...The first cool chill is in the air, and I am grateful despite the protestations of my ever-freezing feet and the damp chill beginning to seep through the floorboards...not for more than an hour or so, always around dawn, I have to cocoon covers around me until the sun becomes unbearable and I have to kick them off. 

I took some mescaline a few weeks ago, while it was still achingly hot...swimming at night, although it kicked in after we had dried off and I had complained that it was a dud batch. I was driving and we both suddenly felt ill. I parked and we uneasily walked to the gelato shop, managed to order, sat outside and couldn't stop giggling for twenty minutes. Twenty eight and twenty nine years old, for chrissakes. How undignified. I dropped her off at home, where she protested that her husband would be mad (he was) and that I should stay. I declined and drove down through rows of lit-up palms, windows down, smiling at the few people on the street, feeling...expensive! Rich! Benevolent! Grandiose! Ah, drugs. I drove my car onto the ferry and didn't garner any suspicion from the usual crew who know me as either A: Joe's girlfriend ,B: a scrub-clad hospital worker, or C: quiet hipster-type. It's a short ride across, but it was the last ferry across that night and so it moved exquisitely slow. Drug stories are never interesting unless you're on them, so I'll stop there.

I saw my grandmother last week in Chicago. I used to feel guilty seeing them, always feeling like I was hiding information, letting a false narrative continue unchecked. Then I thought of the many ways I am perceived by so many people, and it didn't matter anymore. Julie asked me once, "how did you ever take your clothes off onstage for the first time?" I remember succinctly the first time, standing in the wings, nervously unhooking that first hook...and looking out into the audience expecting shock...and seeing apathy. I realized then that I could have been 200 pounds or have a crooked nose or three kids, or looked like Sophia Loren, Jane Fonda and Salma Hayek combined and I would have seen the same look on these mens' faces, all of whom have seen the exact same act, maybe hundreds of times. My grandmother told me "you have become such a beautiful, intelligent young lady." I will accept that. I will accept when a patient calls me a bitch, when Joe calls me stubborn, when a man tells me I've got a great ass,
when Ali calls me "Miss Doctor"...I will accept all adjectives, because they are seldom true on their own, but all are true together. My all time favorite patient, Linda, slipped me a note before she left...best thing ever written about me...it read         

"Barbarella, Barbarella...I can tell you have elegant thoughts...Love, Linda Rooster-Girl"



 

...means non-stop shenanigans! And boy howdy, was it!

Tirelessly charming, a fairytale for adults...go see!


And if you go to Canal Place, get the white-pepper-truffle popcorn...so naughtily bourgy (!)

"Moses of Magazine Street" passed today. He was a great character, and a warm-hearted soul. I didn't know him well, but I will miss him. He was a prophet without an agenda, a beggar who didn't beg.

I passed him one day and, for the first time I can remember, he did not offer his typical "God Bless You Today, Ma'am!" He looked forlorn, and a bit sullen. I knew something had happened to him. I'm still not sure what that was, but I do remember having the strong urge to approach him and ask, what can I do for you today? What do you need most right now?

I never asked. Something about it gave me pause, something about his dignity made me quake a bit, like the proverbial mouse approaching the lion with the thorn in his paw. I wish that I had asked.

Albert, you were so selfless and you never stopped giving. I will continue to pray to be more like you.


Some of my favorite comments from the obituaries page:


"...it didn't matter how the day was going, he would always make sure to tell everyone hello and to have a good day, and if you would tell him to have a good day he would respond " i aways do "



My name is Michelle and I have been in New Orleans for only 3 years, yet for 3 years of my life this beautiful soul would greet me with smiles everytime my daughter and I walked down Magazine St. In fact Albert would always stop my daughter and ask her how old she was, at age one he gave my daughter a dollar bill for her piggy bank, at age two, he would give her two, at age three, he gave her three. I thanked him always and gave smiles back .And on my many walks to work, our paths would cross and I'd give back the kindness he showed to my daughter.Now as her fourth birthday nears, it brings tears to my eyes that we will not be confronted with his beautiful energy and loving kindness. All though I never knew his name till now, and never realized the impact this man had made upon me, I feel a deep loss, Moses, I will dearly miss you in my everyday journeys to and from Magazine St. You forever will be in my memories and your lessons of kindness and love will follow me and my daughter for years to come. Thank-You. One-Love



"i remember when i first moved to new orleans i was walking past reginellis on mag and a couple had left their money on the table outside. I saw Moses go over and pick it up and because i am an ignorant jerk who thought he was some homeless creep i figured he was stealing it. He brought the money inside and gave it to the server.I then knew that he meant every "God Bless You" i received everyday when I walked past him. It truly is sad to pass magazine and not see him sitting in his spots drinking his wine out of his Rue cup."



"...As time went on, I spent less time on the street, and by then I mostly only saw him when I was jogging. He always gave me a thumbs up sign and said "Keep going."




http://nola.humidbeings.com/posts/detail/146990/RIP-Albert-Joseph-Jackson-the-Moses-of-Magazine-Street

I don't usually take the liberty of posting someone else's blog on top of my own, but this particular entry struck me, somehow. Charming, sad, honest, excellent writing. Check it out.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Dinosaurus

1960 found us living on Iberville Street, one block off of Canal.... I was 12.
It was the year Joseph, my grandfather, died after being hit by a car. He was on his way home from buying some Carter's Little Liver Pills, a bottle of One-A-Day vitamins, and some Brown Mule chewing tobacco at a drug store on North Robertson Street, right off of Broad.
I always thought that Joseph would live forever...that his mean, sadistic ways would go on and on.
The wake of brokenness he created in the lives of his children went on for decades.
Joseph made his drug store run at the beginning of every month when his check came in, and then he would go to the grocery and buy a whole case of Borden's evaporated milk...and that's what he lived on...canned milk and wheat bread.
If something was precious to you, Joseph would find a way to mock it, spit tobacco juice on it, steal it or destroy it... and then laugh....
When I was three, I hit him in the head with a fire truck while he was sleeping. When I got older I was glad I had done it..... Somehow it evened the score.
I remember my Aunt Selma commenting on the fact that they found the bottle of vitamins unbroken in his coat pocket after he was run over.... And I remember thinking that we never know what things in our lives will remain unbroken and whole and which things will be shattered.
There seemed to be no logic to it.
1960 was the year the Joy Theater, across from the Krauss store, showed the movie Dinosaurus.
The theater put a huge dinosaur on top of it's marquis... and there were loudspeakers that I could hear two blocks away in our apartment, on the fringe of the Iberville project.
Over and over...day and night..." DINOSAURUS!" (dinosaur sounds) "DINOSAURUS!" ...again and again....for weeks.
My mother did a lot of things to "make me happy"...and the majority of times, this involved her spending money she didn't have... (Mom was bringing in about twenty-five bucks a week at the time.)
I never knew how to tell her that money couldn't fix what was going on inside of me... that taking her money only made me feel worse....
The guilt!
What was wrong with me? Did I look so bad that it prompted her to give me money so that I could be happy?
Well, one Saturday morning, she handed me fifty cents and told me to go to the Joy.... When I asked if she could really afford it, she told me not to worry about it because she wanted to "make me happy" ...and "have a good time".
I took the money, went to Woolworth's and got some popcorn (two jumbo bags), and bought my way into the Joy for the first showing.
Dinosaurus! Seven times....
I left after the last showing of the night and walked home...numb.
That day, as I sat in that dark theater, I did a lot of crying. I felt bad about taking my mother's money, and I cried because I wasn't happy....and there was nothing to fix it...
Not even seven showings of Dinosaurus.
I felt alone...so alone....I cried...because of the loneliness...because I didn't like myself...because I wanted a real family, like on TV...because a movie is a poor substitute for a family.
And it was completely out of my power to make any of this better.
The T-rex that is accidentally unearthed kills a lot of people before the hero hops onto a bulldozer and pushes the creature off a cliff....and then the screen is filled with a big "The End?"
For the dinosaur, it took a bulldozer... for Joseph, it was a white, '59 Caddy.
The End?
I think about Joseph... His children have all died, except for my mother. Roberta, Clifford, Selma, Sydney....all gone. And I am the only grandchild who grew up around him in New Orleans that is left.
I hope that monster never returns to cause more pain.... I hope that it is now safe for us to have something precious....
Mom, that would make me happy.


From "New Orleans as I Remember It"

http://almostoast.blogspot.com/

On a tip from the woman who stage-manages Ford's Theater, I watched Ang Lee's 2007 movie and was completely blown away.





The heady Shanghai street scenes and gorgeous costuming aside, it is a true classic. In a mood reminiscent of Joyce Carol Oates' novel "Blonde", the audience watches with creeping terror as the heroine falls under a spell that may be in equal part Stockholm or Stendhal Syndrome...all under the languid clink-clink of mah-jong tiles...

I wonder if I could, in an act of cosmic revenge, have T---- make my wedding cake? Not that there is a wedding, mind you, but just the same...I think it's fitting punishment.

I am not the vengeful type, and my friends and acquaintances are generally much more skilled in that particular arena than I. Julie, outraged, advised me to buy some mice and loose them in his pristine, candy-colored shoppe on a busy day. Jack, quietly bitter, set himself to the task of learning the Arabic word for adulterer and splashing it over the front window. I put a quick stop to that. Anne told me it was my duty to find his wife's number, and tell her. I simply called him and told him that this conversation would be the last time he would hear my voice.

So, there was to be no wicked, fleeting glamour of retribution. At times I wish there was. This is one of those times. I believe he owes me a cake. The silliest, most ganache-coated, bedazzled, be-flowered, scrumptious cake there ever was. He is quite capable of it, and enough time has passed between us that I think I could look him in the eye and tell him of his punishment.


I was never a proper mistress, probably due to the important reason that I was completely unaware of my title. I would wander his house in a bedsheet, read his books, and ask many questions about England, and Nigeria. I had no deep feelings for him, but liked to hear stories from his childhood about terrible muslim aunties and encountering pythons along the dusty roads. He had a very mod-looking carpet in his front room. I asked him about it one day, and he said, touch it. I knelt down and fear suddenly passed across my face, because it felt unmistakeably like human hair. I had wild visions of hundreds of scalped heads being sewn together by a witch. At that moment, I felt him capable of anything. It's gorilla, he said, it was given to my grandparents before the war. My dismay subsided, but just a little.

When we ate, he chose elaborate affairs. I brought him to small, cheap places where it wouldn't have crossed his mind to ever eat, now that he was a rich man with his own business, and an image to keep.

I think I was lonely, with friends away and a half-deserted city, no one to talk to about little, unimportant things. Sex was always on the back-burner. Was it for him? Was his charming conversation bestowing a furtive glimpse into a wildly patchworked life, or was it simply a means to an end?

I wonder at the women our society call whores, and which should be punished, and which should eat cake.

I listened to Mercury Rev yesterday, nervously driving through a twilight Mississippi rainstorm while my lover slept in the backseat.





I've known more than a few souls who have died along that stretch of road, and as calm as I usually am, driving it in compromised weather always gives me pause. The car stalled out- three times- in Memphis rush-hour traffic, and the frustration and fear of being trapped between trucks made me burst into tears. We quickly switched spots and all was well again.

An excellent trip. My mother is still chain-smoking and gambling and drinking too much wine, but hanging in there. Her sense of humor is still very much intact. Joe thrilled at the museums, the brick houses, the immense deco parks and old theaters.

An exhibit on the 1904 World's Fair was breathtaking, particularly the photographs of foreigners taken by the Gerhard Sisters



Visayan Girl




A Phillipine tribal leader






Ota Benga, a "notorious cannibal"




We stayed at the gayest B&B north of Key West- a four-man shower, mirrored ceiling, 800-thread count sheets, Ohio pottery, Storyville prints and gourmet breakfast. I made Joe use the bidet and fell down laughing. We saw Robin Hood at the Esquire and I am now obsessed with fire-arrows. Bad-ass. Cate Blanchett made an excellent Marion, but I still prefer dreamy Errol Flynn in that wonderfully technicolor version. Does anyone remember that one? Strangest coloring I've ever seen- it looked very much like a lentographic fairytale book I had as a child- and tiger-skin rugs, lam'e capes, velour everywhere...just frabjous. Gotta go watch it again.

A painting by the lovely and talented Miranda Lake


She has a big fabulous house with dogs and Roosevelt-era wheelchairs and weird, weird tchotchkes. She also makes a mean soup. We spent a decadent Thanksgiving at her villa while she was gone at an art show. What a woman.






I've been thinking about her art lately as the oil slick inches its way closer...her pieces are filled with animals; some are anthropomorphized, and most are behaving in a business-as-usual fashion, frolicking, leaping and preening in a non-traditional environment filled with human-built structures. One gets the sense that in the ongoing battle between man and nature, the animals have won while humans have failed.










She has recently acquired a bunny who hopped down her street the day after Easter- a spotted floppy-eared thing that has been christened Dennis Hopper. Lucky bunny! I can't wait to see the environment she creates for him.




There have been some excellent stories about the rescue efforts in the Gulf. My favorite so far was a story on All Things Considered about a foundation based out of San Francisco that has collected thousands of pounds of hair and created very functional DIY buoys made of clippings stuffed into nylon stockings and sewn together. The nylon allows the oiled water to sluice through while the hair absorbs the oil. Brilliant! The woman who runs the organization lamented that, while excess hair is common, so few women wear nylons these days...women, no. San Francisco transvestites, yes! Hundreds of pairs of stockings have already been donated.


I have very mixed feelings about donating money to cleanup efforts. Unlike a natural disaster, we know where the responsibility lies, and that is squarely on the shoulders of BP and possibly Halliburton. I feel that all costs associated with this should be directed to them, given their stated commitment and enormous profit margins. If anybody would like to donate their time, however, please sign up as I have as a volunteer at www.audoboninstitute.org

There is a twenty-year age difference between Joe and I. This is a slim record for both of us. This usually is not an issue, although he confessed that he had planned to try and hide his ID until his next birthday came up, when he would have to confess and I was (hopefully) already hooked.

On Sunday, as we were watching the big game, I squinted at the Roman numerals splashed across the television.

Wow, I said in a moment of supreme grace and tact, You're older than the Superbowl!


Nice.

I don't know what to do with myself. Literally. I need to do laundry, go to the Social Security office, DMV, Passport office, human resources (could they come up with a colder, creepier name?) department, put gas in the car, sweep my floor, call my landlord, cancel some checks and FIND THE PIECE OF SHIT WHO BEAT ME UP AND STOLE MY PURSE Monday night.

The bank gave me fifty dollars on good faith to get a new ID so I could take cash out again- but it won't cover the cost of shipping my birth certificate, putting gas in the car and DMV fees. Also, I ache all over.

So I'm sitting on my hiney and doing nothing.

On top of it all, I saw the guy who mugged me yesterday morning. I'm sure of it. I wasn't able to give the police a good description, but the guy had no weird traits- tall, medium skinned, average voice, no tattoos...unfortunately, there's no category on a police report that simply says "looks like a crackhead." I also want to be cautious- the last thing I'd want to do is accuse an innocent person of assault.

My wonderful neighbor called the police while it was happening, but he hesitated, thinking it was a domestic dispute (I apparently have a real filthy mouth when I'm being attacked). He feels terribly guilty, but I am so grateful to him. At the time, I thought I was going to get shot (he was beating me with something heavy, wrapped in a bandanna)and I figured that if I was, the cops better damned well find him.

So anyway...sitting shiv for a bit. Haiti has me really upset, and as my account is currently frozen, I'm not able to donate money. So the best I can think to do is to sit and be quiet and contemplate and pray. My wounds will heal soon. It will take much longer for them.