Ghosts, Graveyards and Cypress Knees

You Can Never Go Home Again

wanderingeli — Tue, 23 Jun 2015 16:38:00 GMT

The explosion of feathers behind the ottoman reminds me that I am in the company of mighty hunters, whose bloodlust can only be sated by the sound of opening a can of tuna - ahi tuna mind you, only the best around these parts. I myself slurped up a packet of madras lentils, mostly cold with a hot-spot or two left by the finicky microwave and my poor attention span. I sip my tea - a hippy panacea I am told will restore my throat to a non-swollen state - and watch the vines climbing up the bedroom window. Placing my palm flat against the glass I wonder if they have the sort of sentience that gives a fuck if I am here. Perhaps in the life of plants, I am just the parasite that comes in and out of the house they love to climb.

The house itself - not my home, but a home that feels instantly nostalgic when my feet meet its doormat - is small, with a low roof that begs the question why anyone would want to be taller than 5’3”. The rope lights illuminate the spines of books that serve as walls and dividers of the space, and origami dragons chase butterflies along the rafters. The steep driveway leads up to the road, but I don’t go there often. It’s not in my best interest to remember how close this oasis is to the roar of engines and rubber bleeding onto asphalt. Seattle is an amazing city, but I am not amazed today. Today I want to sit in the quiet, and hear dragonfly wings and imagine if they breathe sparks; today I want to remember that not all culture is urban, and in my haste to see all of the great cities of the world I have scurried past whole ecosystems and universes in the rural spaces. Sometimes it is the absence of action that gives space for things that amaze.

When all of this is gone, when the humans have left for faraway planets and a promise of a perpetually expanding universe, will there still be a vanguard of weeds pushing up through the cracks our footsteps left behind? The cracks in the foundation tremble, and the doors do not close easily against the stilted flooring, but I love each and every groan that the house makes as I walk through it. It moans to the roof, and I step harder against the squeaky spot in the hallway where the baseboard is slightly more yellow. I will the house to crumble around me. I want to be here to see past this, past all this mess that we - humans, collectively - have made; I want to see what grows when we are gone.

Crop Circles; and other signs of returning home

wanderingeli — Sun, 21 Jun 2015 08:00:00 GMT

I wonder how many of the TSA agents are just having a really bad day. Things like that plague me; how often it is that human emotional turmoil interferes with the mundane tasks that may or may not have occasionally drastic consequences. I’m told that this show before me - a sea of uniforms and waves of beeping - if for my own protection; but each checkpoint I am inspected and scanned in a manner that leaves me feel stripped away and vulnerable. Life goes on, just as magnificently horrific, and I imagine that this whole facade is just a way to remind us about the ever running lottery system the fates have ticking away over our heads. As if any of us could forget how random the distribution of privilege and disaster can be in this life.

Beep.

I take a step forward, clutching my passport and boarding passes at the ready; anxious about seeming unprepared. Two boys, I guess twelve years old, are in line in front of me. The taller one shares his earbud with his smaller, orange clad companion and their brows furrow with the seriousness of the melodies streaming forth. The head bob and murmur lyrics I can’t understand under their breathe, until they realize that I am listening and they straighten and cease. The moment has passed, I smile.

Beep. Glance. Stamp. Step forward.

There was a time, when I used to run across the red carpets here into the arms of my relatives returning from some sparkling tourist brochure of a vacation. My childhood and the Home Alone movies taught me that running was the speed at which one should travel through an airport. The awkward line shuffle feels so defeating, so out of sync with the up-tempo pop music piped in to drown out the grumbling.

I step onto the Monorail - Disney’s first ride! - that connects me to my terminal, and I watch the sunrise through the glass. Condensation builds on the inside of the storm windows and I remember how much I won’t miss being braising myself in the Florida summer. Each time I come back here, the swampy heat engulfs me in a hug that is immediately nostalgic and intoxicating until it is transmuted into the smothering fuel that feeds my escape back to western mountain coastlines.

Swoosh.

The doors breathe open and the rushing air pulls me from the transit tube. There is a scuffed Mickey Mouse sticker on the window that some underpaid airport worker half-heartedly tried to remove - now Mickey sports a slash mark across his ears, but the symbol of childhood magic smiles through the disfigurement.

My seat on the plane is by the window, and I wonder why anyone would ever choose a looking glass to their potential demise. I pull the blind mostly closed, and suck my frame back into the recesses of my hoodie. The psychological price I pay for my love of travel is my fear of flying, and I peek through the sliver of visibility in the window to give another paranoid glance over the wings for signs of rusted metal or gremlins. The pressure of take-off sinks me into the seat and I imagine my body being pressed flat against the tarmac and watching the plane lift off without me. This image is disrupted by the sounds of a crying child - having eardrums in the clouds is not always a good time. I wonder how many people on this plane are leaving home or returning; I listen for hints of Hippy in the tongues and murmurs around me and listen to the dialect clashing with the peculiar combination of southern drawl and Latina staccato that make up the Florida tongues. I wonder which side my words fall on now; having been so long since I’ve moved.

The ground flows by lazily, even though I am moving faster than I can really comprehend. The circles of industrial agriculture glare up at me, a patchwork of monoculture bandages on a shuddering ecosystem. I imagine aliens reading these crop circles and being thoroughly confused at our haphazard message - it is so hard, after all to believe that anything so grand and particular could be totally random. Then again, perhaps random is just what the viewer experiences when looking at signs that aren’t made for them.

Photos: Florida-Louisiana 2015

wanderingeli — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 07:41:00 GMT

The World's Slowest Orgy; and How I was not Invited

wanderingeli — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 06:56:00 GMT

Mardi Gras beads and a sheen of sweat painted onto every visible surface of skin panders to the desire for shiny things that lingers in the hedonistic reaches of the mind’s crevices. I’m told New Orleans is the world’s slowest orgy - because invariably if you wander the streets ducking into bars and back alleys, you can’t help but run into a former lover sucking down whiskey and being audibly fucked by the string of music-note suitors that perpetually marches out of each tavern door. You would think it would be easy, even for me, to get laid; but here I am, two gin-and-tonics deep in a swamp of self-defeat ranting to the only other queer in the bar I’m not attracted to or interested in.

“So, I bought a Rodeo, because “If you build it, they will come”. Well, that was 6 months ago. Fuck you, Field of Dreams.”

"Yeah, I put my cock in my storage unit. Which basically sums up where I’m at with life."

We turn towards our respective glasses, and smile sullenly at how clever we are in our angst. This bar, the definition of seedy, is close enough to the French Quarter to hear the creaking carriages and stomping mule hooves but tucked away enough to be undetectable to eyes not adjusted to the city’s neon night lights. A band is playing; the singer - a powerful being named Chaos who is a good foot taller than me and has dreads older than my career - is screaming lyrics I can’t distinguish, but there is no mistaking their emotional intent. Chaos, I overhear from the bar-tender, is dating a girl named Riot. Of course she is.

I step outside, tripping over street kids who are piled up on the curb as a result of the recent ordinance passed forbidding the consumption of cigarettes inside bars. The cloud of ash, no longer contained by three walls and a tattered roof, is set free upon the streets - and while our lungs might be healthier for it, I wonder if this change will make it harder to see the stars.

The river is only a short walk, and I don’t completely realize that’s where my feet are taking me until I am standing on the rocky outcropping staring off to the West Bank. The bright lights of the steam powered ship revolves past my view, carrying drunken tourists through the mouth of the mighty Mississippi and the End of the World; which, as it happens, is only about a thirty minute ride away. They are content to believe they are traveling in the style of Tom Sawyer; and I am contented to look past them into the mountains of shipping containers and wonder what adventures are imbued into the steel walls that have traveled the whole world over just to float past me now. There are so many ways forward, and only one clear path back.

I light a cigarette and take the essence of fire into my lungs, hoping that someday I will learn to breathe out with the same flame of passion. The night wraps around me, the heat permeating my flesh and bones forcing my body to sweat out all the toxins and impurities collected over the years of working thankless jobs, and living half-filled lives. I can hear the banter of the barflies in the darkness behind me, and I wonder about the hands and hips that twist, rub and revolve in ways that can be described as nothing but revolutionary. I will make it back there, and maybe even find the distraction I am looking for; but it will always be the tendrils of smoke and steam that breathe out of the pores of the city’s flesh that will ever envelope me entirely.

Possession

wanderingeli — Mon, 1 Jun 2015 09:34:00 GMT

I was possessed by swamp demons, held captive by the souls of New Orleans - a city where even the ghosts exist with a sheen of sweat on their countenance. This city - brick and iron smattered with cement and steel - has a pulse so ancient, it’s a wonder that the spirit of nature’s underbelly survives here; but it does. The energy of the bayous waft up from the small cracks in the sidewalk, helped along by vangaurd of weeds, carried to my nose by a mixture of the best and worst smells of humanity. The heat is all consuming and each drop of sweat condenses generations of gritty revolution or hedonism - which one, my mind unable to entirely decipher the difference - into pools and rivers across my skin. It was in this state somewhere between ecstasy and heat stroke that I was hauled, rather unceremoniously with my an elbow to the gut - out of a street intersection just a glimpse before two SUVs screeched and merged into one smoking, cussing pile of dented metal and middle fingers.

My minor brush with death only elevated the experience of divinely inspired recklessness for both myself and my traveling comrade. We wandered, entranced by buskers, through the streets noting every character along our journey. Taking smiles from the man playing his water glasses - his fingers singing notes that they have committed to memory, but pour into our ears for the first time. Giving quarters to the drummers who keep time and maintain the boundary between the River and the Land. Our treasure map lead us past graffitied landmarks, dive-bars - with the best crawfish in town - and a mural crawling with creatures from “Where the Wild Things Are” which seemed both fitting and markedly out of place. New Orleans was a city of kissing against wrought iron fences; and of too much coffee and of sunflowers that glowed defiant against the heat mirages that roll the length of each street, the ghosts of cars.

Swamp People

wanderingeli — Fri, 29 May 2015 13:16:00 GMT

The swamp belt is the residual battleground left in the wake of wave of "Progress and Development" that swept over Florida directly following the explosively brilliant scientific discovery of affordable (and scalable) air conditioning. With a cool breeze, smelly vaugely of freshly minted coins, the entire area - which was once entirely a swampy asylum for slaves, indigenous Americans, and probably a few forgotten Spaniards - was cemented over and stamped with amusement parks in the memory span of half a generation. Except here, this tiny slice of land that draws a weak internal border on the asymetrical, bent state; the swamp draws the definitive line betwee the beach communities and the urban interior. Its function is a buffer for the hurricanes, dampening the effects of storm surges so that each summer does not come to a close with mass evacuations and gleeful home-insurance companies pre-filled bankrupcy forms. There is money on both sides - the interior with their nice SUVs and their tourists, the beach side with their boats and condos; but the swamp is all trailer-homes and mental health cases swaddled in faux-libertarianism and a drastic misunderstanding of civil war history.

The dust from the cochina shell road plumes up behind me, and in the rear view mirror I can see the swarm of vultures that perpetually circles the area in search of roadkill. There is a gentle pattering noise that simultaneously believe to be raindrops but know that it is the sound of love-bug bodies belting my windsheidl like kamikazi pilots. I drive past the old man who has a knife-sharpening stand in the back of his pickup painted like a Confederate flag, and silently hope that the shell fragments, still imbued with the magic of the golden ratio despite their fractured spirals, cut into the flesh of his lungs so that if new thoughts cannot be consumed at least he will spew out hatred for a few minutes less in this life. The vultures continue to swirl and dive overhead, each lap coming down closer. They are the goddesses of death, according to their associated myths, but as result also the bringers of new life; much like their other brethren of the underworld. The snakes, beetles, maggots, and palmetto bugs; each one turning the collective stomach of the upper echelon, but they each play their role in building the new foundations for life. I wonder if I threw myself into the brambles underneath the palm and pine trees if I too would be regurgitated to a cool, clean life in some new headwaters.

I park the car and step out, crushing a shell fragment with my flipflop - to dust we all return - and walk towards the three walled structure that serves as the road side produce stand, gas station, coffee shop and tourist trap. Like a fly trapped in house of mirrors, my eyes are instantaeously dazzled and overwhelmed by the flickers of light that refract through the thousands of snow globes and glass-enclosed seashells. Moving towards the counter, unsure if I should be avoiding eye contact with the grizzled man hemming and hawing at the register, or the giant stuffed alligator that was perpetually posed for attack behind him. I want to reach out and touch the tail, which looks so smooth gleaming in the light, but hold back for fear of being bitten (by the cashier, not the gator) and turn my attentions towards the man. Fingers drumming on the counter, his mouth drags down on one side as if his lips are holding space for the cigarette that should be resting between them.

"Thirty-five, pump 4. And a pack of Camels" I slap cash onto the counter with a bravado I hope passed for machismo. It does not. I haven't smoked in years, but the stench of death bubbles up from the muck here instills an immediate sense of nihilism and I hear the words spill from my lips with some surprise but without protest.

The chapped lips pull into a snear, revealing the absence of an incisor. He looks over my Driver's License - because my face and small stature will have me getting carded well into my late thirties - and flips it back to me. "Seattle, huh? You move down here to get away from all the hippies and gays?"

I assume this is a test of some kind. I am, afterall, a gay hippy - and a pretty obvious one at that - but his continued stare highlights his non-rhetorical question as it hangs in the air between us. I slide my license off the counter and return it to my wallet. "I'm just passing through. Seattle is somewhere, but it seems that places like this are the roadway to everywhere else."

The pause is long enough that I can almost feel the gators breathe, hot and heavy, behind him; but then he cracks a smile so wide it rivals that of the gargantuan reptile. "Good sense. You can start anywhere you like, but everything flows downriver into the swamp at some point." He places my change into my confused but outstretched hand. "My boss always appreciates your bosses money." Well ain't that the truth. I smile, genuinely, for the first time in days.

I slam the door to my car, and turn out onto the road. The mirage waves seem to provide liftoff from the burning asphalt as the car builds momentum roaring down the road. It will take time before this swamp is done with me, but when it is, I am ready to be reborn.

The Dauphine Street Bookstore

wanderingeli — Tue, 26 May 2015 09:17:45 GMT

The Dauphine Street Bookstore is the kind of place I want my dust to settle after I die; a place where my skin cells can reincarnate again and again in between the pages of a thousand stories. It is a place where booklovers can come to both rejoice in their passion, and commiserate tendencies toward hoarding. The door opened only halfway before it knocked against a stack of books the first time I stepped through its threshold; crossing over from the heat mirage of New Orleans streets in June. It was labrynth of sagging shelves woven into a space that was suspiciously small, given its lofty word count. It was ruled over by a calico cat, who sauntered between the rows and boxes - investigating each and every crevice and crawl space, stalking the ghosts of wayward antagonists dropped from between the bound covers. The shopkeeper, graciously awarded a meager existence by his feline companion, knows each title within the walls and knows the location of each cover with an accuracy only rivaled by his innate understanding the desires of each entering bibliophile’s heart.
“Truman Capote.” The shopkeeper’s voice scraped the walls of his throat during its haphazard escape to the world, its reverberations coarse with the same grit that lies underfoot all around the French Quarter - vestigial remnants of the riverbed that one dominated the city, and will one day take it back.
I accepted the recommended book, though I did not then know the power of its pages. It felt light in my hands - given the famous title I had anticipated a little more heft - and continued to walk between the stacks breathing deep to infuse my blood with a smattering of literary intrigue. Outside the city raged; the buskers volleying notes across the French Quarter - but their shots rebounded uselessly off the door to this sanctuary. These walls, groaning under the weight of their mission, serve to protect each and every character and piece of punctuation; they will stave off the flood of tourists, keep at bay the tears of storms and the lapping tongues of rising ocean tides.
The air in New Orleans hits you each time you breathe it in, hot and transient like summers spent kissing against wrought iron fences and gifting flowers to sun-drunk buskers; but the Dauphine Street Bookstore is an entirely different colored lense of hedonism. It has a refined sense of purpose, collecting snapshots of humanity’s underbelly, so that no story, no matter how dusty and worn - will go untold.