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Temporary Christianity
I have joined in partnership with God and the US Federal Government to provide housing for those that need it.

A woman from the Pentecostal church has been coming by to visit me. Yesterday between knocking and me answering she was singing a little bit and I thought--who that singing? I don't know singing people. It was her though, just checking up. I said I was lagging a bit and she said we were on God's time and he would direct us to our mutual best advantage. Cool, cool, very cool, dig it, I see the attraction. Give it to God.

She wants to rent the place but needs section 8 assistance and I need guaranteed rent money and a reasonably decent tenant. So the Federal Gov will pay her rent (110% of market value) directly to me and I will proudly side step my potential as a gentrifier. As to which level of hell is my due for partnership with the US Government I say one is like another, only different.

I am preparing to head back to that bucolic Rappahannock hill I was on last Fall and early Winter but I don't want to move, or ascend, to quickly and get the bends, so I'm moving slow, and my future renter's assertion that God is leading us I take as my convenient due.

I was on Dumaine earlier today; Mq did not get juvenile life and is out looking good. Just like his older brother (who last year committed suicide by motorcycle at an Orleans Street intersection, and previous to that was regularly in and out of jail for serious crime), Mq looks healthier and younger and more innocent after a lockup. He said hey Mr. Jim and I just smiled at him and he smiled back like he the definition of innocence. And in a way he actually is. F somehow has inherited the weight of the block, to carry by his lonesome, until backup returns. A recent shooting around the corner has certain players laying low. He could barely afford me a whisper and even when he did say hey I inadvertently ignored him.

Me and M we own and rent out a house together in North Carolina and sometimes, actually on a pretty regular basis, they miss rent payments. This last one is a kind of unique twist for us and when M called to check up the man told her everything was cool, they've been making the payments. So we said maybe (even though mailed statements show no such deposits), shit happens, we'll check with the bank, and by we I mean M, because I took the first seven years and she gets the next seven. As mean landlord, or bitch as she says, I say sure, and she says, yeah I guess it works for you.

I don't really dig confrontation that much (or read--he's a pussy) so I would during my term just deposit about a thousand dollars a year into the account from which both the mortgage is subtracted and the rent supposedly is deposited into. For the most part this would cover their slackness. At 300 dollars rent we ain't really making any money, just covering the mortgage. They get a small house on 2 acres backing up to hundreds and hundreds of undeveloped wooded and tobacco fielded acres. We put in new deep well a few years ago. Draws about a million gallons a minute, or so.

Sometimes we feel their pain; mostly we are pretty well individually immersed in our own. Just wish they'd pay the fucking rent.

Well the next day M gets a call from the wife all worried about being thrown out onto the street, or in the case of the North Carolina property, gravel road, or woods, and says she has been keeping her poor fiscal management a secret from hubby and can she make amends by such and such a fashion, please don't tell hubby. So that's the deal, for now. Partners in deception.

Christians are everywhere. Had a conversation with one, a friend, on Dumaine today. Hey, have you seen the Passion of Christ, I asked her. She said, No, I said don't bother. Two very enthusiastic thumbs down. She wasn't having it. I'm not attacking the story of Christ or religion in general (although I kind of blathered up to that later), I just think the movie sucked. Evidently the movie can't suck, from a Christian standpoint. Later I said I wanted to come to her BFC (big church, often televised) and spout my insane notions about the appropriate role of Christians in a modern world and she said no. But I could come if I just wanted to be a quiet little sheep. I pretended a great and fiery disdain for that alternative; I wanted to be up at the pulpit, to preach, to question what is the good coming from all you people sitting in your seats every Sunday?

I love this woman for letting me talk ridiculous shit to her. At one point she asked me what it was I was seeking and I said--someone to play with, an admission as truthful as it is pitiful.

She tried to get me back on safe ground, talking about movies. Yeah, Kill Bill 2 sounds good, and I told her I had rented the vampire/werewolf movie Underworld and liked it ok, Kate Beckinsale, yum, and she mentioned a new one, monster movie, haven't seen the ads I said, but saw one a minute ago, how serendipitous (yeah I know she was in something like that too), the new monster movie stars Kate Beckinsale. My Christian friend did not know, or mention this. She likes a good horror or science fiction movie though, or one with a high violence factor. So I suggested she see Passion of Christ as fourth on a list of what's out now. She wanted to see Hellboy, too.

I went to G's high school baseball game the other day and he sure do like to crowd that plate. Life in the 6th Ward has provided him with a courage that finds him smirking at the limited possibilities of pain from a 60 or 75mph fastball. He stands tall and perfectly still at the plate, none of that fashionable wiggling or bat waving. He took a pitch to the thigh, and advanced to first base. On his teammate's single and the subsequent bad throw to first base, G found himself safe at third after a head first slide. He scored that inning, giving his team their first run, against the opponent's seven. The pitcher for G's team gave up three homers and committed three errors and probably did not get the game ball. Still, G's team made a go of it, only to lose eleven to eight. G had a triple, and scored another run. Ran down and tagged a runner caught between the bases. Later made a long and strong throw from third base to out the runner at first.

Towards the end when the second base umpire made a couple of bad calls things turned a little racial and as me and that ump and one of the coaches from the opposing team were the only white people among the 150 or so black I just bowed my head a little bit and felt the warm protective glow of temporary Christianity course through my veins.

Up on that Dumaine porch people pass on the sidewalk right in front of you and some you recognize and acknowledge and others you don't. There is a sort of halfway house up the block a ways and there is this one long time tenant whom I recognize but only to just nod at. To unfairly judge by appearances, this man may have a mild mental disability. The Christian and me had paused in our conversation and this fellow passed by. The Christian and M acknowledged the man and when he was by me I gave him a cursory glance, a brief smile, and a quick hey. This was more or less like a hundred other passings by this man over the years. This time however, the man paused, extended his left hand, which I grabbed onto with my own outstretched left hand, and the man said to me, Praise the Lord, and then immediately continued on down the block towards the Broad Street bus stop.
- jimlouis 4-21-2004 7:18 pm [link] [add a comment]