Dangermond.org

I walked through City Park this morning, once more in awe of the beauty at my doorstep. I had been talking to someone that the need to feel restored by nature exists right outside my front door – a contemplative walk around the bayou, a stroll around the Big Lake in City Park, a longer walk through the cypress forests or abandoned golf course in the park, an urban walk to the French Quarter. One day the Lafitte Corridor will provide a Green Space connecting us to the French Quarter. All so lovely.

I’ve got my blinders on, my rose-colored glasses my mother handed off to me many years ago. But sometimes there needs to be a reality check, for this reason I began reading this blog, which has a different skew on the same city I am living in and today I read with mouth agape the List. It’s humbling to remember that no matter how many years between us and the Dark Ages we still seem to be pitiful about keeping mentally disturbed people from carrying guns. I watched with fascination last night as our President spoke to the people of Tucson, his cadence like a Southern preacher, his message encouraging everyone to figure this mess out and help us all move past the violence of having a very disturbed young man not get help when there were warning signs of instability (kicked out of community college), not buy a gun so easily (a semi automatic), not kill innocent people, children.

Meanwhile, it’s a desperate world here in New Orleans – a city that is not only still needs to heal from a federal disaster and tragedy, but decades of neglect.

Offbeat is running their best of the best award and it’s time for everyone to vote. You have to shake your head at this list – it’s like an embarrassment of riches and so many that are still not even on here – no brainers are James Singleton, Trombone Shorty and his Bacca Town album – I even voted him best trumpet player for that solo he does on St. James Infirmary, best clarinetist – um, Evan Christopher – the best!, and Gal Holiday for her new album Set Two and best country music artist. Really, take the time to rock the vote.

Caught in a trap – too much to do – no time to do it – and I was supposed to start my homeplay today – meaning my meditation at home – when, how, where?

So a thought for the day is all I can offer:

I wish there was a censor for everything that wastes my time – I just watched a Colbert Report segment because it said he was endorsing the Black Keys for a Grammy – instead it was minutes of a big time suck starting with an advertisement for Red Bull and segueing into the staged fight between a band I used to respect against Vampire Weekend, a band I have no idea about, nor want to now.

I am going to make a THIS WILL WASTE YOUR TIME censor – and yes, you could apply it here if you choose.

When ITV gets here, I guarantee you people will not be watching that much traditional TV – why would you when you could search Bidu Beat – the new English language blog out of China’s huge search engine and reading things like the top ten most used words on China’s internet. Just envious-jealous-hateful is itself a word worth adding to your lexicon, if you already haven’t. But the prize pick here is gellivable – loosely translated as to give power – anyone who wants to say the phrase “Rachel is really so gellivable” would tickle my fancy in a hurry.

The time when we can sit in front of our TVs and have total control over what we watch while having the global world at our fingertips – oh my, we won’t be watching Everyone Loves Raymond. I can assure you.

I spent a good hour today speaking to an long-time source of mine who told me that last year – in 2010 – he and his wife bought nothing. Absolutely nothing. And it was liberating – he said. I just shook my head in agreement. Liberating. I tried to reach Cox Cable today to cut the chord. And I’m this close from doing it. There is absolutely nothing we want to watch on TV – nothing. So why are we spending so much money on cable? There is zero on On Demand that we want to see. Nothing at all on any broadcast channel. So I’m this close.

My sister in law sent me a pic of her and my cousin in the snow in Atlanta – gadzooks. A source of mine is out of the office due to a snow day.

Granted it is chillier here in the last two days but we’re hoping this nonsense won’t last. Meanwhile, because we here in the Gulf South are winter wusses outside has been noman’s land so Tin spent yesterday inside painting and today at the Children’s Museum. Everywhere else has a snow day – we have a it’s too cold day at 50 degrees day.

China just opened its most powerful search engine to an English language blog on Chinese culture. Their thinking – take over the world. One byte at a time.

Who said that 10% is what happens to you in life and 90% is how you deal with it? I don’t know but I can tell you realistically that there are a lot of people that are not looking at 2011 with rose colored glasses. Almost as if there is a taint on the future because of the recent past. What I can tell you is that I have no great expectations set out for this year to deliver to me, because all of my focus is internal. I want to change.

And change I will, without cataclysmic forces pushing me this time – but because it’s time.

90% of what I fear is bullshit. What if I lose my job, can’t pay my bills, or god forbid, make a mistake?

10% of what really happens in life should not be provoking those sorts of fears. What if, what if, what if. What if if’s were skiffs? We’d all ride for free, right.

Now readjusting all of this under the guise of nonattachment makes letting go of those fears a hell of a lot easier. Because now, it doesn’t matter what happens – something will happen, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing’s going to change my world.

Is that naive?

When the show was over last night at Snug, we came out to the bar and stopped to catch up with a friend. I went to the bar to get us drinks and there were four handsome young boys at the bar – one kept saying Hey! to me, and I said you better watch yourself I’m old enough to be your mother. We all started talking and I felt like I was seeing the reality of the book I had read about boys. Here these boys were ranging in age from 22 to 26. The 22 year old the one saying Hey! a little too enthusiastically, the older one the closest to me and the most mature. He showed me a photo of his boy who is 6 years old and had hair just like Tin’s only longer. We talked about how one of them was pining for a girl who left him and took up with another man. The older boy telling him to let her go. And me reiterating that position. Mr Hey! told me he just got engaged – at 22? I said – surely you don’t need to get married now and the older one said, “I could tell when it happened. Just like it happened to me. Suddenly there is one, the only one.”

My boy is going to be like that one day – sitting around with his friends – being supported by them, being loved by them, learning from them.

They made a mama proud. When we were leaving, the boy in the middle who hadn’t said much said to me, “Don’t tell people you’re 51, you don’t look that old.” Ha!

The stars aligned last night as Mother Nature whipped large trees like buggy whips and rain came down the better part of the day and without asking, a babysitter came to watch Tin so we could go to Snug Harbor. We sat at a small table for two in front of the stage, spitting distance as we say around here, and the show began. Tom McDermott on piano, smiling a goofy smile as if it were pride for the other musicians; James Singleton on bass, a bass that looks like its been around the block while the man still looks like a boy and plays like a freak of nature – getting funky; Evan Christopher on clarinet – wearing a band leader style suit and whispering and wailing on his horn, and Bill Stewart playing drums more like playing chock tock chock tock on the sides then on top and up steps Meschiya Lake = a surprise tattoo’d on her face, a powerful voice in a small package, dynamite labeling appear to be engraved like warnings on her arms.

$15 at the door? Are you kidding me – the best deal in the world last night at Snug Harbor. Reminded me of Eudora Welty’s Powerhouse:

Powerhouse is so monstrous he sends everybody into oblivion. When any group, any performers, come to town, don’t people always come out and hover near, leaning inward about them, to learn what it is? What is it? Listen. Remember how it was with the acrobats. Watch them carefully, hear the least word, especially what they say to one another, in another language–don’t let them escape you; it’s the only time for hallucination, the last time. They can’t stay. They’ll be somewhere else this time tomorrow.

* * *

It’s a bad night outside. It’s a white dance, and nobody dances, except a few straggling jitterbugs and two elderly couples. Everybody just stands around the band and watches Powerhouse. Sometimes they steal glances at one another, as if to say, Of course, you know how it is with them–Negroes–band leaders–they would play the same way, giving all they’ve got, for an audience of one. . . . When somebody, no matter who, gives everything, it makes people feel ashamed for him.