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Another Day, Or Two
Well I've made another sustained effort at the completion of Rocheblave with only requisite beer and painkiller breaks to slow me down, and I can say now, finally, after over one and a half years on the job, that, well, I don't think I'll ever finish. I'm not sure if that's a joke or not but what I do know is that the specially designed well ventilated attic--through which run the copper water pipes--is working so well that my pipes are not receiving abundant heat transference and as they are not yet hooked up to a hot water heater, are not, I repeat not, delivering any hot or even warm water for me to bathe under. In my previous seven years here it was still pretty hot this time of year but not this year. It's really beautiful and perfect and cool and dry. I can pretty well cringe through the body bathing but full immersion of this head of hair is unbearable so I may have to come up with a water heating device.
I have a call into the electricians for them to do final trim out; I have my ceiling fans and light fixtures all purchased and ready to go, and have tried unsuccessfully to contact the plumber/heating/AC guy for him to do his final, which would hopefully lead to a water heater, gas meter, and connected kitchen sink which would then lead to me spending the last of the wad on appliances, which I have more or less picked out from the friendly Lowe's Home Improvement Center. At that point I would still have a pretty good handful of finishing details, not the least of which would be, but the least challenging for sure--the exterior finish painting (it is all primed, sanded, caulked and ready to go).
My neighbor the sculptor came over Saturday after a long day of me doing yet another task I've never previously attempted, a fairly major stucco repair (the porch overhang is stucco, the rest of the house is cypress siding), and she said, "are you going to add two more posts?" Meaning porch supports, and I said, "no, uh uh, I ain't doing all that," immediately agitated by her presumption to spend money I do not have even at the same time knowing she is right in her estimation that "the porch is too open," even as I am fond of open. She was wearing a chartreuse velvet beret and was on her way out with husband to do the annual NO arts appreciation gig and I had mortar dust up my nose and would be spending the night laying on top of a blue sleeping bag with Ralph Ellison, whose Invisible Man I read as I read very few--very slowly, hoping it not to end so leaving me with an inconsolable vaccuum. Anyway, guessing from similar style NO houses, my porch should, small as it is, have six posts, three on each side creating a right angle, but what am I, Diamond Slim Brady, post magnate?
The day before Corey's wake I was sort of dead to the world at 5 pm when Phillis from over here at Dumaine came knocking at Rocheblave to rouse me from a nap (stupor?) to tell me that the street repair people were needing Mandy's (who was out of town) car moved so I came over here, parking myself near the corner of Dorgenois and St. Ann, and then walked down Dumaine, stopping briefly to talk to Mr. June, got Mandy's car and moved it just around the corner of Dorgenois and Dumaine. I spent some time over here, fed and talked to the cat, and then after deep darkness had set in, decided to leave out, get my car and head home.
The thing is, after all these years over here, I had never set a walking foot on these blocks of Dorgenois after dark. It can be scary in an all black neighborhood for a white boy when he steps out of context. The 700 block of Dorgenois (at St. Ann) has always seemed a little alien and threatening to me. The 800 block of Dorgenois (at Dumaine) I have always felt a measure of propriety and safeness. The 900 block of Dorgenois (at St. Phillip), while not overtly threatening to a casual passerby has proven to be as deadly as any block in New Orleans and if the local paper still published a dotted end of year murder map, that block's cumulative dotting (say for the last ten years) would not show dots which could be distinguished individually, but would show rather a large black blob of printed ink, representing enough spilled blood to be a proper feast for vampires. So I was thinking about it all and seeing worst case scenarios, those in which I end up dead or wounded, and wishing I didn't have to leave but I most certainly did because I have a home just a few blocks away and there I feel safe and justified. Justified in whatever defensive strategy is necessary.
It's not really that dangerous here but there is often more than enough stimulus to make you imagine that it is very dangerous. The people here are, I think, nicer than any I have ever been around, and yet, I still found myself imagining a man approaching me at the corner, asking for a light or some similar introducing, and then jacking me for little or life.
So when it happened, so when I got to the corner and the man was there exactly where I expected him to be I just felt resigned to it, only a block away from the car. When he said, "I got that fire," I thought first it was as good as any introduction which could eventually lead to ill intended behavior, but then I knew it to be only what it was, an honest solicitation, and although it was a bald faced lie I told him, "no, I'm good," and again as times before, I was suddenly so glad to be alive I let the geek speak, and said, "but thanks for asking, I'm not always good," which on surface was truth but in truth just more of the bald faced lie, and when he said, "for sure," which is the most beautifully sympathetic two words of the local colloquial, that as he rounded the corner, up St. Ann toward the river, and I approached my car parked on the right side of Dorgenois, I wanted to yell after him, maybe even chase him down and hug him, speak to him--"thank you for the offering of marijuana, thank you for being sympathetic, thank you for not killing me."
RIP
Corey's wake is happening out in the street of Dumaine, 2600 block right now this afternoon, and his closest pals will be sipping and burning well into the evening I'm sure. I missed the funeral because there was no one to ask about it this week but the occasionally passing "brother," Cadillac Shelton, and he hates me, or I him, I forget which one of us is the chicken and which the egg. Though Ima go out and pay my respects now, drink the offerings.
Big C
Lately when I have been leaving out of Rocheblave there is to the right, on the pavement of the weed and tree choked vacant lot next door, a black cat, adolescent, and pregnant. It is sitting, sphinx-like, staring at, waiting for, imploring, me. "Yeah, yeah, I see you," I have taken to saying all grumpy-like, which causes the cat to run off and hide in the weeds. "I didn't cause you, leave me alone, I see you, how can I not see you, I can't save you."
And then there are wild dogs that roam the streets of New Orleans, trotting with purpose and a wary eye out for humans, they are of all makes and models, and for the most part appear healthy. They are easy to scare which is a trick they play to make you feel adequate, but at night when you are not paying attention they will come back and quietly forage through your garbage, and for sport or just by adopted nature kill all weaker animals caught unaware.
Friday, I happened to look out the semi-circular glass in my front door and saw Mandy approaching what at that time was a stairless porch. We are polite and cordial towards each other but social visits are not part of the norm so I intuited bad news and went out and greeted her warily, me up on the tongue and groove of my new front porch, and her down below, amidst my debris, wearing tie dye. She was going out of town and wanted me to feed the cat. I said sure and asked where she was going and she said to meet her friend, Virginia, at the Portland airport and then they were driving off together into eastern Washington to find an underground whorehouse. I said that sounded like fun and hoped it would be because she deserves some fun after weathering the disappointment that was me and the daily grind and noise that is her open door open house policy over here on Dumaine.
I just went looking for the Sunday paper but it is a no-show. I did however get to see a chicken dart out from between two trash cans, wait for a passing car, and then cross the street to join it's two companions on the other side. The three of them then headed off, pecking morsels from the sidewalk in front of Phillis's (Mama D's) before disappearing on the path towards Dorgenois.
There used to be a guy a few years back dealing weed from that house across the street. He was a ladies man, dripped charisma, and drove a bitchin' automobile. His mother would show up from time to time and he would tolerate her presence even while it cramped his style, but eventually would throw her out. The woman possessed a mental orientation perhaps a little different from the norm. Or so he said. He got kicked out for non-payment of rent after a year. The house sits empty now, the people who owned it, and lived on the other side (a shotgun double), couldn't keep up payments. The thing is, the drug dealer's mother is back. She sits on the stoop all day long, sometimes moving across the street to sit in front of Esnard Villa for the shade. She was over there just now watching me watch the chickens.
Last night I was over here feeding the cat, drinking beer, and responding to a response concerning my feelings about this New American Crusade. I guess my bottom line is I think it proper to kill enemies that go out of their way to declare to you that they are your enemy. My comrade had written to encourage a higher evolution of thinking, i.e., a peaceful response, but I just can't get there from here.
I took a break at some point and went out to the porch to harass the children. Glynn McCormick, and Bryan Henry were there. I greeted them cordially and then threatened to take Bryan's last piece of chicken (because I was very hungry). He said the piece in his mouth was the last piece and I said what made him think I wouldn't grab it from his mouth and he just laughed, sort of, and I reached down and grabbed the little cup of rice and beans, challenging Bryan with eyebrows raised. He garbled something like, "hey man," and I said, "oh, who's the crybaby now?" (Bryan belittles me when I lament the slivers of wood in my fingers and calls me "splinter-in-his-finger-crybaby.") But I cannot act childishly indefinitely and soon tired of the game, giving him back those most delicious red beans and rice from Popeyes.
Phillis came across and said, "did you hear about Corey," and I pretended like I was ignoring her but I couldn't and even already knowing the punch line to "did you hear abouts..?" I asked her to tell me and she told me he died of a heart attack that morning. He was 35(?). Back when, in the early Dumaine days of 95 and the young gangsters hung in packs on the sidewalks, talking bravely, loudly, and disrepectfully, there would be Corey (Big C) always quietly, and largely (350 pounds) on the scene. He scared the shit out of me, and sometimes while inside looking out the windows at what was then but is not so much now, a very lively street scene, I would pretend to put Corey in his place. "You fat fck gangster btch, get offa this street before I make you get offa it." I was all comedy, up on my toes poking the air in front of me like it was Corey's chest, and Mandy would be at another window, looking out, and saying, "you tell 'em, honey," or, "I think he heard you," at which point my heart would sink and I would take it all back, even to the imaginary Corey.
But he wasn't all that. He was not a big quiet guy harboring evil, he was a gentle giant, a puppy dog, a nice guy with normal interests, and pretty good judgement. He made earnest attempts at bettering his position. He was on one level a man to be judged harshly but I came to like him a lot and he was on the short list of people I had recently been thinking about, and missing. I couldn't sleep this morning so I got up about five, and then all of a sudden started crying, audibly. I hope I can get all that out before the funeral; there are those who may not care for me showing too much emotion.
The Multitudinous
The Muslim trim carpenter from Iran asked me in his child-like Engish what the other trim carpenters thought of his work and I could not resist telling him, "they think you suck," and when he said "what?" as if he did not understand, I repeated it slowly for him, "they-think-you-suck." I was smiling when I said it and so he was able to guess I making joke. He is in truth an excellent trim carpenter and I told him everyone that matters thinks the same.
Last Saturday a diagonal city block from here a man in a black Taurus was found dead, shot several times in his chest, and this in the middle of the day, but you wouldn't know it if you didn't know it, unless you were very much in tune with the spirit world, or, maybe that feeling you get at certain times is actually your ownself being in tune with it, the death. I mean deaths, multitudinous, on the these city streets of New Orleans. We carrying on though, better at least than the dead dude.
The mayor in New Orleans is worried about having to get a real job now that his eight years are up, but the Democrats who promised him work in Washington did not win the right to do the hiring so the mayor, Mark Morial, is trying to change the rule which allows a mayor only two terms. He's doing a lot of last minute promising, he'll make the schools, the roads, and the crime rate better, and his biggest boast, the hiring of Richard Pennington as police chief is really a bunch of hot air because even though Pennington promised and delivered on his pledge to cut the murder rate in half, nobody seems to understand that the murder rate in half is still way too many. It is easier and more productive to forget the dead and carry on. So that's what we're all agreeing to do, I guess.
And the local school superintendent, Al Davis, who made the mistake of urging kids back to non airconditioned schools because the "slaves had it rougher" than that is clearly not making enough difference. The schools aren't getting more better. And if Davis weren't himself black he would have undoubtedly been fired. But he's still here, and I honestly believe he means well but but I'm not sure he is up to the task. It is a huge task though--the restructering of a school system-- so his failure is not really a fair reflection of the man's abilities.
The other day I saw two kids standing in the neutral ground at Canal and Broad blowing their horns for the passing traffic.
Terrell just came in and is playing rap music while racing muscle cars on one of the computers.
I started building my front porch this weekend. It rained most of the weekend but I was able to get much of the more difficult aspects of the job out of the way despite the rain.
Some other stuff happened this week but I'll be damned if I can remember what they are, although one of the things had to do with remembering.
Training Wheels
Joe told me I could get back on now, "on" being the internet, he just had to make a call, out of deep sleep, sleeping between my old bed and the desk which I have yet to capitulate. I stepped not that easily over Joe to get here. Joe explained he had to call his mother to find out if the dream was true--that she died a horrible death--but I guess it wasn't because when I said "but she's all right?" he nodded and free fell to his pallet on the floor and began snoring almost immediately.
I awoke from a dream this morning assaulted by the glare of a fullish moon situated in the window pane to my left. Its brightness was like a nagging reminder, a post-it that won't come unglued and get lost, or maybe it was just a shiny orb hanging where it had no business hanging, or, its me that has no business.
It very well may have been Crawford, Tx. where I stood alone marveling at nothing and then saw the van rise up into the air floating like (but not) Dorothy and Toto, and I could see their faces, youngsters, too young to drive, and most certainly too young to be floating around unlicensed. For a moment it appeared I would be the Wicked Witch, squashed beneath, but I willed otherwise and when they landed it was actually Elvis who left the van.
Pretty soon I'll have to trick myself back to work on the house, it's not that hard to do, I/he's really gullible, infect him/me with a sense of urgency and we will smoke the antidote until our lungs hurt, convincing ourselves we are in charge of our leisurely ways until the leisure becomes work and we have to work to regain a sense of leisure. I can resist this trick but eventually will forget why I want to.
Yesterday I read some really strong pulp by Jerry Ahern, The Defender, #1, It's like politcal science fiction: Terrorists in America battling outlaw Patriots for the American flag. They killed his whole family, man. And the Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison) is serious business. I'm just reading it bit by bit concurrently with Russel Baker essays and Why We Can't Wait by MLK. And I have this horror novel by someone named Ramsey Black (not Campbell) who the Village Voice purports to be, on the cover, better than King, or Straub, which is the stupidest thing I ever heard. I keep it by my pallet-side just to have something to keep my ire at a steady level. I'll read it eventually I guess, unless the first ten page just suck so bad that I can't convince myself there is any reason to. With 12 or 13 more editions of The Defender series out there waiting a book is going to have to be pretty special to get my read.
Today is Labor Day. I think its against the law to work on Labor Day. I have this Philip Jose Farmer I could read. Another Heinlein would be nice, read Citizen of The Galaxy the other day. I haven't been back to the movies since I panicked over at the Palace Clearview parking lot and couldn't leave the car. That's not true. Shortly after that I attempted an early evening at Canal Place to see Ghost World but I got there thirty minutes too soon and could not safely occupy myself that long so I bought a ticket for The Deep End which began almost immediately. It was good.
It's times like these I wonder if maybe I took off my training wheels to soon, or late?
First Two Talking
Hey Slim.
Leave me alone.
Feeling grumpy?
Eat me.
I was just wondering...?
You better quit dicking with me.
Come on, let's talk, you'll feel better.
Nothing wrong with how I feel.
Want some Midol?
All right, bitch, what do you want?
I was just wondering when you're going to get back to work on the house.
Been busy.
Really? Doing what?
Relaxing, reading, avoiding completion...
That's what I'm talking about, why don't you just complete the damn thing?
There is joy in work avoidance. You have to take what you can get.
But what about that sense of fullfillment you would get from being finished, living legal, instead of being a squatter...?
That fullfillment you talk about is an overrated fairy tale, and I'm more in harmony with my environment the way things lay now.
Deep, but they ain't gonna let you live like that forever.
Too many "theys" out there to be worried about any single one of them.
Hey, maybe you could just pick up some materials today and then maybe if you felt like it, today, or during the week, you might actually accomplish something.
Yeah maybe. But if potentially today is the last day of the rest of my life I don't want to spend it working.
Rather be on the beach?
I ain't so crazy about beaches.
Me either.
Amazing we have that in common.
Not really so amazing considering we're the same...
Don't even think it, we ain't that, you just the front and little else, so back away from those easy comparisons.
I don't have to let you out, you know?
Don't be so sure about that, Mr. Jim.
Thorazine
I do not use a lot of illegal drugs and that's because such consumption is simply not covenient at this point in time. Not to mention I am more mature than the young man looking like me, but fresher, who was formerly into random abuses. I mean I used to pick up pills off the street, and convinced I was acting in the name of science, eat them. I got a hold of some thorazine once, given to me by this madman with a convincing smile, whom I had met inside a smoking van (it would finally throw a rod south of San Franciso) full of fellow hitchhikers after stepping off that rock in front of the Mercedes dealership in Santa Barbara that says "stand here" after escaping unscathed that strip search at the border of Mexico the previous day. I was making extraordinarily good time for a hitchhiker. I had not even made it to the end of the entrance ramp in El Paso, or even stuck my thumb out, when two young men in a small pick-up determined to drive non-stop had picked me up on their way to Santa Barbara. What I was doing out there in the great american west was being a college dropout, a work avoider, a mundanity suppressor, a scaredy cat. Anyway, I knew precious little about thorazine except I had seen it work wonders at a party in Austin where a fellow was having adverse reactions to one of those hallucinogenic chemicals. Also, I had had brief discussions about it with another fellow who worked at the state hospital there in Austin. I was not completely ignorant on the subject because I was aware of the term "thorazine shuffle," which as it turned out for me was a slightly painful, most embarrassing, contraction of various muscles which caused me to move through the streets of San Francisco looking like a poorly conceived, cheaply imitative, Hollywood Igor. My home in San Francisco was an underpass at Second and Folsom, or thereabouts, and where I ended up that day was at a movie theatre near that chocolate factory by the bay where I hid out in the dark watching the original run of Hollywood's version of Keroac, the one in which I think it was Nick Nolte playing Neal Cassady. It was a painful day the day I learned thorazine is not a recreational drug. And, not to talk down to you, or be overly obvious, but that earlier part about being more mature was a joke.
Running Onward
Yesterday about dinner time I stepped out into the watery blast furnace known as the local climate and saw a young man emerging from the weed and tree choked lot next door to me; the one owned by the Pentecostals. He was bisecting the lot on a self made path that was bringing him more and more to my attention. He kept turning around and looking towards the direction he came from (most likely that skinny alleyway which fronts out to Iberville and runs along the dance hall). The other sneak attack access to the weed and tree choked lot is pretty much impassable what with all that garbage the Pentecostals left there last year, and in that way I should be greatful but I may in fact be less than that.
I was on my way to the grocery up at Canal and Carrollton because they sell plate lunches and if you get there early enough in the evening you can call it dinner, or supper if you wish, before they bag it up for the day. Thursday is Crawfish Etoufee with praline carrots and let me tell you those carrots are some good. Got a kid won't eat vegetables?, sic a plate of those candy coated carrots on him. Turn him into a regular vegetarian in no time.
So I turn to the guy because it looks like he is determined to occupy "my" space and he is clearly on the run in some fashion, looking out to the street now, nervous, yet seemingly in good spirits, and so as he crosses my driveway in front of the little Toyota I'm about to escape in I look right at him and raise my eyebrows, which may or may not have arched above my cheap sunglasses, and he expresses in the local colloquial that he means no harm by saying--"I'm straight." To that I said "all right," and began to get into the car. The young man on the run paused, and said, "hey, which way you going?" So it was my turn to pause, briefly, while speed spinning the microfiche of a lifetime of responses, and then I had to smile, and laugh a little before grunting, "uh uh." He took no offense, laughed a little himself, and moved off towards Bienville.
An hour earlier a neighbor with whom I have set bad precedent by loaning (giving) money came over, cigarette in mouth, and said "let me get five dollars, neighbor." Shifting the can of budweiser from one hand to the other I stepped out onto the temporary steps of my nearly finished recycled home and shutting the door to keep in the cool air provided by the temporary window unit, said, "uh, no neighbor, can't do it." She ran by me some of her hardships, a not unfamiliar list, and which did not include any moaning about all the crack heads coming in and out her place all night till sunrise. I have been pretty put out with this woman since the last time she came over, during one of my naps, and banged repeatedly on the side of the house until I woke up groggy and red-eyed, and gave her four dollars. That was when I decided this shit would have to stop. I had a good neighbor on Dumaine who used to hit me that way, expert at waiting a lengthy enough time between hits so that I wouldn't feel he was taking unfair advantage. I like(d) the dude, but it would get so I felt a strong need to avoid him, and I can't see, at this advanced age, making all those same petty mistakes, even if I have to seem petty to accomplish that. So that's the way its gotta be neighbor, and that's at the risk of you unleashing your army of ne'erdowells, and expert petty thieves on me. It's what I was thinking over when the kid on the run ask me where I was going. Onward is what I have decided. The neighbor lady said, "that's ok, Jim, we're still friends." Okeedokey.
Night Out
I came over to Dumaine tonite because it is Night Out Against Crime and I'm against crime, where's the free food?
It's raining.
The Dumaine boys had helped hand out flyers last week for the Zulu version of a street party but when they showed up over there tonite for the party the Zulu's said no children allowed. I did not know the Dumaine party was not going on. That's why I came over. I was hungry. I was counting on deviled eggs. They call them stuffed eggs around here. Evelyn is here now, cussing, calling her son a bitch, calling me her husband, I tell her I don't like that language, she tells me she can kick my ass too ( that would be in addition to everyone), I don't argue, I'm realistic, Fermin asks me do I think she talks too much trash? I cannot really console the son against the mother.
I'm really hungry.
Shelton's not here in New Orleans. He's in the Bay Area. So any a ya'll out there keep an eye out.
Jermaine, Terrell's daddy, is here playing solitaire on the computer. In the years past, when crime was more palpable, and there was more of a territory question going on, Jermaine had threatened to burn this house down. It was a good natured threat, as threats go, and was made in a context that did not imagine he would ever get to play solitaire on one of the computers.
Evidently, the kids were allowed to partake in the Zulu feeding afterall, I guess they just were not allowed into the inner sanctum, I'm sure that goes for the rest of us too, but they all coming back now declaring the burgers nasty, school burgers, soy bean, and the hotdogs, hotdogs. That ain't no proper Nite Out feeding. The Zulu's going budget on the hoodlings. You can't fight crime with soy bean.
I'm still hungry. I'm only writing because I can't deal with the reality of my choices. It's late (for me), I've already eaten fast food at least once today. I was really counting on a Dumaine feast, barbecue chicken, ribs, jambalaya, meatballs, macaroni, dirty rice, deviled eggs. I'm against crime. I really am. Beer and whisky.
I miss Mama D. I really do.
Open This
I have to tell you the truth, I'm not really all that nice to ill-behaved children.
My boss brought his pride and joy eight-year-old-son to work today, which is ok, the kid has some work ethic and sticks close to his dad for the most part and I did not mind, in fact enjoyed, playing stickball with him during break, and his dad did not interrupt or even disapprove, as far as I could tell, of my light badgering--"you hear this ball whizzing by your head? It's saying you can't hit me, you sissy, you can't hit me on your best day."
Later, after lunch, which is very close to quitting time, and is a period in which I will sometimes get lost in reflection, similar to but slightly less hopeful than the place I go in the morning period before break, and the kid snuck up on me while I was crouched low to the floor straightlining a piece of baseboard and said "boo," scaring me out of my dreamworld where human frailty is the shortest distance between two points, and I barked at him, "boy, this ain't no game, get away from me."
And I meant it is the funny thing, and still do, even in retrospect I mean it. Evidently, I take my work seriously.
At lunch his dad kept saying ok that's enough but kept pitching the tape ball to him inside the house and I kept at the ready as catcher, saying things like "come on batter," and "hey batter batter," and, "sissy boy can't hit." He averaged out at about .600 though.
Before lunch the boy's dad had him moving all the paint cans from the master closet into the garage so carpet can be laid next week and I was painting the access panels along side the whirlpool bath and when the kid tried to muscle a full five gallon paint bucket I told him to leave it. He was determined though so I put it this way--"doing what you can't do is not worth the effort. Trying to move that bucket is not heroic, does not make you strong, does not mean you are a man. You will only hurt yourself." He countered that he wasn't hurting himself and I countered that lifting something heavy the way he was lifting it--with his legs wide open and the whole of his upper body hovering over the heavy object--was the most sure way to hurt yourself. "When you get to be twenty and thirty and you won't be able to do heavy work and you'll look back on this day and say 'if only I hadn't been such a knucklehead when I was eight.' Just leave it, I'll get it later." He lost interest and went off to find his dad.
Shortly before quitting time and I was painting the windowsills in the garage and the kid was misinterpreting some request his father had made and was trying to remove the lid from an empty plastic five gallon bucket and I was glancing over seeing him having trouble but was pretty much done with the child care aspect of my job for the day so I let him have his trouble. It was late in the day and the lustre was waning from the shiny chrome of his work ethic and so he gave up, and said, or rather, demanded, of me, of all people--OPEN THIS FOR ME.
Well, I am a busy man, and paid, not overly but adequately, to perform a job which I have previously, long ago, made clear does not include responding favorably to pissy attitudes.
I glanced over at the boy and said, "I'm sorry? What did you say?"
"Open This For Me!!!" He was looking at me like he thought I actually would.
I stopped performing my task and turned to face him fully, and looked at him with what I hoped would pass for disdainful incredulity. "Boy, I don't know who it is in your world that let's you get away talking like that but it ain't me, so you best run along now and let me work." He didn't like that and went to tell his dad, who yelled at him, so he came back and played noisely with an electrician's ladder, right beside me, and I took his punishment as my due.
The Sycamore
I glance over occasionally to see what would cause a kid to laugh so gleefully and see a couple of gangsters playing gin rummy in the front room, gangsters who apparently have been given special permission to hang with the younger kids, although some of the younger kids are as old as seventeen, because nothing will stay still long enough for you to bag it and go.
I don't know what he was laughing at.
There is a keyboard here that was never of much use to M, who feels 88 is the only way to go, and a couple of the youngers are fairly talented at playing around with it which is the background music tonight.
After arguing briefly over a scoring issue the gangsters, who had been given temporary special indoor priviledges on account of rain, exit to the porch.
On their own initiative the kids, seven or eight of them, made a schedule and posted it on the refrigerator to determine who would do dishes on what day.
Not solely because of M but truly with a great deal of help from her, three young ladies from this hood are on their way to college, two to the local Delgado Jr. College (one with paid childcare), and one to Southern University in Baton Rouge.
I got caught up in an emotional wave tonight is why I got drawn to the recording machine, I can never capture what it is, but cast away in hopes of snagging something I can eat.
There's a young mockingbird visiting the sycamore in front of Rocheblave, but he's mute. I been whistling at him but he ain't impressed and he won't sing for me.
I slept with my head pointed to a new direction last night and dreamt like a sonofabitch, nothing interesting, the usual averting of near catastrophe.
Bayou Dreamer
There are certain frayed thoughts on the edge of my consciousness feeling like pieces of truth that have been triggered by the fish in Bayou St. John where I sat this morning with my back to Moss and finished reading the encapsulation of Slyvia Plath's life, The Bell Jar (with biographic afterforward).
Will you be putting up a fence around the place?
Will you be getting a TV for the new place?
A domesticated dog came up as I sat there and licked my ear while her owner looking like Bridget Jones suggested--Duchess don't do that.
The Bayou is a real gem of a place and Marie Laveau her ownself would tell you same if you could get to her.
The phone's ringing and ringing and finally is picked up by a sleeper who calls for another boy who has to examine various figures sleeping on the floor before finding the right one who then begins talking loudly to his mother.
All of us various organisms making up Nature are being very still and quiet this morning and the black glass surface of the Bayou reflects, as a background to the trees and houses, pink and orange sky, so that it is above and below and in front and you can get closer to the idea of altered dimension. Which is where the fish comes in...
...breaking the surface of the water and gliding through the air while turning sideways to slap the bayou and coming up and flying a total of three separate times to break the glass into a dimension where pretty pictures disappear and geometry or something from the mathmatic art world comes in so that three separate but entwined circles radiated rippled waves outward to cross each other and form yet another dimension which clearly exists in front of me with no more added to my personal chemistry than coffee and the poignancy of a great long dead writer. And other than the occasional bellowing of a drunk man way far off down by the church there is no auditory distraction whatsoever; there is a place so quiet yet charged with pure vivaciousness. There is an essence of something desirable.
Roaming Boys
A couple of the Dumaine boys knocked on my door at Rocheblave yesterday and when I opened it up there they were at the bottom of the temporary steps, smiling, and, being in the neighborhood thought they would stop by. I let them tour the house such at it is while I sat on the steps watching the boy in the wheelchair and his girlfriend making themselves perfectly at home underneath the overhang of the sculptors residence across the street.
When they came out I tried to figure if they wanted something from the tired in a non-giving mood me or if in fact they just came by to say "hi." If the latter then they would be the first of their type. After a few minutes of all us sitting, swatting and killing the weaker and slower of the mosquitoes, and fidgeting because two of us three are not overly gifted with the gab, we all came to realize not a one of us was going to take charge so all of us would have to make some effort towards a comfortable co-existence.
The one boy said, "it sure is (pause) quiet over here." That's relative to the Dumaine neighborhood which is near the corner of a major thoroughfare and is a block with a history which includes all the best excitement that history has to offer. That is if you find gunfire, drug dealing, police action, and constant motion exciting. A more to the point child would have said, "boring" instead of "quiet."
"I kind of like it like this," I said. In the heart of New Orleans my house is the only residence in my block on my side of the street.
The two boys then talked about the iguanas they had seen at the pet store which is what put them in my neighborhood, and that made me think about the fact that both of them have been known to torture, I mean, play with the prolific indigenous chameleon, so I said "have you seen Dr. Dolittle?" which is a thing (movies) that I used to take them to but don't anymore. "There's a talking chameleon in the movie but it's not like these here it's...," and then the both of them, speaking alternately, told me exactly what the mexican chameleon looked like and most of its pertinent speaking parts for although they have not seen the movie they have however seen over and over the trailers on TV. They have retained more about the movie than I have and tell me things I have forgotten, even though it was just a few days ago I saw the full length of it myself.
The one boy, the talkative one, exclaimed how well we seemed to be doing. "Aren't we having a good conversation? This is a really good conversation." Then we all shifted our attention to how the lady sculptor, who had now arrived in her truck, would handle the loiterers. It was the type of voyeurism that was/is so popular on Dumaine, and is a thing that is useful when trying to forget about yourself. Best to say the confrontation lacked any first rate drama as the boy in the wheelchair, and his girlfriend, did not retreat, and there was no yelling, or police, or threatening behavior of any kind. The Dumaine boys have been raised on better, for example, last month there was this, as told to me by M, to whom I was giving a ride home from work today as my job this week is close to hers and her car is in the shop:
"I saw Y the other day," M said.
"Yeah, where?" I said.
"On Dumaine," she said.
Y is the very beginning of all this.
"She was living with her aunt over on the other side of Broad but got thrown out for drugs."
Y's persisent weakness.
"N's still in," M said.
"Oh yeah, I didn't know." I thought she had been out for a good while this time. "When did that happen."
"About a month ago. She got arrested on The Porch."
"Really," I said. This was news to me. I'm out of the loop. "Warrant?"
"More or less, " M said. "She just quit going to her probation officer."
"Yeah," I said. "Did the boy see it."
"G? No. He wasn't around. The cops put a gun to EG's head though."
"What?" EG is a good boy, a college boy, he can get out if he wants to.
"EG and some of the other boys were in front of the house playing basketball and the cops show up, whether specifically for N on a tip or just a random sweep I don't know, but EG turned around to a gun in his face, and then they let him be, and hassled some of the others. J was there. (and some of his boys). And they found a crack pipe on the porch. I don't know if they can do anything for just that..."
"Yes, they can," I interrupted. "I mean your reputation in the neighborhood will buy you some leeway but, you know, drug paraphanalia, and gangsters, on YOUR property is uh..."
"Yeah, I know, and when I found out I gave J a good shouting, and EG, he wouldn't have said anything about it if P from across the street hadn't told me. When I confronted EG (who lives in the house), he was like, 'oh yeah, I just forgot,' and proceeded to tell me in great detail about having a gun in his face but not like it bothered him, just like it was the weather we were talking about..."
And then the boys arose from my steps and the one boy said, "and now we will be leaving,"
"Well, good seeing you, and, thanks for coming by," I said, and as I was closing the door I heard the one boy say, "that's a sharp bathroom you have," and, "that was a good conversation, wasn't that a good conversation?"
By The Way
BigHead has taken to laying around under my vehicles and under my house. He's not pretending to be my cat and I don't pretend I like him, but on the other hand I don't show him flagrant disrespect.
This week lest anyone should accuse me of lacking regard for chick writers I have purposefully set a path to change that perception and have gleefully read the work of Anne Tyler, Harper Lee, and Slyvia Plath. And there's an Alice Munro waiting in this week's New Yorker but I have not always, or ever, been crazy for her so there's that.
I love Anne Tyler, and whosoever shall not love Harper Lee will burn eternally, and I wish Sylvia had not killed herself because her Bell Jar is an elucidation, and one might wish there was more of her (prose) to read.
At least two of the tires on the truck have nails in them and the spare is a flat shredded retread which is why I'm over here at Dumaine working (ha) at this instead of driving over the Mississippi River Bridge--which is being repainted and has narrowed lanes and no shoulder to pull off onto when all your tires blow out--to shop at various (two competing) Home Improvement outlets. But you know, the thing is, if you don't pull the nails out you can drive a pretty fair length of time on a tire with a nail in it and that's a fact on the other side of an equation which is me losing my nerve. Ima go in a minute though.
I don't mean anything bad, at least in my humble opinion, by using that phrase "chick writer," and in any case I am so far removed from a world inhabited by women who would give a fck, or who would deem me worthy of their wrath, that it seems ok to me in the sense that playing around with a rattlesnake that may only be sleeping is ok. And also I am in a perpetual state of ambiguity as to whether this lack of educated opinionated woman in my life is a bad thing. I know I don't yearn for a serious discussion on the meaning of Ms. Plath's misanthropy and eventual disengagement. I would have nothing to add, and how seriously would you take me when I said, "I dig her; cool chick; I am really effected by her."?
There's a bunch of kids, maybe five or six, sleeping on the floor over to my left in the front room. There's central air and ceiling fans running over here now so the inside summer climate is uniformly comfortable for the first time in 105 years. Southern University redshirt freshman footballer Eddie Green is missing in action this morning so Irving, who pops a mean wheelie, is curled fetally on his bed, which used to be mine. I am not lamenting the loss off that bed and could in no way justify lament because there has never been a shortage of places for me to sleep in quiet peace--under bridges and steps, in dog houses, on floors, on construction sites, in cars and trains, on the white sands of a missile testing range, in caves, in condos, in gullies, by a pig sty, in a shack, in the woods, on the wet sand, by the bay, in the desert, in the jungle, on couches, in chairs, on benches, and once in a while under fresh clean sheets in places that I am not used to and are not used to me, I sleep so peacefully.
There are those who have noted and commented, and complained, with jealousy and without, about my remarkable (yet not narcoleptic) ability to sleep--so to speak and literally--through tornadoes, and rainstorms, and waking up encircled by wild (sleeping) dogs in Mexico being a able to fall back asleep, and waking up to the searching hands of a hobo in Yuma who was going for the buck knife I foolishly wore on my side, stirring with enough fright and movement to interrupt his attempt, yet still being able to fall right back to sleep. I think I'm too passive is it. I better go do something. Kids are waking up. I might get in a nap later on.
Sisters Of Sartre
Looking out my window stubbing my toe on the soft edges of second hand literature I see a thing that makes me lonely for a past dynamic that included more girl children, who could comfort me with their seemingly serene assurance that the world around us, shambled, in tatters, teetering, was only as it should be.
They all scattered to the wind now though: daddy's in jail, daddy's dead, daddy got a new groove going on. In a sense it all goes for me too.
Looking out another window I can see my urban philosophy project is attended and accepted by only the finest feline critics in the city, their sprayed scent a testimony to the value of real estate. I have been the keeper of my brother's dance hall, boarding it up against the onslaught of crack heads, a group I can only attend to on my own terms, and those terms are lacking in but the most meager amounts of sympathy. I am becoming hardened. I cannot see the solution to a problem that is evidenced by a human being brought into this world and left to fester and wallow on the street for thirty or fifty years, a person whose only real contact with God is not to be seen in the person's use of faith based shelters, but in the ringing stark raving clarity of mind obtained via the crack pipe. I would like to feel more sympathy but it is my feeling that sympathy without action is wasted emotion, a valium for your soul, which will not soar to intended heights with the weight of your indifference. So you feel sorry and then convince yourself you feel better, while actually doing nothing, taking not even the smallest step. I myself am the coward who can only feel for the children brought into--and in some cases, heading towards--this blighted world. This is me talking to myself, and you, and YOU, my Pentecostal brother, whose dance hall I board up and sign with the subtle humor of existential despair--"NO EXIT."
The trinity of seven-year-old girls I am missing are attended to by loving and caring guardians. One guardian is banned from this house forever by it's current owner who deemed the guardian's theft of my full to the brim change cup a third strike. The daughter of this young woman was often treated as somewhat of an outcast by the other two girls. She is so beautiful and poised this seven-year-old in the hood, with manners and bearing belying certain aspects of her upbringing that in my opinion would seem to hinder such grace. To make this child smile was such a lopsided exchange considering the weight of the gift which was mine--seeing her do it.
The second girl, small, frail, a mere wisp, with eyes bigger than belong on her tiny face, a dull sheen of skin, and adorned in clean but always second hand clothing, carries the weight of everything I have ever seen or felt or will ever describe, on the bent sloping coat hanger of her shoulders. To make her laugh makes me cry.
The third girl is the embodiment of what makes it all keep happening in this hood and your hood and all over the world. She is the sensuous one. The one of her group who will most likely first experience the sensual pleasures. Her grandma, shortly before dying confided to me that this grand daughter was already getting "musty" under her arms and this meant she would become a woman early. It was the girl's sixth birthday party.
She is now being cared for by a conservative aunt in a neighborhood not much safer than this one. I tried to figure the proximity of bloodstained sidewalk when recently I read of another gunned down teenager in her neighborhood. I have watched with amazement her progress from the age of two. At three I first made direct eye contact and knew I had met that rare child who already intuited more about the world than I ever would.
She is not allowed to come to this neighborhood anymore and last year had an incident in school that as far as I can tell was her first foray into the world of "playing doctor." Her aunt was reasonably upset by this and consulted with the owner of this house in an attempt at trying to understand what the girl may have been exposed to in this neighborhood during her first six years and my response to the owner of this house--who was telling me this and who knew as well as me that that would be a hard list to make--was a vacant stare and a bewildered shake of my head and the word "Jesus."
The last time I saw the girl in person was at a time I now realize was shortly after the incident at the school, for which she was made to feel ashamed, and confused. I was answering the front door over here and there she was looking up at me with none of her usual confidence or beguilement and an expression of guilt that assumed I had heard about her harassing of her second grade peer. I couldn't tell from her mood what she wanted, and she wouldn't tell me so I let her in the house to roam at will. At one point she came over here where I am now and I leaned sideways and gave her a big bear hug and afterwards she stepped back and with a very uncharacteristic mistrust said--"what did that mean?" I guess this is a lesson in context because at the time I did not know of her "incident" at school and therefore I did not think of the many ramifications of my words, words so over used and misused, and misunderstood, and therefore lacking meaning when meaning is needed most. But when you know so little its probably better to stick with that which feels certain. I told her "it means I love you."
And, well, speaking of love and Christ and neediness, and charity, all those things one would hope to find in a church, I think I should tell you again, as like punctuation, that the Iberville dance hall which I keep boarded and reboarded-up and is being choked to death by the ubiquitous Virginia Creepr Vine (which is like kudzu with smaller leaves) and sits in perpendicular proximity to the large weed and tree choked lot which fronts Rocheblave, and is apparently waiting the fate of similar New Orleans properties--which is to burn down during a cold winter when a careless visitor not welcome at the shelters uses poor judgement with a bic, is also, like the vacant lot, owned by the Pentecostal Church, a group upon which I have chosen to lay my wrath. So in a sense I'm like an honorary member of the church, tithing my ill will.
The punch line to the dance hall is a short one. A few years back a group, perhaps too sneakily, tried to acquire the dance hall from the owner previous to the Pentecostals, with the intention of turning it into an AIDS Hospice. Unfortunately, its next door proximity to a small private (Pentecostal) school and general proximity to many god-forsaken, god fearing Baptists, caused the deal to fall through before it could get started. The mayor had somehow helped the group and he did not need that kind of publicity.
I guess I've made it clear to my new neighbors--those who have been foolish enough to engage me in conversation--that I think that was a shameful mistake--an opinion I can offer freely by virture of being the nearest actual residence to the property. How could the restoration of a grand old house for the purpose of offering comfort to dying people (oh yeah, I'm sorry, people with AIDS) be something so many churches would come out against. And boy did they come out. I remember being simply shocked by the words of area pastors concerning the issue. An overt disgust, an almost in so many words expressed hatred for those who suffer the ultimate punishment for their "sins"--slow lingering death. So much so that I drove to the neighborhood (this was long before I bought over here, and in fact did not realize it was the same neighborhood when I did buy) just in hopes of spying what I imagined at the time might be an entirely different specie. I am such a naive schmuck. Its just that the Hopsice debacle was such an obvious turning away from such an obvious microcosmic view of an important problem--ignoring the slow lingering death of our city, and a fear of being too close to the death when in fact the death engulfs us, it is the air we breath, almost literally. Anyway, at the time I had considered going back to church as a way to meet chicks, but that incident really set me back.
Looking down I see the yellowing pages of second hand masterpieces--To Kill a Mockingbird underneath Lord of the Flies. I had been alerted by the crying oustide my window and was watching the loneliness of a small girl child whose Daddy had come back after some absence and was making an honest go of things. He had built for her a rope swing with a primitive but purely adequate seat, and the day before both mother and father had surrounded her with attention, first one pushing, then the other.
The border collie mut the man brought with him as much needed guard dog in a neighborhood recently beset by burglary seemed to understand the need for action but clearly was not up to the task itself. It turned in jumping circles by the back door, yelping its need for assistance. The little girl screamed more even while realizing her feet could be used to propel her in her swing. The light of recoginition and pride showed on her face--that she could accomplish things on her own--and then just as quickly the light turned off as she realized she did not want to do it alone.