I heard from a long-time colleague of mine who ended the missive with, “I didn’t realize how much I needed a change. Isn’t it great to reinvent and grow.” So that is today’s theme – yesterday I met some twenty year old musicians who are imprinting their own musical brand – Jean-Eric – nice to see that everything is not a world filled with over fifty year olds putting themselves in the same trick bag over and over again – the Real World.
It’s all good.
Just came from a podcast at the Columns for It’s New Orleans Happy Hour (and it was) where I got to meet the singers from Jean-Eric and a writer working on a book about the history of gay life in New Orleans. Fabulous way to pass the time on a Thursday afternoon with my new best friends.
Tell me something is there anyplace in the world better than here?
During a tantrum, I put Tin in a time out and he counted out the numbers – up passed 20. Very weird.
There is a lovely gulf breeze that is swaying the Queen palm fronds back and forth and making for a nice, relaxing sound outside my office window. Nice to know there are places you can go in your head from just a familiar sound – makes me think of the beach.
Decided to give Facebook a second chance now that I understand how to limit my profile and to send messages not write on walls. But it already feels as if I am back at the mall – something comforting and disturbing about it that I can’t quite put my finger on.
Nothing like a lesson with a beat.
On this day in 2007, I moved into the LaLa, the rest is history.
Before photo:
This morning as I began my ritual for the day, I described my intention as wanting to learn something new today. But that already happened last night as I attended the Gluttony opening at Fairgrinds and spoke with the puppeteer who had just put on a mesmerizing performance unlike anything I had seen – never mind he was in a red patent pleather jumpsuit.
He was asking me if I had read Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire and knew of his writings on the co-creation of knowledge as it applied to an organization called Theater of the Oppressed? I wasn’t familiar with either. The topic came up because during a street performance a policeman shut him down citing a law against deviance. I said, “In New Orleans?” Kalan said he looked it up and in fact there is no such law. I told him he had a run in with the pleasure police, the repressed.
I was listening to an NPR show the other day about a woman who had grown up with birthday letters from her dead mother and the burden that had put on her life. But one letter came at a particularly pivotal moment in her life and actually helped sway her decision. Her mother wanted her to stay wedded to the Mormon Temple and that was the cause of much duress during her life, but when she was in college and trying to decide what to do a letter came on her birthday imploring her to seek her ethical expression through her work. She chose to become a doctor rather than go into finance.
I listened to that and recalled my impression last night as I was sitting in the Fairgrinds Coffee Shop on Ponce de Leon last night at an art opening my friend Marcela Singleton curated and was featured in – the theme was Gluttony. A long time ago when I headed west to California, my intention was to be a writer, one who plunged into the bad and good insides of my being and brought it all to light. Last night, I stared at a photograph of Marcela 50 pounds heavier, drunk, and half naked – it was a time in her life that she made into art and transcended.
The Colombian architect had just asked me what I do for a living and I said I’m a writer, but that is the equivalent of saying my father was Cuban – it contains no backstory and no weight. I’m a writer among other things. My father was born in Cuba and had various origins. And I work in finance. After the Colombian architect, I told the puppeteer who had just finished this fascinating performance, I had wanted to be Henry James or Georg Eliot when I began writing – I held this to be my calling, my ethical expression in work. And now I write for the financial world and blog.
He said to me, “You blog? You are a post modern writer.”
Hardly, I thought, but didn’t want to show him the err of his ways. I am a modern word hobbyist and not even that most of the time as I am mostly recording a life I am living, rather than creating one. Or is my daily life an act of creation? Have I created this persona who writes for the financial world, lives in the LaLa, and dreams of days when my insides won’t be clamoring to be on the outside and my medication is to blog?
I encountered a situation recently where the old stereotypes of boys and girls was glaring. The boy wanted control and the girl wanted to share. You know it’s not really just this way because Tin is much more of a sharer than you would think (and no I’m not glorifying him because he’s my son, he is just more tender than some boys I see, neveryoumind the meltdown tantrum this morning which usurped his keyboard privileges).
But I was speaking to a dear friend about our New Year’s resolutions and she said for the first time in her life she feels good about the ones she made and the progress she is making and I said me too. We thought about it and it seems this year instead of having goals like get this, lose that, make this, learn that – we made plans for self actualization and process. She said, “Do you think we are finally starting to be more like women then men?”
Amen.