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Kacofinny
Ramona enters from stage left as an image of her true self in the mirror by the door, her dachsund claws clicking on the painted wood floor. The lap cat, whose name I would have to retrieve from the house sitting check list, is not on my lap because the laptop is, but under my right elbow she purrs.
I had breakfast in the French Quarter at the diner on Bourbon St. The jukebox was blaring gospel, the waiter called me babe, the tall cook with glasses was a blur of motion. The rather proper looking woman to my right had a tattoo revealed on that sliver of exposed flesh at the small of her back, disappearing downward, oh my God.
A man on the street had asked me for fifty cents but I gave him a dollar. Another man had pleaded with me to tell him what to do because he didn't have any idea. He was from Pasadena, Tx. and had lost his car, his wife, his house, and his dignity. Tough town to be pleading all that but I gave him a dollar anyway, and sent him off to sleep in the shut down Armstrong Park, which you can still slide into.
A man with funny accent hollered at me from his car and then pulled over and I talked to him and his wife. What the hell he was saying I had no idea but finally I got it. "Where is the broke part?" We were still in the French Quarter. He said, "This is so beautiful, where did hurricane hit, we are from Quebec, that's in Canada." I pointed them north and said it may not look safe but check it out, it's safer than it ever was, and thanked them for coming down. "Our friends said 'oh no don't go down there,' but we wanted to see," and I reiterated my belief that everything is fine here for a visitor, and thanked them again for coming.
Coming back from The Island yesterday down the length of Louisiana Ave. from St. Charles to Broad St. and there was still a 16 foot fishing boat resting its hull on the pavement by the curb but the coffins laid out as trash along the street outside of the Rhodes funeral home were gone.
Also I should mention that there are smaller islands in New Orleans, off the main island, and I am on one of them now, house sitting (the caretaker is everywhere) near the fairgrounds, just up the street from Liuzza's by the Racetrack, which is open, and into which I could be in 45 seconds, drinking beer and eating po-boys, if I were to get up from the couch.
I put a couple of small strands of Christmas lights on my front porch on Rocheblave yesterday and cranked the generator cord and raked the back of my hand against the chain link fence and made a few bloody boo boos between my knuckles and wrist. The lights are very understated and the hum of the generator is less than pleasing, not at all as syrupy but every bit as annoying as Silent Night.