Deep East

Spent last weekend in New Orleans. Here is a mish-mash of notebook and journal excerpts:

Baton Rouge. Friday morning I begrudgingly wake up at 9 to watch the U.S.-Slovenia match. Turn on the TV just in time to crank up the Star-Spangled Banner to wake Eric up. (We've had the conversation that the World Cup is the only time every four years that we feel patriotic, albeit a warped patriotism, but still we won't stand for the National Anthem.) Staying at Ben's uncle's house, and I go wake Ben up too. Says he's going back to bed until the second half (he's English), but eventually changes his mind. Switching back and forth between beer and coffee this morning, and we end up with a 2-2 draw, which most certainly should've been a win for the U.S. But okay, onto New Orleans.

I am thoroughly enjoying this drive through the bayou. Tall trees spiking out of open water, a village of power plants in the distance, wet warm air.... Shortly thereafter we're in the French Quarter (which we will scarcely leave for the weekend), and the terrain becomes: tight streets, grassy medians, amazing Colonial and Creole houses side by side, street after street, all unique. This city is alive, in spite of, and because of, the seeds of Old Europe and the natural disasters of the New World. I love it already, and feel quite comfortable.

We're out all day and much of the night. Towards the end, Ben and Eric are very tired, and I'm not, so I stay out a bit longer. The street our hostel is on dead ends going southwest, and my walk home puts me on the other side of it. Once I realize this, I ask two pretty ladies if they have any idea where it is. They don't. But they're nice: "Are you trying to go into the projects?" No. "Do you realize you're about to walk into the projects?" I did not. "You might wanna turn around." Okay, thanks, I will. It takes longer, but I backtrack to get home safe. Who knew?

A weekend in the oratory tradition of Henry Miller and George Carlin: a complete disdain for censorship of words and thoughts. This means that absolutely everything that comes to the mind finds its way out through the mouth, or at least it seems that way - bad puns, inanely ironic catchphrases, lurid and ridiculous sex fantasies that can be described in one sentence, and intoxicant-fueled proclamations ("I won't be caught alive without a pen in my pocket", etc.).

Saturday, after a rejuvenating late lunch of red beans and rice and sausage, we're walking the streets of the Quarter. A woman abruptly turns back to her significant other, who's pushing the stroller, and makes a suggestion: "Hurricane?"*** The man nods his head and they cut immediately into a bar, as if this was the obvious and only action to be taken. Later, a girl in panties steps up from a candle-lit dinner on her balcony to blow bubbles over the railing, over our heads, into the marmalade-hued sky. A woman walks down Decatur Street with a full glass of wine (you can drink in public in the Quarter, but you're supposed to use plastic cups). Multi-generational groups, oddballs and goddesses, and even families out for wholesome entertainment, all come together, descending upon the gaudiness of Bourbon Street. And we three, walk the other streets, with no agenda and no pace. Directions, stops, whole journeys are dictated by a gesture of beer-guided hand.



***One of those fairly alcoholic specialty drinks that's served in a big plastic neon receptacle

2009 Marcus James Chardonnay, Mendoza, Argentina

I don't usually do wine reviews, but this one stuck out. I bought it at my corner store, on "very special sale," for $5. It wasn't chilled when I bought it, so I threw it in the fridge for maybe a half hour before I got impatient. I didn't smell it either. It's got like a golden-toxic color, something like Mt. Dew, and it has a nice, sweet, fruity taste, like apple-pear or whatnot, with a pleasantly sweet-sour finish. But it's most striking feature is this: I could scarcely take a sip without feeling like it had gone down the wrong tube. I didn't actually choke on it, but had to lean forward a bit, for at least two out of every three swallows.

I thought that it might be the manner in which I drank it - lying on my bed, eating potato chips and Reese's Pieces Easter eggs, while watching Bringing Up Baby (an excellent screwball comedy starring Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn) - but I had the same experience finishing up the bottle over my next couple of meals. Although I enjoyed the taste, I can't wholly recommend this 2009 Marcus James Chardonnay because of the "texture."

However, since at the moment it's the cheapest wine available at my corner store, I'll probably give it a second chance.

Dinnertime for Radicals

The last post I wrote ("Bad Education," below) had been on my mind for awhile, was one of the more difficult thoughts I've tried to materialize lately, and in the end, did not completely produce the desired result. It reeks a bit of angst-in-a-bubble, like if the character Doug, from The State ("I'm a rebel...."), were to be converted by The Boondock Saints; "me against the world," and so on. But more importantly, concepts like the desire to possess someone else's time are left mostly unelucidated. Even more so, this giant preoccupation we have with the idea of "becoming someone in life"... well, there's a lot more to say about that.

My plan was to let it sit a week, and then revisit it with corrections. But a week later, and then two and a half weeks later, I'm still not sure how to correct it, update it, modify it, or do anything else to it. So I'll let it stew, on a cyberspace burner, and wait to see if it comes up again, perhaps even in real life.... In the meantime, instead of correcting something I wrote, I will "correct" something that someone else wrote:

Every town in the world of any size should have a neighborhood named "Freetown" (as in Freetown Christiania, Copenhagen). A place where people who don't have any employment or guns or TVs or bitterness or allegiance to a flag can go.

People like that are treated like pariahs in other neighborhoods, kept on the move by cops, teachers, and small-business owners. Like jellyfish, they are happy to move, but it's nice to have somewhere to go, some times....

Somewhere they can continue to drift, to and fro, enchanted variously by a cactus, a castle, and the hairnets of other jellyfish, until they come to rest at the local cinema or library.

Where they can chat and play all day. Where they can plant gardens and farm. Where they can drink in the streets. The basic idea is this one: a place where people can be free of the dominance that they inevitably suffer from under a capitalist hierarchy.