This evening

It is 7:47 pm. It is still light outside, although the sun has gone down. It is a New Orleans twilight. I am sitting on the stoop outside my half-shotgun house in the Bywater, waving goodbye to my soon-to-be ex-husband as he gets into his rental car and heads off to the airport Hilton. The car is a Chevy Malibu - "Aloha!" he says as he drives off.

We've just had a pizza dinner and some wine. He has just - so nice of him - set up a new printer he bought for me, and set up the sound bar for my new giant 50-something inch flat screen TV. I didn't really want a TV, but we had two in storage, and he suggested I include this one in the shipment of my belongings from California. It's a good idea, and I'm grateful to him. Although I rarely watch TV, it makes sense that I have this one instead of buying another one. And who knows? Maybe I'll start watching, now that I'm living a different kind of life.

I'm thinking a girls' night series of femme fatale movies.

Outside in the street, on the other side of Chartres, the train is rolling past. It has a rhythmic clank-clink-clack thing going, but also a kind of metallic shrieking as wheels abrade on the tracks. It's the soundtrack of life down here.

The sky is still a beautiful blue, shot through with clouds that are suffused with gold. The concrete steps are warm under my bare feet from the afternoon sun. The scent of my potted gardenia is released in the night air. There's a mockingbird going on and on that won't shut up - I hear him even in the middle of the night sometimes.

This is how my summer begins.

Happy Mother's Day

Here's how we celebrate down here.

The 20th annual second line for the Original Big Seven Social and Pleasure Club.

Rolling through the  Seventh Ward.

Our good friend and neighbor Who Dat looking fine!

A poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

The rental house I've been living in this year has a front yard hose faucet at the corner of the house overgrown by a huge monstera philodendron plant. Turning on the hose means thrashing through the giant leaves.

But my landlady's yard man tidied and pruned the yard last week, so yesterday when I was hosing down a storage bin for the move I was rejoicing in how easy it was to get to the faucet - until BAM! - I poked myself right in the eye with the tip of a pruned back stem.

Ouch. I now have a scrape around my eyelid and blood in my eye. Cute.

Moving day

I'm done with school now (although still waiting to see what my grades are), so now I can concentrate on moving.

Moving around the corner seems more complicated than moving across the country, however! It seems to happen in small trips, in fits and starts. We'll be done by Tuesday. Pictures soon!

Darkness at Noon

Right now a fierce thunderstorm is rolling in, the world outside our front door is as dark as twilight, here just before noon. So much for Jazz Fest.

Yesterday a similar storm kept me in the house from sometime around 1:00 pm till nearly 6:00, but it didn't have as much lightning and thunder here in the Bywater as it did elsewhere in town. They had to shut down Jazz Fest yesterday, too.

Today's storm is already flooding the street. The sound of the rain and wind is terrific.

Yesterday the Campus at UNO closed down due to flooding. I have a banquet to attend there later this afternoon - I'm not sure I'll be able to make it.

Publication

My piece about the mule deer in Topanga Canyon has been published by University of New Orleans' literary journal, Ellipsis.

Here's the link:

http://scholarworks.uno.edu/ellipsis/ 

Confederate Jasmine

It seems like in just one day, all the Confederate Jasmine in town has burst into full bloom. Everywhere I go I smell its sweet scent, and see its white flowers. Here massed in a hedge. There climbing up a telephone pole. There on a fence, or  climbing over a vacant house. I once grew this plant as a finicky hanging basket plant in Seattle. Not here. Here it takes over!

Trachelospermum jasminoides is a vigorous evergreen vine with white five-petaled star-shaped flowers. It's a native of China and is not related to the "real" jasmines of the genus Jasminum. 

It gets its common name because it grows so well in the Southern states, those once part of the Confederacy. This is a legacy that perhaps this pretty flower should have outgrown. In Europe, it's called Star Jasmine. That might be prettier.

Nevertheless, there is so much of it here in New Orleans that it has filled our late April evenings with scent.

Fruits of wisdom

I went to the New Orleans Museum of Art today with a friend. On Wednesdays, admission is free to Louisiana residents.

Looking at art with a friend is always a good thing. Some works stir my brain, other works stir my friend's brain. We can point out interesting details to one another. We can go to a cafe after, and talk about things that well up in our minds after seeing the pure and vivid expression of feeling that others - some long, long past - have left in the world.

I am thinking of a Greek double-handled vase from 400 BC, emblazoned with an image of a swan flapping its wings.

Or the stairway of the Paris Opera House in 1880, viewed by an impressionist painter.

Or a medieval altarpiece portrait of a saint - who happens to look exactly like a bartender friend of mine.

Being able to share these experiences with friends is a treasure. I'm so lucky.

Hey y'all

It's a busy time for me. Sorry for no posting. I'm moving into a new place and things are scattered. I've got papers to write, too. Also family things going on.

Spring in New Orleans is lovely, and each time I can snatch a moment to be outdoors or take a walk on the levee, or hang out with friends, it's a treasure.