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So Long Dumaine
This is the last transmission from Dumaine. Am moving the computer to the unfinished Rocheblave this afternoon. Will be offline for an undetermined amount of time, possibly into the New Year. Yall be cool. Have put up a mail box at the house N. Rocheblave, NOLA, but it hasn't been tested yet, maybe they will deliver to me, maybe they won't, so send benignly before you stuff an envelope with hundred dollar bills. And uh, hell, Seasons Greetings. jml.
Pork Chops And The Blonde Woman
I am not a repressed personality, exactly, and yet I have these episodes which lead me to believe I'm wrong about that.
I see him out ot the corner of my eye now, whereas before it was just an idea, me being silly, thinking about dancing like PeeWee Herman in public places, to the muzak; in the grocery store, to the theatre chain theme song; in front of the audience, only there I also fly, swooping over their heads like one of those whatchamacallits, you know, the purple martin.
Today at work I saw him, that is me, dancing to a disco song in front of the mirrors in Willie Roaf's excercise room. He doesn't embarrass me, or scare me, even though he maybe should, him being there and all. It doesn't seem like normality, but so much doesn't if I really examine it. I'm not really into the examining all that much so I don't know what to think about some of these things, when they become alive on their own. I guess I should just be polite. Nice to meet you.
Wednesday is Jamaican Jerk Pork Chop day at the Robert's Fresh Food Market. The "e" in Robert has one of those dashes over it, if you get me. It's a grocery store serving plate lunches, but I mostly get them for dinner right before they throw them out. Doesn't look like the Chops are too popular. Probably too spicey.
The server is talking to a stock boy. The server says while I wait patiently that it doesn't seem right if he just have two dimes that they charging him like that and the stock boy says somewhat proudly the same thing happened to him and he was lookin' at five but they had to reduce the charges on account of something I didn't understand because now I was thinking about those pork chops.
"Whatchu need?" the server asked me.
"Pork Chop Dinner," I said.
"Pork Chop Dinner," she lilted, sounding for some reason impressed.
She was putting down a heavy bed of yellow rice, which was a good beginning. And then she laid on top of it two large chops and juiced them good with gravey. "You see I'm giving you two chops instead of one," she said.
"Yes, that look's good, " I said
"Just supposed to give you one," she said.
"Yeah, last time I got two, but..."
"You should try them first, they spicey."
"I know, I like it like that. I know about 'em, I've eaten everything ya'll cook here."
"Must be a bachelor," the woman standing beside me said.
"Yes," I said.
"You telling a story," the server said.
"Why you say that?" I said.
"'Cause I seen you in here with your woman," she said.
"Not me."
"Yes you."
The woman standing next to me said to the server, "He sounds guilty."
"I wish I were (sort of) but there is no one now so you must have seen someone else."
"Take off your glasses," the server said.
I raised the black lenses and looked at her brown to brown.
"Yeah, I saw you," she said.
"Now you've hurt my feelings, not being able to tell me from the others."
"You was talking to a blonde woman and I said 'you not having a plate today' and you said, 'no, you was eating at home.'"
"Blonde huh?"
"He's guilty," the woman beside me said.
"Not of this, but I do like the way you tell a story, I'm just a little hurt you think I'm someone else. I would recognize you if I saw you again." This young woman had never served me before. She was most decidedly not Drucilla, who is prettier, but would be too timid to serve me an extra illegal pork chop.
The server printed out a bar code tag and after sticking it to the side of the styrofoam container handed the meal over.
"Nice weight," I said.
"Check the tag," she said.
She had under charged me.
"Nice, thanks," I said.
"They gonna have me throw 'em all out in a little while."
I nodded to the woman standing beside me and took my leave.
At the register, checking out, a blonde woman about my age queried my cashier as to the location of the small hand held plastic baskets one might use to shop for small amounts and the cashier did not know what the hell she was talking about, and after the woman had disappeared, said as much to me. I thought about taking up for the blonde woman, she was not crazy afterall, but thought better of it, hell, I did not even know that blonde woman. Maybe she was crazy.
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.