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Up In There
I emailed M, who is housesitting for me, keep your head down, referring to last Sunday's shooting around the corner at Bienville and Galvez, a shooting which resulted in one death and three woundings. She responded that she hears far more gunfire in my 4th Ward neighborhood than she heard over the many years at the 6th Ward house on Dumaine. And she wasn't sure if she was still receiving my cell phone bill from Sprint.
That being said, the day to day calm of my Rocheblave house is most pleasant to a soul needing respite from Dumaine, and this she is finding out just as I did after my retreat. Dumaine, which is more than just a street name, but you'd have to really taste it to know what I mean. So she says she will gladly continue the housesitting until the New Year, instead of Halloween which had been my original return date.
The asbestos removal team was here yesterday so I took another day off and went back up to Skyline Drive. Up in there I saw God, but he didn't see me.
Passing Through
Last week in America outside Dean and DeLuca's gourmet grocery in Georgetown on M street a man did howl, lamenting the world around him that lacked the common decency of respect. He threatened to break windows to even the score. We the passerby counted our good fortune and moved about with a practiced lack of passion.
In Israel a discontented Palestinian woman set off explosives at the popular Maxim restaurant, killing herself and 20 others, showing perhaps to what lengths a person disrespected can go. And the decapitated infant will not speak of passion unrestrained.
For the time being I seem to have removed all the sharp edges from my life but never underestimate the bedpost, the wonder bar, or the mud scraper, all things that can sneak up on you, put you inside the world of pain.
Yesterday, seeking evermore isolation, I drove up to Skyline Drive, inside that Shenandoah National Park, flashed my pass, responded sincerely and dull wittedly to the park ranger's question as to my destination and then listened as she patiently forgave my ignorance; she just wanting to point out that part of the park is still closed due to hurricane damage. I did not tell her of my often misunderstood default credo that has me, regardless of the various available dangers, going until it becomes painfully obvious I can go no more.
I took the south fork at Thorton Gap and drove a fair piece, parked, stepped over the rock guard rail and followed the foot path until it gave out at the first sign of difficulty. I only went a couple hundred yards past that myself, where I came upon a Flinstones-like easy chair. I cleaned it up a bit and then sat back to let time ease on by. I came to conclusion about nary a thing but felt none the lesser for that.
Walking carefully back up the hill I came to a bramble that was also a path of least resistance and entered into it.
Without the vision of it I felt that jolt of another's presence and stopped so to speak dead in my tracks. In front of me only twenty feet away was an 8-point Buck, sitting comfortably chewing his cud. As I had no weapon, nor would I desire one in this context, I felt somewhat disadvantaged, on someone else's turf, that someone with eight sharp spears on top of his head. For only two or three minutes I stood staring at the deer, momentarily wondering if he could see me; if I was there. A treasure trove of questions came pouring into me at that point, all of which I retreated from, just as I was going to retreat from this deer. He watched my circumnavigtion of his world and then, far as I know, went back to chewing his cud.
Later, back up here on the hill, in this world more manicured, I saw a young black bear lope across the property, its body language clearly stating, I come in peace, just passing through.
Cell Phone
I took off from work yesterday to go into Manassas and get a replacement cell phone for the one I lost, so I got that, the 666 number going again, but it has little practical use unless I leave the farm, cell phones don't work out here.
I sat out in the parking lot and checked my messages, about a month's worth. My sister was calling, not from California, but from Dallas, at our mom's house, you know just checking in but it's been six weeks since you moved from New Orleans and no one has heard from you...so me and mom are just laughing about that...
Ok, thanks Sarah, I'm working on the good son angle more than I am working on many other angles of my life that clearly need work, I have written mom two letters recently, and hope to actually be a good son someday. I have some contact numbers that work and some that don't, this I have written to mom, but at times it confuses me so we can guess what its doing to mom.
To the anonymous gangbanger from New Orleans who left me a snippy message to quit calling his beeper I have this to say--Man, f*** you, what I be callin' your bitch ass for?
To Lou in Austin--I lost your number Lou, and K's, so thanks for calling me but I can't call you back because often the # you call from doesn't show up on Caller ID.
My nephew in New Orleans called to update me on New Orleans stuff, the Canal streetcar project is a little behind schedule but they're shooting for November/December 03 and hope to have a big opening weekend party. Another big police corruption case, or two, going on, based out of Internal Affairs, just up the street from my Rocheblave house. My nephew, Ross, he didn't tell me about the mentally deranged man in the Sixth Ward, around the corner from the Dumaine house, who held off police for hours, up inside his house, and finally had to be gassed out. Or the six time suspected serial murderer who calmly turned himself in to police at the Canal and Broad area Burger King, right around the corner from the Rocheblave house, but he's a busy college professor, my nephew is, how is he supposed to keep me up with everything going on in the 4 thru 7? I check Nola.com periodically.
I had some other messages, it was nice to hear your voice.
In bed this morning, awake awaiting sunrise, I was thinking again about that flick I saw a few days ago, Code Unknown, with Juliette Binoche, about her husband in the movie, who is a photographer on periodic assignment in the war torn Kosovo, and in one scene he's just back, and at a bar with wife and two other couples, he seems a little unsettled, and there is laughter and gaiety around him while one of the husbands asks him earnestly about his work and what it's like to witness horror in a war zone and his description was one I could so relate to, how it was hard at first, but then it became easier, and in a way almost preferable to the environment he was currently occupying. I think he was talking about the ill effects of the affluence of too many choices.
Happy Birthday Mr. BC
Me and Mr. BC we built small gunpowder bombs together, flew kites, rode bikes, tossed footballs, baseballs, basketballs, tennis balls, and wiffle balls at each other. Did Yoyos, tops, and water guns every year. He threw a dart at me once. I still owe him for that one. I went to church, he didn't, and I used it against him in loosely ruled scrabble games by telling him my questionable words were from the bible.
He can draw, play music, and make tons of money and I can't.
I have ingested things he has never heard of.
He has seen things I haven't and me I've seen the same thing.
Tossing a pebble, he once knocked a BB gun out of a kid's hand.
He broke my plane on a string, he still owes me for that.
There was a song from our youth that was about a hippie trying to fit into the establishment by putting his hair up under his hat to apply for jobs and a line in the song started "Imagine that..." and when one of us began that the other would finish the line which was-- "me working for you."
At one point he began buying Mercedes Benzes. For awhile he had a twenty-year-old Cadillac with an eight-track player and a new Benz sedan with CD player, not one of the starter models. This was like 15 years ago now and I was staying with him for a few months in another big house he had up on another hill. The thing is I could never remember to put the Benz in Park. But the long driveway was pretty level at the top so the car stayed in place until I got to the front door and for whatever reason I turned around to look at the car I don't know but as soon as I looked at it it started to move. I chased it for a few feet, heroically flung open the door and jumped inside to jam the brake pedal, two feet from head on to a tree. He sicced some Jehovah's Witnesses on me not long after that, so I guess we're even on that one.
He knows what "you did it purposely" means.
He was on the Grassy Knoll in Dallas, November 1963.
He's got a great wife and three great kids, he can thumb type on a blackberry, he's come a long way, from the Badger Days, let's give him a big hand and a--Happy Birthday Mr. BC.
New Orleans Winter
I've been tempted these last few sunrises to use the word "suffused" in part of the description of what's happening to that westerly Rappahannock back drop but tempted is as far as I'm going with it.
Sometimes I talk to people around here. I asked a person the other day--does it get cold in these parts?, they said nah.
Okay, let me start over, I'm from a subtropical climate, does it get cold around here? It's the last day of September and it is forty something degrees. That seems a little cool to me, or to be more exact, like an average winter day in New Orleans. It feels good though, so far.
Yesterday evening I went over for the first time to the local art gallery/video rental store, talked to June for awhile. She only has a few DVDs, mostly VHS, but I got this one with Juliette Binoche called Code Unknown, French film I guess, and it bugged me at first, the way they cut the scenes up, and it had that French interconnectedness thing going on, like when Linklatter? did Slackers everyone was comparing his style to some French film maker(s), it wasn't like Slackers, Code Unknown wasn't, but anyway, the scenes fade to black except it's not really a fade, it's abrupt, and stand alone as vignettes, but also, more or less, tell a connected story with groups of characters connected by blood or marriage intertwining themselves with other groups, except for the one kid who can't get past the door code--he is disengaged from the group. And the deaf children. The deaf children, even in their group, seem disconnected from everyone else. So in the end, I dug it. Kind of reminds me of that German writer J in Jersey City turned me onto, only I cannot think of that German writer's name. But the theme, I can tell you, is isolation.
Okay, I need to start generating a little heat, ciao for now.
Motion
It takes a while to get used to a new place. Some places leave you alone (New Orleans) and some places don't (everywhere else).
Last night's overhead canvas at dusk was a black and blue Pollack with a slice of moon.
I'm not sure what to focus on.
Ima go through the motions though (motion one--get out of bed), see what happens.
Zen Methodism
I was long done with thinking about dogs, freaky or otherwise, when that cute little black puppy with floppy ears lifted his head from the grass growing alongside highway 211 and oblivous, I mean completely oblivious to oncoming 55mph traffic, I mean as if this little black puppy was operating in an entirely different dimension, he puppy galloped onto the road, me the leading vehicle.
I was hoping to give the puppy quite a bit more consideration than the puppy was giving itself but I had to check the blindspot for motorcyles before changing lanes to the left and the puppy was now like playing chicken, running head on to my truck.
Lucky for the puppy's soft little skull I had a free lane so puppy lived. At least as long as time measured by my rear view mirror allowed. The Porsche behind me was similarly cautious, it's engineering wasted thanks to the many state troopers who patrol the scenic 211.
Now on 211 business, just up the road past the Chevron, I saw a giant black Labrador up in the field with the cows, only it turned out to be a baby Black Angus. I was a ranch hand for awhile. I was in that capacity once told to catch and wrestle to the ground a day old calf and it proved to be much more difficult than you would think. In fact, I failed at it.
There are no cows on this property but this morning it smells like cow waste up here. And I'm not sure but there might be a little eau d' Herman inside of up here at the big house. That's the problem with a big house, it's hard to pinpoint exactly where a cat may have peed if indeed a cat did pee.
I'm going to do a paragraph on sheetrock now so you all can run along if you even made it this far. It's not going to get any better, I'll just be talking about sheetrock.
Cancel that sheetrock. I was thinking about church again, as a pasttime, just for a little passive intellectual stimulation, but passing the Catholic church up 211 across from the gun store I noticed all the men going in wearing suits, which you'll say, sure, no big surprise, but in New Orleans I had noticed, passing churches on my Sunday morning drives, that people were dressing very casually up in many of them churches, even shorts and tennis shoes some people were wearing. But I'm a retired zen Methodist, so maybe I should be looking elsewhere than Catholic. The Episcopals have a nice building up on Gay Street, I think, in town here, and the Baptists have that really nice building with the bell tower that overlooks, among other things, this property, and the pool. Which is why you can't swim naked during the day here. There may be other reasons you can't swim naked here but I have not fully explored what they may include.
It could happen that I'll be getting bored soon. The idle mind is the devil's workshop?
Almost October
So right now I'm avoiding that trip into Warrenton for supplies, some of which won't be available and some of which I will forget. Make a list? Forget about it. I'll just forget to put something on the list.
Coming back from Sperryville just now, sated on the Egg McRae and some sort of cream cheese filled pastry, it's a little foggy out, and I become momentarily lost even though it's a straight shot. That one-two punch of not knowing where I am or who I am is ok by me but really we should all make sure we are buckled up.
I saw Leaving Las Vegas for the first time last night. What a great, sweet, brutal love story.
I lost my cell phone a couple of weeks ago. Then, or before that, my Internet connection got queer on me. Now my home phone 99*7 has gone queer and will fall into that category of things I need to attend to but probably won't. I have been for awhile not crazy about phone communication but really had started to embrace the cell phone, and except for it not working within a ten mile radius of these two houses out here I would rush out and buy a new one. I'll put that on the Warrenton list: find Sprint store in the land of Cingular.
It's almost October and I have to start making some decisions about my future.
Library Walls
Yesterday I planted a sign in the grass by the gravel driveway. On the sign, which was made of brown cardboard, I printed BIKES, and then an arrow pointing to my garage.
I was most of the day up at the big house negotiating with the electricians, who wanted to cut another hole in the ceiling just because one of the ceiling joists they were trying to run wire through had a quarter inch steel plate sandwiched in between it. I called them damn sissies, chew through it with your teeth I implored, but in the end I gave in, said, ok cut another damn hole. Then I went and lovingly washed the old dried crusty wallpaper paste off of the library walls.
Later, as the clock wound down, I wandered down the hill in search of beer. In my open garage were seven boxes (thanks cookiejack) and in each box was a different used bike, each totally cool in it's own right, one or two much better than the others. I put the Italian one together first and I don't know which of its 21 gears I was using but driving up the gravel drive and then coasting back down through the grass, was, while not better than sex as I remember it, still was much better than some other things that aren't quite as good as sex as I remember it.
It's time for Herman to go outside.
Another boy, young man really, that I know from New Orleans, has gone to jail. I didn't see it coming. It's a very tough city though, for a kid to grow up in, and stay out of trouble. It is more than unfortunate that the most successful boys club in New Orleans is the parish prison at Broad and Tulane.
I have one more bike to put together, then I'll head off to Sperryville for that Egg McRae sandwich, maybe a pastry too. Probably should haul some trash today, put those headboards on the beds, fine tune the bikes, clue in the local bank to the PO Box, and finish wiping all that crap off the library walls.
Cheesecake
Uh, For breakfast I've been hitting the dessert case at Rae's Deli, Sperryville VA., pretty hard. Today I had another variety of cheesecake. Thank you Rae. Electricians are here, and some AC/Heat guys. And I'm supposed to be painting, so bye.
Again
I am without Internet connection, yet again. At the Rappahannock Library, on a Mac, dial-up, not overly convenient, but very nice this particular second, good thing I have so little to say. Thanks NYkers for the fun last weekend.
Bee B-Gone
Yesterday, out on the farm, legs hanging over the back porch, I was telling Dave about this miniature bee that stung the beejeezus out of me while I killed time on a Georgetown nature trail the day before. A few seconds later, the very same type of bee is hovering right near my bare foot and I said, a bit over-excitedly, that's the one, that's the same bee!
Dave did not hesitate. He picked up his bb gun ( a bb gun for every camper, that's our motto at Mt. Prospect Farm), cocked it, aimed, and fired. You can argue 'till you're blue in the face that this may not be something to be proud of, but Dave put a bb right up that bee's b-hole, direct hit.
If you need someone to argue with, I'm here for you.
Catbox Fabricator
Although I generally eschew the “writer” tag (when it is applied to me) I must accept it and its baggage while I am actually writing because technically I am a writer while I am writing.
Although I generally cringe at the idea of a writer working on his “craft” I sometimes aspire to being somebody who has a craft to work on.
It is said, by writers and people who talk about writers, that a writer only has one or two stories to tell and it is those one or two stories that he will tell over and over, banging his head against the wall of self-deprecation because he can imagine the story much better than he can tell it.
So I have this story I have told several times now over the last week, mostly verbal recitation but also written once to a friend in Oakland, and it is about my life as a catbox fabricator. I sit down to write about something else, or while standing up, or sleeping, or eating, or walking, or talking and thinking about sitting down to write, and I cannot think of anything to say because I cannot get past this one story, the story of my decline; or is it an ascension? that has me falling off the high horse of idealism.
My previous lifestyle, in New Orleans, although undeniably too cloistered, too “all by myself”, perhaps not rich enough, and needing some improvement, was at least simpler (and therefore better)? in the sense that I didn’t have to tell too many lies to maintain it. I was what I was and that’s all that I was. And Shorty accepted that.
Now by “lies” I am not talking about the stuff of Peyton Place but more the stuff that just might fall under the category of mis-communication or lies of omission, or lies of convenience. I have slung the meaner, more accusatory word “duplicity” around while talking about this idea, mainly because it’s hard not to consider the global situation right now and how that lying we grownups all accept as somewhat necessary has gotten us, as a country, into, I’m sorry but it’s time to complete that “high horse” metaphor above–a heap of shit. At one point I was putting myself on the other side of the fence from it, duplicity that is, implying that my ideals protected me from such weak behaviour.
All that though was before I became a catbox fabricator. Before I took that paint stick and made cat prints in the fine, deodorized sand of expensive cat litter to hide the fact that I had been keeping Herman outside all night, providing him, although against the wishes of his owners, with an autonomy I thought he might like.
That feeling, brief though it was, of satisfaction, at the realism of my fake cat prints and the added sense of job well done at the authenticity I created by flicking some litter onto the floor, was the beginning of my remaking from whoever the hell it was I brought here. Slim, are you still with me?
Anyway, it could be said that I am happy, much as I am capable of it, and Herman, who now spends his nights up on Christine’s bed, seems really happy too.
Bill's Brother
Bill’s brother is a big time New York City advertising executive so imagine my surprise when he calls up the other day and tries to sell me a replacement flue for my fireplace. He had me going for awhile. I blushed in embarrassment behind the safety of 250 miles of separation when I realized who it was. I called him a bastard and vowed to get even. So...this is it...Bill’s brother is a lousy fireplace flue salesman. Other than that though, he’s a pretty ok guy. Okay dammit, actually, he was a pretty good fireplace flue salesman, the bastard.
Fatal Futures
Mr. BC asked me the other day how it was for me in Rappahannock. He may have been referring to the fact that I seem pretty well adjusted to my environment given that the environment here could be said to be diametrically opposed to the one I left in New Orleans.
“It’s good. It’s easy to forget,” I said.
F’s new friend, B, who with F broke into the Dumaine house several weeks ago and stole a registered handgun from E, was jailed last week for two counts of aggravated rape.
S, who me and a friend tried to help for awhile and then succeeded only in helping to put him in jail, may be out of jail now, a legal adult, which is the thing he always wanted to be. With no guidance and no proper education beyond that rich but possibly fatal future doled out on the New Orleans streets.
I was sitting on the back porch gazing out beyond the swimming pool and the acres of soft, green, manicured grass, at the solid, peaceful, non-threatening Blue Ridge Mountains. It’s easy to forget.
Mr. BC’s wife, over broiled Tilapia in lemon sauce, with asparagus and salad, asked me have any of the boys I know in New Orleans committed murder. The answer is yes. As to her question how do I feel about that and her sister’s question why have I stayed there so long, all the words that try to answer those questions ultimately succumb to the indecision of I don’t know.
X kill A at St. Philip and Dorgenios.
E2, in jail on drug charges, is charged with one count of murder, and two counts of attempted murder.
J is recovering nicely from the seven gunshot wounds he received last year. The three wounds to his face have altered his appearance somewhat.
There were three young New Orleans girls I was privileged to know for a few years, who I watched grow up in American squalor, who had so much human spirit about them, who made me laugh, and now thinking about, not knowing about, make me cry.
J2, now 17, and early on perceived as the brightest of a bunch, can’t pass the mandated state tests and has stalled out in 9th grade. He will enter a job training/GED program this coming school year.
L, who was doing Algebra in 8th grade, a thing which set him far apart from his peers, dropped out in 10th grade, became a corporal in a 6th Ward army, and most recently upset an aunt enough to have her put out a peace bond on him. Which means she wants him to stay the fuck away, and is asking the police to help her realize that.
And G didn’t ask for any of this. He wanted something happier, safer, cleaner, less threatening day after day after day.
The thing is, about forgetting, you have to start over every day.
A Day Not Clicking
I got off to a slow start today. Everybody at the diner was having a slow start too.
I was trying to look forward to the Home Depot shopping chore but it’s a thirty mile drive and the farther you get from this little (five square mile) world out here the more you realize you didn’t really want to leave it at all, why not just try to get what you need at the Rappahannock Farmers Co-Op. But they didn’t have the six foot aluminum step ladder last time I was there and Home Depot has that one stop shopping thing going on which is what you need if there are more than two things on your list. I had three.
So this morning I got 25 miles into the trip and came to a rise in the road which allowed me to see about 200 cars in front of me, waiting I guess to turn onto 66. There’s a fifteen mile stretch of the trip where I’m unlikely to see 10 cars total on the road and now I was looking at what seemed like madness. I gave it 15 seconds of thought and made the easy U-turn.
If I headed back to Warrenton I might find that Walmart which has eluded me so. I can’t begin to describe what a disappointment that was. Except for the enjoyment of the female form in aisles 16, 18, 13, 11, and 8b. Some of the women were with their kids and husbands and I thought good job everyone. I felt a little panicky at one point, a thing which afflicts me briefly but with force and has been triggered more often at Walmarts than any other place. Still, I remain a faithful Walmart shopper. I got the feeling people would soon start pointing and hissing at me, their eyes glowing red, their overbites transformed into bloody fangs, if I didn’t act immediately so that’s what I did–bought a coffee maker and some baby powder. Also I didn’t know there were still extreme punk rock looking, black leather clad, half shaved head, half long dyed black hair wearing dudes but in the Warrenton Walmart I saw three.
I kept driving, on to Culpeper, where I came upon another Walmart and just pulled in like that’s all I know how to do, shop at Walmart. This one pretended to be a SuperStore but I’ve seen the latest editions in the New Orleans area and this was a step down. After fighting off the onset of a parking lot panic attack I set out through the sultry heat into discount shopper’s paradise. I found a six foot step ladder and an 18 foot extension ladder, which I’ll have to have if I am instructed to paint the stair wells or clean the gutters. The woman at the check out said, referring to the 18 foot fiberglass extension ladder, I know the price of that one because people keep saying can you put that in a bag for me. I don’t think I actually laughed but let her know that I thought she was the perkiest, funniest, most helpful Walmart checkout person in the history of retail shopping. I was supposed to get some of that black flexible gutter pipe extension but that was all about the Manassas Home Depot and I was miles from that now. I also found a replica pair of the cheap sunglasses I had stepped on ten minutes after imagining that I would step on them, that first day I arrived on the Rappahannock property. Maybe this whole day was about those sunglasses.
I headed back down that road from Culpeper to Sperryville, 522 I think, and it’s a doozy, nice and peaceful, easy to drive if you remember to dodge the oncoming gooseneck trailers pulled by big dualie farm trucks which tend to weave into your lane at 55 miles per hour. Some nice green mountain scenery though, which means you’re back in that bubble you realized too late you didn’t mean to leave.
Cat On My Back
It was a period of time consisting of mere minutes. One minute I was performing one of my duties which, don’t begrudge me my good fortune, consists of swimming around the pool testing various properties ( alkalinity and ph bromide reactivities to human skin, floatability, shallow end rope divider tensile strength, temperature, pine needle irritability, and other multi-syllabic obfuscations meant to put in shadow the fact that I am floating around the pool at midday) and the next minute I am kneeling on the rough ass pool deck, attending to the sometimes malfunctioning pool sweeper device with a 20 pound former Brooklynite feline, claws fully working, attached to my shirtless back. I screamed. And then Herman just sittin’ there lookin’ at me like, what. I have read Pet Semetary, probably saw the movie, and recently listened to it as a book on tape, so don’t tell me I don’t know about cats that have returned from the dead to bring moderate levels of discomfort to those around them.
My employer, Mr. BC, says he saw a large bone in the grass just alongside the driveway while he was jogging the other morning. He said it appeared to have been chewed on one end. Which is a thing all goblins learn on their first day of school. Retrieve bones from cemetery, bite off end, suck out marrow.
I forgot to mention there is a small family cemetery on the property. And one of the graves has a bit of a, uh, subsidence problem.
I could make a short, ridiculous, Halloween movie out here if I had a camera and a handful of kids who would do and say more or less exactly what I told them and would work for popsicles.
Mr. BC held my hand yesterday and we got that letter of verification for the right to dump trash in Rappahannock County. At the treasurers office I also got a green cap, and a Rappahannock decal for my windshield. I was so happy about that decal.
I paused leaving out of the dump, right by the office, like I has a rat snake in my boot or something, just in case the dump attendant wanted to admire my new decal. He didn’t.