Nawlins I


Mishlin and Luis live in a magenta house filled with masks, fetishes, and velvet drapes. They run a witchcraft mail order business and a bed and breakfast that Darcy found through a book called "New Orleans Voodoo Tarot." It was hard to find. Street signs are missing because, according to Luis, criminals take them down at crime scenes with hopes the police won't find them. Mishlin wants other pagans to start B&B's so they can network.

Purchased some pecan pralines as a souvenier for Margaret.
Saw numerous Uncle Tom & Mammy salt and pepper shakers. Why didn't I buy them?

"Yes we remove hexes" In window of voodoo novelty shop.

At the statue of Louis Armstrong in the park, the sculpted mouth-piece of the trumpet is missing. Ripped off. At least I think it was a trumpet. I never could tell the difference between a trumpet and a coronet.

Darcy meditates to the tarot cards. I always thought of Tarot cards (and all methods of fortune telling) as fun & games, so this is the first use for them that makes any remote sense to me. When she first tried to meditate she tried to empty her mind, but that doesn’t work anymore so she just lets the thoughts flow.

After Mockingbird swamp tours, read article on the wall about a man who fought an alligator under his house. When he knocked on his neighbor's door, he was bloody from head to toe and had to get 200 stitches.

At the bar, a couple who had a son who died at 17. Drowned. They are wrecked.

Don't know why, but I'm wrecked too. Only there’s no corpse to show for it. Unless you count the bodies that litter my dreams. All murdered. The kicker is it always turns out I'm the murderer.

I can't stand up straight. Try to meditate to the Jungian archetype tarot cards. Try to meditate to the meaningless hoax.

Eating Margaret's pralines.

NAWLINS II

It's weird to be in a place where you are the one with the accent.
"You're from Los Angeles? I got a brother in San Diego."
Dragon flies are mosquito hawks here.

The calliope on the steam boat is playing "Deep In the Heart of Texas," and "Alabamy Bound." On the radio, songs mentioning Louisiana, New Orleans, and the Bayou keep playing.
"Love Potion Number Nine," "Brown Sugar." Songs I never noticed had anything to do with New Orleans before.

Talked to a woman from Florida in Preservation Hall who survived Hurricane Andrew. The eye of the hurricane lasted 20 minutes.
Apparently some people think when the eye comes, the storm is over, so when they walk out of their houses they get swept up and away. The wood from her carport was never found. They found pink siding in her yard and no one in the neighborhood has pink siding.

On his break the jazz bassist pets a stray cat. "I'm playing him," he says, "You can tell from the way the tail's moving."

Outside a street musician is cleaning his mouth piece,"You got to practice safe sax!"

Down further is a rasta clown with a red nose and corn rows.

More novelties.

NAWLINS III

We check out the the Piazza d’Italia by architect Charles Moore, built for a World’s Fair here that went bankrupt. It’s in shambles. A place for homeless to sleep. Fountains clogged, tiles broken, neon turned off. Card board boxes on steps along with Chapter 11 bankruptcy manuals strewn about.

A group of men in polo shirts walks up just as we do. "…This is probably only of interest to architecture students now."
They are building an aquarium in Denver and came to look at the Aquarium of the Americas. To see its problems. Since they are in the area they dropped by to see the Moore work as well.

Charles Moore designed the Beverly Hills civic center and I’ve heard grumblings about the interiors. The librarians and civil servants say it’s drafty and surprisingly cheapo. Just like this.

It seems my childhood dream of becoming a full-time dilettante is not to be. The new dream is to have the most boring life ever imagined.

Stupid August.

Last night I had this dream that was just like the last five minutes of the movie The Others, only in my version, Nicole Kidman gets to eat an entire cake.

Dog Days

The house is settling
along with Fritzie's ear upon my cheek
She doesn't want food from me
She's just sleeping
Once in a while I check to see if she's breathing

It's always hard to latch the doors this time of year
They droop in the heat
So, nothing stops Fritzie from bursting
through my door at six thirty.
to announce another morning
has arrived

My feet feel the bathroom floor tiles swelling
I watch the fuschias wilting in the window box and
notice Jesus Christ's face in a stain in the marble near my toe
The gardeners rake the cement outside
It's the kind of day that makes you think nothing will change

Across the street from Super Yarn Mart
by the vending machine that still sells Bubble-Up
on a collision course with civilization
There you are
Are you ready for me?

I was re-reading this dictionary of New England expressions called "Yankee Talk,"by Robert Hendrickson, and it mentions even more cryptozoologic animals than I remember. I meant to pass the info on to Margaret, so here it is. (I'm actually not too sure when a mythical creature crosses over to cryptozoological, so some of these may not qualify)


1. Shagimaw

An imaginary creature of the woods with two feet like a moose and two like a bear.

2.Side-Hill Ranger

A mythical animal of the lumber camps. Cited as a common term in George Allen England's "Rural Locutions of Maine and Northern New Hampshire," Dialect Notes, Vol.IV (1914)

3.Champ

A fabled water creature said to reside in Vermont's Lake Champlain, the American counterpart of the Loch Ness Monster. Samuel Champlain first sighted the creature in 1609, describing it as a "barrell thick monster...[with a] horse-shaped head." Descriptions have varied since.

4.Lucivee

A "half-mythical" kind of wildcat also called the loup-cervier or Injun devil. Cited in George Allen England, "Rural Locutions of Maine and Northern New Hampshire," Dialect Notes, Vol. IV (1914).Pronounced lucy-vee.

5.(my favorite) Tree Squeak

An imaginary creature of the Maine woods, so named because it is said to squeak like tree limbs in the wind.


Don't that beat all get out? Incidentally, Milo and Inkblot are still alive. Maybe Milo is like a glam rocker of the cat world. He already has natural eyeliner.

Rock on, foo-foo head.