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Synchronicity And The Jaded Warrior Boy 4.6.98
Yesterday, on our way out of the hood heading for the swamp and driving down Ursulines through the sixth ward, Shelton spots his mom, Myrna, and yells for me to stop because Myrna waved to him and that means she might give him some
money. I pull over after about a block and Shelton scrambles out of the back seat (Fermin is riding shotgun on the way out, Shelton will ride on the way back) and starts running back up Ursulines. In the rearview mirror I watch him run as Myrna runs from the opposite direction to meet him. On the radio
is playing this rather soulful, full of lament, love song about "how I used to love you," and I can almost imagine the field of daisies which in fact they are not running through. Glynn in the backseat says,
"Look at Shelton and his ma running like that with that music on the radio, its like..."
"Yeah, I was just thinking that myself, like this commercial I remember..."
"I know," Glynn says, "its just like that." And Jacque, next to Glynn, says, "what are ya'll taking about?"
As we approach the swamp in Laffite (as in Jean, the pirate) Shelton is really put out with this surprise location and in his best 'Mississippi gee golly shucks' voice starts up with,
"Wowww, there'll be trees and water and wierd plants, wowww, and maybe we'll see an alligator or sumthin.'"
Shelton is almost always the dissenting voice and has voiced displeasure at virtually every new place to which I take them. When we get out of the car and find our way to the beginning of the trail Shelton really can't get it.
"What are we doing here?"
"We're going to look around."
"Why?"
"Look Shelton," I say, "on Dumaine I gave you the choice of coming or going and you came, when I parked the car I gave you the choice of coming or going and you came. Now that you're here with us it would be nice if you could try not to ruin things for the rest of us."
But June Cleaver doesn't always make sense to Shelton so he says, "But really, I'm just asking, what are we doing here?"
So I hit him with Hendrix and say, "Existing Shelton, nothing but existing."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean much of the the time we are simply existing, without a clue or a plan or a future. Today is one of those days Shelton. But one of the small things we have control over is where we exist. Today, it will be in a swamp. Unless of course you would rather exist in the car.
Later he gets into running a head on the path and hiding behind cypress trees so he can scare us when we pass.