Dangermond.org

I went to sleep last night to the drone of cars, people’s voices, and a general hum of electrical whatnots, and guess what, woke this morning to the same noise as if nothing stopped while I slumbered. Just a friend once said upon leaving New Orleans, I want to go back to a town with only one festival, I want to return to a city that does sleep and where mornings are slower.

Right now over caffeinated from yet another round of over steeped tea, I’m feeling like my heart is a jumping and I’m not out of pajamas. I wonder how the writers of New York actually find their groove if the city is what is directing the beat of their heart.

Tomorrow is St. Patrick’s day and I’m not sure if it is celebrated more here in New York or more in New Orleans, but either place is going to be serving up a lot of green beer. Sigh.

I opted to put my feet up and order room service and rent a movie – Where the Wild Things Are – what is it with these tear jerker grown up kid movies like Up and now this one? Both made me so melancholy and I’m just wondering what audience they are written for because they both are so dark for kids.

i was talking to someone today who said that he told his 12 year old that he could go on Facebook only if he could be a friend. Now he said, all of his son’s friends are trying to friend him. Then was speaking to someone else about little boys and their anger. I was thinking of how you channel that into something positive. Sports, music, writing? We don’t know because we still don’t know who Tin is going to become.

How to be a good parent and help him develop unlike the way I developed like some crazed heathen gone wild.

I wrote a letter to my brother on the hotel stationary. Then I ate my dinner at the table by the window. Aftewards, I watched the movie and they came to turn down my bed and brought three miniature cookies. I was suddenly seized with a sense of anxiety – maybe it was the boy running away from home after I was just speaking with a friend about how many times I used to run away. She too had slept at a gas station in a car like me. But unlike me she called home and said she was all right even if she wasn’t coming home.

My poor parents. The shit that we kids, all six of us, put them through is mind numbing. Cigarettes, alcohol, pot, sex, running away, parties in the house, broken bones, wrecked cars. Good golly Ms. Molly I hope I’m not staring down the long tunnel of karma. My dear mother, when I think of some of my antics I can’t fathom how she survived and those are only the antics I can remember. Good grief.

Now this wild thing is holed up in her hotel room rather than tripping the light fantastic – here I am, the adult, able to do whatever I please tonight, and I opted to stay in, watch a PG movie, eat a club sandwich and contemplate my navel. Gadzooks I don’t even know who I’ve become much less who Tin will become.

I’ve spent a decade staying at the Muse on 46th between 6th and 7th – loved it but grew tired of Times Square especially considering I could hardly ever get to a play on my trips here. But after a conversation with a colleague I opted to explore a different area of New York – the Bowery – and now find myself at the crossroads of Soho, the Village, Union Square, and a whole other New York that exudes a neighborhood feel.

I tried to get into see Sam Shepherd’s A Lie of the Mind that Ethan Hawke is putting on but unfortunately it was sold out. This is about the third play in the three times I’ve been here recently that I haven’t been able to even pay a broker a million dollars to get in and see a play that is on my list. Whatyagonnado?

So right now, my feet are trying to make a decision for me after walking many miles around this big city from here to midtown and back and around of whether to stay in with a movie and room service or go explore some more of these fabulous neighborhoods. Survey says – get your ass out of the room.

A neighbor asked me to write an article about Faubourg St. John. I wrote it and sent it off to him to send in, and he wrote back that the last paragraph made him cry. He said he was perhaps overly sentimental but I know that it is, indeed, me. Yesterday on my plane ride into Detroit, which was the first stop on a long journey trying to get to New York after this weekend’s storms, I sat next to a retired man who wanted to chat.

I tried the usually confusion of trying to open my Sunday NYT loud and long, and flipping through my book with incredible interest, but he wanted to chat and sometimes there is no refusing a chatty neighbor. He said he was a country boy who had come to the city to make big money, but that his heart resided in the country. I understood.

He said that he had four children, including a son who had died at 32 of diabetes. The son had gone blind and then lost a limb and then eventually he died. He said his wife had also died. She had hepatitis and couldn’t hold off for a transplant and so she died. He said he had grandchildren to help him cope. I understood.

He said that his daughter had bought a franchise in New Orleans and had opened four Little Caesar’s stores. Not even sure what that is but I said isn’t that nice to be polite. He said that she was very successful and that even though she had opened her first store right when Katrina hit, she ran back to see that the place was opened only weeks afterwards. He said she felt that New Orleans was her home now. I understood.

He put his head back on the chair and said that he was retired now, and that he looked forward every year to going back out to the country to some land he owned and opening up his cabin and beginning the fishing season. His grandchildren would come visit him there. It brought a tear to my eye to know that this man had pretty much just summed up his life and that he was living in the home stretch, happy but sad, alone but with family, and he had a story to tell, his own story about his own life that he was willing to share with someone he had never met before just to pass the time and say it aloud – almost to hear it told for his own benefit.

I understood.

Usually I wake up in the morning and T is talking already, she wakes up with words gushing out of her mouth. I always marvel at her ability to find speech so soon after sleep. Similarly, at a certain point even before he wakes, T2 is talking up a storm about something that nobody knows – Da Da, Moo Moo. About this time, Loca jumps up in the bed and does a few downward dogs and Bam Bam might even stretch or not.

We throw open the shutters of the LaLa and look at the bayou – is it dark as a mirror or have petite white caps appeared from a gentle breeze – are there pelicans or seagulls this morning – is it a festival day or an ordinary day?

These are the stirrings of a new day in New Orleans.

Waking up in a strange bed at first gives me a start. Where am I? Oh right, okay. Then I sleepily open the curtains and see a different world, a different light, and I hear no sounds other than the stirrings of other people in other rooms coming to their senses in a strange bed.

There is a restlessness that only gypsies know – I inherited it from my father. Always a longing to go, and once you’re there, a longing to return to the familiar.

Always coming and going, and always too soon.

The great what if’s – what if you woke this morning and sleepily said to the world that you were not afraid – not afraid to fail, not afraid to go broke, not afraid to embarrass yourself, not afraid to die?

I was thinking about this as I had my tea – way too strong tea for my caffeine insensitivity, but I decided to just go with it.

Last night flying in on the plane – we stayed at a consistent turbulent level – enough so that you could never really relax. I thought about how that is what living in New Orleans is like – you could fix your garden, you could paint your house, you could even optimistically put in a pool but the truth is a hurricane could come on June 1st and wash it all away.

So we can never really let down our guard in New Orleans.

But neither should other people in other cities although they are lulled into thinking they can.

So what if life is about dealing with fear and uncertainty and that’s the norm and complacency is a droning we need to be slapped out of and what if it is true that the meaning of life is not to be comfortable but rather to live it?

Today, the rain has stopped in New York and it is going to be in the upper 50s – woo hoo – time to step out into the world and take a big bite out of the big apple and hope there are no razor blades hidden beneath the juicy flesh.

T handmade me two photo books to carry with me on trips – one is about us as lovers and has many photos of us together. The other is about us as a family and has many photos of Tin, me, Loca and Bam Bam as well as her in it. I came back to The Bowery after having had an curtailed trip last time to New York and am sitting in a similar room that looks out over a courtyard that I once looked out at with angst – only the world has changed.

Last time I was here it was November 30th and I was so melancholy I could have drowned in an inch of tears. My mom was dying in the hospital. That night I went to bed and my mom died. I traveled home the next day. And she was buried on Wednesday.

Upon returning to the same hotel I almost had a sense of dread of being at a place that is now haunted by the ghost of who I was on November 30, 2009. But instead I found myself looking at my photo books that T made me and seeing the cover photo of us kissing Tin that Marc took on Christmas eve and I had a whimisical thought about my mother being an angel by my side.

Before when I traveled, I always called mom and told her what I was up to and she lived vicariously through my adventures and she was always a phone call away. Now she sits on my shoulder, an angel, and comes on my trips with me.

That is when she is not watching over her grandson.

Here is what you need when you bring home a baby:

A crib – even a portacrib works

A changing table

A video monitor

A thermometer

A nail clipper

Diapers and wipes and sign up for Amazon prime so you can have these delivered

Onesies

Baby carrier – highly recommend Moby for infants and Ergo Baby for 9 months and up

A few baby books like Goodnight Moon and I Love You Stinky Face

I was laughing with a friend about how I keep calling the pediatrician the vet and she said she did that for a long time herself. But pets do prepare you for a child. Pets like routine and so do babies. Pets like praise and so do babies. Pets don’t like to be scolded or told no, and neither do babies. And the bonus is pets greet you with a smile when you walk in the door and so do babies.