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Summer Fun
Deep in the southern heart of an inner city with streets meaner than you she has begun--after lengthy sabbatical--to torture the poorly educated children and they for their part keep coming: six, seven, eight, nine, "hey, close that door mthrfker," and the mantra "work or go" echoes until there is stillness. Later there is pity pat on the front porch.
When We Lose The Son
So I'm over early to Dumaine not so much to keep the punk ass street bitches from stealing my Sunday paper (I should get it transferred to Rocheblave I guess) but because I feel drawn to the electronic media which exists over here but not yet for awhile at Rocheblave.
There's something to say about all this New Orleans rain but...must I really? I tend to vere so much. And haven't the local headlines this last week said it all: "Rain, Rain, Go Away," and "Enough Already"?
Its like this the myriad images, to outline: It was cloudy in Austin once for sixteen days straight, or was that days straight over one hundred degrees? I think the former, and I was depressed, which I am not now, but chemically (like I know about chemicals?) there is a sense of remembering, triggered by this sunlight deprivation. How you like the bombast so far?
Then there was Oregon, outside of Eugene, across a wooden bridge over a bubbling brook into a treeless land lagoon surrounded by trees where I was heading for cigarettes. It was a mom and pop shop and they were loading their belongings into a moving van. The man said he never realized it could rain so much. They were getting the hell out. Relocating to Gulf Shores, Alabama. I couldn't imagine what the hell he was talking about. I was from Texas, happy, in love locally, and miles away from the acceptance of my eventual failure. I wished the man well.
Then Seattle, well, what are you gonna say? That's were they invented "sunlite deprivation." Of course, other parts of the globe lay greater claim but let's not confuse the issue with too many facts. That's where I started learning about the only kind of failure that matters. Was I depressed, sunlight deprived, chemically unbalanced? Who cares? I strapped all the good and bad tightly to my being, hunkered down on my mobile island, and left out of there, with damaged love, and lover, and some hope.
When we lose the sun the water runs cold. No, goddammit, not poetry, I'm talking about solar heat.
In the woods of Bastrop, outside of Austin, where I was being, for brief periods, a low elevation mountain man, in a literal shack, built by me with some advice, a chainsaw, hammer, nails, and lumber, and where one day (probably while I was failing in Seattle), a friend of mine and lover of another, a former prostitute who had come to the woods to cleanse, died of a heroin overdose. Before that, over the year or so I knew her she did on occasion shine with such lightness that as I think about it now my feelings are not so much of sorrow, but admiration.
Those sparsely populated woods were not comprised of nudists per se but it was understood that public nudity, on your own land, and at the community pond, was ok. "Public" being four or five of us spread over a hundred acres. So it was with an unparalleled sense of freedom that I would in the winter standing naked in those woods with a trigger operated hand sprinkler locked to the "on" position, and attached to the limb of a cedar tree, enjoy a shower. Winter in Texas one must understand is often a sixty degree day, and my water supply was run from a neighbor's pump, overground for several hundred feet, with black plastic pipe. The water in the pipe on a sunny day was understandably quite hot, and lasted more than long enough for my shower. These cleansings rank highly.
Likewise, on Rocheblave, my unfinished renovation project, where I live almost full time now, my bathing is reliant on solar heat until the water heater is installed and the gas is hooked up The gas meter is the last thing that will happen. I have to be pretty much inspectable/respectable for that to occur. I had the plumbers run the copper water pipes through the attic instead of under the well off the ground house because copper is precious metal to the roaming denizens of the night (read--crackheads) and the property is on direct route to the recycling plant a few blocks away at St. Peter and Rocheblave. You don't need much hot water for a summer shower but a little is nice and these last few weeks of sunny weather have aided me in my pursuit of greater comfort. The showers have been nice. Especially after five years of claw foot tub baths at Dumaine, which is not always elegant.
That's all I wanted to say: that my showers this week--what with the incessant rain and clouds and no hints that a sun even exists--have been cold. Which reminds me of the campground at Palenque...
Still Surviving
I had been complaining about the lack of birds in general and specifically those not visiting the Mulberry tree over along the side of the house when a response to my complaint came to me--this was 5-20something, 2001, the weather perfectly cool, crisp, and sunny--in the form of a female cardinal. I was lounging on the side porch with my friend and ubiquitous helpmate, the ice cold budweiser. The Mulberry tree I could almost touch.
The female cardinal drab as they are was soon joined by the vibrant male and I'm being very, very still even at the risk of letting my beer go warm. I was so happy to exist at that moment enjoying what promised but did not turn out to be a love story. I did however get a real nice unmagnified view from about five feet away of the bright red male munching the few remaining berries with his black beak. Two weeks previous I had been begging the gods for more berry-eating birds and now this--a male and female cardinal; St. Louis; Jim Louis. Could it mean something, something good? Should I be embarrassed to reach so far in my mental meanderings?
The mosquito with his frail hypodermic sucking the blood from my left cheekbone made me move and the cardinals did flee. When I reoriented my field of vision to include the world at large I was shocked to see the still surviving feral black and white kitten two feet below me on that little incomplete strip of concrete, doing the scratching backflips--to the left, then to the right, then to the left, a bit awkward and unpracticed. When I went for my budweiser on the step below me and towards the kitten, it became aware of me as if I had previously not existed, and I had to wonder is such a thing possible? To exist and not exist in blinking fashion?
The kitten bolted away from me and all the risk I represent, true to it's surviving nature.
Day Job
Night Job
The Floating Slim Dandy
A few days ago I met with a professional smarmy maggot--that's not the real title of his profession, but then my name is not really Slim Dandy either--and I signed away my rights to Dumaine in exchange for...nothing. The maggot was giggling with my ex partner as I rushed from the scene and even though for her part she was insulting him I don't think he really got it. He felt he had masterfully orchestrated a coup. I mean who in their right mind would sign away a possession of some value without triplicately signed documents stating what was in it for him? Slim Dandy is who.
The maggot's office was done up with art aplenty and the overall effect left me a little queasy as I considered would my criticism of this framed art be insulting to his children, or a bona-fide working artist? Either way, I can only offer as summation that what the art was lacking in quality it sure made up for in quantity.
Me and the ex were supposed to come back to this creep to rework our wills to my advantage but once outside I made it clear I would not be coming back. "I'm not worried about Dumaine parity, we can work something out, or not."
I don't describe the maggot as a creep merely to pile on insults but because his reptilian manner and lack of humor contradicted what could have been a pleasant business transaction. Examples are better but I can offer none except to say he had the essence to inspire the many jokes which are made at the expense of his profession.
So anyway, I'm one property lighter. I feel like I could almost float.
,
WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT?
This kid makes fun of me.
No Mercy
Fermin asked me did I want one and I said sure so he went into the Dumaine foyer where all the school supplies, toys, and kid stuff is stored and cut me a two by three version of his ninth grade graduation picture from Bell. I used to keep my unloaded shotgun in that foyer closet with three hollow point slugs stacked nearby but moved it elsewhere the weekend we kicked Shelton out because the imprisoned Sr.'s advice to M "to be careful" echoed inside me as good advice.
In my forty plus baby boomed years the expression "code red" has mostly been a phrase used in jokes and as a way to suggest an irony regarding situations that aren't really that serious.
And the idea of parallel universes is perhaps written off by many as the fancy of science fiction geeks but I suggest otherwise, as geek, freak, republican, facist, or whatever category fits me on the given day. In America, of which I study, one can if one looks, see the evidence of worlds which exist in a parallel but diametrically opposed relation to each other. What I think confounds the most of us who would even consider such foolishness is the obvious similarity between the opposites. It doesn't make the kind of sense we can easily digest, we the body of people whose biggest conundrum is the answer to the question--"is Pepsi ok?"
As lightweight intellectual I can only offer primer material as example and it is this: last week, six blocks from here in the 2000 block of Dumaine the Andrew J. Bell school effected a code red on it's students because outside on the street at nine in the morning a dude with forehead tattooed No Mercy shot a cop three times, once in the back of the head, and the school immediately went into a lockdown mode that kept all persons in, in, and all persons out, out.
This is a situation that could be, but sadly is not, the definition of horror. The horror is our reaction or lack thereof, which can only look like affirmation. What a crazy world. Glad it's not the one I live in.
"You were in school last week when the cop was shot?" I asked Fermin.
"Yeah," he said.
"You heard the shots?"
"Yeah," he said.
"What happened?"
"They locked all the doors, made us sit down, and stay away from the windows," he said.
Me, I just nod.
The Limping Mr. Roaf
This is the first full week we, that is me and my boss, and one helper from my boss's brother's crew, have spent on the home of professional offensive lineman Willie Roaf, and I'm tired.
The carpenters are some imports from Mississippi, or Alabama, or somewhere, so we are not familiar with them or their ways. Their trimming work is adequate, and they put it up pretty fast, but they put too many nails in the wood and do not do any rough sanding on outside corners or caulking of exceptionally large gaps. They are nowhere near as good as the Sentilles brothers (even though the elder scarred me for life when he pushed the 380 pound Viking convection oven into my temple) who are the other trim carpenters (other that the avowed racist) we work behind. Even without bribery the racist and the Sentilleses are better than these guys and when you bribe them, hell, the Sentilleses especially, do so much extra finish work that the work day for a painter is easy and free.
Back at Roaf's, today was the spray day for oil based primer and I'm keeping my spraying boss supplied with whatever he needs and issuing orders to the other helper, and running (ok walking) here and there and about an hour into it this poindexter-looking carpenter comes in and I give him a one sentence summary of the situation, telling him if he can leave, then leave for about an hour and everything will be fresh, the air will be breathable, and the windows will be open.
I'm wearing a respirator so can't smell the fumes myself but assume the house must be pretty rich with scent. Now this poindexter is going to get to the bottom of things his own way and since I ignored his initial question as to what we were spraying-- because as I said I felt it should have been pretty obvious to a tradesman--but not this one, and he, as if now completely bereft of his considerable patience, practically scolds me as a dolt by saying loudly and slowly--"What-are-you-spraying?"
Painters, as you might imagine, are not the most revered of tradesmen and this goofy boy thought his attempt at an architecture degree and his affection for jargon-laden speech was all it would take to one up the likes of me--the long hair with the brownie glaze in his eyes. Well, I was in a hurry up to this point, not having really made direct eye contact with this boy, but, now called for, burned full rasputin into his querulous blues--and if contempt were love I would have been kissing instead of hissing-- "What does it smell like?"
Now of course this is my story and who's gonna be the hero (even when being an asshole) other than me, and so as it goes the poindexter blinked a couple of times while sliding off his high horse and almost apologized, "I don't really know, I have sinus problems."
I told him "oil based primer," and when he, still intent on getting to the bottom of things, asked, "how long will you be spraying?" I delivered the punch line of my initial summation, "one hour," and then dismissed him by continuing the duty for which I am paid.
By 9:30, which is three hours into the workday for us, we had the entire upstairs of the 13,000 square foot house primed, by spray and brush. The windows had been done previously. I was ready to go home and take a nap, but four hours later was sanding windows when my boss finally said, "let's get the hell out of here." I went downstairs and around the side of the house and washed the oil-based primer dust off my arms, and face, and out of my nostrils. As I came around the corner the builder we quit two years ago but have rejoined for this one job, is moving towards me with Mr. Roaf at his side and as it is clear none of us have time for the other I continue to swab my considerable nostrils with the wet rag, while the builder twangs opinion with southern accent, and Mr. Roaf limps.
Great White
Well I don't want to be one to go on about ghosts but I had a few minutes to spare while I waited for the avowed racist to load his tools into the gang box and so I told him I saw a ghost this weekend and he said what? what? and I responded ghost, ghost.
The man making templates for the granite countertops I have shared space with on many jobs over the years but there has never been a reason for bonding so we traditionally go about our jobs without even the most minimal of contact. It was therefore curious to me to find him standing in what might be considered the "ring" of conversation as I began the story you've already heard (or can hear if you make one step backward).
He of course had his own story and like me never thought much of the reality of ghosts but was of the type to be open minded. He was on a job in old Algiers studying a sheet of paper with measurements when he became aware of a presence and out of the corner of his eye saw what he took to be a woman's shoe, albeit retro. Then into whatever portion of his vision he was allowing for this event he noticed the dress of this woman was coming almost to the floor and he thought how odd that was and looked up and over to see nothing. His admission, contrasted to his general standoffish and rather serious demeanor over the years added that bit of chill which caused both the racist and I to admit to goosebumps.
And then it came to me something I have noticed around here over the years and that is that it is pretty hard to find someone in this area who doesn't have a ghost story.
A guy named Magee from the old college days was in town for Jazzfest last week bearing gifts both baked and of manual labor. The deserts were sweet enough but his manual labor towards the detailing of Rocheblave was sweeter still. He attended the fest for three of the four days during it's second weekend, but somehow wisely missed the Saturday to end all Saturdays during which the previous attendance record was broken almost in two I guess you could say. Previous--ninety some odd thousand, Saturday 2001--one hundred sixty thousand. Both of those numbers exemplify what I don't like about Jazzfest, although it is a pretty amazing event. I ventured out on the Thursday and saw some locals and then was able to hear, but not see (the crowd prevented), Lucinda Williams, who I was worried would not translate well to a middle of the day crowd in an open field but I was completely wrong and her voice I guess combined with a pretty fine sound system was so pure that at times I had to wonder maybe she should be recording these as re-releases of her top songs. So that was good. I fled immediatedly after though because her stage was one that had required me to travel deep into the unknown territory of others, although I must admit some of the "other's" were truly inspirational to behold.
While Magee was being a worker and I sat and drank beers gleefully a denizen of the street walked right up to us with a bucket of tools offering them for sale. The recent neighborhood robberies combined with the fact that he had completely ignored me and had straightaway approached Magee made me behave badly I'm afraid and before I knew it I was laying the old "well it's my property you're on and I'm telling you we ain't interested." The salesman walked off in a huff accusing me of bringing up that old "white" thing. I felt like an a-hole but in the new Rocheblave regime a no-sale is a good sale so I'm happy in a sense to have discouraged another solicitor.
I am the great white a-hole, so what?
how'd you know I was gonna do that?
Visitations
I was talking to myself first and then later to my neighbor and crack consultant regarding things Rocheblave. The first conversation was a self loathing exercise meant to get to the bottom of things and the second conversation was part play acting, part truth by way of absurdity.
"Goofy boy seeing ghosts. Stupid sumbitch."
"l'm just reporting what I saw."
"A ghost?"
"Seems crazy I agree but either way the audience wins. Ghost stories are always fun or if not that then watching the step by step of a man losing his mind could be good too, that is, I mean, entertainment-wise. Reality-wise it wouldn't be fun or funny, it would be mostly tiresome. 'The day he saw the ghost in broad daylight would be a summary early in the chronology of things and later the summaries might read like--The day he started his church, and The day he recruited his first parishoner.'"
My neighbor said, "looks like a compound over here." The new six foot chain link fence does lend an institutional air to the project but whatayagonnado? Some securing of property within budget must occur.
"Yes," I said, I'm thinking of starting a church, how'd you like to join? May I offer some Kool-aid?"
"I should get some of that you're smoking."
"I am sober of mind and the body is free of foreign intoxicants."
"So you say."
"Doubt not the pastor of your new church but embrace his ideology with all your heart and let loose the purse strings into his coffers, for there is much need here in this my new church."
My neighbor pulled his pants legs up and walked about tippy toe.
Later
"But seriously," and then I prefaced and qualified the hell out of what I was trying to say as is my custom, "...and you know it's always nothing, just a shadow, or a moving reflection caused by a distant passing car or..."
"It's not always nothing," my neighbor said.
He's probably just being supportive until I give up the ice cold budweiser he asked for, is what I think at the time but go on to tell him "...anyway, I'm sitting there in the back and I have this sensation that someone is at the front door so I do what I do which is lean my head down low, I'm sitting on a bucket you see, and look under the house to spy legs or feet out front but what I see instead is a face, not black or white but more red, or just a white person with all the blood rushing to his or her head, It was hard to tell the sex of it, looking at me looking at it, both of us more or less with our heads upside down. We stared at each other like that for several moments until I decided to get up and rush the sixty feet to find, well, nothing, of course. There was no one there, and the front door was firmly shut. But not locked. I felt certain that if a person had existed they were now in the house, because it would have been hard to disappear, completely, if they had just run off when I got up. So I push the door open hard with a breezy but nervous 'hello,' and then enter the premises of a place temporarily not my home. I pick up a hammer and the heart is pounding away as I look in cubbly holes and behind sheets of plywood leaning against the wall. I get to the last possible hiding place which of course now is a place where all my cumulative fear can focus and I start hissing, or some bizarre emission of sound, maybe a little fricative thrown in, and I have to admit I was almost scaring myself, but also psyching up to bury a hammer into the ephemeral flesh of the intruder. I honestly never thought of the presence as flesh and blood. Anyway, I found nothing or no one in the house."
"What are you gonna do."
"Nothing."
My neighbor then told me about visitors from beyond over at his house and how it pisses him off and he wants to get a BB gun to scare them away. I offered that I was not so sure about the efficacy of BB guns for scaring ghosts but..."it's such an unknown area of study..." "...except for Ghostbusters," he cut in, ..." but you know, yeah, maybe a BB pistol would be good."
My neighbor and I might not know exactly where the other is coming from on any given issue but he plays along with me as well as anyone will so I have to give him his props for that, though I'm pretty sure we were both mostly serious for awhile during our ghost discussion.
"...and sometimes I look over here at night from across the street and see this guy standing here like this..." and he made his arms extend outward, like a limp crucifixion, with fingers toward the ground.
hello nola, I'm not getting much computer time lately, spread thin between dumaine and rocheblave. i saw a ghost under the house at rocheblave today, looking at me looking at him/her. This looks good and like a lot of work, thanks webmaster jimb
Cat Story
I just now saw something that I have never seen before and hope never to see again.
There are flies in the Dumaine house and this has come to mean one thing to us the residents here. Something dead: in the walls?, the attic?, or under the house.
To get to the beginning of this we'd have to go a ways back to the day I quit smoking while a slightly insane fellow named James sat with me on this Dumaine porch bumming what I told him would be the last, "so let's live it up." I have not seen James since that day. It was late August of the year 1998, almost three years before this day today when I would see something I have never seen before, and me a guy with eyes wide open. Mama D was still alive at the time.
Near the end of the pack a matronly feline who would soon be named Point Blank (posthumously, I'm afraid), ran in front of a small red car and became in an instant nothing more than cooling meat on the asphalt covered brick pavers of Dumaine. I scooped her still limp facsimile of catness with a shovel into the dumpster across the street. I wrote a piece about it and ended it or nearly ended it with the sad sad imagery of Point Blank's recently born progeny lurking longingly by the dumpster.
Those cats begat and so on until there were three fairly identical balls of pitiful fluff begging for food at the back door here. This will be if nothing else a lesson: Don't feed the strays.
One lost half his tail, one got eaten by wild dogs, and one remained, with or without our care, feeding, or watering, she remained. I did occasionally entertain what now can be seen as fairy tale versions of how she survived.
Is that enough clue? Just twenty minutes ago now I'm looking for the paper which might have been thrown over the fence into the side alley (yard) and what I witnessed is what I'm telling you. The little cat, scrawny, no bigger than an adolescent kitten but truly an adult, bent over a sleepy newborn kitten, sucking it's fur. However the kitten is not sleepy but dead, and its mama is not sucking but chewing, and the kitten is not all kitten but half gone; the hind quarters are missing.
And I've toyed with the theme of kitten as metaphor for the urban reality here but the metaphors are not up to it, are not up to describing or enhancing a reality so severe as a scrawny feline you shoo away from rubbing against your leg because the vibrating neediness of it repels you, you suspect a con, you have good reason to suspect a setup, and the needs you don't provide for another are often met in ways you'd rather not suspect.
Incident Free
I have mentioned before the Church's Chicken at the corner of Broad and Bienville because it is the only local fast food establishment that has in recent years had a cold blooded murder occur inside it's doors.
I have for some years fantasized about eating healthier and for this reason have become a semi-regular customer at Church's because they offer collard greens as a side, and I, perhaps ignorantly, think that greens are the healthiest food on the planet.
Last night for my dinner fix I went to Church's (mostly for the biscuits and greens but got some disgusting greasy chicken to go with it because it is afterall, a chicken joint) and was met at once by a time/space warped reality occuring inside a jail cell, which did however also offer chicken, biscuits, and collard greens for the hungry, so I placed my order, sat down, and waited.
"I kill all you mthrfkers and think no more 'bout it. I just finished three so I ain't worried about the time."
"They'llah give you death for that," his partner responded.
There were in all four or five teenager/twentysomethings in their group and the leader was the one just out of jail and this may have been his victory celebration. They were very loud and abusive in a very controlled manner. They had made the inside of the small glass walled chicken establishment a worrisome and threatening place to be. The cashier had the look of someone who came to work to get away from the stupidily loud aggressive behavior of the street warrior and here was met with its most boisterous example.
He sauntered up once and said to her, "How about yous come to work for me?" but he couldn't seem to conjure just what it is he did or what it is she might do for him. Her pained expression showed previous experience in dealing with the ignorant showman.
At one point I was the midpoint of a diagonal path between the big man and his second in command and there was to be a tossed exchange of a packet of ketchup. I could see my order being boxed up and was hoping to flee this place without incident because as I have alluded this was not a place one could consider "incident free."
The packet went wide around my table as if my hope for all things to be copacetic was in itself a beneficent polarity shield. Upon fleeing I did not look back, nor do I wish to, anymore.