The Saints are 5 and 0, although I’m not a football watcher, I’m a fan of the Saints and I am sure proud of the boys. And how about Drew?
Drew Dat!
I went to Rouses’ after visiting with mom where I had watched the game with her, all of a sudden someone said, Who dat? and then the entire grocery store erupted – everyone kept chanting Who Dat? at the top of their lungs. It was weird and wacky and sort of cool.
Michele came into yoga class the other day at NOAC and said she is lucky that everyday she gets to go to work and hang out with cool people. Well the same can be said for New Orleans, like minded people, birds of a feather, we’re all here together for a reason. Last night, friends of ours who have three small children said that their mother was in the country and they had a babysitter and wanted to go out with us and have “fun.”
Did we have to think about it? No. We picked them up and headed to DBA to hear John Boutte. They had never heard him play before. We ran into friends there – they are big fans of Boutte and one of them was passing the hat for him. By the way, if you’re not from here, we support our local musicians by putting some cash in the jar. It’s not a tip – it’s their wages.
We strolled across the street to the finally reopened Spotted Cat to hear the Panorama Jazz Band. Our friends had not heard them before. Then we walked over to Buffa’s and had burgers and beer. Across the street, people waiting in an endless line for a Port O Call burger, while we sat there with the Port O Call offduty bartenders and waitresses eating ours.
A drive up the street to the Circle Bar and we stopped in on Gal Holiday for an hour of dance and song. Then we headed to the headliner of our evening @ Tip’s – Os Mutantes – Brazilian psychedelic pop – they were awesome and we found, of course, more like minded crews of friends from Ned to Nancy, all coming out to have the fun. It’s like we were crashing some terrifically cool 60’s party.
Fun delivered!
Someone put up some signs around New Orleans not to long ago that said IMAGINE THAT YOU MIGHT BE WRONG. Today I was driving down Carrollton and saw that someone had edited the sign which now reads IMAGINE THAT YOU MIGHT BE A ROBOT.
We went to the New Orleans Museum of Art today to see an exhibit by Skylar Fein but actually found ourselves entranced by the William Woodward paintings = mainly crayon on board – so fabulous of the French Quarter when the original opera house was standing, and Bourbon Street was lined with small cottages and the Absinthe House was colorful. What a treat.
I’m looking outside at a sky filled with puffy horizontal clouds that are dark grey blue on the bottom and in the background is a soft pale pink – it’s quite an incredible sky. Someone is playing music, jive shucking type music with lots of drums and somebody getting down. The city of New Orleans is all snake oil, the atmosphere waves a wand of magic over you and lulls you into believing that there is no other way to live. Should you find yourself in another city, and you sit on your sofa, and stare at your television, and you walk outside and see houses that all look the same, and manicured lawns, and you feel like you want to take the poison pill, imagine our life down here, always suspended by music, food, dance, song, and a sky that looks eternal.
It’s Friday – thank god! – and we have had three bites on our ad – woo hoo! – and we are going to open a beautiful bottle of Turnbull cabernet, put in a Jane Champion movie, and eat some kibbe and a salad and say – whew, what a week, but we’re grateful for the pelican, for the cool air that has come, and for the mornings we’ve seen the sun come up across the bayou and the nights we’ve noticed it setting in back.
Enjoy every day – it’s a mistake not to.
Gal Holiday was playing last night at Liuzza’s by the Track, I called my brother to see if he wanted to walk over there with me but he was too pooped. So after Tai Chi, I was thinking of going myself and got a call from a neighbor to join her, but by then was ready to chill. But I also knew that we were going to see Gal Holiday at the Circle Bar on Saturday and so was looking forward to that. Although those plans have shifted to seeing the psychedelic band, Os Mutantes, from Brazil at Tips instead.
Then today somebody sent me this clip – LOVE IT – it is labeled Early Fitness Centers – but it speaks to my love of dancing. I once danced for five hours straight at my niece’s bat mitzvah – by myself – my aunt said she had never seen anything like it before and I come from a dancing family.
Michele from Swan River Yoga just confirmed that they are opening up a MidCity branch on Canal by Jeff Davis – awesome. I can walk to yoga. It opens in 2010 and is in an old building that has a beautiful mural.
I was telling E that I am a tangle of love and guilt seeing my mother hooked to all of these life sustaining devices and wishing that she find her peace soon because this isn’t living. I said I didn’t go see her on Sunday and felt guilty afterwards. We talked a lot about the past years after I came back to New Orleans and the years leading up to my return when my trips home became more frequent because of my mother’s health – emotionally, physically, financially. E said that I had been the dutiful daughter even though many times because of my mother’s addiction, she hadn’t been there for me. So give up the guilt.
I was walking Loca around the Big Lake in City Park this morning – calling it the Big Lake seems a little absurd as it is not that big – and I was thinking about an acquaintance of mine in San Francisco who told me 15 years ago that she had no parents, no pets, no progeny, and that she felt like ping she could float off into outerspace. Years later she acquired a pet bird, a perfect companion for her weightless existence. I ran into her husband the other day, the bird had died and she had left for Southern California where I now imagine her floating like a balloon over the waves.
When I think of the role of a daughter with a rage-aholic for a father and an alcoholic for a mother, the emotions that come to mind are anger, sadness, guilt – all emotions that do not bear fruit. I know that between trying to calm my father and cheer my mother up, I have spent a lifetime learning the skills of a caretaker.
But now, I want to learn some new tricks.
Someone recently was saying they can’t drink or eat sugar, what is left to do – I said YOGA! And again today, I was reminded why. It seems as if the seeds of change only need fertile ground for them to take root. Like when five months ago in my darkest hours with my mother, the theme of the month was addiction. Or recently when I cannot bridge the great divide between my sibling and me and the theme is nonconfrontational communication.
Today as Obama spoke to a town hall gathering of New Orleanians, my yoga class ommmmmmm’d for world peace, health care, and our coastline restoration. Spreading seeds.