When I started to write this, I was sober. When I finished... well, let's just say I was not the same. It reads like a list, a rant, if I could read it on Def Poetry, it'd be awesome, but it's long. So I'll just post it here. I dedicate this to you, Momma. You rock.
Ah, yes! I remembered what I wanted to write about today. The secret of the city that care forgot. Secrets, rather. The way we won’t send tourists to Coops. Or the way the Mardi Gras Indians keep their parade details so secretive. That. The way the moon hangs-sags-drags, silver usually, but sometimes gold in the velvet ebony firmament. The way the wind from the city-from the quarter- sweeps across the river and picks up the jasmine blooms of the green-thumbed Algiers Point residents and wafts gently and so sweetly into your bedroom. The way the humidity wraps you in its sticky arms and presses you closer and closer to the moist earth until you feel you might melt or cry. Whichever comes first, who cares? The way the air, the laissez-faire, can suck you into it, and breathe life into you. Into everything. Everything is more alive down here. It’s the palms, the elephant ears, the moss, the oaks, the iron wrought balconies, the courtyards, the swamps, and the sexy sweet, dangerous breeze that never succeeds- tries but never succeeds- at cooling you down. The way if you go somewhere you originally thought was hot, isn’t so, after enduring a couple NOLA summers. Those cicadas, those freakishly enormous roaches, rats, grasshoppers. The sniiiff, you can hear in any bathroom. The graffiti on the inner door of the stall, “I fucked a Rod Stewart look-a-like in Maxwell’s bathroom”. And the way you completely believe that somehow, that’s true. The music, oh it’s everywhere, drifting from bicycles, cars, and jukeboxes. The people, your friends, your enemies, your acquaintances, the awful, awful roads, the diversity, the strange gutter punks, the businessmen, the corrupt politicians, and law enforcement, the run down buildings and historic homes. The way we almost adamantly fight to not look forwards. The way we walk backwards, even at the extent of our own necks. Always looking back, at our history. Never caring about the future. When suddenly you realize it’s not that we don’t care about anything (although deep down it is) it’s that we don’t care about the future. Because almost nothing matters more than our history. But god, it’s so charming. It’s the pink and green houses. The parades, the festivals, the sheer celebration of life. The frustrating amount of time it takes to get anything done. The lazy laundry day Mondays, red bean Mondays, happy hour, laughter, volume, raucousness, sex, drugs, rock and roll, hope and faith, despair, hope again, voodoo, easiness, southern hospitality, heritage, history, heat, mint juleps, accents, beignets, cafe au laits, pomp and circumstance, full three piece suits with suspenders, stereotypes, whiskey, john grisham novels -I don’t even own more than one coat-, something about the way the warm weather changes brain waves, the routine, the formality, the iced tea, grits, bloody marys, inked up bikers, bar flies, free pours, to-go cups, clowns and jesters and tourist traps, alligators, and jazz, soul, Zydeco, Cajun, Acadian, mulatto, yats, nutria rats, the secrets.
Don’t you understand? Silly me, of course you don’t. And you never will. Until you get lost in the projects. Until you go from work to parade to work again and again and again. Allen Toussaint, Dr. John, Harry Connick Jr. Louis Armstrong, Anne Rice, Trent Reznor, Harry Anderson, John Goodman, and our newest addition, Brangelina. They all know. The pussyfooters, the camel toe steppers, muses, Krewe D’etat, Bacchus, Orpheus, balls, costumes, pink slips, second line parades, wetlands, Tabasco, crystal, blue crab, crawfish, shrimp. Do you know what it means? Do you? The dome, Decatur st., burgundy, Roberts, ghosts, and bartenders that you know, and table dancing and just pure dancing. Grand parties, the end of stuffiness, all contradictions to end, death to the cold, to the new order! What’s wrong with history? We’ll absorb ourselves to death if need be. And oh give them Bourbon. It smells, and it’s not real It’s the facade. They can have it. But the marching bands are ours. Dancing girls, ode to fireworks over the river. To selling your soul to the devil, to brass bands and okra and spiced green beans and oh my...Mike West. RIP Mike and Katie West. To snow in New Orleans-to jackson square- on Christmas eve. To goddamn mother f*&@#g Brett brown, swinger couples, and FIT graduates who gave me hope, to floods, to English teachers, who taught me or rather showed me that I already knew better. It was colder than Lafayette, Indiana. How does she grab your heart like that? High tides, low tides, lakefronts, barbeques, ferry boats, Caribbean markets, free everything. To magnolia trees, magnolia projects, magnolia streets. To weeping, crying, sobbing willow trees. To romance, true love, lazy southern afternoons, to twilight, to dusk, to hurricanes and hurricane parties, mojitos, tire swing bars, friendly neighborhood dealers, and no, no one will look at your nails. Because after all, who cares? Let’s waltz, let’s go to the levee and dance at sunset, Purple and orange, and pink and turquoise. Shells, and brackish water, driftwood. Let’s slow dance. Late nights and long mornings. Plantations, class and dirt. The kind you love underneath your fingernails. To honesty, to unabashed brutal truth that slips from your lips even though you don’t want it to, as if the heat greases them, loosens them, pries them open. To the way that most of them that left (even if they did so of their own accord) come back eventually. They all come back. Let’s put on pretty dresses and take our shoes off. Let’s sit on the porch and sip something. Slowly and savor it. The moment. The night. The life the color, the picture, the cold blue grey smoke that wraps around, curls around us and drifts off into space. Joins the nebula, to become part of another world. To potted plants, to strays. And dog bars, and dog parades and even cat parades. To bulldogs that sit in chairs at tables, to liquor license classes, slack ones. To lucky numbers, 14 beers, floors, 1408. Sushi, gin and tonics, trivia, Pink Floyd laser shows, punk Madonna covers, casinos, never ever, but yes, when you fall, sitting on the toilet seats. Miss and Mr. first name to your elders, hot sausage, andouille sausage, sucking heads and pinching tails, debutantes, tuxes, white dresses, big hats, blonde wigs, family, friends, fiddle-dee-dee and all that jazz. Do you like it? Do you love it? Why? Airboats, cypress trees, hoodoo, Marie Laveau, riverboats, tourons, white tees, juvenile, paneled ceilings, mansions, Audubon zoo, Audubon park, French, liberated, black, red-headed step children. Makin groceries. Yeah you right. Who dat? How’s your mom and dem? And I bet I can still tell you where you got those shoes.
A hot Indian summer day has given way to a magical evening at the Grand Oaks Mansion. The blooms of the lush gardens in the yard quiver in the dying breeze. Above, bright stars burst into visibility in the sapphire sky. The spanish moss, perches precariously from the branches of the mighty oak tree. The stream wanders along, trickling over pebbles and banks. The jasmine perfumed air hangs tranquil now, pregnant with anticipation. But the air is the only thing that’s still today.
