Can We Stop At Stuckey's?
Decided to clean up the hard drive a little and get rid of some files that seem under used or superfluous and in doing so accidently deleted all my audio drivers, or something, I don't really know what I did, nor do I want to pretend that this was some sort of well thought out computer maintenance scheme by a person who goes about boldly and courageously taking care of business in a kick ass and take names fashion. This clean up was more like one of those actions that would come under the general heading of dangerously bored. These are the types of periods that were it a little warmer I would be out building a fire in a fire pit and throwing into it all the leftover pyrotechnic devices that weren't exploded in the foyer of the bighouse several months ago.
So I lost all sound on this computer and my first step after doing this was to convince myself that sound on a computer is not all that important. I can do without sound, I told myself. And I could, too, but after awhile it just seemed dumb to make this relatively minor sacrifice so I tried to download a driver that seemed like it might fit from a page officially sanctioned by Microsoft. But when I tried to install the driver my Microsoft driven OS informed me that the software was not certified and I that I would go to hell for my bold, ill-conceived actions. And then this computer crashed, a thing it rarely does. I rebooted and carried out the same ill-conceived process a couple more times before moving on to something else.
Oh, a Vaio recovery system. That looks promising. It informs me that I can restore my computer to its fresh out of the store original settings or I can pick a date on a calendar and restore to whatever the settings were at that time. I don't need a recovery disc or any of the original softwares, which is great news because I would not have them anyway. The very idea of this frankly blows my mind. I know that deleted things on a hard drive are not actually deleted but just stored out of the way in some digital compartment, I mean I had heard this before, but still the idea that this computer is holding on to my past and every original installed software and also those I have downloaded and then becoming bored with, deleted, seems to carry with it such an amazing level of computational complexity that I find myself becoming in awe of this little device which I generally speaking, take for granted.
I only had to go back two days but instead I picked a date over two weeks ago and presto, I got sound. I don't know why I picked the date I did but it was stuck in my mind for some reason and after I realized I could not access the Internet it came to me that the day I had picked was the day the guys came and hooked up my cable and for some extra change configured my wireless router for me. The restore date is actually very specific and looking at the hour I could see that I had restored to an exact moment--10:43 a.m on January 11th. This was four hours before the guys had come and hooked me up and typed some commands into this laptop which made it communicate with the router. So I reconfigured for a time that to the system would now be the future but was still actually the past. A past that had no awareness I would in a couple of days forward delete something that controlled my sound. Or, actually, maybe this was a past that did have an awareness of the future, since it was a "future" that had already happened.
I'm telling you, when this worked it made me feel in touch with something extra-normal and made me feel close to an idea that is way bigger than I, like that something you might feel in nature, or in church, or under the influence of a psychotropic agent. I was in a sense, if only two dimensionally, time traveling. So yeah, time traveling, that's what I did this week. And some of it was good.
...more recent posts
Not To Mention XY-Wing
It is 15 degrees this morning but feels like 8. I am just going to take the computer's word for it. Aren't I curious about what 8 feels like? No I'm not. I have taken up Sudoku and all my curiosity is now used considering the candidates 1 thru 9, times 81. Ok, less than 81. A Sudoku puzzle with 81 blank cells. That would be a very hard one. I am working on one now with 55 blank cells and it is pretty hard. It is safe to say that I have perfected the technique of recognizing single candidates and hidden single candidates but am not as comfortable with recognizing at a glance locked candidates or naked pairs, triples or quads and am a long long way from attempting any X-Wing or Swordfish maneuvers, although am cautiously and optimistically looking forward to the day when I can in the context of any type of maneuver use those terms.
It is 15 degrees this morning but feels like 8. I am just going to take the computer's word for it. Aren't I curious about what 8 feels like? No I'm not. I have taken up Sudoku and all my curiosity is now used considering the candidates 1 thru 9, times 81. Ok, less than 81. A Sudoku puzzle with 81 blank cells. That would be a very hard one. I am working on one now with 55 blank cells and it is pretty hard. It is safe to say that I have perfected the technique of recognizing single candidates and hidden single candidates but am not as comfortable with recognizing at a glance locked candidates or naked pairs, triples or quads and am a long long way from attempting any X-Wing or Swordfish maneuvers, although am cautiously and optimistically looking forward to the day when I can in the context of any type of maneuver use those terms.
Pass On This One
I have been pretty successful (with some help) at distracting myself these last several weeks from the one year old imagery that is still crisply imprinted inside of me and which occasionally I will pull up and look at with pain and regret, knowing that such images fade but wondering at what point these will. There are some things for which intellectual preparation is both unavoidable and also a complete waste of time, for example knowing that my mother would die of some old age related disease did not prepare me for the specific circumstances of her death one year ago today.
I wrote that previous paragraph yesterday as the beginning of some imagined profound one year commemoration of my mother's passing. But the truth is, at this point, one year away, I am only grateful for the distance from the events that led up to her death and they are this--a thirteen year lonliness which began on the day of my father's death by cancer April 21, 1993. A "widow's hump" which made her seem strange to us, her six children adrift across the country ( I only speak for my siblings out of artistic license.), A day that began the end when in her early-eighties we took her car away and then more lonliness. Some years of it perhaps. A few years of discussion when it became obvious there was something to discuss regarding her well-being and then the giving of a name like Alzheimers or dementia and you can start the intellectual preparation. I love a good intellectual preparation. About a year after diagnosis we tricked her, I'm not being harsh it's just what we did, and took her on a trip to somewhere that was a facility we all felt very good about, but which to her was a prison imposed on her by the six of us. It was those thoughts she lived with for the next two weeks before dying. I honestly don't know what are the words on the death certificate or how accurate they may be.
I'll get a handle on this eventually, and this is me doing it.
I have been pretty successful (with some help) at distracting myself these last several weeks from the one year old imagery that is still crisply imprinted inside of me and which occasionally I will pull up and look at with pain and regret, knowing that such images fade but wondering at what point these will. There are some things for which intellectual preparation is both unavoidable and also a complete waste of time, for example knowing that my mother would die of some old age related disease did not prepare me for the specific circumstances of her death one year ago today.
I wrote that previous paragraph yesterday as the beginning of some imagined profound one year commemoration of my mother's passing. But the truth is, at this point, one year away, I am only grateful for the distance from the events that led up to her death and they are this--a thirteen year lonliness which began on the day of my father's death by cancer April 21, 1993. A "widow's hump" which made her seem strange to us, her six children adrift across the country ( I only speak for my siblings out of artistic license.), A day that began the end when in her early-eighties we took her car away and then more lonliness. Some years of it perhaps. A few years of discussion when it became obvious there was something to discuss regarding her well-being and then the giving of a name like Alzheimers or dementia and you can start the intellectual preparation. I love a good intellectual preparation. About a year after diagnosis we tricked her, I'm not being harsh it's just what we did, and took her on a trip to somewhere that was a facility we all felt very good about, but which to her was a prison imposed on her by the six of us. It was those thoughts she lived with for the next two weeks before dying. I honestly don't know what are the words on the death certificate or how accurate they may be.
I'll get a handle on this eventually, and this is me doing it.
Above Aisle Seven
While having the ability and inclination to appreciate a wide variety of activities it was not I think until she met me that Bernadette was made to consider football watching as one of the activities she might choose to enjoy. I do not mean to imply that I am a real football fan. For me it is a diversion I will gladly give into if in a given year there is a team that I can find even the remotest connection to and this year the New Orleans Saints more than fulfilled that role. There have been years or I daresay sequential years where I have not watched a single football game nor perused the sports pages for those statistics that seem to have so much meaning when you care about them and amount to so much wasted space when you don't.
Bernadette traveled all the way from NY to be here at Mt. P to watch with me last weekend's dismantling of the New Orleans dream season by the Chicago Bears.
It was predicted to snow here all day just as it was predicted for Chicago. I was going to make chili but only if I could find at a local mart a packet of chili seasoning that makes chili the way I like it. The seasoning packet is called Wick Fowlers, and I had the previous week seen it at the market . Several hours before the game I went to pick it up but it was sold out. There was not even a facsimile of the loose seasonings at the market to attempt real chili, that is chili the way I like it, which requires chili powder, onion powder, cumin, cayenne and whatever else I am forgetting, probably garlic. No sugar. Sugar is ok for Boston chili as is adding beans but I'm talking about chili with only chunks of chuck, and so hot with cayenne that it makes your cheeks sweat. I was not sure Bernadette would like this hot chili so I was not going to go all the way 3-alarm but maybe up to as high as 1.75 alarm. We have never talked about chili, Bernadette and I, so this was uncharted territory.
As Bernadette in her satellite office at Mt. P scratched on her Wacom tablet, filling in color to the outlines of the most famous and beloved (if slightly irritating) character in the modern history of children, a character emblazoned worldwide onto lunch boxes and t-shirts and panties and pencils, I broke to her the sad news. We won't be having chili.
At this point Bernadette, a woman who up to very recently, to my knowledge, was neither a fan of football nor chili, made in this context a rather curious and passionate response. She lifted her hand off the Wacom, thereby damning all children worldwide to a thing they are least good at--waiting (for some new product stamped with their favorite brightly colored character)--and said to me in no uncertain terms, we can't watch football without chili.
Ok then, I will drive to the nearest large grocery, in a town sixteen miles away, over one of the steepest and winding mountain passes in the area, during what was the very beginning of a mini-blizzard, and look for a product (Wick Fowlers) which I have never before seen on the shelves (it was a shock to see it at the local mart, as it is mostly a product sold in the southwest.) She said, great, see you when you get back, and returned to her work.
By the time I started climbing up the road to Chester Gap the snow was sticking and packing to the road quite well and I was shifted into 4-wheel drive. Or at least I think I was, this being the first time I had attempted to use it on this new second hand Jeep. I had already passed a few abandoned passenger cars skidded off into culverts but I was doing pretty well and was in no way grumbling or muttering under my breath--we can't watch football without chili? Where did she get that? I've never heard that before. Oh, so she's Miss Football Culinary expert now. None of those things did I say for they would have distracted me from the focus of keeping a very liberal distance between myself and the truck in front of me, with absolute minimal breaking, while keeping an eye on the passenger car behind me, on a winding 6 or 8 percent grade over packed snow.
I made it to the grocery parking lot and pulling into a space lost control for the first time but just a little fishtail, nothing serious. Inside the store was the predictable scene of an areas first snow of the season shopping panic. With two or three lanes open there was a line of at least 40 overflowing shopping carts running almost the entire width of the full sized grocery store. Sure I considering briefly that I could just loot the item and be on my way but then, above aisle 7, I saw the floating visage of Bernadette shaking her head and wagging a finger at me. Over the stores' loudspeaker system came her voice and it said--you get your skinny ass home right this minute. So I bolted.
Back at home but only after a crawling speed of 20 mph passing several more minor wrecks and I was met by a Bernadette apparently broken out of that spell, that fugue state which had her temporarily acting as a football crazed, chili loving chick, and she welcomed me contritely and lovingly in a way that made me feel that she honestly did care about me more than some dumb old NFC championship game and chili that would make her face sweat.
The game was a disappointment as was the Taco Bell queso dip I had heated up in the microwave. But football fan or not, the season of the Saints was of inestimable value to New Orleans lovers scattered around the country.
As it turns out, Harrisburg, PA, is the midpoint between Mt. P and NYC so if Saints rookie receiver, Marques Colston, holds any more of his fundraisers at the bowling alley there, I might just meet up with Bernadette and bowl a game or two. And I'll stock up on some of that Wick Fowlers before next season rolls around.
While having the ability and inclination to appreciate a wide variety of activities it was not I think until she met me that Bernadette was made to consider football watching as one of the activities she might choose to enjoy. I do not mean to imply that I am a real football fan. For me it is a diversion I will gladly give into if in a given year there is a team that I can find even the remotest connection to and this year the New Orleans Saints more than fulfilled that role. There have been years or I daresay sequential years where I have not watched a single football game nor perused the sports pages for those statistics that seem to have so much meaning when you care about them and amount to so much wasted space when you don't.
Bernadette traveled all the way from NY to be here at Mt. P to watch with me last weekend's dismantling of the New Orleans dream season by the Chicago Bears.
It was predicted to snow here all day just as it was predicted for Chicago. I was going to make chili but only if I could find at a local mart a packet of chili seasoning that makes chili the way I like it. The seasoning packet is called Wick Fowlers, and I had the previous week seen it at the market . Several hours before the game I went to pick it up but it was sold out. There was not even a facsimile of the loose seasonings at the market to attempt real chili, that is chili the way I like it, which requires chili powder, onion powder, cumin, cayenne and whatever else I am forgetting, probably garlic. No sugar. Sugar is ok for Boston chili as is adding beans but I'm talking about chili with only chunks of chuck, and so hot with cayenne that it makes your cheeks sweat. I was not sure Bernadette would like this hot chili so I was not going to go all the way 3-alarm but maybe up to as high as 1.75 alarm. We have never talked about chili, Bernadette and I, so this was uncharted territory.
As Bernadette in her satellite office at Mt. P scratched on her Wacom tablet, filling in color to the outlines of the most famous and beloved (if slightly irritating) character in the modern history of children, a character emblazoned worldwide onto lunch boxes and t-shirts and panties and pencils, I broke to her the sad news. We won't be having chili.
At this point Bernadette, a woman who up to very recently, to my knowledge, was neither a fan of football nor chili, made in this context a rather curious and passionate response. She lifted her hand off the Wacom, thereby damning all children worldwide to a thing they are least good at--waiting (for some new product stamped with their favorite brightly colored character)--and said to me in no uncertain terms, we can't watch football without chili.
Ok then, I will drive to the nearest large grocery, in a town sixteen miles away, over one of the steepest and winding mountain passes in the area, during what was the very beginning of a mini-blizzard, and look for a product (Wick Fowlers) which I have never before seen on the shelves (it was a shock to see it at the local mart, as it is mostly a product sold in the southwest.) She said, great, see you when you get back, and returned to her work.
By the time I started climbing up the road to Chester Gap the snow was sticking and packing to the road quite well and I was shifted into 4-wheel drive. Or at least I think I was, this being the first time I had attempted to use it on this new second hand Jeep. I had already passed a few abandoned passenger cars skidded off into culverts but I was doing pretty well and was in no way grumbling or muttering under my breath--we can't watch football without chili? Where did she get that? I've never heard that before. Oh, so she's Miss Football Culinary expert now. None of those things did I say for they would have distracted me from the focus of keeping a very liberal distance between myself and the truck in front of me, with absolute minimal breaking, while keeping an eye on the passenger car behind me, on a winding 6 or 8 percent grade over packed snow.
I made it to the grocery parking lot and pulling into a space lost control for the first time but just a little fishtail, nothing serious. Inside the store was the predictable scene of an areas first snow of the season shopping panic. With two or three lanes open there was a line of at least 40 overflowing shopping carts running almost the entire width of the full sized grocery store. Sure I considering briefly that I could just loot the item and be on my way but then, above aisle 7, I saw the floating visage of Bernadette shaking her head and wagging a finger at me. Over the stores' loudspeaker system came her voice and it said--you get your skinny ass home right this minute. So I bolted.
Back at home but only after a crawling speed of 20 mph passing several more minor wrecks and I was met by a Bernadette apparently broken out of that spell, that fugue state which had her temporarily acting as a football crazed, chili loving chick, and she welcomed me contritely and lovingly in a way that made me feel that she honestly did care about me more than some dumb old NFC championship game and chili that would make her face sweat.
The game was a disappointment as was the Taco Bell queso dip I had heated up in the microwave. But football fan or not, the season of the Saints was of inestimable value to New Orleans lovers scattered around the country.
As it turns out, Harrisburg, PA, is the midpoint between Mt. P and NYC so if Saints rookie receiver, Marques Colston, holds any more of his fundraisers at the bowling alley there, I might just meet up with Bernadette and bowl a game or two. And I'll stock up on some of that Wick Fowlers before next season rolls around.
BC And The Watchtower
An Interloper came up the driveway and parked at the bighouse. I watched from down here and thought about going up but there's no way out but back by me so I just waited and after a minute or two they rolled down this way and into my driveway. I crunched across the snow and realizing my belt was hanging loose (and that I might look the part of the lonely, ill-kempt, fumbling, demented caretaker) turned away from the aged woman exiting the vehicle and with some difficulty got my belt re-attached in its proper fashion. No benefit that I can see from allowing strangers near your door so I continued closer until she began her pitch with Watchtower in hand, us at the halfway point. She apparently doesn't remember me from the previous visits. It is a known fact that all reprobates look alike and she obviously had me mixed up with the many others she hasn't the ability to convert. I remember her though. She'll ask my name in a minute but she won't call me by it next time. She doesn't really want me. She wants that bighouse conversion. I was going to give it to her but not before we talked a little about the end times. Did I know the end was near? Did I ever. Maybe I would like to read about how it would go down, she spoke while tapping the Watchtower pamphlet. I am very interested in new information I replied with that sincerity that quite a few mistake for its opposite. Was I familiar with (a specific verse from) the book of Matthew? I was not. She did not take the time to recite it but I would have been glad for the words. I love a true believer but this woman has never struck me as having the patience for it.
I like to picture Mr. BC giggling 20 years ago as he on his way to work passed a Jehovah's Witness in his driveway and stopped long enough to chat with briefly, smiling out his rolled down window, before sending them up to me, the closest thing to a lost soul he has the privilege to know. I am not bitter about that day but I always thought it would be funny if I could return the favor so I gave this woman all four of his email addresses, his home phone, his cell phone, his home address, business address, and business phone, while telling her that he had just come into a sum of cash money that so much weighed him down he could barely carry it all, and as it happened, for awhile had had me carry, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars rolled into a fat wad and another fat chunk in a half fold. She looked only moderately concerned about this strange confession. Outlaws? Gamblers? Politicians? Who exactly was she dealing with here and what would it take to get her hands on this money? I told her I thought he was likely wanting to unburden himself of this heavy paper that had practically dropped into his lap and to give him various calls, and to tell Mr. BC the caretaker had referred her to him. In the pause that is amounted to by these words now being typed I allow Mr. BC to consider how unlikely or likely is it that I did this last part. It has been my lifelong experience to not be taken seriously by the Watchtower group but should they get a hold of you Mr. BC, you make sure they earn that money and that they call you by name and that you get the Matthew verse out of them. They owe you that much.
An Interloper came up the driveway and parked at the bighouse. I watched from down here and thought about going up but there's no way out but back by me so I just waited and after a minute or two they rolled down this way and into my driveway. I crunched across the snow and realizing my belt was hanging loose (and that I might look the part of the lonely, ill-kempt, fumbling, demented caretaker) turned away from the aged woman exiting the vehicle and with some difficulty got my belt re-attached in its proper fashion. No benefit that I can see from allowing strangers near your door so I continued closer until she began her pitch with Watchtower in hand, us at the halfway point. She apparently doesn't remember me from the previous visits. It is a known fact that all reprobates look alike and she obviously had me mixed up with the many others she hasn't the ability to convert. I remember her though. She'll ask my name in a minute but she won't call me by it next time. She doesn't really want me. She wants that bighouse conversion. I was going to give it to her but not before we talked a little about the end times. Did I know the end was near? Did I ever. Maybe I would like to read about how it would go down, she spoke while tapping the Watchtower pamphlet. I am very interested in new information I replied with that sincerity that quite a few mistake for its opposite. Was I familiar with (a specific verse from) the book of Matthew? I was not. She did not take the time to recite it but I would have been glad for the words. I love a true believer but this woman has never struck me as having the patience for it.
I like to picture Mr. BC giggling 20 years ago as he on his way to work passed a Jehovah's Witness in his driveway and stopped long enough to chat with briefly, smiling out his rolled down window, before sending them up to me, the closest thing to a lost soul he has the privilege to know. I am not bitter about that day but I always thought it would be funny if I could return the favor so I gave this woman all four of his email addresses, his home phone, his cell phone, his home address, business address, and business phone, while telling her that he had just come into a sum of cash money that so much weighed him down he could barely carry it all, and as it happened, for awhile had had me carry, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars rolled into a fat wad and another fat chunk in a half fold. She looked only moderately concerned about this strange confession. Outlaws? Gamblers? Politicians? Who exactly was she dealing with here and what would it take to get her hands on this money? I told her I thought he was likely wanting to unburden himself of this heavy paper that had practically dropped into his lap and to give him various calls, and to tell Mr. BC the caretaker had referred her to him. In the pause that is amounted to by these words now being typed I allow Mr. BC to consider how unlikely or likely is it that I did this last part. It has been my lifelong experience to not be taken seriously by the Watchtower group but should they get a hold of you Mr. BC, you make sure they earn that money and that they call you by name and that you get the Matthew verse out of them. They owe you that much.
Checked My Anecdote At The Door
On a shopping spree in Virginia I drove past the bowling alley and took the next right into the strip center parking lot. The Big Lots is a store that sells the world's over stocked merchandise at a discount. The atmosphere in there is part garage sale and part well managed discount merchandise establishment. The goods are often cheap but rarely exactly what you want. I look in now and again to satisfy my desire for that curiously attractive garage sale mystique. Garage sales are another place to get not exactly what you want. You get things other people thought they wanted but obviously didn't, and are willing to part with for a little change and the moderate hassle of setting up a retail operation in their driveways, on weekends. Going to garage sales is a little more work than going to Big Lots, sort of like solving a puzzle in a parallel universe by extracting clues from classified ads and then consulting maps to get to the treasure of a homespun, open air, retail outlet that did not exist the previous week, and to which, according to the ads from the more elite purveyors, you better not show up early.
I just went into the kitchen and got more juice with which to flush my system of this minor common cold that is threatening to invade my well being. But I forgot to bring it back in here with me so I will go back and get it now, excuse me one minute.
Yep, there it was, on the counter where I left it. Cranberry/grape this time and Tropicana OJ last time. Orange juice is going to get very expensive soon so I am trying to drink it while the getting is good. I won't drink it when it gets expensive. When it gets expensive I will compare it to some other liquid I enjoy, like beer, and go for the beer every time. I won't blame the company for the price hike. Supply and demand, frozen crops, these things I somewhat understand but what the hell is up with all these Tropicana varieties now on the shelves? The other shoppers grow weary of me standing so long in front of the juices. Original is the only one for me. I do not want five different choices between amounts of pulp, nor the extra vitamins and minerals added. Freedom of choice my ass. I am shackled by choice. And yes, thank you, I will consider moving to a communist country to see how I like it without so many choices.
After many minutes roaming the aisles at Big Lots it became imperative that I buy something. It would not do to start a shopping spree without buying something. So I picked up some tea bags, but only after worrying myself to death over how fresh they would be. Then a bottle of rubbing alcohol for 80 cents. Didn't even have to think about it. Toothpaste? Need it, bought it, also 80 cents. Would you look at that?--a 10 piece manicure set for a buck fifty. Got me one of those. Has two pairs of nail clippers, emery boards, some cuticle tools which I will be forever afraid to use, and a metal file and some scissors. I was shopping now, picking up some steam.
It was like juggling, badly, trying to carry all that stuff around so when I got in the line to check out I rested the many items (I didn't tell you I bought four boxes of that tea) on a display of light weight sweat shirts. Which, come to think of it, I need, so I wrapped all the loose items in a large green one. The shirt was the priciest item of the day at four dollars but adding up its now utilitarian value as a knapsack I still think quite the bargain.
I waited patiently while the other two shoppers and the cashier engaged in what may not have been the most efficient customer/employee relationship but if I wanted efficiency above all else I could shop online (as if I could ever find a 10 piece manicure set for a dollar-fifty, online.) There is now coming the whole reason for my making this considerable effort to punish you with the minutia of a single morning in my life. The inspirational nugget if you will; the shred of pork fat stuck between my teeth. I am flossing now.
The cashier, all yakety-yakety up to this point, was mute to me. She was not rude but she was not friendly, or not really not friendly but not loquacious, as she had been for the previous 10 minutes I had waited in line. That's fine really, someone getting down to business will not be faulted by me. But as I walked off she started right back up with the next customers in line, a man and wife. The man had some little anecdote handy and if I had known that was required to get some human interaction from this cashier, I would have had one ready too. His was something about the weather. Excuse me, a weather anecdote after the weather turns cold? I had checked my anecdotes at the door, thinking I was entering the building of a well oiled national discount merchandise chain whose business was the business of selling, not listening to my tired old anecdotes, which, given the chance, just a single chance, would have been a humdinger to anybody listening. I mean, they're still laughing down at the post office about that funny thing I once said, I forget what it was, but it was funny funny. But it's true that it took them awhile to warm up to me down at the PO. It was maybe two years before they laughed at me, I mean with me. I got all that stuff at the Big Lots for 14 dollars. It was a pretty good trip. I didn't go in there to make friends.
On a shopping spree in Virginia I drove past the bowling alley and took the next right into the strip center parking lot. The Big Lots is a store that sells the world's over stocked merchandise at a discount. The atmosphere in there is part garage sale and part well managed discount merchandise establishment. The goods are often cheap but rarely exactly what you want. I look in now and again to satisfy my desire for that curiously attractive garage sale mystique. Garage sales are another place to get not exactly what you want. You get things other people thought they wanted but obviously didn't, and are willing to part with for a little change and the moderate hassle of setting up a retail operation in their driveways, on weekends. Going to garage sales is a little more work than going to Big Lots, sort of like solving a puzzle in a parallel universe by extracting clues from classified ads and then consulting maps to get to the treasure of a homespun, open air, retail outlet that did not exist the previous week, and to which, according to the ads from the more elite purveyors, you better not show up early.
I just went into the kitchen and got more juice with which to flush my system of this minor common cold that is threatening to invade my well being. But I forgot to bring it back in here with me so I will go back and get it now, excuse me one minute.
Yep, there it was, on the counter where I left it. Cranberry/grape this time and Tropicana OJ last time. Orange juice is going to get very expensive soon so I am trying to drink it while the getting is good. I won't drink it when it gets expensive. When it gets expensive I will compare it to some other liquid I enjoy, like beer, and go for the beer every time. I won't blame the company for the price hike. Supply and demand, frozen crops, these things I somewhat understand but what the hell is up with all these Tropicana varieties now on the shelves? The other shoppers grow weary of me standing so long in front of the juices. Original is the only one for me. I do not want five different choices between amounts of pulp, nor the extra vitamins and minerals added. Freedom of choice my ass. I am shackled by choice. And yes, thank you, I will consider moving to a communist country to see how I like it without so many choices.
After many minutes roaming the aisles at Big Lots it became imperative that I buy something. It would not do to start a shopping spree without buying something. So I picked up some tea bags, but only after worrying myself to death over how fresh they would be. Then a bottle of rubbing alcohol for 80 cents. Didn't even have to think about it. Toothpaste? Need it, bought it, also 80 cents. Would you look at that?--a 10 piece manicure set for a buck fifty. Got me one of those. Has two pairs of nail clippers, emery boards, some cuticle tools which I will be forever afraid to use, and a metal file and some scissors. I was shopping now, picking up some steam.
It was like juggling, badly, trying to carry all that stuff around so when I got in the line to check out I rested the many items (I didn't tell you I bought four boxes of that tea) on a display of light weight sweat shirts. Which, come to think of it, I need, so I wrapped all the loose items in a large green one. The shirt was the priciest item of the day at four dollars but adding up its now utilitarian value as a knapsack I still think quite the bargain.
I waited patiently while the other two shoppers and the cashier engaged in what may not have been the most efficient customer/employee relationship but if I wanted efficiency above all else I could shop online (as if I could ever find a 10 piece manicure set for a dollar-fifty, online.) There is now coming the whole reason for my making this considerable effort to punish you with the minutia of a single morning in my life. The inspirational nugget if you will; the shred of pork fat stuck between my teeth. I am flossing now.
The cashier, all yakety-yakety up to this point, was mute to me. She was not rude but she was not friendly, or not really not friendly but not loquacious, as she had been for the previous 10 minutes I had waited in line. That's fine really, someone getting down to business will not be faulted by me. But as I walked off she started right back up with the next customers in line, a man and wife. The man had some little anecdote handy and if I had known that was required to get some human interaction from this cashier, I would have had one ready too. His was something about the weather. Excuse me, a weather anecdote after the weather turns cold? I had checked my anecdotes at the door, thinking I was entering the building of a well oiled national discount merchandise chain whose business was the business of selling, not listening to my tired old anecdotes, which, given the chance, just a single chance, would have been a humdinger to anybody listening. I mean, they're still laughing down at the post office about that funny thing I once said, I forget what it was, but it was funny funny. But it's true that it took them awhile to warm up to me down at the PO. It was maybe two years before they laughed at me, I mean with me. I got all that stuff at the Big Lots for 14 dollars. It was a pretty good trip. I didn't go in there to make friends.
My Wooden Snake
There is a wooden, multi-jointed snake on my breakfast table. I got it at a truck stop in Mississippi. One of the cable internet guys was sitting across from me, showing me the bill for 24 dollars. I was writing the check when he said--you a snake lover? I think that is what he actually said but I was writing the check and only caught on that he had mentioned the snake and I just said something like, yeh, hoping that I would get away with it. I don't actually speak a lot, in the course of a day. He went on to say that snakes were the only thing he was really afraid of. I felt bad about this, his fear of snakes, so I blurted out a bald-faced lie about why the snake was there on the table. It felt weird lying to this kid about snakes. He already thought I was a snake lover because I think I had already admitted as much. I wanted to let the kid know that I was also afraid of snakes, but to say so would make me a hypocrite, a snake loving hypocrite. But I don't know, really, what was going on. This was a perfect example of poor communication. Of two people not synching. I think it was partly the kid's fault. His partner was in the other room hooking up the wireless router. That's not what they were paid to do, that's not what the 24 dollars was for but I had told the partner there was an extra cash 40 in it for him if he had me wireless when he left. I'm getting the hang of things. I am a slow learner but I am getting the hang of things. It took the partner about 5 extra minutes to get me wireless. Was it worth 480 dollars an hour to me? Yes it was, is the crazy truth.
There is a wooden, multi-jointed snake on my breakfast table. I got it at a truck stop in Mississippi. One of the cable internet guys was sitting across from me, showing me the bill for 24 dollars. I was writing the check when he said--you a snake lover? I think that is what he actually said but I was writing the check and only caught on that he had mentioned the snake and I just said something like, yeh, hoping that I would get away with it. I don't actually speak a lot, in the course of a day. He went on to say that snakes were the only thing he was really afraid of. I felt bad about this, his fear of snakes, so I blurted out a bald-faced lie about why the snake was there on the table. It felt weird lying to this kid about snakes. He already thought I was a snake lover because I think I had already admitted as much. I wanted to let the kid know that I was also afraid of snakes, but to say so would make me a hypocrite, a snake loving hypocrite. But I don't know, really, what was going on. This was a perfect example of poor communication. Of two people not synching. I think it was partly the kid's fault. His partner was in the other room hooking up the wireless router. That's not what they were paid to do, that's not what the 24 dollars was for but I had told the partner there was an extra cash 40 in it for him if he had me wireless when he left. I'm getting the hang of things. I am a slow learner but I am getting the hang of things. It took the partner about 5 extra minutes to get me wireless. Was it worth 480 dollars an hour to me? Yes it was, is the crazy truth.
Advice To Slim
I signed up last year and had all the necessary background checks to qualify as a volunteer in a local mentoring program for area youth, but in the year since I have not actually participated in the program. Shortly after the final orientation I had to leave the area for several months. And then upon returning I wasn't sure my future here was stable enough to commit to a program that asks for a minimum of one year involvement. When I did become more comfortable with the idea of being here it was due in large part to a woman in NY, who exists for me in blinking fashion, sometimes here, or I there, and sometimes not. It is a relationship that survives by the acceptance of a five hour separation. And that one of us can visit the other often enough to make it seem real. And so I add this--that I must travel away from here on a semi-regular yet not scheduled basis--to the list of reasons why I cannot commit to a local mentoring program.
But the truth is, before I even get to those reasons, it may be that the real reason I am hesitant to get back into mentoring is because I suck at it. Yeah, I did a little mentoring once, sort of free-lance, outside of an actual program. And in my head I try to blur the number of failures into one. But as the years pass it is hard to imagine any description that would in any way define my efforts as mentor as anything but, well, a tad short of ideal, and the number of failures not just one, but several. On Sundays I used to load up a compact car full of teenage and pre-teenage boys and drive them around a city in southern Louisiana, looking for distractions from the difficult scenarios that played out every day on the street on which we all lived.
What brings all this to mind at this point in time is the news that another of the boys has been locked up for first degree homicide. So that now I can look back to a Sunday almost ten years ago, where of five boys in my car, all five have at least been accused of murder, if not actually committing it. On other Sundays the mix would be different and I can proudly say that one of those mixes included a carful where only two of the five have grown up to be suspected murderers. Of what use is this information? What do you do with it? I'm not sure yet of what use it is but what I'm doing with it is getting rid of it. These bits of information can slip in almost unnoticed, a brief email exchange where you ask--oh really, what was he arrested for? and the answer comes back first degree homicide. And then the information sits there and you think you have processed it but you haven't because it turns out that you could never keep up with it, over the years. Every so often you think you have cleared out the old files, those files with tabs that say--kids who cuss; kids who hit; kids who stab; kids who murder, but apparently you not only suck at mentoring, you are not much of a bookkeeper, either; the information is not gone, just hidden, and not even well hidden at that.
I am not really so egomaniacal, or self-critical, to think that my deficiencies led directly to these kids growing up to be murderers, but as we shared a part of our lives together it is hard for me not to think of our lives as being intertwined. And so to whatever small degree I was actually an influence on these bad boys, I seek in at least that measure the answer to what it is I could have done differently. Which is funny, because my mother, may she rest in peace, once asked the same question regarding her raising of me. I told her at the time that I thought she had done a fine job, I really had no complaints, and that I thought there was a limit to how far a parent should go in taking responsibility for the overall outcome of their child. Hey, that's pretty damn good advice, I should take it.
As for these boys--is it true that they would greatly benefit from a relatively stable two parent family, some love, some discipline, a school system that hasn't given up on itself, and them? I would say for sure it is true and "greatly benefit" might even be understatement. Is it also true that seeing the problem, defining it, studying it and speaking out about it is half the battle? No, I don't think so. I think we should quit seeing it and speaking about it and just jump right in and do something, be something, in some way become something that can be described as actively involved. There will be plenty to look at and talk about after the fact. I'm talking to you, Slim, and this isn't just about mentoring. You need to giddyup boy, giddyup.
I signed up last year and had all the necessary background checks to qualify as a volunteer in a local mentoring program for area youth, but in the year since I have not actually participated in the program. Shortly after the final orientation I had to leave the area for several months. And then upon returning I wasn't sure my future here was stable enough to commit to a program that asks for a minimum of one year involvement. When I did become more comfortable with the idea of being here it was due in large part to a woman in NY, who exists for me in blinking fashion, sometimes here, or I there, and sometimes not. It is a relationship that survives by the acceptance of a five hour separation. And that one of us can visit the other often enough to make it seem real. And so I add this--that I must travel away from here on a semi-regular yet not scheduled basis--to the list of reasons why I cannot commit to a local mentoring program.
But the truth is, before I even get to those reasons, it may be that the real reason I am hesitant to get back into mentoring is because I suck at it. Yeah, I did a little mentoring once, sort of free-lance, outside of an actual program. And in my head I try to blur the number of failures into one. But as the years pass it is hard to imagine any description that would in any way define my efforts as mentor as anything but, well, a tad short of ideal, and the number of failures not just one, but several. On Sundays I used to load up a compact car full of teenage and pre-teenage boys and drive them around a city in southern Louisiana, looking for distractions from the difficult scenarios that played out every day on the street on which we all lived.
What brings all this to mind at this point in time is the news that another of the boys has been locked up for first degree homicide. So that now I can look back to a Sunday almost ten years ago, where of five boys in my car, all five have at least been accused of murder, if not actually committing it. On other Sundays the mix would be different and I can proudly say that one of those mixes included a carful where only two of the five have grown up to be suspected murderers. Of what use is this information? What do you do with it? I'm not sure yet of what use it is but what I'm doing with it is getting rid of it. These bits of information can slip in almost unnoticed, a brief email exchange where you ask--oh really, what was he arrested for? and the answer comes back first degree homicide. And then the information sits there and you think you have processed it but you haven't because it turns out that you could never keep up with it, over the years. Every so often you think you have cleared out the old files, those files with tabs that say--kids who cuss; kids who hit; kids who stab; kids who murder, but apparently you not only suck at mentoring, you are not much of a bookkeeper, either; the information is not gone, just hidden, and not even well hidden at that.
I am not really so egomaniacal, or self-critical, to think that my deficiencies led directly to these kids growing up to be murderers, but as we shared a part of our lives together it is hard for me not to think of our lives as being intertwined. And so to whatever small degree I was actually an influence on these bad boys, I seek in at least that measure the answer to what it is I could have done differently. Which is funny, because my mother, may she rest in peace, once asked the same question regarding her raising of me. I told her at the time that I thought she had done a fine job, I really had no complaints, and that I thought there was a limit to how far a parent should go in taking responsibility for the overall outcome of their child. Hey, that's pretty damn good advice, I should take it.
As for these boys--is it true that they would greatly benefit from a relatively stable two parent family, some love, some discipline, a school system that hasn't given up on itself, and them? I would say for sure it is true and "greatly benefit" might even be understatement. Is it also true that seeing the problem, defining it, studying it and speaking out about it is half the battle? No, I don't think so. I think we should quit seeing it and speaking about it and just jump right in and do something, be something, in some way become something that can be described as actively involved. There will be plenty to look at and talk about after the fact. I'm talking to you, Slim, and this isn't just about mentoring. You need to giddyup boy, giddyup.
Ticket Envy
Oh he's a big college professor in New Orleans now but when he was just a critter, a speck, an aphid on the family tree if you will, back in Texas, me and my older brother used to mess with his head a little bit, we did. My nephew doesn't seem any the worse for it now, I mean, I don't think he's worse off. You could take things out of context, like the fact that he has been seen more than a few times in public wearing colorful tights and a mask, imitating perhaps the sidekick of a popular superhero (and clearly in possession of an actual hollow leg where he dumps gallons and gallons of beer), and say, well, I think you guys effed up his head permanently, but you don't understand, that was just him being...it is in the context of...it's a seasonal thing...well, never mind, it's hard to explain. To meet him though you would think--what a fine young man, and such a lovely family, oh that wife of his, he doesn't deserve her you might kid him with a poke in the ribs. His three young children not just smart but handsome and pretty as well. Truly, what an outstanding man, what an outstanding family.
All right you bastard, I got you to read this far, I know you're reading this, now where is my damn playoff ticket. I know you have five of them, I know you took a chance and invested in a team that wasn't likely to be that good and got yourself some season nosebleed seats for that whole damn cute family of yours, and it's worked out for you guys pretty well I would say but enough is enough and somebody's got to sit home Saturday Night and I'm tired of it being me.
Here's what you do. G comes home from school today, proudly holds up his math test with a 99 on it. He's looking up the length of your towering bean pole self, waiting for that most predictable response from his proud father. But you tell him, in no uncertain terms, that 99 will just not cut it this time. The bar is being raised. 99, you scoff, crumpling the test paper into a ball and mashing it into the wood floor. You send him off to his room and in response to his predictable crying jag (and the balloon bubble above his head which says--my father is a whack job) you banish him from Saturday's game. Or look, it's already going to cost me a pretty penny to get a last minute flight from DC to NO, I should really start looking for deals right now, maybe you could call up the school and have one of his teachers break it to him.
I'm just kidding G, you know I wouldn't do you that. You too crazy about your sports for me to even think about sneaking your ticket away from you. But nephew, look, what about Izzy? Come on man, that girl is too young to really appreciate the importance of football. Here's what we could do...
Naw really nephew, I'm cool, I'll just hang here, by myself, try to take some consolation in the 50 inches of plasma Hi-Def. Yeah boy, high definition is really, you know, the bomb, makes everything look better. Even the president last night looked...well, like shit actually, but his skin tone was really...a little sallow actually, but...oh!!!--I think he almost correctly pronounced nuclear the second time it came up on the teleprompter. Like any of that world politics crapola matters. Go Saints.
Oh he's a big college professor in New Orleans now but when he was just a critter, a speck, an aphid on the family tree if you will, back in Texas, me and my older brother used to mess with his head a little bit, we did. My nephew doesn't seem any the worse for it now, I mean, I don't think he's worse off. You could take things out of context, like the fact that he has been seen more than a few times in public wearing colorful tights and a mask, imitating perhaps the sidekick of a popular superhero (and clearly in possession of an actual hollow leg where he dumps gallons and gallons of beer), and say, well, I think you guys effed up his head permanently, but you don't understand, that was just him being...it is in the context of...it's a seasonal thing...well, never mind, it's hard to explain. To meet him though you would think--what a fine young man, and such a lovely family, oh that wife of his, he doesn't deserve her you might kid him with a poke in the ribs. His three young children not just smart but handsome and pretty as well. Truly, what an outstanding man, what an outstanding family.
All right you bastard, I got you to read this far, I know you're reading this, now where is my damn playoff ticket. I know you have five of them, I know you took a chance and invested in a team that wasn't likely to be that good and got yourself some season nosebleed seats for that whole damn cute family of yours, and it's worked out for you guys pretty well I would say but enough is enough and somebody's got to sit home Saturday Night and I'm tired of it being me.
Here's what you do. G comes home from school today, proudly holds up his math test with a 99 on it. He's looking up the length of your towering bean pole self, waiting for that most predictable response from his proud father. But you tell him, in no uncertain terms, that 99 will just not cut it this time. The bar is being raised. 99, you scoff, crumpling the test paper into a ball and mashing it into the wood floor. You send him off to his room and in response to his predictable crying jag (and the balloon bubble above his head which says--my father is a whack job) you banish him from Saturday's game. Or look, it's already going to cost me a pretty penny to get a last minute flight from DC to NO, I should really start looking for deals right now, maybe you could call up the school and have one of his teachers break it to him.
I'm just kidding G, you know I wouldn't do you that. You too crazy about your sports for me to even think about sneaking your ticket away from you. But nephew, look, what about Izzy? Come on man, that girl is too young to really appreciate the importance of football. Here's what we could do...
Naw really nephew, I'm cool, I'll just hang here, by myself, try to take some consolation in the 50 inches of plasma Hi-Def. Yeah boy, high definition is really, you know, the bomb, makes everything look better. Even the president last night looked...well, like shit actually, but his skin tone was really...a little sallow actually, but...oh!!!--I think he almost correctly pronounced nuclear the second time it came up on the teleprompter. Like any of that world politics crapola matters. Go Saints.
Admittedly, No Olmi
Man, I look like Howard Hughes at the Bates Motel with these long fingernails perched atop the keyboard next to that worrisome fly. Except Norman would not kill the fly and I will, soon as I finish making this list of things to do, which will include cutting my nails.
I shouldn't have to make a list that includes nail cutting. I should just do it. I should do it after I take a hot shower so the nails are softer. I didn't put nail clippers on the last list and the pair I have, which I will for no particular reason use before killing the fly, have lost their edge. They'll work fine though after I soak myself in 20 gallons of hot water. Or I could burn a few gallons of gasoline driving to get the clippers, and forget the shower. But in my haste will probably also forget numerous other things which should be on the list but aren't, because there is not a list, yet. If the first thing on your list is to make a list and you accept generally that you don't write "make a list" on the top of a list, how do you get started?
Also, if you accept that in making a list you will invariably forget to put things on the list then does it make any sense to make a list at all? Why not just forgo the list and listlessly forget things?
I think people who make lists are superior human beings though. I really do. Make a list and check things off. That is how you go about being successful. But I can't decide what it is I would like to be successful at. Maybe I should start with sentence structure.
I can't even decide if I want to be a successful fly killer. Every time I look over and see it--on the bed cover now--without making the effort to kill it, I feel like Norman Bates, a thing with which I am not all that comfortable. I am not a fly-lover though, nor by not killing the fly do I want to be associated with a male Psycho who dresses up in old women's clothing, or worse, if that is possible, a member of PETA. I just don't know how much of myself I want to invest in the killing of this particular fly. And assuming I do kill the fly, then what?
Not to make you dizzy with theme shifts but how often is it that you make a really good list, the list to end all lists, one that includes--if it were lacking it--every item that defines your deficiency, do you then lose that list? Now this is not one of those questions where there is no wrong answer. There is only one answer and the answer is--every time. If you didn't get that answer then you need to re-work the equation. You can use the back of your list for scratch paper.
Scratching now, akin to itching. A fly in my presence makes me itchy. Especially around the eyes, which probably lends credence to the theory of me having some sort of allergic thing going on with my eyes, often crusty, the crust adhering to my lashes like crystals adhere to string dipped in hot water to which you have added sugar. You do this because you are a kid and obviously bored (why else are you making rock candy when you could be watching TV or playing video games?) and you have never done it before and that in itself is its own reward. Or punishment, if the thing you have never done before is putting your hand over a candle in a small jar to see how long it takes to suffocate the flame.
If I choose to be a particular Italian director and am comfortable with my content or comfortable more importantly with that which is missing, I can here finish by saying--FIN.
Man, I look like Howard Hughes at the Bates Motel with these long fingernails perched atop the keyboard next to that worrisome fly. Except Norman would not kill the fly and I will, soon as I finish making this list of things to do, which will include cutting my nails.
I shouldn't have to make a list that includes nail cutting. I should just do it. I should do it after I take a hot shower so the nails are softer. I didn't put nail clippers on the last list and the pair I have, which I will for no particular reason use before killing the fly, have lost their edge. They'll work fine though after I soak myself in 20 gallons of hot water. Or I could burn a few gallons of gasoline driving to get the clippers, and forget the shower. But in my haste will probably also forget numerous other things which should be on the list but aren't, because there is not a list, yet. If the first thing on your list is to make a list and you accept generally that you don't write "make a list" on the top of a list, how do you get started?
Also, if you accept that in making a list you will invariably forget to put things on the list then does it make any sense to make a list at all? Why not just forgo the list and listlessly forget things?
I think people who make lists are superior human beings though. I really do. Make a list and check things off. That is how you go about being successful. But I can't decide what it is I would like to be successful at. Maybe I should start with sentence structure.
I can't even decide if I want to be a successful fly killer. Every time I look over and see it--on the bed cover now--without making the effort to kill it, I feel like Norman Bates, a thing with which I am not all that comfortable. I am not a fly-lover though, nor by not killing the fly do I want to be associated with a male Psycho who dresses up in old women's clothing, or worse, if that is possible, a member of PETA. I just don't know how much of myself I want to invest in the killing of this particular fly. And assuming I do kill the fly, then what?
Not to make you dizzy with theme shifts but how often is it that you make a really good list, the list to end all lists, one that includes--if it were lacking it--every item that defines your deficiency, do you then lose that list? Now this is not one of those questions where there is no wrong answer. There is only one answer and the answer is--every time. If you didn't get that answer then you need to re-work the equation. You can use the back of your list for scratch paper.
Scratching now, akin to itching. A fly in my presence makes me itchy. Especially around the eyes, which probably lends credence to the theory of me having some sort of allergic thing going on with my eyes, often crusty, the crust adhering to my lashes like crystals adhere to string dipped in hot water to which you have added sugar. You do this because you are a kid and obviously bored (why else are you making rock candy when you could be watching TV or playing video games?) and you have never done it before and that in itself is its own reward. Or punishment, if the thing you have never done before is putting your hand over a candle in a small jar to see how long it takes to suffocate the flame.
If I choose to be a particular Italian director and am comfortable with my content or comfortable more importantly with that which is missing, I can here finish by saying--FIN.
NO Murder Inc.
The first couple of times I left New Orleans to consider this life in Virginia I saw no real need to change the name of my email from NOLA page because I didn't see that it made much difference what the page was named and I had never cultivated much of an audience beyond a few loyal readers and I couldn't see how the fact that I was writing from a blog named NOLA about rural Virginia experiences would make that much difference to those few readers. But after Katrina, when New Orleans brought so much attention to itself, I shared on my very small scale, some of that attention and drew a handful of new readers who thought of me, I think, as a New Orleans-centric blogger, which is fitting, since I was living and writing from New Orleans after Katrina, from Oct.05 to June 06., camping in my only moderately damaged dwelling on Rocheblave. But after I left I didn't want to piggyback on any of that New Orleans attention, since I am not currently a New Orleanian, so I started this new page and have tried to keep my themes and stories from having anything to do with New Orleans, as there seemed to be no shortage of NO chroniclers.
But the recent murder spike in that city, 12 dead in 7 days, 6 of those in a less than 24 hour period, makes it hard for me to think about anything else and brings to mind what I have said to almost every person I have ever talked to about New Orleans and Katrina, and that is this--the tragedy of New Orleans existed long before Katrina and central to that tragedy is the killing, and how it never stops, or it only stops long enough for people to fool themselves into thinking that everything is ok now, parrr-teee.
As bad as these weekly numbers are, they only represent a recurring spike that has happened with a thankfully not too frequent regularity over the last 30 years. Except all the previous similarly horrific death counts were framed inside the statistic of a population twice as large. So let's say 24 dead in seven days and 12 of those within a 24 hour period. I know this way of looking at it is probably not allowed in statistics, that there are considerations I am leaving out, but think of it anyway.
I will never be able to rule out a return to New Orleans, if only seasonally. The world is large and we should all see as much of it as is practical to our circumstances, but New Orleans is under my skin for better or worse and I won't be able to go on with my whimsical and absurd blathering until I explore my feelings about the fact that murder seems to be the only fully functioning city enterprise at this date, post-Katrina one year and three months.
I know there will be another march on City Hall this week, in response to the twelfth killing, the artist and mother murdered on Rampart St., and her husband, a family doctor, also shot (but surviving) while shielding their two-year-old son. I do not mean to put too fine on point on this last bit, nor do I mean it as aimless criticism of the civic-minded, but I think that these marches most commonly only happen when the death count includes white people who happen to be productive members of the city. And then the citizenry will more or less rest while the death counts continue, month after month and year after year, but only include the lost boys (who only happen to be black) killing each other over turf and other issues we deem not worthy of our serious consideration.
There is so much about this problem that the individual marching citizens have no real control over and real change will only come with the laying of those essential foundation blocks which seem to forever elude the city, including better schools, more police, better leadership (I do not lay sole blame on the mayor, I still like him, yet I would change my vote if I could travel back in time). And it should not be that pigs have to fly before that money which does occasionally come to the aide of New Orleans is spent solely for its intended use instead of being lost forever into the pockets of those professional, political, and administrative criminals that are forever dooming New Orleans to failure. That they will all be murdered some day is unrealistic and should not be hoped for.
It is right to march and shout and demand change. But to me it all seems like part of the New Orleans pattern which has brought about no change. Marches comprised of not exclusively but mostly white people happen when white people get killed and for the most part only the black ministers of New Orleans hold vigils, and fasts, and prayer sessions to bring attention to that majority of the yearly murders--the black teenager killing the black teenager. The challenge of New Orleans is not one that is all about the division of the two predominant races but I think it is always partly about that. What if the white people of New Orleans marched on City Hall every time the weekly murder count got over some number that all agreed was unacceptable, but only included those hateful, threatening, unproductive gangbangers who always seem to be black and whom we just can't seem to get ourselves to care a good goddamn about (unless fear and hatred of can be construed as caring). In many cases you would only have to erase 13 or 14 years to think of these murderous bastards as babies. And babies are good. Babies are not threatening. That's my idea for the day. It would be different, a break in the pattern. I think different would be good.
The first couple of times I left New Orleans to consider this life in Virginia I saw no real need to change the name of my email from NOLA page because I didn't see that it made much difference what the page was named and I had never cultivated much of an audience beyond a few loyal readers and I couldn't see how the fact that I was writing from a blog named NOLA about rural Virginia experiences would make that much difference to those few readers. But after Katrina, when New Orleans brought so much attention to itself, I shared on my very small scale, some of that attention and drew a handful of new readers who thought of me, I think, as a New Orleans-centric blogger, which is fitting, since I was living and writing from New Orleans after Katrina, from Oct.05 to June 06., camping in my only moderately damaged dwelling on Rocheblave. But after I left I didn't want to piggyback on any of that New Orleans attention, since I am not currently a New Orleanian, so I started this new page and have tried to keep my themes and stories from having anything to do with New Orleans, as there seemed to be no shortage of NO chroniclers.
But the recent murder spike in that city, 12 dead in 7 days, 6 of those in a less than 24 hour period, makes it hard for me to think about anything else and brings to mind what I have said to almost every person I have ever talked to about New Orleans and Katrina, and that is this--the tragedy of New Orleans existed long before Katrina and central to that tragedy is the killing, and how it never stops, or it only stops long enough for people to fool themselves into thinking that everything is ok now, parrr-teee.
As bad as these weekly numbers are, they only represent a recurring spike that has happened with a thankfully not too frequent regularity over the last 30 years. Except all the previous similarly horrific death counts were framed inside the statistic of a population twice as large. So let's say 24 dead in seven days and 12 of those within a 24 hour period. I know this way of looking at it is probably not allowed in statistics, that there are considerations I am leaving out, but think of it anyway.
I will never be able to rule out a return to New Orleans, if only seasonally. The world is large and we should all see as much of it as is practical to our circumstances, but New Orleans is under my skin for better or worse and I won't be able to go on with my whimsical and absurd blathering until I explore my feelings about the fact that murder seems to be the only fully functioning city enterprise at this date, post-Katrina one year and three months.
I know there will be another march on City Hall this week, in response to the twelfth killing, the artist and mother murdered on Rampart St., and her husband, a family doctor, also shot (but surviving) while shielding their two-year-old son. I do not mean to put too fine on point on this last bit, nor do I mean it as aimless criticism of the civic-minded, but I think that these marches most commonly only happen when the death count includes white people who happen to be productive members of the city. And then the citizenry will more or less rest while the death counts continue, month after month and year after year, but only include the lost boys (who only happen to be black) killing each other over turf and other issues we deem not worthy of our serious consideration.
There is so much about this problem that the individual marching citizens have no real control over and real change will only come with the laying of those essential foundation blocks which seem to forever elude the city, including better schools, more police, better leadership (I do not lay sole blame on the mayor, I still like him, yet I would change my vote if I could travel back in time). And it should not be that pigs have to fly before that money which does occasionally come to the aide of New Orleans is spent solely for its intended use instead of being lost forever into the pockets of those professional, political, and administrative criminals that are forever dooming New Orleans to failure. That they will all be murdered some day is unrealistic and should not be hoped for.
It is right to march and shout and demand change. But to me it all seems like part of the New Orleans pattern which has brought about no change. Marches comprised of not exclusively but mostly white people happen when white people get killed and for the most part only the black ministers of New Orleans hold vigils, and fasts, and prayer sessions to bring attention to that majority of the yearly murders--the black teenager killing the black teenager. The challenge of New Orleans is not one that is all about the division of the two predominant races but I think it is always partly about that. What if the white people of New Orleans marched on City Hall every time the weekly murder count got over some number that all agreed was unacceptable, but only included those hateful, threatening, unproductive gangbangers who always seem to be black and whom we just can't seem to get ourselves to care a good goddamn about (unless fear and hatred of can be construed as caring). In many cases you would only have to erase 13 or 14 years to think of these murderous bastards as babies. And babies are good. Babies are not threatening. That's my idea for the day. It would be different, a break in the pattern. I think different would be good.
Bowling, Another Dream
When you find yourself in an area that has limited possibilities for nightlife and for that matter daylife it may come up that someone will ask you to drive sixteen miles to go bowling. The first time you can get out of it by saying that sounds like fun, let's do that sometime. Sometime of course means some other time. The next time you can just be grumpy or in some other way ill of mind and simply say no I'd rather not. It is best not to play this card too often because the bowlers in your life will come to see what a loser you are before you even arrive at that bowling alley to which you know you will eventually have to arrive and of course show to them without a doubt what a bowling deficient, gutterball-throwing loser you really are. They probably won't care because they will figure it as better than bowling alone, if only marginally. When they throw strikes, or, how fantastic, a series of consecutive strikes, it will be dampened somewhat by the fact that their opponent just threw consecutive gutterballs. That you are doing your best is a pitiful excuse.
It may happen once that you will be given the gift of refusal by your bowling desirous partner. You will say, hey let's go bowling tonight (you will say this in the throes of some inexplicable burst of confidence in which you honestly believe that being a shitty bowler is not that big a deal, you have other fine qualities, a verity you cling to even if the enumeration of those qualities does not flow forth easily).
When comes the time that you are driving to the bowling alley for the first time, along a rural state highway in Virginia under a nearly full moon, it may alarm you that the thought of crashing into a suicidal deer is, while not comforting, an almost acceptable alternative to bowling. You really should not underestimate those previous periods of confidence and perhaps it may even behoove you to consider methods of cultivation.
At the bowling alley. While you can watch at night before bed graphic horror movies with nary a bad dream after, the sight of this small town bowling alley, sparsely populated with salt of the earth bowling enthusiasts, puts you in a frame of mind that will later be played out in a dream which has you walking naked in a cold rain down a busy city street.
It's league night and fifteen of the eighteen lanes are quiet, ghostly quiet, waiting for the bowlers to arrive in one hour. Some of them have on their good days bowled perfect games and you can see their names posted on huge banners along one wall, with 2 foot tall 300s emblazoned beside the names. You wonder is it too late to have a tummy-ache? You hold onto hope when the attendant says, it's league night and only three lanes are available to the public and they are all occupied. But wait, one of them will soon be available if we want to wait. Your partner does. You ask, is there beer here?
Bernadette orders a cup of watery beer and I get a Corona, keep your damn lime. We are, combined, almost a hundred years old, but get carded anyway, by a girl that to me looks twelve-years-old. Bernadette doesn't have her ID and the pre-pubescent bartender says Bernadette will have to ask the attendant at the bowling counter if it's okay. Bernadette disappears from view and comes back and says it is okay. We grab a table and wait for her name to be called. People are staring at us because we are new faces on this local bowling scene. They think--I am sure of this--that I am a world class champion bowler come to impress his woman. I am trying to telepathically communicate to these strangers, please don't hold on to your unreal expectations.
The attendant comes to our table and delivers the good news. Our lane is ready, number 17. I hope I don't have to ever find out if this comparison is accurate but walking to the counter to pick up my bowling shoes was like a walk to the gallows. I felt myself shrinking inside myself. This was it then. Had I accomplished anything? Would I be remembered any longer than I myself remembered those dead before me?
While we had waited, sipping our beers, Bernadette jabbed rusty nails into the remaining wafer of my self-confidence ( a level of confidence that had me pretty damn close to uncontrollable weeping) by admitting that she had twice in her life been a league bowler. I wanted to tell her that twice in my life I had broken a hundred, the last time perhaps as recently as 15 years ago, but I just nodded my head while feeling my lips press together in what I hoped would not be construed as a grimace.
Three of my first four balls thrown traveled happily through the gutter. They were these balls very possibly grateful for this holiday from pain, this easy and smooth path that I provided for them. I don't think anyone laughed at me. I kept my eyes averted just in case.
To our right on lane 18 played an affable father and son, of similar portliness, and complexions just slightly pitted. The young man very politely informed us at the beginning which of the balls in the return rack could be removed, as they belonged to the former bowlers. I was touched, perhaps out of proportion to the effort involved, by this simple kindness. I'm sure I was just happy to experience a bit of kindness before the probably approaching ridicule.
When Bernadette began picking up spares the father would say, nice pickup, and give her some skin, on the level, neither high nor low. If fives from the father were added together over the 20 frames we each bowled, Bernadette collected possibly 50 to my 10, which pretty fairly represents the disparity between our final scores. I did break a hundred in the second game. Unfortunately, Bernadette broke 169.
I shook hands with the kid and said goodbye and told him to go easy on his dad, who was gently beating his son each game. They both laughed. At one point during my less than illustrious play the father had offered to buy me a beer if I could pick up an almost (okay, for me, entirely) impossible spare. I didn't pick it up. We had not reached that level of friendship where he bought me a beer anyway.
Later, in the dream, walking naked through wide populated alleyways on a cold rainy night in a city I did not recognize but was probably NYC, a man came urgently running up from behind me and gave to me my old, stained, brown leather work jacket and said I had left it somewhere, but I don't remember even existing before being naked on a city street. The man exuded kindness. I put the jacket on as a jacket is worn, feeling half relieved but if possible, twice as ridiculous. It is only now, typing, that it comes to me I could have tied the sleeves of the jacket around my middle and covered that part of me that should in public be covered.
When you find yourself in an area that has limited possibilities for nightlife and for that matter daylife it may come up that someone will ask you to drive sixteen miles to go bowling. The first time you can get out of it by saying that sounds like fun, let's do that sometime. Sometime of course means some other time. The next time you can just be grumpy or in some other way ill of mind and simply say no I'd rather not. It is best not to play this card too often because the bowlers in your life will come to see what a loser you are before you even arrive at that bowling alley to which you know you will eventually have to arrive and of course show to them without a doubt what a bowling deficient, gutterball-throwing loser you really are. They probably won't care because they will figure it as better than bowling alone, if only marginally. When they throw strikes, or, how fantastic, a series of consecutive strikes, it will be dampened somewhat by the fact that their opponent just threw consecutive gutterballs. That you are doing your best is a pitiful excuse.
It may happen once that you will be given the gift of refusal by your bowling desirous partner. You will say, hey let's go bowling tonight (you will say this in the throes of some inexplicable burst of confidence in which you honestly believe that being a shitty bowler is not that big a deal, you have other fine qualities, a verity you cling to even if the enumeration of those qualities does not flow forth easily).
When comes the time that you are driving to the bowling alley for the first time, along a rural state highway in Virginia under a nearly full moon, it may alarm you that the thought of crashing into a suicidal deer is, while not comforting, an almost acceptable alternative to bowling. You really should not underestimate those previous periods of confidence and perhaps it may even behoove you to consider methods of cultivation.
At the bowling alley. While you can watch at night before bed graphic horror movies with nary a bad dream after, the sight of this small town bowling alley, sparsely populated with salt of the earth bowling enthusiasts, puts you in a frame of mind that will later be played out in a dream which has you walking naked in a cold rain down a busy city street.
It's league night and fifteen of the eighteen lanes are quiet, ghostly quiet, waiting for the bowlers to arrive in one hour. Some of them have on their good days bowled perfect games and you can see their names posted on huge banners along one wall, with 2 foot tall 300s emblazoned beside the names. You wonder is it too late to have a tummy-ache? You hold onto hope when the attendant says, it's league night and only three lanes are available to the public and they are all occupied. But wait, one of them will soon be available if we want to wait. Your partner does. You ask, is there beer here?
Bernadette orders a cup of watery beer and I get a Corona, keep your damn lime. We are, combined, almost a hundred years old, but get carded anyway, by a girl that to me looks twelve-years-old. Bernadette doesn't have her ID and the pre-pubescent bartender says Bernadette will have to ask the attendant at the bowling counter if it's okay. Bernadette disappears from view and comes back and says it is okay. We grab a table and wait for her name to be called. People are staring at us because we are new faces on this local bowling scene. They think--I am sure of this--that I am a world class champion bowler come to impress his woman. I am trying to telepathically communicate to these strangers, please don't hold on to your unreal expectations.
The attendant comes to our table and delivers the good news. Our lane is ready, number 17. I hope I don't have to ever find out if this comparison is accurate but walking to the counter to pick up my bowling shoes was like a walk to the gallows. I felt myself shrinking inside myself. This was it then. Had I accomplished anything? Would I be remembered any longer than I myself remembered those dead before me?
While we had waited, sipping our beers, Bernadette jabbed rusty nails into the remaining wafer of my self-confidence ( a level of confidence that had me pretty damn close to uncontrollable weeping) by admitting that she had twice in her life been a league bowler. I wanted to tell her that twice in my life I had broken a hundred, the last time perhaps as recently as 15 years ago, but I just nodded my head while feeling my lips press together in what I hoped would not be construed as a grimace.
Three of my first four balls thrown traveled happily through the gutter. They were these balls very possibly grateful for this holiday from pain, this easy and smooth path that I provided for them. I don't think anyone laughed at me. I kept my eyes averted just in case.
To our right on lane 18 played an affable father and son, of similar portliness, and complexions just slightly pitted. The young man very politely informed us at the beginning which of the balls in the return rack could be removed, as they belonged to the former bowlers. I was touched, perhaps out of proportion to the effort involved, by this simple kindness. I'm sure I was just happy to experience a bit of kindness before the probably approaching ridicule.
When Bernadette began picking up spares the father would say, nice pickup, and give her some skin, on the level, neither high nor low. If fives from the father were added together over the 20 frames we each bowled, Bernadette collected possibly 50 to my 10, which pretty fairly represents the disparity between our final scores. I did break a hundred in the second game. Unfortunately, Bernadette broke 169.
I shook hands with the kid and said goodbye and told him to go easy on his dad, who was gently beating his son each game. They both laughed. At one point during my less than illustrious play the father had offered to buy me a beer if I could pick up an almost (okay, for me, entirely) impossible spare. I didn't pick it up. We had not reached that level of friendship where he bought me a beer anyway.
Later, in the dream, walking naked through wide populated alleyways on a cold rainy night in a city I did not recognize but was probably NYC, a man came urgently running up from behind me and gave to me my old, stained, brown leather work jacket and said I had left it somewhere, but I don't remember even existing before being naked on a city street. The man exuded kindness. I put the jacket on as a jacket is worn, feeling half relieved but if possible, twice as ridiculous. It is only now, typing, that it comes to me I could have tied the sleeves of the jacket around my middle and covered that part of me that should in public be covered.
Hear What?
One day several weeks ago I explored head on the potentially harrowing risk of human interaction and left the property in search of ice cream. As I drove down the hill I saw a vehicle parked off road by the pond and its occupant standing by the fence a hundred yards away. The vehicle was a late model foreign-made family hauling vehicle, dark blue, and the woman an American, of healthy appearance, not showing distress of any kind, and at home in her trespassing. As caretaker it would be necessary to scold this bold trespasser but as I saw no reason to be abusive or threatening--even though to be so would be well within my job description--I stayed in my Jeep and waited patiently for the woman to finish whatever the hell it was she was doing over there along the north fence. I stared straight ahead and therefore missed the woman waving to me in a fashion which if seen would have implied friendliness, perhaps even familiarity.
If for long periods you refrain from exposing yourself to other people even friends and family can appear, upon new viewings, to seem intimidatingly unfamiliar. How dare this woman park on the grass. Is she challenging me? And what, in holy hell, is she doing over by the fence? She began to walk towards me.
As it turned out it was one of my bosses, Mrs. BC, come out to meet a contractor or deliver some new piece of furniture, but when she first arrived she had heard a ringing over in the direction of that fence and had gone over to investigate. Thinking that the ringing was someone's alarm and that she might perhaps save them and subsequently have a parade thrown in her honor--the townspeople lining the street weeping for joy, so happy to have in their midsts one so courageous--she had me follow her back over to the fence so that I could hear the alarm. I couldn't hear it. Are you sure? Yes, quite.
I'm not always so literally minded nor am I above playing along with people who hear things or for that matter people who see things but in this case I thought it best to admit only to hearing things that I could in fact hear. Mrs. BC is the mother of three and it would do no one any good if I were to coddle her in these early stages of whatever mental disorder can be implied from the onset of auditory hallucinations.
Mrs. BC though was not ready to give up so easily on a parade thrown in her honor and attended by all 150 full time residents of the town, which would break the record for the number who attended the annual Christmas parade. She was not at all impressed by the fact that I don't hear things. It could be that the sun was slanted just so that day and that she could see the fulsome crop of hair clogging my ears which thus rendered any acoustical opinions I might have to be utterly without merit.
She suggested we drive over a few blocks to a road that runs parallel to the north fence because now she believed she was smelling smoke. I could see how badly she wanted that parade so I didn't bring up the fact that most everybody has a burn pile going this time of year. I might later be telling a concerned Mr. BC--at least we can discount the olfactory hallucination. We drove as far down the road as we could before becoming trespassers, and got out to listen. She could still hear it. You can hear that now, right? No, I swear to God I cannot. When she suggested that maybe she was crazy I, out of respect, said nothing. We drove over to the next parallel block and found the burn pile which blew smoke towards the north fence and Mrs. BC was now ready to admit defeat as the image of adoring, cheering, happily weeping townspeople faded to black. Let's go back she said, and we did. A tree man came out shortly after that and she got his opinion and diagnosis regarding trees.
The thing is, now, on a pretty regular basis, I can hear that ringing, all the way up at the cottage, which is more or less in line with the spot where Mrs. BC first stood by the fence, pretending to be an interloper. I don't know what it is but it can be mildly annoying. If it is a fire alarm I wish the building would burn down already. I did eventually get ice cream that day. It wasn't very good. I still have some of it in the freezer. Butter pecan should have pecans in it but this brand didn't have a single pecan.
One day several weeks ago I explored head on the potentially harrowing risk of human interaction and left the property in search of ice cream. As I drove down the hill I saw a vehicle parked off road by the pond and its occupant standing by the fence a hundred yards away. The vehicle was a late model foreign-made family hauling vehicle, dark blue, and the woman an American, of healthy appearance, not showing distress of any kind, and at home in her trespassing. As caretaker it would be necessary to scold this bold trespasser but as I saw no reason to be abusive or threatening--even though to be so would be well within my job description--I stayed in my Jeep and waited patiently for the woman to finish whatever the hell it was she was doing over there along the north fence. I stared straight ahead and therefore missed the woman waving to me in a fashion which if seen would have implied friendliness, perhaps even familiarity.
If for long periods you refrain from exposing yourself to other people even friends and family can appear, upon new viewings, to seem intimidatingly unfamiliar. How dare this woman park on the grass. Is she challenging me? And what, in holy hell, is she doing over by the fence? She began to walk towards me.
As it turned out it was one of my bosses, Mrs. BC, come out to meet a contractor or deliver some new piece of furniture, but when she first arrived she had heard a ringing over in the direction of that fence and had gone over to investigate. Thinking that the ringing was someone's alarm and that she might perhaps save them and subsequently have a parade thrown in her honor--the townspeople lining the street weeping for joy, so happy to have in their midsts one so courageous--she had me follow her back over to the fence so that I could hear the alarm. I couldn't hear it. Are you sure? Yes, quite.
I'm not always so literally minded nor am I above playing along with people who hear things or for that matter people who see things but in this case I thought it best to admit only to hearing things that I could in fact hear. Mrs. BC is the mother of three and it would do no one any good if I were to coddle her in these early stages of whatever mental disorder can be implied from the onset of auditory hallucinations.
Mrs. BC though was not ready to give up so easily on a parade thrown in her honor and attended by all 150 full time residents of the town, which would break the record for the number who attended the annual Christmas parade. She was not at all impressed by the fact that I don't hear things. It could be that the sun was slanted just so that day and that she could see the fulsome crop of hair clogging my ears which thus rendered any acoustical opinions I might have to be utterly without merit.
She suggested we drive over a few blocks to a road that runs parallel to the north fence because now she believed she was smelling smoke. I could see how badly she wanted that parade so I didn't bring up the fact that most everybody has a burn pile going this time of year. I might later be telling a concerned Mr. BC--at least we can discount the olfactory hallucination. We drove as far down the road as we could before becoming trespassers, and got out to listen. She could still hear it. You can hear that now, right? No, I swear to God I cannot. When she suggested that maybe she was crazy I, out of respect, said nothing. We drove over to the next parallel block and found the burn pile which blew smoke towards the north fence and Mrs. BC was now ready to admit defeat as the image of adoring, cheering, happily weeping townspeople faded to black. Let's go back she said, and we did. A tree man came out shortly after that and she got his opinion and diagnosis regarding trees.
The thing is, now, on a pretty regular basis, I can hear that ringing, all the way up at the cottage, which is more or less in line with the spot where Mrs. BC first stood by the fence, pretending to be an interloper. I don't know what it is but it can be mildly annoying. If it is a fire alarm I wish the building would burn down already. I did eventually get ice cream that day. It wasn't very good. I still have some of it in the freezer. Butter pecan should have pecans in it but this brand didn't have a single pecan.