it's as bad as it looks

i finally talked to my girlfriend kristy this morning. she and her boyfriend and their dog go out of new orleans in the middle of the night last night. she said it is as bad as they say. she has stopped watching CNN. she is in baton rouge at her aunts and will probably end up in athens, GA with her boyfriends family to regroup. she said she stood in front of her house before she left and thought 'i am probably never going to see this again'. i asked her what they took. a couple bags of clothes, the computer, the dog, a box of photos from her whole life. that's it. the took the one road out - the one that runs along the levee on that was still holding, along tchopotulous. it runs along the mississippi from uptown through the garden district and lower garden district then to the entrance to the bridge over the river to the west bank. she said it was dry and clear. i can't believe it. we used to live about 5 blocks from there - from that road and entrance ramp. that's the route we took to home depot, mc frugals and the best vietnamese food in the parish. we would always say - west banks the best bank. i am trying to imagine the circuitous route they had to take to get back to baton rouge? i can't picture it. she said yesterday, when they were still trying to fix the levee, when they hadn't exhausted every option and given up because they had too, they were on the 10 beyond the superdome where you can exit down elesiyan fields to the quarter or to mid-town, the neighborhoods on either side were up to their roofs in water. we used to live over there. we lived in the bywater - that was named as such because it was - by the water. it is right next to the 9th ward - one of the poorest in the city because it is the first to flood, one of the lowest areas in a city that maxes out at -1 below sea level. that was one of the things i loved about that city - that it sat fully beneath sea level. i loved walking around knowing we were that vulnerable, that at any moment, we could be wiped out. it added to the mystery that i felt being there - we were sitting ducks - we could be wiped out. never in a million years did i think it would actually happen.

New Orleans Mouthwash

I keep dreaming about New Orleans. I have dreamt about it for a week straight now. I keep thinking about the Quarter, the 9th Ward, the Market, the Bywater.

The bywater - that's where we lived. When we first got to NOLA, we lived on Chartres street in the Bywater - down the street from Shae and Bill - who were the first couple i knew to have an open relationship.

Update on Monday, August 29, 2005 at 09:41AM by Jeen

i wrote that silly little snippet before i realized new orleans is getting washed away. my long lost friend kathryn emailed me this morning reminding me of new orleans impending demise - it reminded me that she and i fell out of touch, which reminds me of when we met, which reminds me of new orleans, when she - a beautiful young woman - was sitting on my couch talking sexual politics and smoking cigarettes. which rips my heart out to think that new orleans may be underwater soon, swimming in alligators, toxic waste and the mississippi...

helena cab driver

That painting reminds me of Helena Montana, when I went a couple of days ago and met a cab driver that was chatty. He told me he was a Canuck and that he hadn’t been in the states for long and where was I from? I told him Chicago and that reminded me how much I hate the movie musical Chicago that I haven’t seen but can tell I really hate (that one actress with her pinched face and squinty eyes and that other buxom actress who hooked up with that old guy, which reminds me that I am still married and I gotta get down to New Orleans and get that taken care of – I don’t know what the rush is all of a sudden because it has been years since I have seen him. New Orleans reminds me of rain the kind of rain you expect but always catches you off guard so your car gets stuck in the low spot in the road and the water kills your engine when you open the door your floor gets flooded - flooded like New York – it reminds me when I lived there I was a hooker, for only a short time, but made some quick cash, so I could move there (from NOLA) get the fuck out because I had made a mess of my life, my friends and my marriage – shit, gotta get divorced)

He said he was a Canuck from BC – Edmonton area – the Elkhorns. I asked him how high up we were in Helena – he said he didn’t know, took up his CB and called a buddy of his ‘say, how high up are we here? Lady from Chicago, in for business – can’t remember’. 5,200 feet is what he told me – his buddy told him, he told me.

He said I’ve played keno, since the wife divorced me – last year and anyway I'm going to see my daughter in Texas next month (I ask ‘you flying Big Sky then I suppose? Shit, I only flew it once, but wanted to encourage conversation, impress upon him that maybe I had flown BS before, was a lady that got around, knew the ropes, so important for him to know that I knew the ropes) “nope’ he said driving. Like I said I’m a Canuck and haven’t seen but the upper tier of the states, like I said with this keno money and am replacing nearly every single part of my engine, like my buddy says, it’s almost warranty. So anyways, my wife can’t touch none of the winnings since she’d divorced me last fall like I says.

(The wife still lives in the cave basin – where there had been a mine – in the Rockies where BC and Edmonton meet)

Keno winnings – that reminds me of when I used to drink, and my brother and I would get loaded and go to the Casino’s on the strip in Vegas where he lives, we would smoke and drink and laugh about our mom, how much of a angry old bitch she was – no wonder he checked out of the family for all those years. No fucking wonder.

The Helena Cab Driver’s daughter hadn’t done well in high school. That’s why she hooked into the army, that’s why she’s in Texas, so in a round about way – her bad grades are giving me a vacation thru the US.

Keno – we never played keno in Vegas, we would go to the strip for an hour or so, and he hated the strip – Christ I live here why the hell would I want to come down here? We would go back to his house and sit on his couch, play with his dogs and drink Jack – or Jim Beam? And smoke – god did we love to smoke, and we would talk about how horrible, how goddamn awful and sad and miserable it was that his only daughter was killed by that van – hitting and running – her mother, holding her little body dying in the middle of the road, her brother (his son) looking on.

We would cry, I would bawl. And tell him, if it weren’t for her dying, I wouldn’t have seen him again – that was the turning point his little girl getting smashed by that van – that motherfucking van – I can’t believe it. But that is what did it – that is what softened our mom’s heart enough – when his ex-wife called to tell her that her granddaughter was dead though she didn’t talk to her son in years thought she should know that she was dead. So mom went to the funeral met up with her son and grandson whom she’d never met – and said to him in a moment of tenderness ‘let’s bury the hatchet’ and he said ‘fine’.

He flew out to see us the next Christmas. And this is what I bawled about – this is what he bawled about. I would curl up in his lap and tell him I loved him, how much I had missed him all those years he was gone.

The cab driver said – I can give you a ride back to the airport when you leave out – when you leaving out. ‘ Day after tomorrow’ not a long trip huh, that’s too bad, Helena is pretty, lots to do, you have to make it down to The Parrot, good chocolate, good shakes, my daughter came to visit once and I have a picture of us sitting at the soda counter sharing a malted. Every goddamn waitress in that place has a tattoo on her forearm. I am not kidding you. Craziest thing I’ve seen. I got tattoos myself.

Silence, I heard myself listening.

snippet

He had a gap between his front teeth wide enough to hold several toothpicks. That’s what he told everyone at the bar. He asked the bartender to throw him a few so he could prove it. Once, he stuck six in his gap. One on top of the other and it took some twisting. It hurt toward the last toothpick. The crowd cheered him on. (His gums bled the next morning when he gently tried brushing his teeth – nothing serious.) That was a while back and he didn’t go to that bar anymore. When he thought about it once and a while the conclusion he came to was: I worn out my welcome.
He had his bike, his cart in a hiding place behind the levee near the French Market, where Tchopitulous met up with Elysian Fields. He read once Elysian Fields was like heaven, or nirvana. Didn’t seem like it to him, not until you passed Barrone street at least, where the streets opened up, the streetcar clattered, full of tourists and - God - those homes, those beautiful antebellum homes.

I was raining hard. She was so sick so goddamn sick of it raining. She was sicker of her beauty operator talking to her – well, that’s New Orleans in the summertime for ya! Please lady, shut the hell up. She pulled the dryer down over her ears. The bitch kept talking. She ignored her. The bitch finally shoved off. Left her to look out the huge window that was a pane of glass sitting practically on Decatur street – the tourists running around like idiots, wearing rain smocks that have the names of famous New Orleans streets plastered all over them (Bourbon! St. Charles! Magazine! Canal!). You can buy them at every damn store in the Quarter. The shopkeepers love the rain – make a killing off the tourists selling smocks if the suckers haven’t loaded up on gumbo mix, magnets and mammy dolls already.
Why the hell did I move here? She was trying to read the People magazine in her lap but that is all she could think.

writing stinks

it is the thing you must do - the laundry, the dishes, walk the dog. you know it is there lurking, stinking up your sink, growing fuzzy purple and yellow mold in your hamper, crossing it's tiny little legs at the front door. but, goddamn it, if it could just wait another moment, if the dog would do the dishes and start a load of laundry before it let itself out to go potty, if it would just magically get done without having to lift a finger from your oh, so challenging, high-class life. you want to do the dishes, laundry, pooch walk. you want those things to get done because you know you are a happier person when the sink is clean (laundry: folded, dog: relieved). that sense of relief and accomplishment, no matter how minor, can stop you from taking the last of those sleeping pills.

this is writing. that lurking, stinking, fascinating, horrible, wonderful hard-ass job that doesn't just sit in a hamper or sink. oh, no. it is mobile, it knows how to use public transportation and teleport thru dreams. it follows you everywhere. it even knows how to talk. 'you know you should be writing, you know that story is sitting there almost finished. what's wrong? you scarred?'. writing can taunt you like the the boy that stuffed tampons into your oboe case, or snapped your bra daily in spanish class and teased you when you got that perm you thought was going to be so fashionable.

here is the upshot. when you finally succumb to it, the taunting, the headaches and night sweats finally kick your ass - it feels good. it makes sense. this is going to sound prosaic but life seems to have order. okay, momentarily. but, fuck it man, momentarily is a whole lotta hot dog in certain instances. momentarily, is all you got.

write, write write.

The Shoveller

It was stairs today. They were breaking up the stairs at 1110 N. Wolcott. He was positioned in the street behind a large, black truck. It had an open bed with makeshift cyclone fencing running it’s circumfurance. He had already unloaded the men’s wheelbarrows. He had shinnyed up the side at 7:30, startring time, and thrown down their hammers, electric and manual, buckets, shovels, picks, from the bed of the truck so they could start balling-the-jack.

They were breaking thru to the rebar. The shoveller, knew this was good, it was a good sign when they hit rebar. Meant they were getting somewhere. He scrapped stray bits of cement and rock into neat pile. He adjusted his harness, the one he wore for the last 5 years since he blew his L4, L5 lumbar out, and with a quick precise motion, filled his shovel with the debris from the pile he had just made. Quick, precise. It had to be to get the shit to stay in the shovel, to get it to stay in that tiny little bucket – make it easier on yourself, get more in a load, throw more in less time – that’s the ticket right there.

A shirtless man walked by and said – hey, hey! lookin’ good – good job – it’s a hot one! The shoveller, standing at the back of the truck, his position for the day – every day, tipped his head up, to acknowledge the greeting, the awkward praise. He is grateful for things. No matter how small.

They yell, hey hey, from the busted up steps - not to be rude - but to get his attention. They had filled another wheelbarrow. They loaded he unloaded, it was a nut-buster, but it was an important part of the whole gig. It was his job. The system worked well. The shoveller, threw the last bit of gray, broken stair from his pile in the street to the back of the truck, waved to the guys letting them know yeah, I heard yah, I heard yah. He limped. He had a walking problem, it only happened on the job for the most part, it didn’t hurt some much as the pressure got to him, in his lower back, like he lost the ability to straighten up. Like there was some huge rubber band that was wrapped around his middle twice, kept him sorta crunched over. He was just glad it didn’t hurt. He knew plenty of guys who got hurt – it was a hard-ass job.

He pulled the barrel from the sidewalk to the curb – thank god they were hittin’ rebar. He had to set the wheel barrel at the curb and then get them their hacksaws. They had to bust the shit up and cut the metal out. He had to get their hacksaws. He sat the barrel down, fetched the saws.

He laid down a chunk of plywood from the curb to the street, made it easier to get the wheelbarrow down when it was so full, so loaded down with metal and dirt. Yep, this was truth, this was life, this is what felt okay. His hands were sweaty in his gloves, his head was sweaty beneath his hat. This is what made sense. His face was and long, he looked tired. But if you go real close, it looked innocent and kid-like and almost like dough. His nose was bumped at the bridge, he hadn’t gotten popped a good one or anything - all the men had that nose in his family. Good strong Polish nose. His lips were full and the color of salmon from a can, his cheeks were flaming with work.

He dumped the new load on the street. There was a pretty young gal, he noticed out the top of his eye as his head was down, intent on his work, digging at the rubble, scrapping it to a manageable pile. He saw her, young, nice car, pulled up jumped out, locked the car, flipped her blond, long hair out of her eyes, he couldn’t make out their color. He kept his eyes just under the brim of the hat he wore, it was blue and looked sort of like a floppy bowler, like a clownish hat a tilt-a-whirl operator wore. It kept the sweat off his face and kept it from rolling down the back of his neck – it was a hard-ass job – and it was a gift from his brother’s kid few years back. He loved that kid, smart as a whip, cute as a button, all that. He kept his eyes low, he wasn’t a gawker. Scrape scrape, scrape. The girl, skipping up her front steps directly across from where the boys were swinging mallets, wielding hacksaws, bustin’ chops, she looked, to the shoveller, like she was floatin’. He though: I wish we was bustin up her steps. Wish we were across the street at 1111. She’s a lollypop; she’s a sweet heart. Then, she was gone, inside, door closed behind her.

Scrape, scrape, shovel, load, repeat.

Firecracker!

baseball, hotdogs, apple pie and chevrolet. what could be more american than that? perhaps - hula hoops, illegal fireworks, pasties and backyard bar-b-q's.

my sparkly friend didi met me at the park yesterday and i was feeling a little down. she appeared in the distance with a hula hoop in tow. fuck, was my first thought, my second thought was, there is no way i will be doing the hula hoop thing, bitch is flying solo.

next thing i know, deed's hooping in the park, there are gaggles of children and interested frat boys gathering. she is doing splendid job. i am sitting on a rock, in the shade, a tiny little girl rolls up next to me, looks me up and down. after she determines i am probably okay, she sits down on the rock next to me to watch my friend.

the little girl turns to me and says 'i break your neck like chicken bone'. i looked at her, i looked around. didi pointed at me and said 'your next'. i looked back at the little girl, she was so cute, how could she have possibly said what she said. she was wearing ribbons in her little pig tails for crying out loud. she looked at me and smiled through gappy teeth. i heard didi again 'your turn!' she was fucking gleeful.

it wasn't a desire to hula-hoop that got me up, it was that creepy little girl. christ, where were her parents anyway? she probably didn't have parents, she was probably the worlds youngest ax murderer. she had to have a special ax made because she's so small, the adult axes wouldn't allow her the control required to expertly ply her trade.

so, then i'm up, then i'm hula hooping. somewhere in my history there is a failed hula-hoop attempt as a child. somewhere, back there, my stupid cousins could hula-hoop and i couldn't. ergo my reluctance to try now, as a middle aged woman. (middle age is pushing it but if i only live to be 68 then yes, middle age is appropriate).

what happened next was a breath of fresh air that didi recognized before i did. i am distrusting of strangers, so when mark (find out later he is in fact a 1/2 blind yoga instructor that juggles fire) walked up and said 'nice hooping' my first instinct was to dig for my pepper spray. didi's first response was 'hey thanks!' she meant it.

so mark starts talking about these friends of his that come up and "hoop" in the park on sunday afternoons and teach classes at the yoga shop on division on sunday afternoons, and they have this troop that travels all over and could he borrow a cell phone, because his battery is dead so he can call his friend KC to see if she is going to come hooping in the park today because he met these keen young gals hoopin' in the park and though we should meet.

i was sure it was all bullshit. didi was enthralled - happy like a kid (i wished i felt the way she looked - excited, trusting, beautiful).

to be continued....

safety

A therapist friend told me recently that a person's feeling "safe" was at the bottom of that person's "pyramid" - it was vital to a human's ability to function and deal with life on life's terms, so to say.

Let's assume she is right - we need safety. Need to feel safe. Safe in our homes, on the job, in our cars. We have to have a group of friends and family that make us feel safe. A safe childhood would then obviously lead to a safe adulthood ("safe" would be synonymous with "well adjusted" or "normal" in that case). Christ, even Axle Rose pines for safety when he sings "her hair reminds me of a warm SAFE place where as a child I'd hi-e-ide...'. Ah, yes, a warm safe place.

Safety is a dichotomy. We must have safety as our source, our jumping off point, in order to interact in today's world and live the life we are handed. However, we have to know when to step out on a limb and smack safety aside and take a risk now and then - how would we grow, meet people, fall in love, move to big cities, write books, invent vaccines, crochet? Whatever you are afraid to do you must do some time if you want to grow.

Fear. There is a wonderful motivator. Maybe safety and Fear are partners. We have a healthy fear of fire so we don't stick our fingers over a flame - that fear keeps us safe. Fear helps sign up members to safety's club. But safety is a cunning enabler of mediocrity, inaction and procrastination if not used correctly. Just as fear is a rotten joke played on people to keep them in their homes (remember Julianne Moore in "Safe" cah-reepy) in their narrow understandings - and it encourages folks to never ask "why" or more apt "why not"?

I am a victim of both of these forces.

Fear keeps me firmly in my place. Fear is safety for me. it is something I am becoming more ill at ease with and therefore less willing to tolerate. I try to put fear aside when reasonable and stick my neck out. Don't get me wrong, I have fears that will probably never go away: a noteable fear of flying, fear of losing my child, fear of snakes, fear of skydiving. None of those fears keep me from flying around the world, or make me cloister my child away from the world and her life. I won't be going skydiving with snakes anytime soon. Those fears are well placed.

Safety seems like such a good thing and in many cases it is. I have a kick-ass apartment that keeps me, my fiance and animals safe and warm. I live in a quite little neighborhood with little or no crime, and my Subaru has all wheel drive, drivers and passenger side airbags as well as side impact. So safety is good for me - right?

Traveling Lizard Salesman

For better or worse, I have Vicki Lawrence's "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia" running through my head. I wonder what she is up to at this very moment? Is her live in fiance sharpening a knife in the kitchen? Is her pet rabbit and pet raccoon lounging in their stacked pens in her pantry? Is Vicki Lawrence still alive even?

I had a dream last night I am compelled to share. I, stark naked, recieved a traveling Lizard Salesman, at my hotel apartment. It wasn't "The Plaza" or even "The Chealsea", oh no, it was more say "Travelodge" route 80 between Des Moines and Omaha, or a Motel Six in Terra Haute. As i said, I, nude, recieved the Lizard salesman (it is worth noting at this poiont the gentleman playing the Lizard Salesman in my dream was none other than the guy who played the Maitre'd at the Chez Paul in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off")and listened intently to his pitch. I looked over his wares - he had a lovely smooth skinned lizard that appeared slimy but was silky, dry and soft as a baby to the touch. Then, I had to fend off the Salesman's unwanted sexual advances. I couldn't figure out why he was coming on to me so strongly? The goddamn nerve! Another thing i couldn't figure out was how wonderful I looked in the nude - my God! I was stunning, fresh, new and beautiful! My breasts were perky and at attention, my child-stretched belly skin (repleat with stretchmarks) had magically vansihed - I should have let him fuck me! In the end, I bought a lizard - I assume to get him off my back. My new lizard was like a space alien. Long, graceful fingers outfitted with suction cups on each didgit. He was green and had huge, responsive and I got the feeling - very loving - eyes. He stood on a plate on the backrest of my couch most of the time.

Moments later, i was having sex with a tiny Asian woman under the sink. I don't know where the lizard got off to?