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NEW ORLEANS - 4 April, 2003: It seems that I've been bombarded by words this week, rather than producing any myself. Words from people wanting to me read about Mr. Bush's war, words from my employers about The Rod Show, words from Fashionable about the many changes she's making in her life. Meanwhile, nothing bubbles up from the wellspring inside.
A change is imminent, I suspect, my love. Whether for good or ill I cannot tell.
Odd things have been happening. My friend Matt tells me on my last day of work last week, Tuesday, that C-------, my fellow bartender, palmed a tip he, Matt, had left for me, along with money from another customer.I suspected something was amiss before, but I am so angry when I learn this that I cannot speak. I struggle to pay my rent and utilities, I work the worst and longish shifts, while C------ gets to cherry-pick the best there are. That he would rob me seems fantastic. I'm not sure how I shall respond.
7 April, 2003: I am a statistic again. I could not bring myself to stay at The Cat considering the circumstances. If it had come to the point that a co-worker had enough animus to rob me, I had stayed too long.So now I am ass out again. I don't even have enough money to pay my rent. I shall doubtless be the brunt of various calumnies from the people at The Cat, as was Daniel, my former co-worker. No matter how you attempt to acquit yourself, it must be your fault that you had to leave...
I was getting that "Lusitania" feeling about the place, anyway. It was time to open a new door.
I keep wanting to believe, my love, that there is a separate country, one separate country some place, where children like you and I can thrive and be happy. I search for it all the time.
I've been reading up on Grand Turk Island lately, where my great grandfather took his family (on my mother's side) from in order to move to Bermuda. It is just a spit of coral off the coast of Cuba, a place that legend says Columbus made first landfall in truth.
But that's a Crown colony and I have no more sympathy for Mr. Blair than Mr. Bush. My separate country has to be somewhere where I won't feel I have blood on my hands every day. I am too committed to justice for that...
My friend Darryl, on the anniversary of the Rev. Dr. King's assassination, sent me a copy of the speech King made the year before. It's a telling and moving speech. I shall share part of it with you here:
Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.
When I read those inspiring words, and the one that follow in Dr. King's speech at the Riverside Church, I must believe that there is one separate country, one place where conscience is still alive.
Here are a few more places to visit on the Web when you have the time, lover. (As I told you, I'm being bombarded with words.)My pal, Raoul Tesla in Santa Cruz send this along for your perusal: http://www.markfiore.com/sf/barbecue.html. Enjoy! It's a wacky look at life in San Francisco. (Flash required.)
- http://electroniciraq.net/news/524.shtml
- http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2003/04/mayer-je-04-01.html
- http://www.sundayherald.com/32522
SO WHERE AM I TONIGHT, my dear? Both desperate and destitute. A few friends, notably Mary, Scott and Fashionable, have offered me their encouragement. Fashionable flatters me by saying that I brought wisdom and a special touch to The Cat that made me stand out among the bartenders of this benighted town. She says that I shall be missed.But bartenders are a dime a dozen here, as are the tipplers. I shall be missed for a moment and then forgotten. That is the way of things in Nawlins.
All I have to offer, again, is this cathedral of words and my love. I hope that shall be enough for you this week.
PEACE!
Things I Need This Week
1. A new job that respects my talents.
2. A way to accept my life in The Big Easy graciously.
3. An escape route.
Thanks for coming back this week."Work like you don't need the money,
"Love like you've never been hurt,
"Dance like no one is watching..."
Rod
Rod was a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he wrote over two hundred articles on web design and development issues. He was also principal writer and Editor for IT Manager's Journal, where he reviewed technology issues weekly, producing 383 editorials. He became the Managing Editor for Electronic Mail/Newsletter Publications at Andover.net at the end of February, 2000, and left in September of the same year. He was a contributing writer for ACCESS magazine, which appeared both on- and offline for 10 million readers in 100 newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Post, Boston Herald, Austin American-Statesman, Denver Post and Orlando Sentinel, among others. Rod was the US reporter for Silicon.com, a division of Network Multimedia Television in London, UK, reaching 3.5 million European readers, until May, 2001.
Last year he worked as Assistant to the General Manager of a Big Easy company that does restaurants and nightclubs. (Think: The Boy.) Oh yeah, Rod's had Day Jobs working construction. Mostly renovations of old New Orleans structures, houses and a bar. Sometimes he designs Web sites for other people so that he can get his creative juices flowing the way he can't at a staid publication like this one. And he's been the instructor in Editing for Internet Publications at the Novi Sad School of Journalism in Yugoslavia. Right now our Resident Philosopher has joined the pantheon of New Orleans bartenders and still doesn't know when he'll have a "permanent residence" that he likes.. In his spare time, he chases women in the manner that a fly pursues a spider. 
Rod lives in New Orleans, Louisiana. This town is eroding his normal sense of driven purpose. He wants to live somewhere civilized when he grows up. Wish him Luck.
He continues to be committed to integrity, chastity and a dose of humility.
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