Coffee Barges

It's almost too much: the sight and scent and taste of a perfectly brewed cup of coffee, Joni Mitchell's Misses CD on the turntable, a gray-sky Sunday.... How in the world to compose a coherent sentence with these historically potent influences and no cigarettes?

I'm grateful for the overcast skies today. To match my mood. Maybe not such a good idea to have started the day watching the second half of Recount.

I'm grateful for coffee. And inflatable mattresses. Although there are days when it seems like a measure of my immaturity, many days the whole process of re-inflating is one of the purest pleasures of the day: the little battery-powered Coleman air pump which cost so little and still works like a charm every time all these years later...the "problem" of sag that is so easily solved by the flip of a switch...and the serene Infinity I enter while waiting for the mattress to refill--there's nowhere to go, nothing to do but hold that pump and wait.

On my birthday, the thought occurred to take the day off. The day was also my 4 weeks smoke-free anniversary but in the end I settled for just allowing myself the luxury of taking the Louisiana bus from Tchoupitoulas to the St. Charles streetcar instead of walking as I usually do. There's a Rite-Aid at the corner and I dashed in and bought a bag of strawberry Twizzlers before the streetcar arrived. Twizzlers have been my cigarette substitute for a few weeks....I think that's ending today.

It was a pretty easy day at school; the piano girls joined the full band in preparation for the upcoming winter concert on Thursday so I had no full teaching duties and provided mostly a chaperoning presence for the hour.

After class, instead of waiting for the streetcar I chose to walk along the track and try to think of a way to celebrate and reward myself. Something I could purchase or maybe somewhere to go for dinner or some live entertainment... I couldn't think of a thing and wondered, as I often do when I can't figure out how to be good to myself, Oh lord, have I slipped into depression again?

The streetcar was a long time coming which allowed me a good long walk in the balmy New Orleans dusk. By the time it caught up to me I was several blocks down St. Charles and full to tearfulness with gratitude for the flounce of my skirt against my knees and my good strong legs, and the magnanimous elegance of sundown in New Orleans, and the breathtaking paradox of the beautiful faces and relentless mischief of the kids I'd just left, and the crazy incongruity of landing in the best days of my life with a full-scale recession underway globally.

When I stand in the World, it seems an enormous, wonderful surprise that Obama is president of the U.S.

When I breathe from my soul and stand in the deep waters of Time, the synchronicity and harmony of his election--not to mention me finding my way to New Orleans and countless other specific aspects of Now--are apparent and awesome.


There's something maybe clever or informative or amusing yet to be revealed to me about Obama's high profile smoking cessation attempt at the same time as my low profile attempt. Meanwhile, the specters of my two big heroines--Joni and Sojourner--hover nearby, with smoking inextricably woven into their life stories.

If I take a long stroll down some train or streetcar track, will the imminent insight come forth? Will I have a eureka moment and either resume smoking or never smoke again--but either way, reach an understanding that will settle the matter once and for all?

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like....Indiana

For those of you not living in the area, this is not a picture of me but this is how the world looked when I walked outside my house this morning and I responded as the child in the photo is responding.

What a wonderful, wacky start for my fourth week off cigarettes.

Overheard in my emailbox...

Me: Did/do you like Lucky Charms cereal?

My Friend: i did, and i would still, although there was always a feeling of discontent with it because i knew i was in it for the colored sugary charms, but if it was all charms, it would be pointless nutritionally, but yummy. i have the same thing with a salad and blue cheese dressing.
you?


Me: It was a weird cereal. Like you, I was in it for the charms but

did the non-charms have to be sooooooooo unappetizing? I mean, they weren't even as good as Cheerios.

and

the charms, while tasty, had a somewhat unnatural texture: not really marshmallow though they were advertised as such

and

the leprechaun or elf or whatever that creature was.....just a little bit creepy to me as a kid, like the feeling I had around my uncles when they got drunk at family picnics...

My Friend: you are right. the "noncharms" were sub-cheerio...and cheerios aren't even that good.

In Memoriam

I changed my Gmail profile pic to the John-curled-naked-around-Yoko shot earlier today. Tonight I remembered what today is...

9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980

One Man's Ceiling

What to make of New Orleans' recent designation as the most violent city in America?

"Based on what?" I wondered when the announcement was made. A little research revealed the stats and criteria and time frame and author of the study. All legit as best I can tell.

But the irony (or is it paradox) is breathtaking: the first and only place on the planet that's actually felt like home to me is the most violent city in the U.S.

I'm a woman living alone--and frequently walking alone, bicycling alone, eating out alone, etc... The most threatening situation I've witnessed was a swarming convergence on a chef by 6 police units down on Canal Street one night. Along with 7 or 8 other passengers, the chef and I were entering our 2nd hour of waiting for a replacement or a repair team for the Magazine St bus parked at the curb and the chef expressed his frustration loudly enough for the bus driver to hear. I guess the driver felt threatened and alerted NOPD.

I could understand if the announcement was that New Orleans is the most frustrating city in the U.S. The place is clearly wired for telephone service (look at the spaghetti tangle hanging over our little one-lane street) but just try to get someone in city government or the utility companies or the post office or the sanitation company or ..... to answer the phone. Or if you succeed in reaching someone (and when they finally answer the phone on the 14th ring, they sound surprised--as if a client was the last person they expected to find on the line), good luck getting any information or assistance or a callback.

Government and business have websites but most all of them are riddled with misspelled words, dead hyperlinks, and inaccurate information. Today I was trying to send the mayor an email. After composing my succinct but compelling missive, I was instructed to copy a string of characters at the foot of the page as a security measure.

What do you think? The security measure malfunctioned. Likewise for the webmaster link where tech problems were to be directed....

But I still love this place.

It doesn't make sense; usually I hate when things don't work due to human negligence. I hate lazy communication. I hate intentional misinformation. I hate when people just tell you anything to avoid saying "I don't know." I hate having my time devoured by someone talking long and saying nothing.

And all of those things go on here. In abundance. On a regular basis.

I've felt frustration more often than fear since coming to New Orleans. But my gasping and fist-clenching is diminishing. Sometimes I'm actually laughing through the frustration (usually possible if I've had a few drinks). More impressive, I'm developing some wiliness. I'm getting slick and learning how to slide through or devise a trick or a strategy.

Oh, I'm a novice for sure. I'm a rookie up against the charming, relentless Error Message that is life in New Orleans. But I like games.

And I love that people look me right in my face here.
And I love that people speak, even to "strangers."

And, in my book, those two features make New Orleans the least violent city I've lived in.

Teaching Black Girls To Talk

I teach a piano class four afternoons a week at a KIPP school.

The girls were horrible Thursday. No one had done their homework, three of the five showed up without notebook, music or pencil, and they were talking as much and as loud as me for most of the hour. Finally I threw in the towel. "OK. You don't want to listen to me or work today so talk to me."

They gave me two things I could use. First, T_____ said she can't learn when she's hot. The girl has a point. In the cinderblock cell where we meet, room temperature is either sweltering or frigid; there's no middle range. When the AC is on, arctic air blasts directly onto us from a 3 foot by 3 foot vent in the wall. When it's off, my blouse sticks to me.

R______ said "Miss Alex, I think we'd all do better if we had a morning class. Our mind is too tired by this time of day." Another very good point. Inspirational messages like "No Excuses" and "Find A Way" are emblazoned all over the walls of this school. Granted I haven't spent a lot of time with adolescents, but these kids seem to be making excuses all the time. Is that typical of the age group or are they just rebelling against the signs?

I stopped in the office to pick up my check on my way out. After making my way through balloons and crepe paper and tables burdened with chicken wings and cake--preparations for Parent's Night--the tension in the office was an abrupt change. The office ladies were tiptoeing around the edge of the room with averted eyes, leaving a wide circular berth around a white male teacher and a brown girl student.

I entered asking, in a normal volume, if I could borrow a computer to look up the bus schedule.
One of the secretaries gestured toward an empty desk and mouthed "Use that one..." What was going on? Well, Mr. (who is the principal as well as a teacher at this school) was schooling her in how to say "Excuse me. I didn't understand what you said." After each utterance he'd say something like "No, you sound angry" or "Now you sound like you're annoyed" or "That doesn't sound like you really want to understand."

This went on the full four or five minutes it took me to find what I needed and get out of there. It felt hard and abusive and pointless to me. I think I took it personally. And the episode fed whatever it is in my cellar-soul that growls at the sight of all the uniforms and standing in line that defines these new New Orleans schools.

These kids are being trained to fit in the dominant culture. I'm not slamming the dominant culture wholesale; don't misunderstand me.

BUT

Since not one adult found a way to inform me of the schedule changes on Monday and then Wednesday last week; and since neither the office staff, the teacher who hired me nor the payroll clerk can figure out how to set a payday and pay me on that day; and since I received neither email nor telephone message--at either of my phone numbers--today informing me that class had been canceled but instead learned about it after traveling through rain to get to school today....

It just seems like maybe drilling the adults and getting them to conform might be more useful than drilling a 12-year-old girl about the tone of her voice at the end of a long school day (they meet 7 a.m. to 5 p.m.).

That job I left in October was one of those places where voice tones are modulated to flat and positive and facial expressions are perennially pleasant. There's a slender band of affect permissible and anything to either side of that is problematic, dysfunctional or unprofessional. Suppress, suppress, suppress....

How and when did flat affect and fake smiles become the desired demeanor? Why is it unprofessional to look or sound amused or annoyed or embarrassed or hurt when one is amused or annoyed or embarrassed or hurt?

It would be a different (and possibly less distasteful) situation if the girls were being taught meditation techniques or boxing or offered tools and opportunity to encourage them to self monitor to achieve a balance that works for them--if not the dominant surrounding culture. They're being told "That way that you walk/talk/laugh/emote is not okay with us. You need to stop doing that and do it this way because we're happier and more comfortable when you do it this way."

I think the girls are bringing them something they don't know how to handle so they're outlawing it.

When I was coming up, adults would say things like "Do as I say. After you've traveled the road I traveled, you'll have the right to an opinion."

But what if I'm not interested in traveling your road? What if I was planning to sail to my destiny? Or fly?

Reflect and Review

The tone of my horoscope for the last week or so reminds me of my emotional state in the days leading up to this year's presidential election. "Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!" the little voice in my head gasped. "Are we going to do this? Is it possible?!" Anticipation--of the breathless-excited-standing-on-tense-tippy-toes variety. Something's coming....like, dare we say it -- a new day?

As the first day of my current Quit (that's how smokers refer to the process of confronting and engaging their addiction) drew to a close, I checked the day's message for Sagittarius:

It's the first full day of the Sun's month-long visit to your sign. This is a period of renewal, so make time this weekend to review the year behind you and to envision what you want your next year to be. But this is not a one-time event. Repeat this ritual of intentional visualization until it becomes ingrained into your everyday thinking. In this manner you can impact your future by changing how you see it.

And this morning's reading

There are so many big things in transition now that it's hard to pick just one and talk about it. In these days prior to Thursday's Sagittarius New Moon, you need to look back into your past and deep into your soul for the truths that can guide your life into the future. Keep in mind that you don't have to tell anyone about your inner journey today; it's yours and yours alone.

[Maybe I'm screwing things up by letting you read this?]

Anyway, the first week of a Quit is not the best time for the kind of deep life review advocated. I am fuzzy, unfocused and disorganized... I woke up this morning to discover I'd left the freezer door open over night. I risked one social outing over the weekend and spent $100 on dinner for two. I was so ditzy all day yesterday -- misplacing things and staring into space -- that by 9 p.m. going to bed seemed the safest thing to do. So I did.

I feel like I need a map or an outline or questionnaire or something to guide a meaningful life review. Or maybe just having some time off and alone on Thanksgiving will be enough. Feels like me and America are about to step into an important time...a time for correcting some crookedness and learning from mistakes...and getting it right this time.