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Our Daily Bread, or, Jesus Said Eat Me
I'm daring me, boring me, listening to James Hendrix and James Booker, Nick Drake, and Steve Earle too. Write something because there is nothing else to do and yearning for some essence of sex or the more artificial snortable inhalable versions are not your thing anymore, hear me, listening, not likely.
I'm Hungry.
And Tired.
And its not that there aren't enough hours in a day, it's that there are too many, and we get uncomfortable with all the daily waste. We can't live up to the visions so we bore ourselves with the mediocrity of our times. We convince ourselves with false enhancements. Not to worry though, we are what we are, and that's nothing to be ashamed of.
Do you ever wonder what I'm thinking when you don't hear from me?
Brighter, Whiter, Fresher
It is always the same question in the back of the mind, "why scribble another one?" and "simply because you can" never seems valid, but it's probably the best I'm going to do, and so I scribble another one.
All the cliches are true and we are better off not forgetting that and "be careful what you wish for" is sometimes my favorite and what I'm referring to in this case is something, frankly, I can't remember fast enough to insert in its' proper place, but it has to do with my current living arrangements, washing and writing at Dumaine, sleeping and working at Rocheblave. If I remember my point I'll get back to it but let's face it, I'm not going to get overly bogged down with the point. It is almost always a disappointment.
And throwing segues to the wind let me add further, that that (I love a good that that), recent local weather phenomenon which will so to speak be burned into my memory, did finally break, and normal New Orleans weather patterns now ensue, and relatively felt, feel cool cool cool.
Also I seem to be walking with a limp, but I'm to suggest that as noteworthy to an audience which includes John Schwarz, who was recently enough stampeded nearly to death by a flock of wild stallions while harvesting the much sought after organic dental floss on the prairies of Montana?
Let's face it twice folks. This is all about waiting on my laundry
His Secret Is Safe
Kids have to go in and out on hot days breaching that questionable vapor/heat lock that is a front door, and I don't blame Raticia for opening the freezer door and asking Mandy vague questions about melted ice while that cool air tickles her face, and Kizzie's youngest, Lil' Corey, howling his discontent, peeing on himself, drooling, and generally exhibiting all that normal toddler behaviour doesn't seem to weigh that much, but stepping out on the front porch to test the theory is it possibly cooler outside, and seeing that speedy spin of the electric meter (the big window unit works ok if you sit right in front of it), and realizing that it is about equal, that heavy heavy density of heat inside, and outside, just seems plain criminal.
The three lil' girlz all have bowls of cereal, happily yet grumpily clustered around that ubiquitous Capn' Cruch Computer game. It's hot. And we are grumpy, all of us. I scare myself with my heat n' the hood inspired fantasies of evil behavior, and so when I am alerted by Erica that Shentrell just shot her the finger I am not too overwhelmed by the audacity.
"That means a bad word," Raticia said.
"It's the f word," Erica said.
"Tell her to quit messin' wit me and I won't do it," Shentrell said.
I call Shentrell into my work station, "closer, closer," I have to coax, she's ready to be hit, "closer," I say, "you know I ain't gonna hit you," I'm saying impatiently almost angrily now. Erica looms close to be witness to the dressing down. "Go away," I order, and she does.
"Shentrell, you are a pretty girl and when you do that finger it makes you ugly. Don't be ugly Shentrell, don't be common, don't be like everyone else you see, be different Shentrell, be different." I can't think of anything else to say so I puncuate my simplicity with repitition, "be different Shentrell."
Shentrell seems ready for more of my quietly polite abuse, so different from the maniac she witnessed screaming at Shelton last week (a screaming inspired by Shelton hitting Shentrell), but I don't have anymore time for her, I have to get back to my writing, which doesn't exist without her, but she doesn't know that, and so my secret is safe, for now.
Mr. Jim Get's A Jacuzzi
Last week my plumber, Jack, who will be played by Sam Elliot in the movie told me to make a decision between cast iron tub and fiberglass tub/shower insert because it would effect how he went about the roughing in of his pipes, and if I was going with the insert it would need to be there tomorrow. I went to one of the five area Home Depot's, haggled with the hands off "salesperson," because both the left hand tub/shower inserts were damaged and I'm thinking 50% off this damaged merchandise would be a favor to me and the Home Depot but my "salesperson" gets on the phone with her supervisor and comes offering me 10%. Just getting to the point of this bogus offer had wasted more of my time than that so I waved her off and bid her adieu.
Traveling in a somewhat easterly direction I crossed the river into the area generally known as the Westbank and got off at Stumpf Blvd, Home Depot Number 2. There I found the same insert, undamaged, and asked a man to help me load it onto a flat cart. I picked up a Price Pfister tub/shower valve and handle set also, old timey style, complete with valves, tub spout, separate porcelain handles for the hot, cold, and shower/tub diverter, and a very handsome shower head. I paid for it all and then rolled my sizeable (and large too) purchase out to the truck, where I slid it up onto the plywood bed cover and strapped it down for that high and windy ride back over the Mississippi River.
I passed by Dumaine hoping to find a helping hand for the unloading into the Rocheblave house and as I approached the front of the Dumaine house there came the out cry from one of the large group gathered there--"Mr. Jim got a Jacuzzi."
"Gotcha Jacuzzi, huh, Mr. Jim?, Jermaine said as I rolled to a stop at the curb and leaned my head out the window to survey the crowd, looking for a helper.
"No, it's a shower insert," I said.
Bryan Henry said, "Zatta-jacuzzi, Mr. Jim?"
"No, it's a shower insert," I said. It was mostly little kids up on the porch and when I ask where was Shelton no one knew. Cadillac Shelton was wandering off and as I was about to give up on this crowd, maybe cross the street and see if Van was home, Jermaine offered to help.
"That's a five dollar job," Cadillac Shelton kidded Jermaine.
I was going to pay ten.
Over on Rocheblave I had to widen the front doorway a bit as Jermaine balanced the not very heavy, but awkward insert on the stairs. Once in the house it became obvious that I was going to have to rearrange a couple of doorways to get the thing in place so I thanked Jermaine for his ten minutes of help and offered him two fives. He took one of the fives and gave the other back. I gave him an ice cold budweiser and we chatted for awhile. He wanted me to know that if I had any work I could count on him, that he could work, that he didn't do anything, you know, but hang around all day. And I know him as a conscientous worker and I wish I could hire him and the many others who ask me for work, and although those that are sincere are probably a minority, there is no doubt a good many young, able, bored, and ambitious drug dealers floating around this city who would rather be filling up at least some of that vast amount of wasted down time that is inherent to dealing drugs, doing something productive. I told him I didn't have anything he would probably want to do right then but if something came up I would let him know, however the chances of a suitable job coinciding with his availability are slim.
I dropped Jermaine on Dumaine and went back to the house. With a sledge hammer for force, three short lengths of galvanized pipe for the wheels of finesse, and a level and square for verity, I was able to situate the tub/shower insert in its proper place. The next day Jack the plumber asked me was I living two lives, and that was the first real Rocheblave compliment I have received.
After I placed the insert I was back at Dumaine to clean up and I'm not sure which kid it was, but he asked me, "You got a jacuzzi, Mr. Jim?"
Girls From The Hood
A darkroom thermometer inserted between the two stacked rolls of paper towels which plug the gap not being taken up by the 32,000 btu Fedders window unit is reading 105 degrees Sunday night at seven and has been reading that for the afternoon hours for what seems like forever but is probably more like five days.
I don't wake up here at Dumaine anymore but bathe here in the evening and have stopped by once or twice at six or seven in the morning to pick up some forgotten toothbrush or pair of socks and at that early hour have seen that thermometer to register over 90 degrees, and as I pause and ponder the splendor of extreme heat in the deep south I am interrupted in real time by Raticia (7), who is visiting along with Shentrell (6), and Erica (6, although the other day I suggested 7), and she comes up to me and asks, "what you say," and I tell her I didn't say anything, but I am struck by her question, the third such, in three days, by three different people. I know I can be way too noisy for such a quiet guy, Mandy used to bust me on that all the time, but am I actually speaking to people now and not being aware of it?
"You're the third person to ask me that in the last three days. Did you hear me say something."
"Yes, you said you wanted me to help you turn the computer back on."
I think she has it backwards because I just watched her turn off one of computers in the front room and so I ask her if she wants me to help her turn that one back on. Clearly annoyed by my lack of understanding she shakes her head and says, no, she's going off to Mandy's room.
Not writing but pondering still, and Shentrell comes over and says, "why you crying?"
"I'm not crying, am I?" and I trace that line where tears fall and it feels dry, and when I suggest to Shentrell that she trace the same path, she does, and says, "you cryin.'"
To be so transparent to an artist like Helen Oliver who caught my melancholy years ago in a NYC nude, minus ass and genitals, is one thing, but that these little girls from the hood can see it all too is disconcerting, unless I consider the possibility that such transparency is probably my goal.
Rocheblave is still a gutted hotbox, tar paper on the roof awaiting shingles. Plumbers and Heating/AC guys have nearly finished their rough in. There's copper in the house now. I sleep as guard on an excercise mat--smeared with deet, fan blowing--like a baby yet to experience the weight of conscience and doubt. Working from six to eleven Saturday and Sunday (and with four hours of paid help) filled up a construction dumpster this weekend to a level three feet over the top with a huge pile of compressed weeds and tree limbs, concrete and bricks, and various lumber products. Cleaning myself at Dumaine and then hiding in two different movie theaters, and one volume discount restaurant both days, Saturday working the dusk, fullish moon shift, Sunday, writing this instead, I am able to offer four movie reviews. Rocky and Bullwinkle, enjoyable. Perfect Storm, quite good, and companioned with the book, a high recommend, and no matter your ('s and mine) previous negative opinions of George Clooney, he is on a strong roll with We Three Kings, and this latest. Chicken Run is good, and The Kid with Bruce Willis and his new haircut, and Lily Tomlin, pulls all the familiar emotional strings, but the script, for me, is intelligent, and despite the obvious downside of stretching emotional subject matter beyond the level of disbelief suspension, I liked this movie ok. And while I'm confessing to mediocrity let me add I'm reading, for the three or four minutes of consciousness I enjoy at nighttime Rocheblave, John Grisham's, The Testament, so shoot me.
Rushing now, have to alter somewhat and send this before the phone line gets tied up with this night's call from prison. Had another fight with Shelton this week. It was ugly.
A List
Cries for help.
Tampered with doors.
Children boxing in the street as proud guardians look on.
I love you's.
Halfway houses.
Children I've never seen before calling me by name.
Kids who know.
Kids who do not.
The one who stays away in the name of shame.
Killers.
Dopers.
Fuckers.
Shysters.
These are a few of my everyday things.
Night One
Last night was night one at Rocheblave, the camp out, a return to my roots. Not so bad; the mosquitoes love me. Slept very little but I have planned ahead and made up for that by sleeping too much in the past.
Little T is crying, I don't know why, but the emotion of it is music to my ears.
I don't really work twelve hour days everyday, obviously, but in preparation for the plumbers I've been sweating and drinking bucketloads of liquid as I go about my solitary way. This seems very much like another plane, and drug free, if you don't count the ice cold budweisers.
Erica tonite made me read to her Curious George Flies a Kite, "can't you read it yourself," I pleaded sitting in a straightback five feet in front of the frigid blast furnace by Fedders. "I can't read," said the almost 8-year-old Erica, and so I said, "ok, but only this one," and I was smiling the "I mean business" smile and she smiling conspiratorily with me said, "that's right, only one." After I finished I said "I wish you could read to me sometime," and so she did, Curious George Flies a Kite, the first four or five pages, by herself with really minimal help from me, and I'm thinking, despite the previously discussed (but not with you my dear readers), possibility that she is only memorizing and not reading, I don't know, whatever it is, she's getting better at it, and I'm so fucking proud I could just go out and lie down in the sticky, trash strewn, oil stained gutter of Dumaine and cry my eyes out, and someday--perhaps inspired by the angst of a gangster's son--I will.
Just enough time left for a movie review and this one is me at the dollar show, last night at the nine o'clock in Kenner, thinking by eleven--this being an hour I am rarely awake for--most certainly the climate will be less oppressive, and I will sleep the purest Rocheblave sleep--but optimism ain't buying me shit, and it's hot hot hot after the movie, which by the way was Final Destination, a movie that can only be given the rating of good, but as good movies go, this was a great one, and if you disagree with my assessment perhaps it is because you have yet to arrive on that plane.
Little T And The Unborn
It's Friday, you know I get off early, temporarily skipping lunch, and pressing duties, to slip inside Dumaine and improperly rehydrate with two ice cold budweisers. The tree is heavy with thought but I only offer one-liners, and what goes on down at the farm.
There goes little T (Terrell, Jermaine's son, this week being his first to make regular visits inside this house, playing games on the computers), we regard each other suspiciously, me as stragedy, he, because that's what he feels. It seems like ages ago that Jermaine rather fluently orated his threat to burn this or any other house on Dumaine taking part in the signing of Neighborhood Watch petitions.
Plumbers are coming to Rocheblave on Monday. Just ordered a porta-toilet to be delivered on Monday also. Yesterday I was at the Sewage and Water Board office to request a resetting of the water meter, dormant since 1991. Everyone was very nice, maybe even more so than the permit folks at City Hall. I'm all business, and at the same time, lazy and unproductive. And I daydream (with dread?) about twenty pound sledge hammers, diamond tipped saw blades, and the driveway that needs to be busted up. It will work for me. I'm meeting the Insurance guy at 3, sign, sign, initial, give him the check.
I saw Evelyn's daughter, Julia, 16 and pregnant, this week, and she is a glowing beauty. Lulu, 18, also pregnant, also glowing, a little more than usual, stopped by briefly on the fourth. And it has been reported to me that Heather, 16, is also pregnant. I have not seen her yet to gauge her glow. But she is a genuinely beautiful young girl, and I expect her glow would only add to that. And as much as we are supposed to disapprove of teen pregnancy in the ghetto, and elsewhere, I know that if there can be delivered even a modicum of real love to these new lives, it will all be worth it, and the planet better off for their being here. I am reminded of a recent essence to which I was made fortunate, and it is a theme which visits, and revisits, and I only know to call it--hope.
The Jazz Burning
Its so complicated you see. The needy hard working disenfranchised poverty stricken desperate illiterate frightening drug using prostituting gun toting day to day living on a cellular level exacty like you and me kind of people who inspire the attitude of and share space with the people who would say stay away from me I pay taxes and send my kids to private schools and wished you did not exist are so inextricably twisted like twine together as a part of the greatness, the pure essence of twine that is a place like New Orleans, which is a place like no other--although I think there is a pill you can take, or possibly a room at DisneyWorld that simulates this essence, and there's nothing wrong with simulation, in fact consider the benefit of not having to wash your hands afterwards--that city planners and city councils and such must face many a nail biting decision-making process when things like this come to their attention, i.e., the owner of the First Street home where Buddy Bolden lived for most of his creative years, 1895-1906?, wants to have it razed because of damage from a recent fire. A home and a neighborhood inhabited by the same people I have been describing (not quite rightly but maybe I'll get it someday), for the last three years, and there is nothing remarkable about any of this and we shouldn't put too much stock or pride in the fact the property has already been declared an historical landmark because it can go just like Mr. Armstrong's entire neighborhood went in the 60's? to make way for a park with his name which created a northern buffer for that necessary ($$$) French Quarter, that is, made Rampart Street less frightening than it is was, but trust me on this--don't ever under estimate the potential for danger on Rampart Street, or any points within twenty blocks north.
I say fuck it, let's raze Buddy Bolden's house, afterall who the hell was he but the best quess anyone has as to the paternal parent of the music known as jazz which only complimented and inspired the blues which has absolutely nothing to do with modern rocknroll and let's face it, without which, Britney Spears would never have been inspired to get that boob job, the discussion of which is almost a cottage industry on the Internet.
Did I just say "fuck it, let's raze Buddy Bolden's house"?, what I meant was fuck it let's raze the whole planet. I will apply for the European Dozer and I'll go for the Prado first thing, too many Bosch and Bruegels in that pigstye of art. Do you feel me?
"'Slim25, please return to your cage."
Peewee And Ken
I can't yet tell my good friend and financier of Rocheblave this but the 30K he loaned me to purchase and begin renovations on the property that struck my fancy is uninsured. I do not possess an over abundance of good sense or perhaps I have a fair amount but have real trouble accessing it. I took possession of the property on Leap Day of this year and as we speak (me and me, that is), I am only within a very real proximity (bottom line, uninsured), of having the property insured.
Insurance, however necessary, is not only boring, but in my mind almost sinister, I'm a freak, and living with it.
That being said, I am to be true to you my dear reader confessing that I do have an ongoing relationship with an insurance salesman. It is not at this point a sexual relationship but if things with Barbie don't work out, who knows(?). We have never met, me and this salesman, but we have traded voices and emails. And I say this with all the passion of indecision--I do not dislike this insurance salesman.
He wants--relative to my budgetary constraints--a huge sum of money to insure just pretty much the exact sum of money, including renovations, that I will be spending on Rocheblave. My response to his emailed figure was--"ouch."
(And then the phone rings which I'm not ignoring, temporarily, because I must deal I mean deal with the business of humanity and it's KK calling for Shelton and me reeking of benevolence take the phone to Shelton on the porch playing dominoes with Jermaine and a dude I've never seen before with shaved head and abundant gold teeth and an undeniable charisma I profile as (I'm not ashamed of that, I can't get fired for it, I'm not running for office, and I never wish to be on anyone's list of most politically correct), a medium/high level drug dealer, God bless him, or fuck him, I am ambivalence).).
I'm going to insure the property though, probably during this first week of July, because it has to be done, and also because I just got back a call from a plumber (who also subs out the central A/H work) and for both the major plumbing and central air he quoted a price which was a couple of thousand less than I imagined (I was working with nothing more substantial than "imagine the worst" scenarios) just the plumbing would cost, although I did agree to break out the concrete in the driveway myself. The truck is falling apart and I left it with Del Cid on Broad and there's some hundreds involved but all in all I'm feelng pretty perky, fiscally speaking, poor PeeWee lookin' mf-er that I am.