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Ghetto Jogging
I was glad that my DC area friend, my best buddy from childhood, showed up unannounced at my doorstep Saturday morning. He had jogged from Convention Center Blvd. up about twenty blocks of Canal Blvd., which is no small feat, but one I had seen him do in my imagination months previous. He survived it then and now. Saturday or Sunday mornings are probably best for it. I told him he was forever off the sissy list. That jog is a dangerous one but one that I've seen other non-urban oriented people do, and survive. I think surviving that jog without any altercation is possibly a thing that would happen as much as ninety percent of the time. The angle I'm still not accurately addressing is how the good times here roll parallel to the depravity and murder, without much of the latter bringing harm to the former. I think that is the story from here I'm trying to get but not getting right just yet. I had a great time with friends, moving around town freely and safely, drinking and eating well. But all around us people were committing the ultimate crime of killing their brothers. Not really a threat to those around them because almost exclusively the young men and occasional woman who die on the streets here die of point-blank gunshots to the head. Not that many stray bullets really and a person here who minds their own business has remarkable survival chances. Overall crime is down in NOLA, but murder is up 56 per cent. Just a reminder, old news, just a reminder, our urban youth are surgically assassinating each other at alarming rates. Still. This Jazzfest weekend set attendance lows records and you almost wish you could blame that on a fear factor affecting prominent whites--too much murder let's stay away (then of course somebody would take the problem seriously, smirk). But mostly people come here with the accurate assumption that everthing will be fine and some might even be completely unaware of how close they are to the real thing. Six murders over three days during Jazzfest. Two of them very local to Jazzfest commuters. And several more specific to the area over the previous month. I don't have a point about it, I just like lining the disparate possibilities up next to each other. As for jogging in or near the ghetto--surviving real threats may be good for the heart. Exercise some caution.
Health Care Professionals
My friend Mark missed a plane or something and somehow found himself in Houston instead of New Orleans so he rented a bright red Mustang and drove on in. Sure it was midnight when he clomped heavy-footed up my steps waking me from deep sleep but I wasn't dreaming so what of it. He brought a girlfriend, some bedding to separate him and herself from my floor, and various assorted beverages and snacks. I told him about towels and soap and he told me which of his snacks might most appeal to me. The girlfriend named Diane is nice and referring to her first trip to the deep south and a stop at a Baton Rouge area Walmart I asked was it a Super Walmart and she said, well it was all right (drum and cymbal). She's a veterinarian so I clued her in to the spiders that live here, the chameleon under the washer/dryer and the geckos living over the kitchen sink. I alluded to giant flying cockroaches but those really must be seen to be fully appreciated. I let her know right off about wild dog bb gunning and she doesn't approve, but I don't think we are going to blows over it. I don't approve of it either, even as I do it. The thing I didn't mention is Killer's pyschiatric problem and what, I want to know, is she going to do about it. As a visiting animal health care professional I think it is her responsibility to do something about that dog's anti-social behaviour. But her and Mark are out galavanting so Killer's emotional well-being is on hold. Lucinda Williams is about to go on one of the Jazzfest stages but I'm not there, as is my custom. I could take a nap but I would probably just dream about Killer barking, barking, barking. I got another Mark, a Craig, and a Jeff coming in later, staying down by the convention center. This convention center Mark just got certified to needle away problems with acupuncture. Maybe he will help Killer.
Conspiracy Of Mondays
Of late there has been a conspiracy of Mondays to shape and color time and events with a uh almost manic despair. That's the best you got!!!, I'm yelling at no one in particular, remembering back to when I had not the previous experience of it. I don't get very far on the puzzle and then its Monday again.
His Happy Trick
I'm so happy, I am the happiest man in the world. I'm happy about war, I'm happy that the US Treasury is going to collect every penny I have saved over the last year, I'm happy to be stuck, I'm happy to be going nowhere, I'm happy.
I'm happy my job sucks, my car is dying, my cat is dead. I'm happy I couldn't find his body, I'm happy there is no closure.
I was so happy to come home today and see that my neighbor had hired heavy machinery to tear down that building on his property that was the only architecturally interesting structure on this block.
I'm happy to be happy.
I'm happy the high hopes I entertained last night about meeting new people were dashed to bits. I'm happy I didn't dig 'em, didn't get it, don't dance.
I'm happy that every idea I have is faulty.
I'm happy to be here, I'll be happy to leave.
No kidding, I'm happier n' all get out.
College Basketball
I've been following over the last several months the reporting of violent crime (rape, armed robbery, and murder) in the 2200-2400 block of Dumaine. There's something bad happening over there and you can't guess or predict when it will stop and move somewhere else. Having it move somewhere else is the best you get around here. The murder last night on Dumaine, near Phillis Wheatly Elementary School, was one of two in the city, and I don't think either one of them account for the gunfire I heard in my own neighborhood around the same time both of the murders occurred. That's one thing about having a TV, you don't hear as much gunfire at night. I have noticed, in following crime trends in other neighborhoods, that eventually the murders bring about a lull in violent crime. Some of the bad people move away in simple acts of self-preservation, and the others, well, they're dead.
There's nothing to do about it. I don't want to sound like I've lost hope but the truth is today I don't have any. I can't write about these violent deaths everytime they occur because it amounts to an inconsideration of my audience. I mean, who needs it? I'm only reiterating simple facts that can be found in any newspaper in America.
It's better when you don't hear gunfire at night. It's such an angry, permanent sound. I can't always stand the pictures I see when I hear it. It hardly ever happens on Bourbon Street though. I guess that's what matters.
Congratulations to the Syracuse Orangemen, College Basketball Champions of the World, ya'll seriously kicked some Big 12 butt those last three games. I hope you enjoyed your stay here.
May Contain Doom
P came over disgusted to tell M that MH was beating some kid's head into the sidewalk, why didn't M do something about it.
"Yeah, stop the killing," I said.
There had been a shooting a bit earlier just around the corner, on Dorgenois, right where I had applied the break pedal a month previous and said to visiting friends that, "this is kind of a rough corner." It is a most unassuming kill zone but still, lots and lots of gunfire, blood, and death on that corner in the last ten (20? 30?) years.
M was asking me did I read about it and what was the condition of the shot cab driver. I said critical but didn't know any more than that. She said the shooting had stirred the kids up and was why they were fighting. The kids, a group of 3--15 boys aged 12-21, know the shooter, a 16-year-old neighborhood boy. The shooting at the corner is not an everyday thing, but maybe only once or twice a year with a free year skip every once in a while. I think its not a stretch to say that a 20-year-old man from the Sixth Ward of New Orleans will have had near or up-close exposure to as many as five or ten actual shootings, and better than casual knowledge in those twenty years of as many as forty murder victims.
"Yeah, you need to stop that killing," I reiterated.
Earlier in the year there was a ten day stretch with no murders, then in one day a four-year-old found his daddy's gun and shot himself dead and a 14-year-old boy accidentally shot dead his 15-year-old cousin.
There's a new School Superintendent, a guy named Amato from Connecticut, who given a treasury missing 31 million dollars is promising great improvements even as he stares down a monumentally ineffective, perhaps criminal, and often combative, school board, in a town that is steeped in failure.
Well, I was going to try and ascend towards a happy(er) ending, a bit of bright side, but the last three paragraphs have contained more bad mojo, so I'll just stop here for the day. At least I got my health (cough).
The Unimproved Guinness
(This is a piece of something from October of last year)
...so that taken care of, I have shifted my ire to yet another great wrong going on in this world. I speak, of course, of the new Guinness Draft in a bottle. What the holy hell is up with that widget? I don't want a rattling plastic rocket ship in my beer bottle. Eh, Uh, no, no, no. For any reason. No.
I refuse to believe this new packaging idea is the brainchild of an Irishman. The Irishman living in my imagination would never water down a perfectly good full strength Stout, call it Draught, and then pour only 11.2 ounces of it back into a sexily shaped bottle with a plastic skin and a plastic rocket rattling around inside and then implore me to "drink straight from the (rattling) bottle." It doesn't work. It doesn't work even if I couldn't tell the difference in a blind taste test between the bottle and a draught in a bar. I mean I probably couldn't. On one level--the level not being assaulted by that widget--the taste is very authentic draught, which I like Ok, in a bar, with 16 or 20 ounces of it in a heavy glass. But 11.2 ounces of very very smooth almost watery non carbonated supposedly stout beverage on a football Sunday is unacceptable. Good thing the full strength is still available, which then really gives me nothing to complain about.
December 17
(I found this in one of my draft files. It was written the week before Christmas. Time to get rid of it.)
I'm just unsure about where I am at. And I got too comfortable. Or I am misusing my comfort. Last year I closed off the front two rooms from the rest of the house and used a couple of small electric heaters to warm me through the winter, but this year I got the gas (finally) hooked up and the central system has me toasty. The house is still not finished really but did I mention hot water? Last year I took cold showers all winter, contorting myself so that the water only cascaded over key areas, and then maybe I would rinse myself with water boiled on an electric hotplate. Now though, turn a knob and this lovely lovely hot water comes pouring out the shower head and I just stay in there long after I'm clean and love the liquid warmth.
I've decided that not finishing the house is some sort of control freakiness, where like I'm in charge of inactivity. I am the best at it. Do not compete with me. I am very good.
Sometimes I think I'll use all forty gallons of hot water myself, but I get too sleepy before that happens, and I end up looking me over and thinking damn man, you certainly have developed a beer gut for such a skinny guy. Or like I'm the pregnant Demi Moore on the cover of Vanity Fair, without the breasts, acting ability, or deep throaty voice.
It appears I can say anything I want.
Let's see, also, since August, the dancehall got torn down and so now when I go into the kitchen for beer or whiskey or nachos or chicken salad I can look out the window and see across Iberville to the Pentecostal Church, which is not an awe inspiring edifice, yet does have a blue neon outlined cross atop its steeple. I bought a washer and dryer so I don't have to go the the Laundromat anymore, and I got a gas stove while I was at it, which I don't use alot, but a kitchen should really have one.
I think I already told you about getting a phone, and oh yeah, the mailing address thing finally took hold after some confusion about my existence. No hard feelings on that one though, I mean, that's what I'm getting at--this confusion about my existence. Like I can blame the post office for not understanding where I am at. I had to call in a favor to M to get that taken care of (ok, actually the gas meter too) because I finally realized I had invested too much of myself in not making the necessary phone calls. I had to find a place from which I could deal with the fact that I'm inaccessible even to myself and once I got there I asked for help. I'm not afraid to ask for help, I just forget it as an option.
And if I think about a thing and it goes on sale for 99 dollars, then I buy it. That's right. I upgraded the 5 inch b/w TV (In rereading some of the old stuff I realize I had another 5 incher for a few months back in 98) for a 13 inch color with built in VCR. Oh, and it has a remote, and I feel like, even though I'm not Catholic, saying--forgive me father, I have sinned. I rent movies, drink imported beer, and Irish Whiskey, I take hot showers, I recheck library books by phone, I have low speed Internet access via same phone, and I don't really do anything for anyone these days.
I mean the kids. I don't hardly see them anymore. I haven't seen Erica in two years, but I know more or less where she lives, in the 7th Ward, and I have heard recent reports that say she has gotten taller, and that she still looks like Erica, which is a good thing. Hi Erica. I think about you a lot. Merry Christmas. Are you nine?
My Barbecue Grill
If Satan were a dog he would look like Killer.
Of the three Bienville fronting houses that back up to my side yard, all three of them have watchdogs. Pertaining to my property, Sheba, an ancient female pit bull, when not napping, guards the back. Killer (my naming), the newest, some version of pit bull, guards the middle, and Watchdog (my naming), a Border Collie mut, guards the front.
I have this miniature barbecue grill. It is not a hibachi. I store it under the house, right across from Killer's territory. Killer does not exactly differentiate all that well between friend and foe. When getting out my grill I can calmly turn my back on Killer only because he is restrained with heavy duty chain in addition to a chain-link fence being between us. Still, that sound of chain dragging across dirt and the rattling of the fence when Killer rushes to defend territory is not calming. I try, sometimes without success, to not yell at Killer, as that only exacerbates his bad attitude. Once in awhile I might try soothing baby talk like--"that's my baby Killer, yesss it is, that's my sweet little Satan from Hell." Such sweet nothings have so far yielded no positive results.
The college basketball team (Oklahoma) that I was hoping would make it here to New Orleans for the Final Four lost it's semi-final game so that's that. I guess I will cheer now for my alma mater but I'm a dropout so maybe that should be al mat. Go you Longhorns, go. And yet, if I had cable I would tonight watch and cheer against those (Lady) Longhorns. Go LSU, go. Temeka Johnson rules.
I'm having to work in Hammond again this week, so I have to leave a little earlier, 5:30 a.m., to meet my boss for the commute. I am not comforted by the small group of guys hanging out across the street in front of my neighbor's house. She is pretty much a squatter over there; there is no electricity, and the plumbing amounts to little more than dripping water in a stained tub; the toilet is not connected to a water source and is only loosely connected to the floor over the sewage line. I was called in once as a consultant a couple of years ago. Supposedly she had twenty-four hours to fix the toilet or would be thrown out. I told her that fixing what existed there in that period of time was a hopeless proposition. I guess the "landlord" did not have the heart to put her out on the street. She doesn't pay rent. She's seventy and her health is not that good. She is an avid reader. We sometimes share books. When her reading glasses break I try to tape them together. I used to be friendly with her companion but he's gone now. She bums money off me and when I'm flush and feeling generous it's no problem, but when she's got that many shiftless guys hanging out on a regular basis and comes asking me for money I feel much like the chump. Someone finally stole those two pieces of wood under the house. I blame those guys over there. It is towards them that I direct my enmity. I hope they start keeping a lower profile.