this spring was luxurious in new orleans- we had perhaps two and a half months of absolutely perfect weather. warm and not too humid. cool breezes off of the gulf. in mid-april, during the midst of the great grad school panic of 2009, i remember distinctly having the thought, "how could i ever leave this place?"

well, it's 100 degrees. in my house. i'm working with no pants on. and it's fucking early june. and every damn article on nola.com includes the phrase "shot in the head". new orleans, new orleans, you are like a bad relationship that i can't quite shake but know i have to.

i've begun volunteering with a local youth photography project- my first day was this last week. i have never really worked with small (ages 5 - 10) children, and boy oh boy oh boy. the screaming! the climbing! the jumping! the hair-pulling! the fighting! the grabbyness! the glitter glue all over me! it was fun, even though i know it's going to take me a couple more weeks to be comfortable with these kids and telling them yes and no and giving them directions. they were so high engergy, and, according to one of the girls also working at the center, "a little starved for attention", hence them going so batshit nutso when presented with a group of adults there solely for their amusement. by far the best moment would be when i was trying to show one little girl how to use a camera and she snapped, "i know how to do this! some white person already showed me." hilarious. worst moment would be the realization that all of them had really bad teeth. as in, definitely rotting. poor babies.

it's so hot. it's so hot. it's so hot.

so last night, while attending a dinner party that was quicky detiorating into a drinking party, i recieved a text message from my brother that read, "i think mike wallace died."

naturally i thought he was referencing mike wallace from cbs' popular television journalism show, sixty minutes. so i laughed and showed everyone the text message as a sort of, haha, my brother is so strange! what an odd message to send.

of course, within a minute of laughing and sharing the weirdness with everyone in the room, i realized that he had to be talking about a mutual friend from high school. and, sure enough, he was. and this morning everyone from high school has facebook updates pertaining to the death and the funeral.

so the question is, how am i supposed to feel about this? i hadn't talked to ths kid in seven years, probably. (which it is another odd thought that i am getting to the point where i have "friends" with whom i haven't spoken to in almost a decade; ah, the strange land that is your mid/late twenties.) so yeah, hadn't talked to the kid in years, hadn't talked to most of the kids talking about it his funeral in years, but due to the strange pervasiveness that is facebook, i have this information and am supposed to maybe develop a thought or feeling about it. but really the only thought is about how fucking weird social networking sites are; how strange it is that i can find out the "intimate" details of "friends" who i am neither really friends nor intimate with.

not to mention that this is the second time in a year when this exact situation has happened.

not to mention that it's vaguely offensive for me to think that i have to feel anything about this occurance, considering that obviously i am so removed from the situation. but then again, does that make me a callous individual- that this person i was once very close to has passed, and my immediate concern is whether or not i have a right to think or feel about.

about a year ago this same thing happened- a good friend from high school killed himself and it was a mess and i didn't go to the funeral and people called me wanting to talk and cried on my voicemail and i didn't respond. and i felt like an asshole, sure, but at the same time i felt like distancing myself was necessary. im a very different person than who i was back then, and even back then, i was a very different person than most of my friends.

it's strange, looking back and thinking about everyone so young. and the traditional phrase is "so young and full of promise", but i think most of the people i was friends with were never really full of any promises except that yeah, they were going to get addicted to drugs, and yeah, they were going to have children way too young, and yeah, they were never going to leave our horrible hometown, and yeah, they were probably going to die way too early and from stupid accidents or from their own hands. and i'm going to be 600 miles away, spying on facebook memorial groups and trying to figure out how the fuck i escaped out of that quicksand.

been unsure of late about all these decisions im making. the future, you know, and what to do, whether to stay in this rotting, decaying, violent city, whether to leave and start over somewhere else again, whether to take on a lot of debt and go to a fancy school, whether i want to work in community development anymore, why i am always so unsure about where im supposed to be and what im supposed to be doing and what im allowed to say about what.

ive been quite productive over the past months- makin jam, knitting presents, reading books, being altogether in a good mood most of the time and happy where i am with my life. but there's always that question of what next? i can't do this forever.

so i woke up early saturday morning- mostly because i went to bed early, mostly because i was sick and spent friday evening baking cookies and knitting socks, which is mostly not very energy intensive- and laid in bed for a bit, lolling around and listening to weekend edition on the radio, where i heard one thing that i loved and one thing that i hated.

the thing that i loved was actually comprised of many things that i loved. it was a short piece highlighting "the annoying music show", which is something that i have always been curious about but never tried to listen to. and i instantly fell in love. chorus of the bells redone to have the lyrics chant "i love tacos, yummy yummy yummy tacos"?? annoying children squealing "you are the wind beneath my wings"??? WHEN A MAN LOVES A CHICKEN??? sign me up. i am going to up my capacity in performing the role of world's worst jukebox ten-fold now. my friends already hate me.

the thing that i hated was a commentary by a woman who apparently writes for the wall street journal. which i didn't catch at the beginning of the segment but when, at the end, they announced her place of employment it was a big OH moment. basically she bitched about how obama shouldn't be so negative and scary about the economy when he speaks because, come on, you guys, it is SO NOT BAD out there. and she specifically mentioned that people were not selling "apples in the streets" or "standing in foodlines" as being the metrics to use to gauge exactly how effed our economy is. which, sure, these two indicators might not be happening in her neighborhoods, but, as i drove across town to the boyfriends house, i was struck by the insane amount of people standing around on street corners hawking valentines day crap. tons and tons of them. mostly in the poorer neighborhoods. i do not remember that happening last year.

oh, and tons of people are standing in food lines all across america, lady. just cuz you ain't got to yet dont mean you can discount those who do.

last night was the first night i've slept alone in my room since someone broke in my house monday night. a bit creepy, laying in the dark, thinking about this person who was in my space with me, going through my things.

also, however, kind of funny, considering that they stole a jar of coins, my deodorant, and a pair of pants. although my keys were attached to said pants. and they stole my car and crashed it into a mcdonalds.

so i've been walking to work. which has been great. better than great. i used to be such a pedestrian- i went five years in athens with no car, and, since coming to new orleans, i have become a spoiled brat as far as transportation goes. i have always loved walking, and i'm actually kind of glad that this has forced me to really rediscover that.

tentatively planning a trip to peru in august.

finally figured out how to knit socks.

feeling better. always feeling better.

so of course im sitting outside talking to a friend about how fucking depressed you've made me and that "dreams" song by the cranberries starts playing from a house across the alley and reminds me that that was the first song on the first mix tape you made me.

i wish my brain would die.

drew for the first time in forever last night.

cooked dinner for the first time in forever last night.

listened to the rain.

didn't try to tell you anything.

sipping whiskey and listening to nina simone and wishing that i had decided to drive to georgia this morning. hanging out in this city with all these people who have known each other forever has been depressing of late- i'm so out of place, i can't keep up, all i have to offer is this pathetic sob story that is you.

i started drawing a little comic strip of us- what happened. how did it start? why did it continue? the narrative is so bold- travelling in bands, going to mexico, hurricane katrina. perhaps what i am mourning the most is the story. we had such a good story.

2008 has been a rough year. deaths, accidents, deaths, break-ups, no money, no time, frustrations, questions. as a child i thought that once you were "grown up" you had it all somehow magically figured out- but now i'm realizing that there is no map, and there are many many streets and alleys and buses out of town. should i stay? should i move across the country yet again and throw away all my friendships once more and forget all of these things? i've been feeling like i'm waking up these days- like this past year was just some strange dream, that none of this happened, my god it was all so boring- but now the question is, what am i going to do? i no longer have to answer to anyone. scary thought, scary thoughts.

i seriously reccommend that no one ever ever ever get invovled in some complicated long distance relationship. the reality never squares with the dreams, and the tension between is just too strong to navigate, and you might find yourself shipwrecked somewhere you weren't meant to be.

things that you said that i don't want to forget:

i know i've been stupid.

i know i fucked up.

i'm depressed a lot of the time, and what i'm depressed about most is how our relationship went bad.




what you didn't say:

i miss you, i love you, i'm sorry.

it astounds me how little i've documented my life over the past few years. maybe i instinctively knew that the picture i would end up drawing would be depressing, and that you had a lot to do with why, and i just wasn't ready to deal with it.

ever so often i think of something positive about you- something you said or did that reminds me as to why i was with you for so long. mostly these positive things happened months, or even years, ago- when we were both younger and prone to grand thoughts about one another, or life in general. these happy little memories have been crowded out by the shit that defined the past nine months, though. perhaps i'm doing you a disservice by concentrating so much on the negative- i don't want to hate you, or even really dislike you. i'd prefer nonchalance. in some ways, i am sad that i have lost that happy person from a few years ago. it's even sadder that you have lost that person. i apologize in advance for forgetting these sweet moments about you, because it's going to happen, and i'll only remember the reasons why we broke up. i wish that you would grant me the same kindness, but ultimately i don't care what you decide the narrative of our relationship is.

i think in a lot of ways we've been strangers to each other for our entire relationship.

i think in a lot of ways i'm tired of thinking about this. i'll be relieved when i have something else to worry about before i fall asleep.

last friday at sunset i was sitting on my back porch, and i realized that there was a giant flock of crows (or murder of crows) flying low directly over my house. caw, caw, caw, all black against the peach lit evening, for the entire slice of sky over my head.

in other news, sunday night i saw an elderly couple walking miniature ponies across north rampart street towards the gas station next to armstrong park. ponies!

i should be working on grad school applications but i am being crushed by my own indecisiveness and instead am (obviously) diddling around on the internet, posting on a blog that i (obviously) rarely post on. go me.

is it fall?

it's been deliciously cool (if, you know, you live in louisiana and think "cool" equates to 75 degrees) and not particularly humid this week. i've been walking to work, since i believe i am about to relocate from mid-city to the bywater, and walking the distance to work will soon be very out-of-the-question.

i do regret how non-pedestrian i've become since moving to the city, but now i've decided i'm just going to have to start biking more. i need to go visit plan b bike project and attach brakes to my bike- currently only the brake on the front tire works, and when i say works, i mean that if i start braking 15 feet before i have to and put my feet down before i reach the intersection i will be able to avoid getting hit by a car. it's just been so easy to ride without brakes here since the city is completely, utterly flat, meaning that my lazy ass can't usually get above, oh, 5-1omph at best. brakes just aren't that much of a necessity, but i suppose if i'm going to start biking clear across town to get to work and back i might want to part with the 40 dollars it would take to install a brake that functions properly.

so i just found out that the girl whose body was used in that infamous sarah palin in a bikini with air rifle was a friend of mine from college. biz-arre. considering she's an uberlefty feminist, i'm sure she's been thrilled with the situation.

i've been splurging on books. and by splurging i mean that i'm purchasing them online for ridiculously low prices, but buying a lot of them. i have always been a reader. i think i am going to start keeping track of the books that i read, simply because there was that huge fuss made last year about how the average american reads four books a year, and they're probably all beach reads anyhow. seriously, i read probably four books a month, depending on the books involved (meaning how long they are, whether or not i am re-reading them, how many books i am reading at the same time, and how interested i am in them.)

so. so far in 2008, i have read moo and a thousand acres by jane smiley.
i am currently reading after the promises, which is about new orleans during lyndon johnson's pursuit of the great society.
i'm trying very hard to read dying to win: the strategic logic of suicide terrorism. i think i may in fact just skip the introductory chapter and go straight to the meat of the study, because i am not digging the ridiculously plodding nature of his thesis introduction. seriously. the man has stated how he designed the study something like nine times in the first twenty pages.

i just ordered books on j. robert oppenheimer and superpatriotism.

i sound like a bore, huh. oh well. it makes for interesting conversations in bars.

it's too cold to contemplate actually going out tonight. even though i am going through bad-jukebox-shuffleboad withdrawal. and quite possibly drinking copious amounts of beer withdrawal. and most certainly not even thinking about drinking screwdrivers ever again, since seriously, i was a drunken fool for krewe d'vieux last weekend. my legs were sore on saturday from following the hot 8 from the bywater to the french quarter to the bywater again.

very relieved it is friday, and that means tomorrow is saturday, and i am going to wake up and paint and pot some plants and then do community outreach in district five. hooboy! i am thinking about going to barkus on sunday. i don't know who i am kidding. i'm going to barkus on sunday.

images of the city

i infiltrated an abandoned pool last weekend. it was raining, and cold, and pretty much a miserable day. part of the city flooded, as per usual. last night i was out in my garden, and i saw that my broccoli has sprouted little itty bitty broccoli heads. it was pretty exciting.

images from the city

i've been listening to an obscene amount of sad, old country these days. i think it's because i miss georgia- the location, and the time i spent there, and the people i knew, and who i used to be. that rickety old house where we fell through the floor a couple of times. and used to drink too much too early in the day. last night there were many people in my dreams who i will probably never speak to again. eventually it won't feel strange that i don't see them everyday.

it's cold and raining here in louisiana today.

going "home" to my parents house is always interesting. first, because they move around, a lot. since i left for college, they have lived in augusta, georgia, two different houses in knoxville, and now a rather strange house in lexington, kentucky- so four houses in a period of six years. second, because now that i live in new orleans, leaving that city for one that, you know, functions is quite a shock. the parents live in a new-ish neighborhood that is absolutely strange. it's one of those new developments where there are six prototypes of houses, all of which are situated on the exact same spot on lots that are the exact same size. all of the trees are roughly six feet tall, and are planted in the exact same spot in the front right corner of each lot. all the mailboxes are the same style, and spaced perfectly even, so, when standing on the slight hill where my parents' driveway begins, the predominent impression one gets is of insane and intense monotony- it looks like it was built by legos. at first i hated it, as my mother hates it. but now i'm finding this strange attraction to it. i wish i had brought my camera, so i could take pictures of it. but me and my camera had a bit of a falling out, and i'm trying to think of how to bridge the gap now.

i just don't want to take pictures that much anymore. living in such a photogenic city as new orleans has my photographic sense on overload- everything looks amazing, but contrived. and i realize that i am not an official member of the new orleans club yet, so i don't want to push myself in. also, as a friend of mine said the other day, "really, you don't want to wander around new orleans with an expensive camera." for real.

never before have i had to think so much about a place as i have new orleans. i feel like there's going to be some sort of final exam i'll have to take before i move away. a thesis to produce. it doesn't help that any time you encounter someone from the outside they make you talk about it. how is new orleans. how is new orleans. depending on ones' mood, it's either better, so much better, they never talk about how much better is getting, or it is worse, oh man is it bad, you will not believe how fucking crazy this town is.

i never intending this to turn into a clearinghouse for what i think and feel about the city. but really, what i think and feel about the city is turning out to be what i am preoccupied with most of the time.

i think i have to get out of politics. which is pathetic, considering i really just go into politics, and really, if i stick it out my resume would look great and i might get good "contacts"- but for what? the political landscape of this city? perhaps if i felt that i was going to live here for an extended time period i would tough it out, muscle through, swallow whatever tiny bit of pride and dignity i have and just. deal. with. it. and not to say that i haven't worked with good candidates and great people. i have. i just don't believe in it. and now that im poised to get thrown into much bigger races with much bigger candidates whom, really, i am against for various reasons, i don't think i can play along anymore. i understand the idea of the lesser evil, and supporting those candidates who have a chance of defeating the truly odious ones, but really, fuck it. i'm supposed to be young and idealistic right now, which is pathetic considering how jagged and jaded i feel these days. i'm turning into that horrible person who is anti everything for some reason, against the system and against the revolution.

was out drinking last night down in the cbd. it was a book release party, but for an indie book about life after the storm, so the place was chock full of overly self-conscious young white kids trying to play some unrecognizable part. and they all looked the same.

wondered how much it would cost, really, to hire a hitman in this city. not to do it, but just out of curiousity after hearing about a pair of hitmen in the seventh ward who collectively were responsible for over 30 murders. talking with a friend about really, what do people do for a living here? the cost of living is so high, and the wages so low, and decent jobs so scarce.

the whole city feels like a twisted social experiment.

had a great conversation with a fellow transplant last night, about this city, and how it's like no other place, really, in the united states. which, ironically, was a point that had been forced down my throat on saturday night, when an extremely drunk man who believes himself to be some sort of robert capa uber-male journalist harangued me for forty five damn minutes on the socio-political schitzophrenia of empire and what god hath wrought on new orleans. and i understood what he was saying, but i resented it, because i am getting tired of how self-conscious so many young people in this city seem to be, like they constantly have to remind themselves that they are living on the edge, the wild wild west of urban america.

last night two of my bar acquaintances told me that they had been in pal's the night a mentally disturbed man slit a woman's throat- she died right at my feet, he said, and i have army med training and there was nothing i could do, it happened so fast.

and what we talked about was how every day you wake up and you either love this city, or you hate it. and there is no in between. and this happens with everyone, the whole population, every day this strange struggle. and this city won't be the same in five ot ten years, people will forget, or people will leave, and this city might not actually recover. so i am glad that i am here, witnessing it, and am able to make up my mind about the actuality, the reality of this place, instead of constantly being told what it is, especially by overbearing drunks.