Taming the beast
I went to have dinner with mom who looked tired and is tired from the long hours she’s working in Raceland. Ever since Katrina she feels compelled to be a martyr and work beyond her capacity.
As I was getting the groceries out of the car N, K’s son, called to me from the bayou where they were sitting. I said hi and went about my business – not wanting to go back into that firepit again with K (who is working on the asshole neighbor’s house). But I left the front door open as I put away my stuff and a woman came to the front and asked me where I got the house numbers from. So I gave her my Design within Reach catalog and told her they are Richard Neutra designs. Everyone is so enchanted by these numbers.
J was sitting on the bayou with E&H in their boat – H was talking about how she lost everything in Katrina – all of her grandmother’s and mother’s furniture and heirlooms. “Gone,” she said. “Some people are attached to their things and some aren’t, I was the person who was attached and now I don’t want to replace one single thing.” E is an architect who said, “oh your house is the one that was designed by a California architect.” She said, “You don’t see that kind of stuff here, it’s progressive.” I said actually the house was a California bungalow that we converted to a more traditional New Orleans architecture.
People don’t get that.
She said, “The back, the tower is like nothing else in the city.”
I said, “The back is a mock camelback that you see all over the city. It’s all just reinterpreted – but this is a New Orleans house. Not a California house. Steve is very talented and so it all seems effortless but there is a reason behind everything and it all points back to New Orleans’ vocabulary, not to California. Sometimes an out of towner “sees” New Orleans more than the locals do.”
Later as J and I sat with our chairs pulled close to the water – we saw the mother and father duck and the 12 adolescent ducks glide by. Then we saw a nutria skim by. Then a fish jumped out three times. R – my neighbor – the good one – said the fish jump out of the water because they want to see what we are doing. I told J that I had had a day – a day of recollection and reflection that had left me searching for meaning in my current life form.
The best either of us could get to was to stare out at the water, the lights from the houses glimmering on the glassy surface, the muffled voices of people sitting along the banks, and then J said, “well, look at where you are now.”