Why is it that the most rote of routines – up at 5ish – dogs fed – dogs walked (Arlene dragging, Loca pulling) – a run – breakfast and tea and the Times Picayune – then to my desk by 7:30AM for Monday’s work – can bring so much joy to my life? Note to self: recall this realization when you’re restless by Thursday.
On this Sunday – one day of my life, one page in my book – where the music from Voodoo Fest is dominating the otherwise languid air and the brown pelican dives repeatedly for fish outside in the bayou – I find my mind bouncing from topic to topic, not completing one thought before beginning another thought – the curse of even my Sunday afternoon carved up into a multitasking event. But where my mind…
On Friday evening, some friends stopped by to see how I was doing and ended up hanging out and listening to music and dancing. They left at around 2AM. Then pretty much the same group reappeared on Saturday morning for breakfast and never left until late last night. It was porch hanging, dancing, champagne, kick up your heels – and wave to all the festival goers – but here it is Sunday morning and it…
It is so gorgeous outside – a fall day – there is music drifting over from City Park as Voodoo Fest is underway – kids are canoeing in the bayou – the sky is a perfect blue – it’s going to be hard to stay inside this weekend and nurse my face along while the neighborhood is gunho with music, festivities, people – man of mystery called saying he remembered last year when we biked…
My neighbor is a biologist and works for the Wildlife and Fisheries – he was identifying all the things stuck to the bottom of my canoe for me last night – mussels, barnacles – that I have to scrape off. Meanwhile, he and his partner head off to the wildnerness and live like heathens for two months every year out of a camp they half built – they hunt, they fish, they do whatever it…
That’s just what Bush did in California when he decided to take a jab at Louisiana’s Governor and her competence post-Katrina – I ask any person to stand in her place and tell me what they would have done? Maybe she didn’t rise to the occasion, maybe she didn’t end up being Rudy Guiliani post 9/11, but Bush is an utter and complee embarrassment to the people of Louisiana and the United States. I’ve gone…
Ever read Eudora Welty’s Powerhouse – it’s her version of trying to write about jazz after experiencing a jazz musician who entranced her? Or my friend Chris Cressionne used to paint to my brother Robert Namer’s talk radio program. Okay, that’s right, I’m throwing these two in the same vein. I came across this poem today on a website I like. Time and Materials Gerhard Richter: Abstrakt Bilden I. To make layers, As if they…
The music has started jamming down the street in City Park as the sound systems are getting ready for Voodoo Fest. I’m held captive in my house by voluntary consignment. I’m a pumpkin before Halloween.
A girlfriend of mine who has proven to be more adept at asking for what she wants from relationships than me sent me this: “Oprah once repeated something one of her guests said that sticks with me: When someone shows you who he really is, believe him!” The best lines in poetry from John Keats: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” – that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. The…
I just love Richard Russo – if only I would have read this passage from his Bridge of Sighs the other day, instead just like when I was in therapy, I had to get to it myself and then have it confirmed later: Odd, how our view of human destiny changes over the course of a lifetime. In youth we believe what the young believe, that life is all choice. We stand before a hundred…