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I picked up a few of James Baldwin’s novels about a year ago, and after reading Go Tell It On The Mountain, decided now to pick up Tell Me How Long The Train’s Been Gone, and last night, in going to bed and having a rare moment to really read, I became so mesmerized by the narration that I couldn’t put the book down even though my hands were turning to ice outside of the covers.

It was a passage where Leo the boy has just come home and has to tell his father what has just happened. He and his older brother have been stopped and harassed by two white cops and they were scared for their life. (The hairs on my neck stood up at this scene as the mother of a black son in New Orleans where the cops are fossils.)

Before you take my word for it, read Mario Puzo’s critique of this novel in the NYT where he denounces Baldwin as a novelist. And I would advise you to then pick up the novel.

This is an excerpt, not from what I read last night, but from later in the novel:

And she’s right, I thought. There is nothing more to be said. All we can do now is just hold on. That was why she held my hand. I recognized this as love — recognized it very quietly and, for the first time, without fear. My life, that desperately treacherous labyrinth, seemed to fall where there had been no light before. I began to see myself in others. I began for a moment to apprehend how Christopher must sometimes have felt. Everyone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can bear it. Everyone desires love but also finds it impossible to believe that he deserves it. However great the private disasters to which love may lead, love itself is strikingly and mysteriously impersonal; it is a reality which is not altered by anything one does. Therefore, one does many things, turns the key in the lock over and over again, hoping to be locked out. Once locked out, one will never again be forced to encounter in the eyes of a stranger who loves him the impenetrable truth concerning the stranger, oneself, who is loved. And yet–one would prefer, after all, not to be locked out. One would prefer, merely, that the key unlocked a less stunningly unusual door.

Last night, after we finished Paris, Texas which took about a week to watch given the holidays and Tin and our need to sleep, we flipped on the TV, something we rarely do, and started watching Piers Morgan interviewing Tony Bennett.

Let me start with this, although I knew Tony Bennett from his songs, his voice, and history, I did not know Tony Bennett until the day I walked up to the Jazz Fest stage he was singing on and fell smack in love with the man. My god, the style, the charisma, the voice, the amazing quality of this man emanated out to the fest crowd like magic, pure liquid magic. My Jazz Fest epiphanies of music and talent are usually one standout a year that makes me think the ever more expensive brass pass that I buy each year is worth it for that one performance – but Tony Bennett, now that was a lifetime pass.

Anyway, but I digress, Piers Morgan (so glad he made the most annoying entertainer list), was interviewing Tony Bennett who said someone told him two things that changed his life – one was in giving your life as an entertainer over to drug and alcohol abuse, you are sinning against your talent. And the other piece of advice was that at any given moment, you could learn.

That is the power of present living. And he proved this to be his philosophy when Piers asked him about his best moment as an entertainer and he said, it was four days ago when he was at the Metropolitan Opera House and he looked around, a little nervous because Opera is that great art, and he was simply a jazz singer, and the audience loved him. He said he felt terrific.

Tony Bennett is 85 and one of his best moments was four days ago.

We will come rejoicing ringing in the new:

December 26, 2011
Taurus (4/20-5/20)
Get ready for one of your old friends to become a new cheerleader in your life! Whether they are back in your circle of friends or not, they are out there singing your praises and telling some very important people how talented you are. This could lead to a very promising lead with a career opportunity, or they could be working hard to hook you up with a very exciting candidate for your next romantic adventure! Keep waiting. You’ll be rewarded.

Yesterday, we had Christmas at the LaLa, not what we usually do, but since I did find a solution to the tree dilemma (two LED branches of cobalt blue lights placed in the two flower pots), and I did find a black Santa ornament, and Aunt Jerri took the form of old St. Nick – well, it was Christmas.

The morning began with Tin running into the living room to discover the drum set that Aunt Jerri had bought him:

He said thanks by promptly playing Jingle Bells much to everyone’s astonishment. Let’s just say there were copious videos made of this and the next performance – which I will post later since Tatjana’s luggage is still missing from her trip home and with it her camera cord. But here is Aunt Jerri later playing back the videos she took for Tin:

And of course, there was beauty all around us, eggnog spiked with rum, tortilla española made from Isolina’s recipe, a pound of bacon fried crispy, Irish soda bread from the nun and good cheer (especially after a little morning eggnog):

Then there were visitors, Evan among them bringing Tin a book that is an interpretation of A Wonderful Life:

The nun brought a gift of remembrance – Jews believe that if one person has too much, one person is lacking, so a reminder to always be in a state of grace, in state of giving back, and to never allow the scales to tilt too far in either direction.

Then there was the Jewish tradition of Chinese food with friends uptown, but I think we might skip this one in the future as I’m really not the biggest fan of the American interpretation of Chinese food to begin with and with all the delicious Vietnamese our city has to offer, we might opt for that next year.

Later, as the day was unwinding, and Tin was tucked into bed, we gathered around the TV fire and counted our blessings and took a moment to breathe, when suddenly down the chimney came two couples struggling to hang on to their relationships – one has decided to divorce and the other are hoping to stave off an avalanche, but sitting on the front steps at 11 pm and watching the mist hang over the bayou on a crisp, coldish Christmas night, and listening to sadness, fear, and uncertainty color words that hung in the balance – I felt the best I could do was to sympathize but then come inside and get down on my knees in thanks for the family who lives in the home we call LaLa:

Even give thanks for a couple of the more challenged family members:

And so it was that after a coffee at Puccini, they walked around the old neighborhood and found themselves on the street where they had first lived together, in an apartment that now seems enormous in hindsight, but then housed a roommate that made it feel small. An opportunity came up to buy the ugly house on the alley in front of them, the one where the old man had shoveled Sam’s dog shit back to their porch, and then where someone had set a Vespa on fire and they went running to call for the same old man to come out, which he did, not in pajamas, suggesting a delay of decorum, in the middle of the night. The shit wars were now behind them. If they could buy this fixer upper with a roof that had been caved in for some time, wouldn’t they turn the corner, but it wasn’t meant to be. Later, they peeked inside the lit windows and saw a raw wood ceiling and realized someone had given the nondescript house a dose of love and whimsy. It looked inviting still even after plans were made to head elsewhere. The flat grew larger, absent the roommate and the smell eventually dissipated. The old man who hung out his windows to wash had a stroke and was no longer seen from their kitchen. Claude, the resident bum, had found fame and fortune and had left the alley street too. And there they were walking down memory lane, by a house that as improbable as it may seem, the designer had just moved into after falling on hard luck professionally and personally. They too had fallen on hard luck, had turned corners, and yet, the street seemed heavy with promises broken and equal parts wonder about what lay ahead. One of them mused, “Not every house is a home.”

“In the depth of Winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible Summer.” ~ Camus

2012 is looking slightly different than it was just a few days ago, I went ahead and pulled the trigger on my conscience and it told me, “You know what to do” and so done. The road ahead I claim as my own.

My friend Matko in Zagreb said the same thing that Camus said, I need those two weeks on the coast to renew myself and bear the rest of the year. But it is understanding who you are during that time on the coast, the body that walks your soul along the ocean and listens to the waves, and feels the sunshine in your face, and knows inside that we are all truly free.

It’s Christmas morning on the bayou. The TV fireplace is going, the pine incense is burning, the Wedgewood tree is lit along with the window menorah – no one is stirring (except the crazy cat). Soon Aunt Jerri will bring over the drum set she is giving Tin and we will pour our eggnog and eat our tortilla española and raise our glasses to another year. Another opportunity to be more of ourselves and to be grateful.

So I heard in a meeting the other day that it is okay to shoot a raccoon because they are unwanted. Poor raccoons. Then yesterday my neighbor shot a hog in the wild and brought it home to cut up on the driveway.

I’m feeling pretty Jewish as I look on.

Paul Sanchez wrote: This little beauty sings the part of 8 year old Belinda in Nine Lives. She is New Orleans born and raised. Her mom is a teacher and her Uncle ‘Drew plays horn with Big Sam. She is wise beyond her years, fabulously talented and absolutely adorable.

Don’t underestimate the life changing force of a day or a moment. I call these forks in the road, where you blindly walk down a well traveled route, or decide to head blindly down an unknown trail that suddenly seems too quiet, where shadows portend mountain lions or rapists and color the senses, with your heart pounding in your chest, you have to try to locate yourself. There is a big draw to walk quickly back to the familiar path. The pulling away feels like shedding skin, the stomach lurches, and somewhere here is what separates the the conscious from the not – a toe kicks into the pine straw littering the trail, a smell of clean open forest rises from the earth, a hard pack of dirt, fragments of light filtered through another lens, a twig, a stone, eyes of a newt.

The noises are your noises, breath, movement, clothing on skin, swallowing, and the heart that beats more rhythmically. Do you meditate along this pathway, as you move, as you embody it, as you have your eyes wide open, could you channel down into the softer noises, look beyond the shadows of your mind to the one the egret throws, and moss will be out there, hanging, sympathetic, not violating its host, which seems more solid than anything you could imagine, able to withstand water up to its arms and not move. We shall not be moved.

A bayou, a park, a lagoon, a trail shall not be moved.

Nor shall you.