Then, on Saturday, when I normally go into full court press on this effort, things just fell about. My zip disk failed on me and most of the articles and all the cover design work I had done was lost. (I'd done my last serious back-up of my essential files on the 18th. Oops. That meant that during this worst time of year for middle-aged men who can't be with family, all of whose friends are going out of town, I was stuck with spending the holidays working again.

Then our server at Ugo.com went down. Nobody could get to the site and I couldn't reach anyone at Ugo to solve the problem. Arrgh! So, as I write this, I face the prospect that you won't read our new Christmas issue until after Christmas.

The guys who are working on our "Palm Project," so you that you can enjoy this magazine on any PDA, offered us hosting space as soon as I let the information be known. But I decided to give Ugo one more chance. If I don't hear from them by Wednesday, then it's definitely "Hasta la vista, Baby!" This is our second outtage in two months --- even though the first one was "planned." This time, the lights just went out and there was nobody home to help fix them.

I HATE it when that happens...

Merry Christmas, Rod

Now that my boss is out of town for two weeks, and it's the holidays and work is tougher than hell to find, I have no money coming in again. AND all of my "friends" borrowed money from me which they promised to have back to me by Christmas Eve...

Not one of them did get the money back to me, of course. (NOT that I can say much considering all the money I owe.) The difference is, $30 separates a good week from Total Hell in Life of Rod. And each and every one of these "friends" knows that... So they decided to have a better Christmas at my expense. That's what I've come to see as The New Orleans Way.

I've begun to see that moving to New Orleans has only moved me two steps backwards rather than even a single step forward. And that is NOT the way I need to go right now if I am to keep my commitments to my friends and have a real life of my own again.

The Plan

NO, I don't think it would be a good idea to get all the way back to California (a three-day drive the way they do it) with Matt's parents. I do think that I could recommence the hejira, though.

My friends Becky and Kent once offered me couch/floor space in Houston, Texas, for a couple of days when I thought I might have a job interview over there. Houston is on the way to San Antone (San Antonio to you non-Texicans) where Matt's folks will stay on their first night. It's a six-hour drive from here.

No problem. After all, these are Matt's parents. They're my age.

What Joy There Was

My darling Barbara sent me a Care Package with all the things I love:

• Ghiradelli Chocolate (Yum!)
• Smoked Oysters (OOh-La-la! Hey wait! Is she hinting about my need for a Love Life?)
• A lovely carved wood box from Poland.

Lynda telephoned me for Christmas Eve. This falls into the Small Miracle category as it is difficult for Lynda to talk to me at all. All that First Love baggage between us, and -- as you've read --- mostly on my end.

My intellectual problem, and I say that analytically, is that I have compared each of my loves since to that first one. My ex-wife noted that. When I was random-dating, and got deep into the process, various women asked me why I had not tried to seek her out again, considering the standard she had set in my mind. I admitted that I had tried, off and on, without success. It was an itch that either I was afraid to scratch or did not want to.

But it never went away. As you know, I eventually did seek her out three years ago. Our communications over those latter years have been sparse, sporadic, revelatory and reticent (her end.)

This time I made a breakthrough in that I heard in her voice the new person she has become and not the idealized love I remember.

This is a good thing.

She also seemed to hear, I think, the reserved old man I have become. How much I need the aloneness and the silence... She had questions for me which were as insightful as any I ever remember her asking me, about my life here in New Orleans, about my feelings on my writing, about the roommate debacle and the strange women floating around my life.

(Snippet: "I don't understand. Isn't there some way out of that situation you seem to abhor, with drug addicts and all sorts of people just running through your apartment? Loaning everybody money you don't have anyway? Couldn't you just find some writer's garrett or something and be better off?"

"Lynda, when's the last time you heard about a 'writer's garrett' outside of a hundred year old novel. This is 2002, just about. Those types of places don't actually exist in the Real World!")

It wasn't until the end of our conversation that I could provide any answers. I managed to do so, though, in about three paragraphs (estimate.)

Lynda said: "That was very concise and succinct. I really want to talk to you more about what you think about your life now."

We shall probably do it from the safe distance of e-mail. I reminded her that with e-mail she would be dealing with me in my own environment ... and it's cheaper. Heh!

I kept thanking her for calling me. Maybe too much, I think now. It was probably cloying, which I didn't mean to be...

ALSO: My friend Snezana (who we called "Sneza" for short) whose name means "Snow White" in Serbian ("Srbpski",) like the fairy tale character, e-mailed me on Christmas Eve morning. She is the one who gave me the CD of the wonderful Serbian music I have referenced here, music that has been such a comfort to me in times of despondency. Sneza (pronounciation key: snehz-jah) is a linguist. She speaks many languages and continues to force herself to learn and understand many more. She has done translations for the Chinese businesses which once thrived in Serbia. This winter she is studying psycholinguistics (I have asked her to explain to me what the hell that means) and more French grammar.

She writes that she will share much more of the wonderful music with me when I return...

Ha-ha! I can't afford to get to the CBD in New Orleans and I'm still dreaming of returning to Belgrade.

My life is a joke!

Rod, the Editor & Publisher

Listen: I met a guy who is known for being The Sphinx. Mr. Reserved & Silent. That is until he heard from someone else about this dream project of mine, this Cathedral of Words, the G21. Suddenly he is very talkative. Suddenly he is telling me the best (bar none) stories of this storied town I have ever heard.

Even as I say I'm ready to get in a truck and move to Houston, he's insisting that I go to Kaboom Books, an antiquarian bookstore off the beaten path, but still in the French Quarter, meet the owner and get a map the bookstore owners --- all eccentrics from what I can suss --- have developed to promote their little network.

"These are YOUR PEOPLE," he insists to me. "They have read just about every book in their shops. They will laugh at your jokes." (See last week's comments about the Literary Canon.)

I think: Well-read people in a town of drunks and reprobates? Okay, maybe I should give it a shot.

I know: My Michael Corleone Moment.

I need to get out of this town. I need to run and not look back. Still...

So. Either I'm off to Houston on Friday --- maybe I should move down to Taxco with those ArtCamp people who keep writing to us on the "VoxPop" page --- or I go to the Dr. John concert after visiting Kaboom Books.

You make the call.

Now a bit of shameless promotion:

My friend Lionel Rolfe, the Menuhin scion, is doing a book signing in Los Angeles in February. Yeah, that's his picture over there. Here's the skinny: A publication party is scheduled to happen on 3 February at Skyligh Books, 1818 N. Vermont Avenue in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles. For info, you can email "calclass@earthlink.net".

THINGS ON THE ROD-LIST THIS WEEK

Rod was a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he wrote over two hundred articles on web design and development issues. He was also principal writer and Editor for IT Manager's Journal, where he reviewed technology issues weekly, producing 383 editorials. He became the Managing Editor for Electronic Mail/Newsletter Publications at Andover.net at the end of February, 2000, and left in September of the same year. He was a contributing writer for ACCESS magazine, which appears both on- and offline for 10 million readers in 100 newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Post, Boston Herald, Austin American-Statesman, Denver Post and Orlando Sentinel, among others. Rod was the US reporter for Silicon.com, a division of Network Multimedia Television in London, UK, reaching 3.5 million European readers, until May, 2001.

Rod lives in New Orleans, Louisiana, right now. The new home of the magazine. But he plans to return to Serbia next year.

He continues to be committed to integrity, chastity and a dose of humility.

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