Too small to see.

I lie here in the still quiet of Slidell's Midnight, and reflect. I think I was a bout eight when I began taking myself too seriously. 16 years later, I wrote about it in my iPad as I sat in my car on the corner of Washington and Prytania next to the Lafayette Cemetary. Writing about it didn't make it go away. Who knew? So much has happened here, and I sometimes feel that I'd give up every minute for a day on the warm river rock, a day spent wrapped in sun-browned skin and raven hair like a curtain of midnight set against the backdrop of the noonday sun. Like a dumbass, my common sense reflects at this sentimental idiocy. Time, King said, is a face on the water. He never explained what that meant, but I think I know. The world moves on, and one can either choose to tube up and give it a float, or tread backward like a pussy and slip beneath the surface without ever finding out what lies around the riverbed. I think I'll go ahead and tube. Much as it makes me sad to see the beautiful landscape slip out of sight behind me, I know the best views are as yet unseen, waiting further down. Hella deep, brah. Hella deep.

The Softer Side of Heaven

Wake me there, when the sun rises on a better day. We share love, laughter, and together we shoulder the weight of the uncaring world. It's a miserable burden to bear alone, but with the many strong backs of good friends and brothers like mine, the yoke is nothing more than a reminder to appreciate all that we have. Love the ones who love you, and remember to save a little love for yourself. This mess is a dream; when it's over and we wake, all we'll take with us is the love we've saved along the way. Maybe that's why love is so hard to give. Maybe that's why it's so hard to hold onto. Maybe I can earn it.

Reflect

Again, the weeks have marched past all but unnoticed. Things are the same, and maybe that's the thing of it. I work six to eight shifts, three days off to wander/wallow as I see fit, try some new food, explore a new swamp, learn a new song. I am a year older. I saw a little music. I made more plans for the summer. None of my friends came down for Jazz Fest. It is as I expected, and I am ashamed that it makes me feel so sad and abandoned. I take solace and comfort in knowing that no one but me will ever read any of this. I miss all of them. I left them, after all. What do I have to feel so left behind about? It was my choice, and at the same time it wasn't. I couldn't have stayed there any more than I could pick up and leave here tonight. That is to say I could, but I won't. Grow up, then see how you feel, I tell myself. Well, all right. I spent a weekend with my Granddad in Fairhope, Alabama. He doesn't see himself living to the close of this year, his 96th. It was time well spent, and I'm not sorry to have turned 24 in his company. He's lived approximately 72 years more than I, and one can imagine that he's learned a thing or two since he arrived on the planet in October of 1916. I will have plenty of other birthdays, and time between to do whatever I want. He asks nothing of me, not even my company. He never has. He simply loved my brothers and me as his own family for as long as I can remember. For all his faults, he's a good man, and he loves deeply.

Rubicon Summer

Two weeks slipped by while I was looking the other way. Work, eat, sleep, repeat. Crawfish, Commander's, coitus. Music, podcasts, Pontchartrain. I confirmed plans to work in Telluride this July, and afterwards to spend a few months in California. I will drive from Louisiana to Colorado in the early days of July, joining other members of Chrysler's teem when I arrive. From the Telluride/Ouray area, we'll drive to Montrose, get on a plane and fly to Sacramento, where an associate will be waiting to pick us up. We'll spend 10 days preparing and packing gear in Georgetown before loading up and driving back to Colorado, where we will set up camp for the Chrysler executives who will be on the trail. July's remaining weeks will be spent in Colorado, maintaining and finally breaking down camp. We'll then return to California. If I have my own way, I'll be leaving Colorado in my car and heading southwest through Las Vegas and then Los Angeles. I'll spend a few days on the beach in Hermosa, then take Highway 1 up the coast to San Francisco. A few days there to see friends, music, and maybe eat some food, then on to the Divide. I'll continue to work for Jeep over the course of August and September, filling the gaps between trips with office work. The final trip is in late September, and after it's over I'll be driving up to Garberville in Humboldt county for trim-sesh 2012. When the month is out, I'll be done trimming and headed back to Louisiana for the winter. It's shaping up to be a pretty decent summer.

A Walk With the Palm Trees

Today was for the oysters. I woke with the dawn, well-rested for the first time in days. The distant cry of the morning train reached my ears from the crossing on Gause Boulevard, heralding the break of day with the unchanging punctuality of sunrise. I worked the property with Tom for several of the day's cool early hours, then we went to visit his ailing mother in a nursing home a few miles away. After a short time there, we left on Highway 190 for Biloxi. This small two-lane road took us to the coast. We saw the remains of the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina: empty foundations, shattered remnants of private wharves, and houses twisted and torn as if by giant, clutching hands.

We stopped and ate at a harbor in Pass Christian, Mississippi, at a precariously leaning shack called Shaggy's. We snacked on Tuna and seaweed on the second-floor deck overlooking the harbor. Fish gamboled just below the surface of the water twenty or so feet below, flashing their silver bellies at the sun.

From the harbor, we continued east along the coastal highway, white sand beaches to the right and sloping lawns, live oaks and antebellum plantation style houses to the left. It would be worth whatever these places cost just to have a rocking chair that faces the Gulf of a summer evening.

Stopped at one section of beach and waded into the warm salt water. 100 yards out and i was barely waste deep. I swam for a few minutes, then returned to shore. There was another brief period of driving before we arrived at the Hollywood Casino in Waveland, Mississippi. I ate myself sick on fresh, grilled and fried oysters, fried catfish, hushpuppies and peach cobbler, then proceeded to watch old people gamble for a few hours while the food settled. Back on the road and back to Slidell. My three-day weekend is at an end. Time to rejoin the working world in the morning.

Cannon Balls and Mud Bugs

Up at 5am, dropped the car at Dorr Automotive to get a new transmission mount and an oil change. I drove into New Orleans with Tom as the sun rose over Lake Pontchartrain. I looked for a moment out the back window at it as it broke over the rim of the world, as firey and beautiful as any sunrise I had ever seen, but with the liquid glass surface of the lake below to cast its reflection back a thousand times from every ripple in the lazily shifting surface. A sheet of flame seemed to have fallen onto the water, and it burned there with a feverish intensity that grew, grew, and faded as the sun crept up and up, finally parting company with the horizon.

Tom broke the silence with a racist joke, something about moon crickets being distant relations of Spanish Moss, because they just hang around and do nothing. He was driving me into town so that I could attend a meeting at Commander's Palace on proper alcohol service. The meeting was a formality. Each member of Commander's staff is required to attend the class, take an absurdly easy test, and most importantly pay $25 cash in order to legally serve alcohol in the state of Louisiana. Paid the man, took the test, and was headed for the Quarter by 10am. We tried for Cafe Du Monde, but it was jam packed with a line out the door and down the street. We ate instead at the French Market, a restaurant on Decatur that has been open since 1803. A dozen oysters, a basket of alligator tail, and a giant assorted seafood platter later, we were uncomfortably full and ready for a walk. We went down to the riverfront and watched the cargo ships pass beneath the bridge for awhile. Back in the Jeep, we were headed to the Chalmette Battlefield, where was won the most important conflict of The War of 1812. The battlefield, which butted upon the Mississippi River, was nearly silent. The muted sounds of the traffic from the adjacent highway was nearly cut off by a line of trees. I found it ironic that a place where so much blood had been shed should hold such complete stillness and peace. To look out over the field, one would never guess that thousands had died here. It was full of flowers and crawdad mounds, green grass and not much else. A replica of the old plantation house stood off to the side like a half-finished afterthought. The live oaks bore silent witness to all that had passed in the 200 years since the men of three nations had come together to fight and die on the ground where I walked. Like me, they didn't have anything to say about it.

We left behind the old ghosts of that strange, silent place and took once more to the road, rounding Lake Pontchartrain on the Chef Menteur Highway, past Fort Pike and once again into the lush, swampy depths of Irish Bayou. We followed back road after byway after near-hidden track, and ended up once again on the banks of a river, this time the West Fork of the Pearl, across from a line of old fishing camps where Tom had spent his summers as a teenager. Tom told many stories as we drove, stories of his childhood, his family, and his life in the 32 years spent in the United States Army. I will record those at some point as well. He's a hell of a human being. The murky, swift-flowing water, the vibrant green of the jungle-thick foliage all around, the weather-beaten boats lined up on the shore, all of it appealed to me more than anything I have yet seen in this state. I will be sure to return before long. After a quiet minute on the river's edge, we returned to Slidell for crawfish, shrimp, and File gumbo. I've had worse days.

Mofro Country

More than four months later, here I sit in Slidell, Louisiana on the edge of Irish Bayou in St. Tammany Parish. I stayed too long in Las Vegas, but I left at the end of January. After a three day drive which took me across Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, I crossed the Sabine River and entered Louisiana. A few short hours brought me to this place. It's been a couple of months now, but I remember walking through the front door and feeling the crushing loneliness that was to be mine for the foreseeable future. I realized in that moment that I had come to a place where I knew no one, and no one knew me. I realized that I had left behind all that was familiar, and much of what had become important to me. My heart was sick, and I felt foolish, selfish and weak. Not the best way to begin, but it was a beginning nonetheless.

I went into town the next day and met with Freddy, the only contact I had made before arriving. He got me a job at Borgne, John Besh's new restaurant at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. I worked there for a two weeks before securing a position at Commander's Palace. It's one of the oldest restaurants in the city, and very prestigious. I feel that if I there were anyplace in the city of New Orleans where I could learn about the service industry, this is it. I trained during Mardi Gras, cut my teeth on the busiest days of the year, and since then have been learning new things about food and service every day.

For the rest, I am finding new places.