NEW ORLEANS GYPSY

Heart Stoppingly Good

I enjoy the circular winds, barometric pressure, and general heavy/light gusty weird quality of tropical storm air.  Things are moving around, bending, drenched out there in the Gulf - and though nobody in New Orleans wishes a hurricane or tropical storm even on anybody we do know where we live and choose it so we must like it, yes indeed.

I'm reading "Lush Life" on Bob's recommend and I have to say: that Bob's got great taste.  It's pretty rare to find a writer who nails dialog so effectively, who can build tension and mystery without kitsch, who can slowly smartly hook me in.  It's great reading but not "easy" - like Chekov or the other Russians (was Chekov Russian?!?  Why don't I know this?!?  I think he was ...) it pays off in dividends.  I eat books.  This one's slammingly delicious -

While I'm at it I might also add that I'm really digging calypso, yes the new Beck, and revisiting Boogie Down Productions.  There's a great new café on Frenchman in what used to be the back half of Café Brasil, YUKI, and they've got fantastic world & big beat/dub dj's at least 3/4 nights a week and that plus the totally refreshing saki cocktails they make, plus the shrimp toasts they've gotten me addicted to, makes for a total pleasure experience.  What else?  Oh I'm moving again -

change change it's gonna come, it's good, it's the opposite of death

Get Back/Local Tomatoes Safe

There's a grand gorgeous pleasure to being alone with the stereo, a favorite band, the ceiling fan, just a quiet night during which you might cry, if you give your self the freedom. I give myself freedom and give it. And laugh. God it's good to get back.

Bare feet in wet grass, this is simple, really: I practice innocence, still, again. I practice being still even though underneath I confess it can get frantic. It feels sometimes like life is just a constant spin - round and round it goes, where it stops nobody knows - to keep the head above water. And here I am, living on water. It's purposeful, and it's as if it's personal, and it is, and isn't. When did it all get so intense? Feeling like we have to fight s how - having to fight just to exist, for our homes, our families, the things we love, having to fight for things that nobody should have to fight for. It's no wonder I'm obsessed with giving things away, in the belly of this.

I only want to say if I can, and I can, all I want to do is enlarge a space of peace and beauty. Like a reservoir I picture it expanding around me and I imagine just floating in it. A fine balance between things seems to be the best way to live a life fully felt, which is how I live, and yet I admit I've been fevered and insomniac and pissed. I confess I've been all the things my life is not devoted to - my real life, the simple inside life, the internal core, my real heat (that is hot but sweet). Things have gotten messy and lonely, too bare, too tender. So what I'm aiming for here is an absolution that only I can give:

I forgive myself for surviving
I forgive myself for asking forgiveness
I forgive myself for wanting
I forgive myself for weakening
I forgive myself for pretending
I forgive myself for dreaming big
I forgive myself my infractions
I forgive myself those nights that kept lasting
I forgive myself for wanting affection from people who cannot give it
I forgive myself for not letting go
I forgive myself for letting go
I forgive myself for resisting the pain
I forgive myself for hoping to be free and safe
I forgive myself for being angry
I forgive myself for having no shame

All I want is to get past the world that wants me to spend my energy explaining horrors away, to live with injustice, to be a stunted tree growing around the fence. There is no explanation for anything terrible, there's no answer, there's no solution for the past; no matter what happens I'm still who I am: I'm still going to be a good samaritan. And what I want is to relax and go to sleep and wake up happy. I am going to relax and take a bath and go to sleep and wake up happy. I relaxed, took a hot bath, slept, woke happy - that's all there is to it.

After wandering about there for a little he started to return, but was met near the outer gate by Sorais train of chariots, which were galloping furiously along the great northern road.

Misinterpreting the look, she smiled to him.  Next morning, in
spite of the protests of her hosts, Darya Alexandrovna prepared
for her homeward journey.  Levins Coachman, in his by no means
new coat and shabby hat, with his ill-matched horses and his
coach with the patched mud-guards, drove with gloomy
determination into the covered gravel approach.
 
Darya Alexandrovna disliked taking leave of Princess Varvara and
the gentlemen of the party.
 
Smoke rose only from the
opening in the roof of the main building, but its slender column showed
from what a very scanty fire it ascended.
 
The purpose which this was to serve was readily discovered, for in front
of the open door of the dwelling, that seemed far too large and on
account of the pillars at the entrance, which supported a triangular
pediment--also too stately for its sole occupant, sat an old woman,
plucking three ducks.
 
 So much has
come upon me at once.

I'm A Groom's Man!

6.7.8 and for three days we're going to grill the meat, splash the water, pet the gator, jump the broom, break the glass, pin the tail, eat the cake, toast the kids, and so forth.  I can't wait.  I'm going to seat guests and make sure the groom's got the ring and just basically grin a whole hell of a lot.  They were in my yard for their first date - when I lived in the trailer.  Thanksgiving.  Burning what we did not want.  What a long way we've all come.

you make my blog look fabulous

She read Suttree out loud while I fired up the grill and he rocked in the chair.  Well, wait, that's not entirely true.  She did read Suttree out loud but I wasn't doing anything that had anything to do with the grill.  But what was I doing?  Oh, I was plating food.  Or something like that.  However you slice it I was busy while listening to her read Suttree out loud.  Now I remember, I was shuffling cards.  And he was laughing and rocking away, in just one of the many chairs on my porch that would convince even you to chill out and sit a spell. 

So there we were - a rocker, a reader, and me.  And now?  We've all gone our separate ways, surely, carrying traces of the comfort this friendship fuels our ships with.  Thanks god and others present, thanks the Cass Corridor Food Co-Op, the Paradigm Theatre, Maurice Greenia, and you. 

XOX
Boo

promise/evolved

there will be enough hot water.  I will have some place to escape to, or the means to escape.  The animals are safe.  That the straight and narrow really isn't what it's cracked up to be.  That the curvy and wide is a much more interesting route.  That the dog won't eat the jalepenos off the jalepeno bush.  Bells will ring and rain will fling down upon the world until the world stops.  It's a magical night.  It is a magical night.

It's only people who haven't lived here that think "the Katrina story" is all that compelling.  We know that the more arresting tale is "the now", which yes, spreads from that site of gigantic proportions, but goes back even further, and reaches forward even further.  It's a complicated thing, explaining this.  What we've learned here is code, a language that is our own, like the Basque, and we'll fight for it, and we'll drink wine.  But please don't look at us with those dumb sad eyes.  How about a crown instead?  Or at least my computer out of the Computer Shoppe, harddrive intact, and some salmon on the grill.

 

it was gonna be the best title ever but then I forgot what it was

Soy candles.  When they burn they release negative ions in the air.  Like thunderstorms and the ocean.  That can only be a good thing.

Jeans, dark wash, when I wear them make me feel invincible.

I remember riding the bike in high heels and thinking nothing of it.  Now I can only handle medium heels.

Tomorrow I get my hair cut and colored.  It's like an adventure, always, every damn day.  Can you imagine the dislocation I feel?  I'm getting my hair cut!  I'm sure you know what I mean.

Love,
Sinja Soosun *who drank so many beers

"From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere... If you never did, you should.  These things are fun and fun is good."- Dr. Seuss

Stance stance stance

I feel really good to be planting in a garden again.  I've got parsley, cilantro, sage, oregano, marjoram, basil, rosemary, peppermint, jasmine, mandeville, jalapenos, green peppers, banana peppers, bouganvilla, ferns, sunflowers, agave, clematis, wildflowers, and the trees all going really well right now.  The composting all winter long really did make a difference with the transplants - talk about a steaming pile! 

I also feel really good to be doing nice things for people who have done so many nice things for me.  The people who trusted that I would come back around, that I would reinvent my life and get to where I wasn't so ... homeless, quite frankly.  And now I'm getting ready for the Helvestons to stay with me, to potluck and dance and fresh fruit them silly! 

Feeling good is also about push-ups, honesty, fulfilling obligations, water, sleep, pets, and a trip coming up that I can't wait to take.  Ah yes, a road trip up the Eastern seaboard to my original city - New York.  It's gonna be swell, I'm gonna eat & drink David to the poor house (!), walk and talk art, lose myself in Little Odessa, see the Atlantic, and go shopping at H&M with Ginger.  That also feels good.  It's really quite swell, folks, isn't it? to feel good.

don't stop till you get enough

What if the audience for art (who they are and what their relationship to the work might be) were considered the goal at the center of art production, at the point of conception, as opposed to the modernist Western aim of self-expression?  And what if the location of the art in the world were determined by trying to reach and engage that audience most effectively? 

The 12 Stations, Or At Least 3

Tomorrow's closing day at the track and we're going.  I only hope they have the oyster bar open, I have serious cravings these days.  Oysters, shrimp, crawfish, crab, all those seasonings, crawfish and corn bisque from Zimmer's, Frankie and Johnnie's crawfish pie, Drago's smoked oysters, raw on the half shell all that rock salt and horseradish and domestic beer.  Must be Easter, must be Spring, eggs, mosquitos, wisteria, flies.  Down the street walking the other night with Ginger we got hit with the rotting rank smell of crawfish boil clean-up reeking from hot black garbage cans.  Then just one door down a fence full of jasmine.  Boom boom, one two, the constant collision of life and death, that tension, it's delicious.  Sure it stinks in the end but what doesn't?  And how it got there, you just can't beat it with a stick.