Saturday, February 28, 2004

The mausoleums were stunning. Broken, graffittied, decrepit, pissed on, shat in, uncared for marble structures long ago pilfered of dignity yet somehow still solid & graceful in their weight. The doors had been bashed down to chalk and each gorgeous marble structure was an outright drug den. Needles and blood were strewn everywhere.
No vampires & yet, vampires.

Friday, February 27, 2004

Fred & Ed were supposed to drop us at the Louisiana border. They were heading to Reno to draw some luck from the one armed bandits, plus Reno is an easy city to be anonymous. State troopers were everywhere & that was making them nervous. Entering Louisiana changed everything. The whole state was flooded, which is why they built the highways up above ground level. We were literally driving across a lake with this little trail of pavement across it. Closest I'll ever get to walking on water. They couldn't let us off into the lake so they took us direct into New Orleans. "Least we could do for the value you were to us" Turns out all that free gas $ they had been collecting from churches was to get me home to my dying mother. "Fabulous" I thought, "I'm gonna burn in hell" .
It was with a sigh of relief we waved them off on their journey & turned ourselves to Jackson Square. Too postcardy so we headed over to Bourbon Street. Lawdy but it was all I had hoped. Wrought iron & swanky exotic strip joints everywhere. You could smell the hedonism in the air. We lunched on crayfish from a street vendor. 10 cents a pop and drank beers across from the club with the electronic plastic lady legs waving up & down enticingly. GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS. New Orleans has its own amusement tax. Beer & smokes had been cheap everywhere else. $1 a draught & 80 cents a pack. In New Orleans a draught was $2.50 as were smokes. That put a dent in our impoverished armour. So we found ourselves a nice spot on Bourbon Street & took turns busking with J's guitar. We were doing pretty well, tourists took us as part of the scenery & videotaped us, we're all over Japanese home movies as part of what New Orleans had to offer in the early 90's.
About a half hour into our busking set the hotel owner comes out screaming at us about laws & culture & if we don't move a half foot to the left he'll call the cops on us. Ok, mister nice guy. Soon enough a rusty ole pick up truck pulls up & let's out 5 or 6 littleCajun kids with tap shoes and shoe boxes. They tap down the street toward us swarm our guitar case, take all our $$ & move on laughing all the way. J had already stashed a $20 in his pocket & I had stashed a $5 so we went for some site seeing, unfazed by the "robbery". We met an old smelly guy with a shopping cart full of the strangest things. He gave us 2 bars of soap & 50 or so rolls of Rolaids as a welcoming gift. What a sweetie. He saw the tapdancers grab our loot and talked to us about territory, saying " but you an go anywhere I go, I'll protect ya...."
We went down to the water front to watch the riverboats and hopefully see some crocodiles. The knats were so bad it wasn't a long stay. Big webs of bugs trying get to the juice in our eyes. We wound up at Cafe Beignet where all they served was Monte Cristos and french donuts. In the bathroom there was my first realization of how absolutely filthy I was. The southern sun had baked a kilo of dirt into my face. My hair was wild, but my clothes! Oh my clothing was horrendously filthy. The waitress recognized my accent & turned out she grew up about 25 miles from me at home. Crazy, she brought us all the Monte Cristo & donut action we could eat & cup after cup of that thick Louisiana coffee. She told us about this church she was going to after work where starting around 1am all these musicians gathered in the back around a fire to jam. Words don't exist in any language to describe the music I heard all night that night. Blues & jazz & voices so authentic & heady. The bar for music was raised impossibly high in my soul & ever since I have been ruined for those styles of music & how they are presented by almost everybody. All night we met the strangest assortment of thieves & con artists & the invitations of places to stay & wash were tempting but no thanks. We slept soundly to the music for a few hours and woke up early to the most horrid stench. That city starts at midnight & ends at 6am. The 6 am streets are covered in urine, puke & trash. We went down to the graveyard where the characters in the Anne Rice novels did their business, the one that's featured in the drug scene in the movie "Easy Rider". The sign on the external gate read "Enter at your own risk. The City of New Orleans is not responsible for the activities inside these gates."
Risk be damned, what could they mean????

Tuesday, February 24, 2004

I didn't want to now what Fred & Ed were on the run from. It was enough to know that they resembled Fred & Barney even down to the rusted out holes in the floor of the truck. But I did want their drive because I was sore and tired. We stopped at every church on every back road from Florida to Louisiana. Fred would go in, come out smiling and we'd hit the nearest gas station. We stopped for a few hours at the swankiest truck stop I've ever been to in my life just outside of Louisiana. Fred & Ed vanished with some ladies of questionable purity to spend the free church money so J & I headed in for some relax.
Every truck stop I had been to had been essentially the same, coffee, fries, clubhouse sandwiches, showers & country music. This truckstop was a fine dining room replete with casino and sauna. If I hadn't immediately become obsessive compulsive about germs & disease I woulda spent the rest of my life in that sauna. We took a seat at the side bar and ordered up 4 roast beef dinners as Ed & Fred had opined. They were gonna be hungry after their manly duties. J & I ate like demons, this being our first actual meal in over a month. Fred & Ed were slow to return so the waitress put their plates under the hot lamp while J & I worked the room meeting truckers, all of whom were sketchy, odd and ominous. 3 hours later still no Fred & Ed, who were paying the bill so J & I were getting a bit freaked and making friends with the waitresses who may possibly be our saving grace if all of this went bad. J was terrible at flirting and charming but he was giving it his best shot.
Finally the cave men returned and before eating told us to go get in the truck, we'd be leaving real quick. J & I returned to our holding spot in the back of the pickup relieved to be almost leaving this stranger's land. Jumping into the back was a bit odd as it was full of crap that hadn't previously been there. Things like TRUCK ENGINES! Those friggers had pilfered every 18 wheeler in the lot. Just as we were figuring it out they slammed the doors and wheeled out of that parking lot leaving a wall of dust 20 feet high. J & I just looked at each other, "we are gonna die..."

Monday, February 23, 2004

Pop culture quote of the day:
"What are we holding onto, Sam?"
"That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for!"

Let's see if this works today. I've been posting, publishing & republishing all to no avail. Spending as much time as possible climbing the new Hali hills and walking in the middle of the street as taxicabs rush by splattering me with dirty slush. I love the state of emergency. It can blizzard on my town anytime. Chaos is my lifestyle, even as organized as I am with my work I prefer life around me to be entirely chaotic. Eye of the storm syndrome. I could never be Dorothy, I'd have to be the tornado itself, or those spankin' red shoes.
In 1998 I hitchhiked down south to visit New Orleans with a compadre. Too many tales to begin from that trip but I bring it up because while riding through Kansas in an 18 wheeler a tornado danced its heady self across the horizon and it slayed me. A lot of things could have been running through my head but all I could think as I laughed to myself at the utter blessedness of it all was "Dorothy we're not in Kansas anymore" Of course I was in Kansas and as I've stated I could never be Dorothy but oh what bliss when fiction because fact and faerytales become the stuff your actual life is made of.
If anyone's read Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins then you know all about my stay in New Orleans. He was absolutely correct: that is one hell of a smelly city in the early morning. Phew. I learned a lot in New Orleans. I learned more in Kansas.