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We had three different couples in from out of town this weekend and it is Southern Decadence with all sorts of events to go to, one namely being the big parade yesterday, and as things would have it, we did not do much of any of what we had planned:

Reason number 1: On Sunday, Tin who never naps in the morning slept for a long time. Then didn’t eat lunch.

Reason number 2: It was so beautiful just porch hanging that there was really no reason to go elsewhere.

Reason number 3: See number 2.

It was so nice just hanging out and relaxing that our guests decided hanging was way better than joining in the festivities. They rode our bikes to the lakefront along the shady bike path that follows the bayou, then we went on a little car ride around uptown and Riverbend and Magazine.

We picked up groceries at Whole Food as I was in mid diatribe about the evils of buying anything pre-prepared, not local, and in particular at Whole Foods! And then we came home and our guests prepared us a delicious supper of kebobs, rice pilaf, and a large Greek salad. Yum!

The subject of appropriate age differences came up and T said that in Croatia there is a saying: if you lay down with children, you wake up peed on.

Pretty well sums it up what we were trying to say all evening.

When Obama was in town he took the entire family to Parkway Bakery & Tavern, right down the bayou from me. I’m not sure what they ate, but here’s a pretty good idea of how it went – I was there ordering a catfish on a bun dressed and a large roast beef poboy dressed – we were going to split with the boys. While I was waiting for my order, the kitchen loudspeaker came on and a man aid, “There is a burned hot dog on the counter if anyone wants it. It’s good but just burned,  put ketchup on it.”

This morning walking through City Park with Loca and Heidi on a gorgeous almost fall day, we passed all the other fellow park pedestrians who were also out later than usual because it is Sunday, because it is Labor Day weekend, and because. It was a lovely day, I had left Tin for a resleep in the crib and Tatjana for a morning nap after we had all had eggs, grits, biscuits and the last of the fresh peaches from the Green Market.

I debated a longer walk but was pulled in too many directions, should I get home for the guests who would be rising around now after coming in late? Should I get home to take care of giving Tin his lunch? Should I get home for something that I’m sure I must be doing? I decided to opt for the longer walk.

But as we rounded the end of the lagoon, I realized the dogs were already hot as the church bells ringing told me it was now eleven o’clock. So we turned and started our way back, but we passed several people reclining on blankets, and one couple had their very young infant on a blanket with a pacifier that had fallen out on the way laying on the sidewalk.

As we were about to leave the park, I decided for once to just sit on a bench in the shade and be.

The large white swan was preening and bathing and some brown ducks swam around as her white feathers were spread out and tucked back in. I thought about a conversation I had with a dear friend of mine who told me that instead of looking for inspiration in work she had started to contemplate the sound of birds in the trees as she walked her daughter.

Do you know how to just be, Rachel? a woman asked me a long time ago as she was explaining that perfectionism is overrated, expectations are out of whack and sometimes just doing something because is better than having the goal – walking the dogs, going to the grocery, to the post office – why not just go, walk, for the sake of doing it and being and nothing more?

I called E and am going to pay her a visit next week because again I find myself at a cross roads of trying to just get back into my skin and be. The doing part of me overrides the being part of me most of the times always harkening back to that line from an older actress who said, “I’m a doer,” as if that just explains away the endless toil and constant motion, as if it explains why some people just have no understanding of just being.

My friend is a doer and so am I and frankly I’m sick of being one. I want to inhabit my body and exist – like today when later in the afternoon everyone was napping again, I was able to recline on the sofa and read my book (although I again found myself tortured by the choice to go read on the porch or read on the couch).

I read and read Pollan’s treatise on how we have fucked up the simple pleasure of eating and now I wonder about the simple pleasure of being.

Ever hear the one that goes like this: Fatty and Skinny went to bed, fatty rolled over and skinny was dead? Well today we went to breakfast at Huevos and once again Tin ate four tamales, two poached eggs while I was struggling to keep up. Then I came home and was getting ready to hose down the back porch as we have company in this weekend and Joe was out in the back yard mowing the lawn. He said, “You sure have put on some weight.”

Thanks Joe.

So I paid him to hose down the porch and I went to the gym. It seems like it’s all work and no play for me these days as I can gain weight on a radish or even thinking of the image of a radish. While everyone else in the house seems to be able to shovel food down at lightning speed  with nary a pound to show.

Whatyagonnado?

On my way home from the gym I passed Joe on the Dumaine bridge and I rolled down the window still sweating from Boot Camp and said, “Hey, I lost five pounds.” He held up his fingers and said, “Two more to go.”

Thanks Joe.

There are two women who live across the bayou who are both 95 years old. Both of them walk every day. Both of them live alone. But that is where the similarity stops. One is active with the church and is constantly engaged in some church activity, bible class. I remember right after Katrina she told me the reason that we had been spared – those of us right on the bayou – is because of her, with a nod to the Virgin Mary, whose statue is in a grotto on Esplanade Avenue. She told me she went every day to give her thanks after the levees broke.

I was speaking to the other one recently because she is the one who is always filled with interesting tidbits about being born on the bayou and how it has changed over the years. It’s through my conversations with her that I see a picture of what the bayou looked like at the turn of the last century. So when I asked her if I could interview her, she laughed and said why would anyone be interested in me except for I might live to be 100. She was sporting a new aluminum cane with four legs that the bus driver for the school had given her (it wasn’t as stylish as the wooden cane she normally walked with but seemed more sturdy). She was also wearing a smock that was badly in need of washing and I thought about how the senses are what really confuse you when you’re older. She said, “My mother lived to 103, right next door.”

When I asked to interview the other, she had told me no, she was disinclined to talk to anyone as she had no use for history. She doesn’t want to even engage in small talk about history as she had just told someone from the church. “I’m not one to reminisce, I have no interest in history of any proportion,” she said.

Tin has been in the throes of Pirate-mania. Tata, our friend’s nanny in Zahara, gave him a pirate tee shirt and then we have been reading Pirates Don’t Change Diapers and suddenly it is nonstop pirate all the time around here. Below is Tin carrying around the now crumbled photograph of Tata who showed him how to baile flamenco – oh pa! and gave him galletas Maria to eat while we were in Spain. He has not let go of that photograph and he LOVES his pirate shirt.

We went to see The Kids Are All Right last night because T wanted to see it. I was watching it again from a sort of character point of view. I initially went to see the movie by myself and thought, wow this couple is Tatjana and me – I’m the Annette Bening character and Tatjana is the character Julianne Moore plays. But later a friend said she had seen the movie and loved it but she and her husband were convinced it was the opposite that I am the Julianne Moore character – causing me to suddenly wonder who the hell I am?

I have to say seeing the movie a second time was just as enjoyable as the first time. We saw it at the new Canal Place Theater, which has leather club chairs and little table tops almost like you are in a dinner theater. We were able to order food and drinks, we opted for a gin and tonic and truffled popcorn as we were headed to eat afterwards. It was just perfect. We then went over to Three Muses and walked in as an interesting band was playing – one guy on guitar singing and another on this drum concoction – they were singing those types of songs that reminded me of early folk – sort of that “Give me that old time religion” type lyric, which afterwards I learned most of their lyrics were original. It was all good fun.

Then we walked around Frenchman Street – on the corner a band gathered from nowhere it seemed – young boys playing big brass and making some good down home funky music. They drew a crowd who stopped to tap their feet and an elderly gentleman appeared from nowhere carrying a golf club and began to dance and direct traffic on the corner.

Early in the day I had seen a bumper sticker on a truck that said I AM NEW ORLEANS and as we milled around the crowds, we peeped into the DBA and the woman said you should go in this guy is an icon for  us here in New Orleans. I said, “I’m from New Orleans and I’ve never heard of him” and we kept walking, reading the line up at Snug for this month, then crossing over to the Spotted Cat, and finally we meandered back to the brass band on the corner.

Tell you the truth you can’t find a night like this just anywhere, New Orleans is evocative even when it is keeping it real, and well maybe there is no type of who I am, but maybe I might be happy just thinking of myself as New Orleans. Yeah, you right.

I’ve always been perplexed by people who take copious photographs of their cat and then want to show them. It’s so queer. And sure enough, here I find myself taking photographs of Blekica and wanting to share them.

And speaking of queer, on my way home from yoga, I saw two mobile homes pull off of the I-10 exit by the Quarter, with very attractive men in front – the gays are coming, the gays are coming (hide your tacky clothes).

Southern Decadence kicked off today with lots of activities around the French Quarter and beyond planned culminating in a parade on Sunday. This is the time of year when the city is flooded with beautiful young men. The history of Southern Decadence goes back to 1978 and while it is more known among the young gay men, truly it is like any other festival here in New Orleans where people wear costumes, pour out into the streets, listen to music and have a good time:

Since it was founded in 1781, New Orleans has marched to the beat of its own drum.  For two centuries, those in control of the Louisiana state government have tried in vain to impose their prejudices on a city that is French, Spanish, Creole, African, Catholic, pagan and very gay (in both senses of the word).  If nothing else, New Orleans knows how to throw a party, from the world-famous Mardi Gras to other, more specialized celebrations.

One of these celebrations began quite inauspiciously in August of 1972, by a group of friends living in a ramshackle cottage house at 2110 Barracks Street in the Treme section of New Orleans, just outside of the French Quarter. It was in desperate need of repair, and the rent was $100 per month.  At any given time the residents numbered anywhere from six to ten, and it was still sometimes difficult to come up with the rent.

The large bathroom became a natural gathering place in the house.  It had no shower, only a clawfoot tub, but it also had a sofa.  With from six to ten residents, and one bathtub, everyone became close friends.  While one soaked in the tub, another would recline on the couch and read A Streetcar Named Desire aloud. The Tennessee Williams play inspired the residents to fondly name the house “Belle Reve”?in honor of Blanche DuBois’ Mississippi plantation.

And so it was, on a sultry August afternoon in 1972, that this band of friends decided to plan an amusement.  According to author James T. Spears, writing in Rebels, Rubyfruit and Rhinestones: Queering Space in the Stonewall South, this “motley crew of outcasts” began Southern Decadence as a going away party for a friend named Michael Evers, and to shut up a new “Belle Reve” tenant (from New York) who kept complaining about the New Orleans heat.  As a riff on the “Belle Reve” theme, the group named the event a “Southern Decadence Party: Come As Your Favorite Southern Decadent,” requiring all participants to dress in costume as their favorite “decadent Southern” character.    According to Spears, “The party began late that Sunday afternoon, with the expectation that the next day (Labor Day) would allow for recovery. Forty or fifty people drank, smoked, and carried on near the big fig tree … even though Maureen (the New Yorker) still complained about the heat.” [You can read the rest on their website - http://www.southerndecadence.net/history.htm]