LOVER

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Downed

All Gone

Kitchen Door

Inside

Mama Fork

One Hundred And Eight Degrees

My New Orleans landlord just called me - he went by my place to see what he could see. The garage is "down". The washing machine is on top of the dryer, which floated down the driveway. The water inside the house got higher than the water outside. He peeked in the kitchen window, "It looked ... all wrong in there." He says Gentilly is "A real mess, they're not kidding, it's gonna have to be torn down." And it will be weeks, if that, before we can legally get back in there. They're saving Gentilly for last, it's "that bad". That said, I'm going in within 2 weeks and we're gonna renegade me over there. I can't stand this waiting to go see the dead body. The dead body is rotting. He said, "Your house is plaster, it doesn't mold as bad as sheet-rock ... but."

He told me all this while buying a whole chicken and three bottles of wine at an open store in Metairie for Miss Victoria who bought his childhood home & has been in it 4 weeks w/out water or electricity or anything. She ran up to him while he was standing outside his ravaged house. "I've been in there the whole time with a two week old kitten! I couldn't leave him! And I stepped on him today can you help me, he NEEDS to see a vet RIGHT NOW!!!" He got a guy from Café Degas to ferry her to a vet. He's also buying her 2 plates of red-beans, "A whole chicken, wine, red beans - now wouldn't that heal your soul?" The only beer they had at that store? O'Doul's & Milwaukee's Best Light. "That's not a choice! I'm not doin it! I'll drink wine in the middle of the damn day!"

"All you have to do is give them a list & they're happy"

1. I've been a searcher. I've been a fool. I've been a long time coming to you.
2. Quesa
3. So here, smoking's like drinking.
4. The worst thing you can do for your face is not wash it every night before you go to bed.
5. Between 7th & 8th on Red River
6. Pierre. Or Pear.
7. You have your arms and legs.
8. All of the girl things that make you a woman.
9. Speakin' out
10. Santa Cruz, in the hills
11. "You look good, especially with everything you've been through."
12. Roll another number (for the road)/I can get under any load
13. Ink
14. That's just offensive.
15. Orange pillows
16. Tomorrow I'm taking myself to the movies.
17. Fine. You don't miss me, I don't miss you.
18. Evacuation lifestyle.
19. Borrowed time
20. Paris '49
21. Thing is, you'll have to get through the wall around it.
22. NordicTrack CX925
23. Searching searching, how I've grown
24. And the world on a string doesn't mean I don't know the way.
25. Mott The Hoople
26. Spilled coins
27. 5
28. Come on baby, let's go downtown
29. New Orleans Louisiana
30. Walgreens reading glasses
31. Agua agua agua
32. The sun was a harvest moon today and I was twilit hills.
33. Degrees

No Outlet

A guy just came to the porch to cut the grass, awesome for me cuz I just can't seem to muster up the energy to get a gas can, gas, & do it myself. So I went to the ATM to get his $25, a real deal considering the size of the yard & our lot next door, and he went to get his ratty-ass lawnmower.

He & I got to my house at the same time, followed by a hulking silent cop who cuffed & searched him without a word. Searched him slow-ly, taking all his ratty-ass junk out of his dirty jeans. "Aw MAN!" was all he said as the cop pulled up, rolling his eyes, but he didn't say another word. What's the point, I know fella.

I asked the cop, "What's going on, is that lawn mower stolen?" "Yes ma'am - we're pretty sure." "Well what does he say?" Smirk, "We're very familiar with this character."

Now Harold was wild-eyed but he had a nice firm handshake and wanted to work. "I got it from my friend down the street!" The cop made some pretense of checking the old beatup lawnmower for a serial number. Give me a break. Another cop pulled up & put the piece of junk in his trunk & off went Harold for a night in the clink.

Now I don't know the story, not really, but the whole thing makes me feel like crying. I am not actually crying, I just feel like it.

Israel Launches Air Strike on Gaza

Not here to play, here to WORK! work is play! Well not in Gaza (so that's why "they" let "them" have "that" land: wall them in, easier target), but in Austin Texas it is. I drive hills that make me feel I'm high in Hollywood, finding botanicas, and I'm allowed to not be into that band, I may be displaced but I still got my standards. Not a cacti, a succulent, Hill Country, check my eyes to see if they have spokes, see if they are moving, see if they have spokes, see if there is somewhere else to ride. Wendy is historical, I am too. All chixen, all the time. Wigglin up & down my spine. Saw a man on tv tonight pointing out the "good side" to the reflooding of New Orleans: the parts that are getting flooded had been flooded before so it's not like anywhere 'new' is getting wet. Everything is exactly as it should be. Mind the gap, Point Vicente, wash, hitch, stinging nettle, haul, slag, Sanchez. So there is, for women, no possible law for our pleasure. Sexual pleasure is then engulfed in the body of the Other. The Other escapes the grasp of discourse. Flash floods, Colorado River, stars on everything. Return to The Girl's pre-Oedipal phase. I was a peasant with beads around my neck. I was a princess throwing beads. I was a cook chopping cabbage. I was on my knees, they told me it was for a goddess but I never liked the meaning of that. It was to keep me on my knees. A crow stood still for me on the walk today. I stood still too. And then flew.

hello/goodbye/hello

Wendy put it best, we're living two lives.
- One where we are right now, acting & initiating a self & that self's desires.
- One that's still in New Orleans, not embalmed but molding, not ossified but maybe paralyzed.
Those two lives are who we are right now.

I'd even take it further and say we're living three.
- The life in New Orleans.
- The life of the disassociated spirit punched out of the body by the trauma of what we have and are enduring.
- The life here where we are now.

My work has always been about home, to some degree. Seeking it, claiming it, a ghost without it, a dream within. The nest I/we built of the names of the dead. ABCENSE REMAINS. Blessed it, worshipped it, annointed and wrapped, took it to the river that leads to the sea and let it go. This is the home that is me.

There's a gigantic colony of bats that roost under a bridge over the Colorado River not but 7 or 8 blocks from my house. Their daily evening flight is timed to the minute. People migrate to see the migration. I'm going there this weekend cuz soon they'll leave for Mexico (in my mind). I don't really know where they're going but they do somehow and in every way that is the life of the three lives unified.

Umbrella of blood, heart of strewn flowers

Hawaiian slack key guitar masters playing the sounds of my heart, mournful and tart, a pineapple uncut, thorny, leaking. Sick bile vile settled in my gut, in the Salvation Army I saw a picture of this next hurricane and have felt ill since. Driving around, where the hell am I? I ask when I get out of the store (Randall's, like Austin's Robért), where the hell am I?
Numb finding the Walgreens for prescriptions, the woman working the hurricane tip to get my scrips for free for me, I just couldn't stop crying. Jenny, her voice, I miss so much of my life, our system. It's not the same for me as it is for everyone who can go back. It's not the same.
Twilight in hills, bbq at Sam's, it was those big black men made me feel ok. Molifa telling me a story of Austin I can understand, "It's alive but remember, it's only 8% black. Different culture than New Orleans. White and hispanic. Where in Gentilly you live?" Yes, Sam's BBQ & the owner's name is Brian. He gave me a big big hug, gold teeth, papa bear. The human contact in there was the closest I've come to home since. So Dirty Dozen Brass Band are playing ACL Festival? It's no Hot 8 or Lil Rascals.
Just unpacked my books and started sobbing. Is this the diary of a quivering teenager? I'm just sayin. Is that all I have? Is that all I have? looping around my brave lonely heart. And sobbing, and not better. I drink water all day and I'm dying of thirst. I just want to go home, into my house, see my things, I want to touch them, save them, bury them. My hands are dying to find what I can find. I have always benefitted from touching the corpse. I remember kissing Arun's forehead, after his mother and father and sister did. My small hand on my mother's dead one.
Yes, 4765 Western was my ashram. I can rejoice in that; I am awe-struck by how prepared I was to be able to handle this. Thank you world. That said, oh, oh, oh.

red dirt girl

Letting something go isn't a sign of not loving it, it might be a sign that you love it more than anything. That's the one thesis I had in mind during the performance of my Natural Disaster installation. Jesus f'in Christ - did that really happen exactly when it did exactly as it did by whom & how? Art really can read the air like morse code. Art really can prepare us for dying. That's why I did that damn piece and maybe having done it the way I did is why I'm not dying but alive. I've been dying my whole damn life & right now? I'm alive. You're alive too. Wanna eat some Archway molasses cookies w/icy cold soy milk?

"We took New Orleans with us anyway so wherever we go, we've got it."
Tanio Hingle/New Birth Brass Band

God I just remembered coming upon Hot 8 when they were doing their for real second line in tribute to Kip's brother who had been murdered. It was after the St. Patrick's parade, me, Michelle, Wendy, Jill. What a wild twilight. Somebody handed me a menthol cigarette and a big bottle of rum. Well what would you have done? I took what I needed & passed the rest on.

red dirt hands

For the first time since evacuating, I dreamt of my home in New Orleans last night. Walking through, looking at the damage, feeling the walls, the water creeps up you know. Put my hand on my wall & it was wet all the way up to 6 feet. There wasn't much sludge or mold (ah - dreams) but everything tossed, wet sad piles, my bed how I'd left it w/treasures piled on it just soaked & ruined. My Zenith phonograph destroyed. It was then that I cried out, "Oh!" And woke.

Golden Ticket

I've landed, finally, I have a bed, finally, that I don't have to leave in a few days or tomorrow. My animals are safe, all the arrows are pointing up. I'm in Austin Texas and I like it. Something chilly-grand is happening here, for me, to me. My body's clean. I turned onto Live Oak & then onto the street Susan laughingly called "No Outlet" cuz there's no sign for Linden but a "No Outlet" sign. So I live on No Outlet street. I'll be here awhile. Tomorrow I buy a crisp suit. Wednesday I interview. Feels like I've got a purse of gold coins. Feels like a new phase of my life. Thank you, Marguerite Valance. And in that way, thank you Tobey & Arun. Guess you all knew it was time for me to leave. Had to get vomited out, it just had to be.
(The truckers took care of me on the road, like they always have. When I stopped at the rest stop & asked them questions they let me know where the speed traps are & where they weren't and then even let me - shit - what's it called when you ride behind a vehicle in the pocket of air their wake makes & hardly use any gas? And they'd honk at me & wave & I'm telling you. Go to the Peterbuilt sites - they're fighting for the Gulf Coast for real.)