Last night we headed to Swirl - a place literally where everyone knows your name - for a town that can sometimes seem so incestuous, so claustrophobic, so stifling, here you delight in the opposite - showing up at our town hall on Friday nights - Swirl - and seeing many groupings of friends and acquaintances, past love interests gone awry or unfulfilled - there’s even a new dog on the scene, Taylor’s successor is Sangi, an adorable mix puppy with bandit markings - what’s interesting about an evening like last night is having this place - a place you can walk to from your house on a Friday night - select a glass of champagne, taste new wines, or simply grab a beer - people spill out into the streets - so you start with one group: say the Turks and you listen to a beautiful Turkish woman sing (she’s the second runner up to the Turkish Idol), then you segue to another group to chit chat about Russia and Georgia (and discover this Georgian was actually at your house for a party last year), shuffle over to a group of familiar faces and catch up on the latest gossip, goals and goings on, and then simply stand back for a second to watch all of the moving parts swirling harmoniously in and an around.
On a good night you will be entertained with a dose or more of drama, welcomed with warm hugs and cheek to cheek kisses, learn one thing you didn’t know before (how to say fuck in Russian, sailor style), and then you need walk only ten paces to fall into your own bed. How great is that?
Don’t think because she’s here that I’m not appreciating every single minute and worrying about every second she will be away again - because dear reader I am. I keep trying to relax into a scenario that is “this is us twenty years from now, thirty years from now,” but you never know what life is going to hand you and when it gives you love on a silver platter (albeit with a chip in it), you have to make every minute count.
A power walk through the park this morning with Loca on one hand and Flower on the other and a state of the union check - there is not world enough and time - so you have to change yourself. I told her that I’ve heard from one too many a person that at my age is when the years start clicking by in the blink of an eye. I can’t stop time but I can slow it down by my own will - so years of habit forming break neck speed and super producing must now be transformed into a stroll vs a power walk, seeing instead of surveying, listening instead of hearing, savoring instead of consuming, grooving instead of rock n rolling. Lena Horne said it’s not the burden that wears you down, but the way you carry it.
Flower arrived in the midst of a work maelstrom - too busy to spit - and so after a brief porch hang, we went to Donna’s to hear Evan Christopher, who has had a steady gig there on Thursday nights. For $10 you hear world class music in an intimate setting on Rampart Street. This is why you have to love New Orleans. You walk off your porch and in five minutes you are listening to a clarinetest extraordinaire while sipping a Corona.
I’m convinced of a do it yourself world since once again my encounter with any form of contractor has proven to be most unsavory. Painters returned to fix the complete f-u in T’s office and we discovered that they never even mixed the pigment in the paint to begin with - this is after countless conversations, printed out instructions - OMG! - I just can’t deal with any worker again. Now T is going to fix what they did. We should have done that to begin with!!
Bam Bam joined our family today. He is a grey six year old cat whose mistress, Rachel, died after a year long illness. He is slate grey but his fur bleached to almost blonde since he moved from an indoor cat to an outdoor cat the last year as Rachel had been in and out of the hospital.
He’s a sweetie and is under my desk right now. We’re isolating him from the terror (read: Loca) until he can adjust and get his bearings. Rachel had named him Bambi, but we’ve settled on Bam Bam.
It was a typical New Orleans experience, Carol my neighbor sent an email to the Fauborg St John email group, then she gave me Pam’s number, who was Rachel’s neighbor. When T and I went to go check him out, Rachel’s gentleman friend M was there and P’s husband came, and turns out T and I both know S, who was a tenant of Rachel’s.
M showed us how Bamboo (as he calls him) shines your shoes - the cat rolls his head on the toe of your shoe. Very cute!!
The streets are blocked off down to the right of us as they are filming “I Love Phillip Morris” with Jim Carey on the corner of Harding Drive and Dumaine St.
G reminded me of a funny scene from that sitcom 30 Something where the woman is pregnant and she says to herself, “I can’t drink, smoke, or do drugs. This isn’t a fetus inside me, it’s a probation officer!”
