How Soon Is Now?
Are you awake?
Open eyes, open heart. I live in a New Orleans of the mind. City Lights.
I wonder if anyone realizes that I am referencing Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Everyone thinks I am like Charles Bukowski, which I am not, though he and I mine similar terrain for different reasons and in very different ways. I visit his world but I do not share his world view. I play a role, the observed observer. Wherever there is sin, there must I go. I have the tee shirt.
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical, and naked, dragging themselves through Tremé at dawn looking for an angry fix, angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night. I celebrate myself, and I sing myself. What I assume you shall assume, for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loaf and invite my soul. I lean and loaf at my ease observing any given New Orleans day as it rolls around me.
The secret to happiness is low expectations. Life is full of predictable, petty, minor disappointments. The world needs more poetry. The secret to happiness is low expectations. It is a good thing I live in New Orleans. Happiness loves company.
Because I usually wear a fedora and I am usually overdressed for any given occasion, and, because I am usually reading or writing out in public, people like to compare me to Truman Capote. Because I always wear a hat, people think that I am bald, like Mr. Capote. I am not. I thank my lucky stars that I have neither Truman Capote’s hairline nor his voice. I would not want to go through life like that. Little things mean a lot.
Have you ever dreamed that your hands were claws?
I am going to talk about a personal observation that is only remotely related to my inhabiting Lower Decatur Street, by which I mean only in the most general of general ways—ways that would apply to all of New Orleans, Uptown, Downtown, Lakeside, Riverside.
First, though, I have to put up the paywall.