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NEW ORLEANS - 12 August, 2001 - I learned this week that I know two people born on 13 August, my dear friend Barbara and our own RON DIENER. (I knew there was something I liked about that guy!)
This was the week of long letters for me. Again, I exchanged tons of e-mail with my friend Dragana Vicanovic in Belgrade. It has been a comfort having her to "talk" to as I try to get my sea legs here in subterranean New Orleans.
I've been wrestling with the wanderer/writer thang this week, and the latest news about my Mother... I've been numb and torn. I've been trying to get beyond my past so that I can look into the future.
My friend Lionel Rolfe, writes from Los Angeles. He lets me know that this page is a tribute to his mother, Yalta Menuhin, and has links to his work. I am pleased.
Dragana writes that I have already saved my life, I just don't know it yet. That could well be true, but from this perch, down here in the Southland, that seems a supposition at best.
Lots of people, mostly women and including my sister Rudell, have said they hope I ultimately find what I'm looking for.
I can relate to Bill Clinton. Matt jokes that, since being in New Orleans, I've been a lot like Dollar Bill: I just can't catch a break.
Dragana says I'm in a form of combat right now. I soldier on, but it's been mostly trench warfare. (I wanted to type "trance warfare" just now.)
I am sleeping and eating again, though. That is surely a sign of some increased mental health. I don't dare venture to guess when I'll stumble upon The Next Woman. I actually resemble the people D.A. BLYLER is giving advice in our SEX COLUMN this week. I even have started wearing my glasses more these days. A woman in a restaurant the other night said they made me look "...very intellectual." Eeek!
Despite all of this confessional exposure, I find myself becoming less and less understood these days. I am aching for a means of getting back to Serbia. Microsoft has signed a deal with the new government, Dragana tells me.
I have no shame: I'll work for cheap! Hire me, Bill Gates! Hire me, please!
Two days later, one of the bunkhouse boys came knocking at my door at 2 in the morning. He wanted to know if I'd heard anything outside. His truck had been stolen.
Two days later, our next door neighbor came over to ask if I'd heard anything during the night again. Her van had been stripped of its front grille, one front headlight, and the back tail-light cover. The cover alone costs $150 to replace.
I started feeling nervous again. That feeling I have living in America these days: Fear of Crime. That's one of the reasons I'd like to get back to Serbia. I don't like living in fear everyday.
Two weeks ago a Black adolescent robbed one of Matt's co-workers as she came back to work with her lunch, ordered from a deli across the street. He had a t-shirt wrapped around his hand in which he claimed he had a gun.
Summer is tough in Nawlins. The kids are out of school and looking for trouble. Most folks are broke. So crime goes way up. Way up.
It's not all about crime, though. Matt gave me the Wild Magnolia's CD on Saturday morning "Life is a Carnival" and I thought about Auntie Mame saying "Life is a Banquet." That used to be my slogan when I was the hero in this movie. Dragana tries to convince me that I still am. But I have started to doubt it. So much's the pity.
I'm not finished yet. Stay with me, Pilgrims.
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I received a wonderful care package from my friend Yona in Oakland, California. It made it possible to purchase a bus pass (as in transport on which to look for jobs) and smokes and contributions to the household beer and food funds. It came at a good time. My pal, Darhl is back from France and has sent a cryptic note about a mystery Priority Mail, as well. I told him he should have saved the ducats. Priority Mail takes about the same time as the less expensive snail mail coming here to New Orleans. I still haven't figured out why... but I've got a few ideas about the pace of things here in the Big Easy.
The Writer & The Wanderer
One of my mother's big concerns was when I would stop wandering. I guess she never saw that the wandering actually feeds the writing. I've always been more successful, you see, as a journalist than as a fiction writer. Fact is, I've always made more money -- hundreds of times more money -- as a journalist. Other than this on-going diarist role I've taken up in this Glass House, I'm much more read as a journalist, too. I have had millions read the journalism, where as only thousands read this diarist stuff and I could probably count all the people who've read my serious fiction on fingers and toes. Some people, like Yona, like many of you, have said that I'm my own best character. There seems to be a grain of truth in that.
Matt says if I finally told the whole story of my family, people would be amazed (and appalled, too) but there a some things that even an exhibitionist like myself must keep private. So I reveal much in order to have the luxury of concealing even more.
Well, don't act so mysterious about it, folks! I've said a million times that all that I'm looking for is "Home." Can I make it any plainer than that?
The problem is that my definition of "Home" has become much more complex than yours because I've never had the support of a family behind me. I've been an orphan longer than many of you have been alive. I have lost the inherent talent of trusting people, or I trust the wrong people, or I trust too much, only to have the person looking at my heart say: "I cannot remember the name." I have become Blanche DuBoise.
If you know anybody at Microsoft, let them know I can send them a resume. I'm learning the language. I have contacts. Bill Gates, listen up! All those columns I wrote about your bloated code when I was working for the Linux crew? Forget them, Bill! Our disagreements over vaporware? Show how big you are and let that ride.
NAWLINS
There's never a DULL moment here in Nawlins, I'll tell you that. Two weeks ago we had a minor crime wave where I live on Rue Dauphine. First, one of the demolition workers who rent the apartment diagonally across the street from our place bought a bottle of wine and borrowed a corkscrew from my now flat mate Caio. (Pronounced Ky-o, as in coyote without the T.) He swaggered down the street exclaiming: "Drink it all!" A couple of hours later, he jumped the fence behind Caio's then-place, beside the apartment where he and the other "bunkhouse boys" (as we've come to call them) live. Moments later a man drove up in a golden van with the window smashed out. It seems that this drunken bunkhouse boy had smashed in his window and stolen his cell phone. The cops came. Then the Crime Scene Lab truck.
It turns out our brilliant (and reportedly racist and homophobic, according to Matt and Caio) bunkhouse boy had gone back into his own apartment with the stolen cell phone. Yeah, he was busted, Dudes and Dudetteskis. See it on "Cops."
VOX POPULI is YOUR PAGE to talk back to us. I'm glad you're not bashful. Keep those cards and e-mails comin', Kids!
Our Editor does listen!
© 2001, GENERATOR 21.
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