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List Of Lists
An advertising man and a real estate man came to the farm over the labor day weekend and I'm not saying which one and I'm certainly not saying it was the one that owns the farm, but one of them set off a package of firecrackers in the house, right under the bedroom I have been sleeping in. And in which I was sleeping at the time, so that the first two blasts echoing well beyond their intended outdoor potential because they weren't set off outdoors but instead as I keep mentioning, indoors, in the acoustically triumphant foyer of a 150 year old house, well, they, those first two blasts made me wake up in New Orleans, which is quite a bit of instantaneous transporting, but then I was awake and realized it was just firecrackers as the final 18 blasts did that audible dance very unlike gunfire. I did not at first know they had set them off indoors, right below my room, until a minute or two later and all that noxious firecracker smoke started seeping into the quarters where I had been perchancing to dream. I do not know how giants of business behave in your part of the world but out here it is becoming increasingly obvious that you can't really know a thing about human potential until after the last act is written. Until each and every individual giant of business has explored their inner insanity.
It has been suggested by more than a few that as a way to address the unique lack of structure to my life out here that I keep lists. Lists of accomplished tasks and lists of tasks to be done and lists of materials to acquire. I could also make a list of lists.
Yesterday, a day I don't feel I was overly ambitious, I got up and unloaded the dishwasher and loaded the dishwasher. I went out and clipped the dead hydrangea blossoms. Clipped or dead-headed the daisies. Turned off the new sprinkler system which did not seem to be accessing its computerized potential of knowing that it was raining, and has been raining off and on for several days. I checked the pool skimmer and found no baby marmots floating. Added some chemicals, skimmed off a few floating leaves. Trimmed off the tops of the seven foot tall round bushes in the center island out front and raked into piles those trimmings. I had a mid-morning business meeting with the guy who mows the 5 acres of lawn and sent him off with promises of future lawn cutting profit. I tested Mr. BC's new fly rod for a few minutes on the pond. Had late breakfast of hanger steak, lentils, and swiss chard. After breakfast had a brief business meeting with the advertising man's wife about local real estate potential. Then I went out and removed the 12 purple martin apartments from their pole and loaded them into jeep for storage in the barn because there are no resident martins yet and the pole will have to be moved elsewhere, away from the soon to be constructed outdoor fireplace and bocce court. I think the pole took a little knock from the backhoe and is bent so I'll let those worker guys extract it. I trimmed back the bushes from the side of the house by the pecan and walnut trees and set up the ladder and ran the extension cord and put on my dust mask and set to ready my Makita disc sander and then it started raining. I went inside and installed the new toilet paper holder and toilet handle in one of the bathrooms.
My lovely guests left--and I peripherally count as my accomplishment--without blowing off their fingers or sinking a barbless fly hook into their lips or initiating a lawsuit for slipping on the bath mat. I located and removed from premises some mouse doo-doo.
As it has been a guest-laden couple of weeks I paused and luxuriated in the solitude while gazing at wispy white clouds moving across the green mountains surrounding me 360.
A car comes up the drive and it is my tennis pro friend just stopping by to chat. Who gives a damn if I'm all chatted out? Followed shortly thereafter by my hay-cutting friend who needs a new kidney, and in his own right is quite the chatterer. They left and I watched some tennis for awhile until Mr. BC's brother shows up with his French girlfriend. He brought me a 300gb hard drive just because they were on sale and he is wonderful and thoughtful human being. He did not set off fireworks in the house but he did bite the tip off what could have been but wasn't a deadly hot pepper. At least he didn't intentionally step in a pit of fire and then accidently fall in nearly frozen pool water, which I'm not saying he ever did anymore than I'm saying his brother set off fireworks in the house. I shared a couple of roma tomatoes dipped in sea salt with the French girlfriend, then said, ok, its time for yall to get the hell out of here, and forced on them a bottle of champagne and some pistachios, for the road.
So Much Of Everything
So much of everything regarding writing is about timing and place unless you are disciplined and or professional which I'm not and don't consider necessarily bad but it could be and can explain the lack of writing here. Don't think I'm writing behind your back even though I am in some fashion but it's really none of your business at this point in time. Stay tuned or don't, you have to be comfortable with your own decisions.
Lance RIP
hey, i wanted to thank you again for the paint job. if you send me a receipt i can at least try to get you some of the insurance money. that seems fair to me.
i’ll go back to new orleans probably end of september. the whole notion fills me with dread, but i won’t be eligible for grant money unless i’m living on the premises.
bad news: lance got himself shot and killed last weekend in houston. i thought you’d want to know.
-m
New Orleans Murders Itself
Saturday, July 29, 2006
--4 found shot dead on street in Treme
Four people were killed Friday night in a shooting in the Treme neighborhood.
Friday, July 28, 2006
--N.O. man slain while changing tire
A 21-year-old New Orleans man was shot to death Thursday morning as he changed a tire on his car outside his eastern New Orleans apartment complex, police said.
Thursday, July 27, 2006
--2 held in killing of N.O. barber
Police on Tuesday night arrested a pair of roommates suspected of murdering a popular Bywater barber early last week. The pair burst into a trailer next to Clifton Barnes' barber shop and demanded cash before killing him, the New Orleans Police Department said.
--Drugs detected in 4 people killed in June
Each of the victims in a quadruple slaying last month near Slidell tested positive for at least three drugs, reinforcing detectives' assertions that narcotics played a key role in the "execution-style" killings, St. Tammany Parish Coroner Peter Galvan said Wednesday.
--Woman found dead of gunshot
The body of an unidentified woman was found Wednesday in the 4500 block of Paris Avenue, New Orleans police said.
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
--Police seek identity of man shot to death on street
New Orleans authorities are seeking help in identifying a man who was found shot to death Sunday night in a 6th Ward neighborhood.
Monday, July 24, 2006
--Man, 40, is found shot dead in N.O.
New Orleans police are investigating the shooting death of 40-year-old man whose body was found at his eastern New Orleans home Sunday.
Sunday, July 23, 2006
--Marrero man shot to death in SUV
New Orleans police are investigating the killing early Saturday of a 36-year-old Marrero man who was shot several times while riding in a sport utility vehicle at Calliope and Tchoupitoulas streets, near the Crescent City Connection.
--Teen wanted in crime spree arrested
New Orleans police early Saturday arrested a 17-year-old wanted on six counts of attempted murder and a string of other crimes.
On Company Time
Freddy from Honduras said of his work mates, two are from Guatemala, and two from Bolivia. Any Salvadorans? I asked. No, Freddy grimaced. No te gusta Salvador? I asked. No, Freddy said. Porque? I asked. Because they kill women and children, he said. Cuando, I asked. Setena y siete, setenta y ocho, he said. Oh, si, recuerdo, I said, remembering back to my college months in Austin and all the love everyone was feeling for Daniel Ortega. Freddy is from the state of Limpira, which borders El Salvador. He is only twenty-five so he is carrying on a hatred handed down by his older relatives. Freddy said a nice house can be got in Honduras for $7,000. I paid $22,000 for my house in New Orleans. It was a fixer-upper.
I was talking to one of the Guatemalans around lunchtime yesterday. It was his birthday. He asked me to take him a la tienda. So I did and he got him two packs of Marlboro lights and a drink. He bought me a large Heinekin. Earlier he had asked me what I smoked and I showed him and he said, oh, Camel. I smoke Marlboro light, girly cigarette, but Camel for man (I tried to show him that my Camels were lights too but he didn't get it). Yes, I said, lowering my voice and puffing out my chest, and hacking up a hairball.
I want to now shine a brief light on the Marshall office of VDOT which has some good men and women working for it and some with rather antiquated racial attitudes towards its African-American workers. I will spare you the details because I would hate to taint a burgeoning lawsuit. But it seems they have a lot of fun down there with their workers, and even Anglo on Anglo gags are rife with hilarity. Workers have been known to duct tape weaker workers into submission and then sit on their chests and wag penises in their faces. So if you live in Virginia and pay taxes you might make a note on your next tax bill that you would prefer your money not go to projects that would include penis-wagging on company time. Unless that is something you do support. I am not here to make judgments.
Deputy Dog Lives Another Day
Dear Mom,
I don't know if you remember this but back when you were still living I wrote to you about a barking dog in Virginia, down the hill from where I stay. He would bark all night at the moon and stars and the foxes and if there were sheep out here he would bark at the sheep. A yappy bark. A high pitched yappy bark. The sound would travel hundreds of feet and come into my bedroom and make me feel insane in a way disproportionate to the aggravation. If I were a superpower I might, to show how discontented I am, fire bomb a hundred small cities and follow up with a couple of atomic bombs dropped on the citizens of two larger cities, or, say I were the bitch step sister of a superpower and some mean people kidnapped two of my people, and these mean people were a group with no agenda that I considered relevant, I might fly around in jets and drop bombs over the entire country where the mean people holed up. What, mom? The innocents? Please, please mother, there are no innocents.
By the way, speaking of ill-logic, after a lifetime of eye-wandering under-achieving, with a list of suspect accomplishments including, college-quiting, cross-country hitchhiking, boxcar riding, ghetto dwelling, and a series of moderately satisfying dead-end blue collar jobs, I have ended up as sole occupant of a rather large house on top of a hill, surrounded 360 degrees by Blue Ridge foothills on a property that has a pond, a pool, a tennis court, and as we speak, a rather ambitious re-landscaping of all the land between the pool and the tennis court. Yes mother, I am in the bighouse. What? No mother, no. I know that's what Cagney and Robinson called the...no, I don't mean THAT bighouse. No, unh uh, I've never meant it that way, don't be silly.
Anyway, to the point--I am several hundred feet higher up the hill from the yappy dog and I can still hear it, sometimes waking up in the middle of the night to hear it, and so I was just wondering if maybe Jesus would let you have a dog I could send you this one. I know that after our cat, Frank, died, you said you didn't want anymore pets, but that's been a good many years ago and I think you might enjoy this dog, its no bigger than a puppy really, and...no, I wouldn't say it was cute but do you remember that cartoon Deputy Dog?, well, it looks kind of like that.
Sure, yeah, no, I understand. No, you are absolutely right, I should count my blessings. What? No, this isn't long-distance. No, really, I don't think you have to worry about that anymore, I think you are operating with the currency of eternity now and so....click...dial tone. Ok then, it was nice chatting.
One Twin Banging
The police came banging on my door yesterday. I opened the door and it was one of the twins. "Jesus man, why you bangin' like that?, you sound like the police."
"I'm not the police."
"You sound like the police, what's up?"
"Just wanted to see if I could take a quick dip in the pool."
"Of course man, go ahead." Up to this point I had thought this twin was the other twin, the one who is the far less likely to abuse the privilege. But quickly I realized this twin was not the one I thought he was and what the hell is up with these twins now starting to look like each other? They didn't use to even seem like brothers much less twins but now they are like mirror images of each other.
And then these two teenagers, his step children?, come up and he says, "I just wanted to come by and check with you and see if it was all right..." and I interrupted him and said, "it looks like you already decided it was all right."
"No man, it's not like that."
"Go ahead and get wet."
He tells his step children, teenagers both of them, to go swimming, he wants to catch up with me because I had been in New Orleans all winter and spring and he hadn't talked to me in so long. He used "New Orleans" like a currency. As if it were a valuable thing that would be of interest to the teenagers but they like the rest of the world overwhelmed by who will be the next American Idol or get voted off which island or fired from which high level job, did not, do not, give a damn. Only Brad Pitt can save you now.
I don't know if the guy was coked up (a possibility) or just really excited to see me (unlikely) but he talked a mile a minute--about what, I cannot tell you, because I really wasn't listening. I was so mad at myself for my mistake of thinking he was the good twin instead of the fucked up one. How long would I have to listen to this drivel designed to suggest an age old intimacy? You cannot be nice to people who see niceness as a weakness to be taken advantage of. From a couple of sources I have enough information about this guy's recent behaviour to just scratch him off the list of people I need to be even nominally nice to.
Well, sun's starting to come up, new day. Another bird just smacked into one of the windows up here at the bighouse, makes my heart race.
Dude banging like a cop on my door, that was a bad start.