I'm Still Here

I want to be writing here but it's proving harder than anticipated to carve out time and get writer-ly in my work place.

I want to be writing because writing helps me think. I want to write here because I like having an audience and I want my friends to know what's going on around me and in me.

It's going to be a little while before I have computer and Internet access in the house on Harmony Street so I'll keep trying to show up.

Watch for a picture of my new hairdo, coming as soon as Carlton empties his digital camera and sends me the shots he took last weekend. I'm on a mission: I want to look pretty again and as an early step in that direction I visited Beauty on de Bayou and gave Jowald free reign last Friday. I'm pleased, folks are talking at work and I'm getting more play on the street.

Stay tuned....

Pleasure in the Fight

Two or three people staged a grand argument in the street in front of my house last night. It was "funny" because it was almost 10 p.m. and I'd only just returned home and made a mad dash for the piano to get a taste of the Brahms Impromptu before turning in for the night.

Most of the time bird song or human whistling or singing rises up in the silence after the music. This was the first time angry yelling erupted in the wake.

After a few minutes, it was clear the woman at least was deriving some kind of good from the yelling (the other voice(s) were male); the tone of her voice grew rounder and mellower with each utterance. I couldn't see the speakers and I would be hard pressed to explain what I'm about to say but gradually the sound of the anger seemed tinged with pleasure. Near the end of the scene, the woman was actually laughing with such zesty satisfaction that I started smiling too.

The House on Harmony

I found a place to live. A little green house on Harmony Street. (I hadn't noticed the double meaning until I googled "green house" and most of the images were glass houses.)

In my private universe, this is an unquestionably beautiful thing -- having "green" and "harmony" associated with the place where I live and dream and make things. In my universe such omens portend unequivocal peace and joy.

But I know in "the real world" it's just silly to believe pretty coincidences mean anything.

And it is inside that knowing that doubt and fear and second-guessing arise. What should I be paying attention to instead of (or in addition to) the things that naturally catch my attention?

On the day the landlord and I met to look around the place, I noticed there was no refrigerator in the kitchen. "Uh oh. No refrigerator. That settles that--I can't rent a place that doesn't have a frig."

"Well, I don't usually provide a refrigerator for tenants but I have one in another unit you could use."

Problem solved in the little green house on Harmony street.

On the day I moved in, the landlord was in the kitchen--spray-painting the refrigerator. Was that one of those things that should have had meaning to me? How would an adept social anthropologist have interpreted the occurrence of a landlord with a spray can and a refrigerator? I saw it as more Crescent City quirkiness and thought "I love New Orleans!"

By the end of the day, there was no doubt about it: the refrigerator wasn't working. Except as a safe and nurturing space for fledgling newborn creatures. I left the landlord a voicemail.

A few hours later, my CD player, my piano and the lamps all went off at the same time. Even though the ceiling fans and the microwave still worked.

"Uh oh," I thought. "Is the real world colliding with my rose-colored outlook?" Should seeing the spray can have warned me the lights were going out?

When I returned from work the next day the landlord and a guy who looked like what we called "poor white trash" where I come from were sprawled across my kitchen floor working on the refrigerator. A rusty mini-frig was parked on two big cinder blocks against the opposite wall. Apparently something they called a "starter" was broken and the landlord would buy a new one the next day. "I feel kinda funny 'cause I don't usually provide refrigerators for my tenants," he added. "But I told you I would so I guess I have to."

"Uh huh," I said. I said nothing about the other problem, the power coming off and on.

The next day, I left work for a few hours to meet the gas&electric company at my apartment to switch the utilities into my name. The technician was a swarthy, uncommunicative little guy who barely responded to my questions about the intermittent electric power until he reached the other side of the house and opened the breaker box. "Here's why your power's going off and on," he practically shouted, holding a copper and glass thing under my nose.

Now he spoke in a clear audible voice, obviously warming to his work. I didn't understand much of what he said beyond "no connection" and "breaker" and "needs replacing." I left the landlord a voicemail.

He was audibly annoyed when he returned my call later that day. "What?!!" he yelled in the phone. "The electric was fine before you moved in. What's going on?!"

"I don't know, M____. I'm just telling you what the guy said."

"OK. OK. We'll take care of it but I've done all I can with the refrigerator." The line went abruptly silent between us.

"What are you saying?"

"I've done all I can do. I kept my word and put a refrigerator in. Not my fault if it doesn't work."

"Oh... " I said. "I'm really disappointed..."

"Well, I kept my word," he repeated.

"M____ ..." I was exasperated. "Don't talk crazy. You haven't kept your word. Installing a broken refrigerator is not 'keeping your word' and you know it."

"Don't you remember me saying that I don't provide refrigerators for my tenants?"

"Yes, I remember. And do you remember me saying I wouldn't rent a place that didn't have a refrigerator? Did you really think I'd be ok with a non-functioning refrigerator?"

"Yeah, yeah..... But do you remember me saying I don't provide refrigerators?....."

Never a good sign when the conversation turns circular on ya..... I let it go. The next day, I explored craigslist. I didn't want to do it, but I was willing to move again after less than a week in residence. And I found some groovy possibilities (including a house in the Marigny with two female artists looking for a third creative soul).

But by the time I got home last night, my landlord had come to Jesus and found a replacement refrigerator. He left a voicemail indicating he's okay with me paying my half of the cost of the refrigerator over time.

I don't intend to purchase 1/2 a refrigerator but I don't have to tell him that yet. I called and left him a "Thanks so much.... I'm happy" voice mail. A couple of days of harmony can't hurt.

Venga un Estornudo...

You know how you feel like sneezing...and then you don't? And sometimes the feeling lingers and you almost-sneeze a few times? Even before the sneeze, you know what's trying to approach. And there's no fear or resistance usually; in fact, you want it to come.

There's something I could call "the breath of Real" that's been playing with me for a few weeks. It moves sort of like a sneeze. In the same way that a deep inhalation can sometimes trigger the urge to sneeze, now and then, on the release of a slow, deep breath, a feeling or awareness or sense comes over me: no doubt about anything, no fear of anything, no worry about anything and clear sight. Like everything false or uncertain in me and the world drops away.

It's not huge or brilliant or fantastic like some of the insight or conversion experiences I've read about (and sometimes wished for). It's just a simple dropping away of all nonsense and distraction. An unequivocal appreciation of the "This" that feels as easy and graceful as opening my eyes.

The sensation is simultaneously imminent and realized.

And then it's gone.

Today begins another smoking cessation attempt (one has to keep trying...). Things always begin to get very "real" when I'm not smoking. I wish, I wish, I wish the Sneeze of Real to come...

What I Think IT is

It came to me the other night, driving back to Megan and Andy's after a couple hours communing with my piano in the French Quarter. I was thinking about a recent email from a friend in MS that seemed to suggest summers are hotter in New Orleans. Is it hotter over here? What is it about New Orleans? Why do I prefer it to Gulfport?



The weather was perfect that night. All the car windows down, OZ jamming as usual... Folks on the street forming one picture-perfect still life after another. Each block a visual metaphor, containing buildings in every state along the pole from collapse to renewal and people displaying every human condition from affluent decadence to abject poverty. Everywhere I looked I saw poems, performances, collages.

That night, as ever in New Orleans, I was at peace in my body. Whether puffy-eyed, itchy and sneezing with allergy or gleaming with perspiration or waddle-walking after more-than-enough of another great meal: I'm almost always completely in my body here and smiling about it. I've never felt over- or under-dressed whatever the event. I'm not self-conscious about my appearance--even strolling down Magazine in pajamas with uncombed hair. I'm at home in my body, just as I am, in New Orleans.

I don't notice it being any hotter here than in MS. What I notice is that life is slower in both places than anywhere I've lived or visited in the North and West. And people seem generally more down to earth all over the South. What I decided the other night is that "down to earth" in Gulfport lacked the joie de vivre that I find in abundance in New Orleans. It's in the food and the people and the music and the architecture and the language.... In some strange way, it's even in the graft and ineptitude and violence and class bigotry that are also part of the landscape.

The unpretentiousness I notice as a distinguishing feature of Southern living has a brown tint in Gulfport and a dusty rose with flecks of gold tint in New Orleans. So far, it's easier to live with my depressive tendencies in NO than Gulfport.

I'm not looking for a fight here. These are my impressions, my opinions. If Gulfport is your favorite place on earth, I won't try to change your mind. I'm just reporting the view from where I stand. For my taste, New Orleans has a grace and elegance and kookiness that fits just right. And there's nowhere on earth I'd rather be.

Aqui, Ahora

I agree that Be(ing) Here Now is the way to go.

Yet several times a day I run through a mental list:

find an apartment
collect my stuff from around New Orleans
retrieve my stuff from MS
deal with my stuff in CA
get my stuff from KY
get back on anti-depressant meds
start meditating
buy a scooter
do yoga
eat more fruit

This is a To Do list and it's all about things To Do at some moment beyond where I am.

A sweet young woman rang me up at the checkout counter at Walgreens today. Everything about her said "sweet natured": demure hairdo, gentle tone of voice, pale rose nail polish, easy smile revealing white, evenly-spaced teeth, a muted twinkle in dark brown doe eyes.

Was I ever as sweet?

I can't remember but "sweet" is not my nature now.

Another list in my head contains items like

Be nice
Don't ask questions
Smile
Surrender
Put your hands in your lap
Shhh!

This list, duplicated countless times, is the fading wallpaper in one of my mind's rooms. The cashier's sweetness brought the list to mind. A list mostly beyond the Heres and Nows of the kazillion Present Moments of my past.

I appreciated the cashier's sweetness and thought about how often I encounter this kind of sweetness in New Orleans. And wondered if it's possible living here will lend even a touch of such sweetness to my nature. Here and Now, the possibility is fading on the wall. But maybe...

Bike Riding

It's been awhile since I posted.

I'm staying with new friends in New Orleans. They are a delightfully eccentric young couple with hearts of gold whose generosity affords me comfortable shelter and, last Friday, some excellent eating. Today, they offered the use of the computer that sits in "my" room.

Hearts of Space is weaving good music medicine on the radio. My guitar lies in its case at the foot of the bed. Returned to me this afternoon from one of three places where my stuff is temporarily stored around the city. My contentment couldn't be greater tonight.

The piano is still in the French Quarter. I haven't missed it once today.

Then again, today was an unusual day: at 4 am I was lying on a couch in Long Beach MS wondering if I could pack up and get out of there without waking my sleeping hosts or their large dog. I succeeded and was cruising down I-10, watching the full moon set over New Orleans by 6 am. By 10 I was moping over the classifieds in the Sunday Times Picayune--looking for an apartment and slowly realizing I'll probably have to earn two paychecks before I can rent my own place...

At noon all I wanted was a nap after getting up before dawn two days in a row. But the weather has been luscious for a couple of days and going out seemed a better idea. So I did: a poetry reading up at City Park, a stop at Rouse grocery way up on Carrollton, a conversation with a friend sitting on the grass at Tulane...

...and back "home." Where I didn't miss my piano. Or open my guitar case. I sat down to write to you. To me. To write.

I felt a little rusty at first. I couldn't remember "how" to blog.

Apparently it came back to me.