new music, and I had danced to it all of two practice sessions, plus listening to it over and over and over and over. I was quite tired before even getting to the Middle East (edge-testing yoga class and fabric shopping expedition earlier in the day, plus still being sick) and felt queasy with stage fright.

And then my music started--and I have no idea what happened, but man, I was ON last night. My veil thing was okay, I felt like it ended before I really got with it, but my Banat Baharei was smoking if I do say so myself. I hammed it up big time, playing the sassy girl from the seaport of Iskanderia (Alexandria) with attitude galore, even lip-synching some of the words or phrases that I knew, and people just responded like crazy. I'm not saying my dancing was technically great that night, but my performance as a whole was really all that I could have hoped for. I had fun with it, people were shouting yalla habibi's and aiwa's all over the place and I made the most tip money I've made yet, even though the usual big tipper wasn't there last night (my tip jar at home is now up to silver silk veil level, but I think I'll hold out and save some more til I reach L Rose baladi dress level, or maybe put it towards my wings). I think I still have traces of adrenaline coursing through me--I just could not fall asleep last night, just lay there staring at the ceiling and running through my music in my head, trying to remember which steps and combos I had really liked for different parts of the songs.

If somebody had told me ten years ago that someday I'd be belly dancing in bedleh in the middle of a restaurant holding everyone's attention and rocking the roof off, I would have thought they were either insane or talking about someone else.

In other, most likely unrelated news, here's a cool animated gif of dust devils on Mars. Pretty darn fantastic.