Flamenco guitar.

I sedated my father with meatloaf and mashed potatoes tonight and then dragged him to see a classical guitarist at the library. Who's going to turn down a girl who can cook meatloaf and mashed potatoes?

The guitarist, who had several Latin names, the last being Pico, seemed like a gentle man. That's the first word that comes to mind. His hair was dark and wavy with some streaks of light gray. He was Colombian, and his skin was a warm golden brown. He had a small stature, and he gestured towards his heart whenever he spoke. His voice was soft and apologetic, heavily accented and unsure.

He had transcribed Pachabel's "Canon in D" at someone's request, and, though the rendition was shaky, it was also lovely. His fingers quivered the strings the way that a gentle, steady patter of rain taps at a dandelion stem. The movement was imperceptible except to the ear.

The acoustic guitar, when played alone, has an exploratory and tenuous sound. The notes quaver and pause a moment, like a ballet dancer on her toes with her hand cupped to her ear waiting and listening, and then they pass into nothing. Each note is a swan song. Each note is tentative. Each note sounds as if it was created specifically to express that moment. Just then. Spontaneously.

And also as if it might have paused there for a century or more. As if it was struck on a lyre made of a tortoise shell within the cool chamber of a Greek cave in 341 B.C.E. And it has been there, on tiptoes, ever since.

The myth of other people.

Polanyi, purveyor of the idea of tacit knowledge, said that "we can know more than we can tell."

A critic reading a novel brings with him a lifetime of experiences and beliefs that he applies in his efforts to understand what he reads. This tacit knowledge which informs him is a backlight that simultaneously clarifies and casts shadows over the text.

On the one hand, without the tacit knowledge, the critic would have no context by which to learn new knowledge. Like it or not, all knowledge is molded by the shape of the brain into which it is shoved. And without the mold of the brain, knowledge has no home.

On the other hand, there is no way for the critic to share his understanding with another in a way that is completely unqualified. Even if he managed to explicitly annotate every nuance of the novel, his explication would be at the mercy of another critic with another realm of tacit knowledge that is entirely unique. To know is simple enough, if we can put aside prejudices about absolute knowledge and define knowledge as something understood by a subjective mind, but to share knowledge is impossible.

I have friends who, I feel sure, must know me. And then I take a step away and wonder how they know me. What am I to them? I'm an interpretation from a unique field of knowledge. I represent something. I'm theoretical, what Polanyi would call focal knowledge, if memory serves me. I'm not concrete. I'm not even myself. I'm symbolic of a set of ideas. To one person, I might represent an idea of a mother. To someone else, I will always be bound up with the idea of a karoake-singing, bourbon-swilling audacity. If I'm lucky, I may represent a romantic ideal to someone out there. If I'm unlucky, I may represent trouble and trash. And, knowing me as I do, which is tacitly, I could never tell you what I am. Not really.

Baby ducks. 

Indian cigar trees.

I took Fain for a walk today at City Park. It's very different from City Park in New Orleans. Smaller, but cleaner. If you discounted every square inch of City Park in New Orleans that had a Popeye's cup or a plastic bag covering it, then the two would actually be about the same size.

I found some sweet olive, and the scent made me forget the plastic bags for a moment. Weeping willows and crepe myrtles and snowy Indian cigar trees shade the path around the lake, and pines and maples and young oaks cluster together in tight-knit groups along the outskirts of the park where the grass is green and sweet-smelling. There were dozens of Canadian geese, some with goslings in tow, and the mallards also had tiny duckings darting after them. The water was aflap with white ducks and white swans and those strange oriental swans with black heads and red beaks. Some turtles poked their heads through the surface and also some small fish. The water was clean and clear, and I could see right down to the bottom. The ducks and fish and turtles and geese in New Orleans would have been envious of their country cousins.

Tomorrow I'll take the camera and let you see for yourself.

Aching.

Today my fingertips are sore and tingling from practicing every spare minute yesterday. I like the feeling. It reminds me that I have a body and that it is useful for things other than toting around my brain.

I love to learn new things. Usually I focus on academic subjects like history or literature or, if I'm feeling brave, science. But I especially love to learn things that require a tiny amount of physical aptitude. Granted, playing a guitar isn't an Olympic sport, but it causes some discomfort and some strain. Strange as it may sound, I enjoy a little of both.

My favorite part of learning to snowboard years ago was falling. I displayed my black- and blue- and green-bruised legs with pride. I liked the way my cheek felt when it scraped against the ice as I tumbled down, down, down. That's what being alive is about. There's no adventure without a little blood loss.

I loved learning to play pool just because I was entranced by the cracking sound of the cue ball slamming into the other balls. I loved the weight of a pool cue and putting a bead on the eight ball, squinting my eye and pursing my lips.

I spent a whole summer on Beech Mountain making my old boss Jimmy play catch with me out on the softball field. The sun would glare in my eye and sometimes I'd get hit before I saw the softball at all. But I loved stretching out my arm, feeling my shoulder blade pull away from my back, feeling my spine stretch out of its usual alignment, feeling my calves tighten and lengthen.

I ran track in high school, and I enjoyed it more for the sensation of being a modern day Atalanta or Athena than of being a competitor. I was thrilled by the sensation of my heel peeling away from the asphalt, then my arch, then the ball of my toe, and at last that final captain toe lifting off. It felt like grace.

I love the piano because I love to feel my fingers reach and pull apart. And sometimes I love writing for the writer's cramp in my palm.

It's just so easy to forget what being human is. That it's more than philosophy or religion or science. That it's also pain and pleasure and stretching.

In time.

I taught myself the accompaniment to Tom Waits' "Time" today. It was such a thrill to hear notes come together and sound like something. And it was magic to know that I was doing it with my own two hands.

Singing.

Memaw loves to sing. I remember her singing all the time when I was a child. She sang songs about love-lorn flowers and about gregarious pumpkins. She sang one song about an old mother receiving her son's last letter written on the battlefield before he died. I would cry and then beg her to sing it again. And again. She sang songs about wishing on stars and about dancing cheek to cheek. And she had and still has a pleasant, wistful voice.

Chailley said that historically music was written foremost for the benefit of the performer and then secondarily for the listeners who played an active part in the experience. Today, of course, music is written primarily for a record label. Once it was active, now it is passive. Today people buy albums and listen to them. Once people just sang.

I love music. And secretly I love to sing. I'm not good at it. My voice is wobbly and weak. But I enjoy it nonetheless. I used to pretend to be a singer in an opera while I showered. I would invent melodies and just warble. But I would never have considered singing in public.

Fain changed that. It started innocently enough. I would sing the songs that Memaw sang while I was washing dishes. It entertained him long enough for me to accomplish something. Then I'd sing classic baby ditties to him while he played. After a while, I began making up songs about broccoli and drooling while he'd eat. Then, gaining confidence from his obvious approval, I'd sing softly as we strolled to the park. Then while he was swinging. Now I'll sing anywhere (as long as I'm with Fain), and it just makes me happy. It feels like I'm letting something out.

Dreaming Martha.

I had a strange dream last night.

I was in a small white room with a window that looked out at a dove-gray October sky and a black skeletal tree. I was standing at a table that was directly before the window, and I was dipping a bundle of red roses into a pot filled with melted gold. The gold was the consistency of maple syrup and coated the roses with an iridescent armor. The gold that dripped back into the pot was tinted with red from the roses, and it spread over the surface in circular waves. Tom Waits was sitting in a rocking chair in the corner, playing "Martha" on his guitar. It was beautiful. I was sad to wake up.

Loving a book.

Some bibliophiles frown on books with water-marked dust jackets and dog-earred pages, calling it abuse. They believe that books should be virginal, white-leafed, untouched, chaste, unsullied. They arrange their novels and their tomes full of essays in orderly rows from tallest and thinnest to shortest and fattest. When you open these books, they creak and sigh. Decrepit old maids.

I would like to pop the spines of each of these books. I would be gratified by the violent crack. I would write love notes in their empty spaces. "What a charming idea you are. How clever. I adore you." I would caress these lines with a brilliant highlighter, tickling every word with my implied promise to return to her over and over again. They would wear the marks of my love like ear-nibbles and lipstick stains. That's what love should be. It doesn't belong on a shelf. It's pages should never be white.

Music as magic.

In the beginning, according to Chailley, music was a form of magic. A spontaneous incantation. As it was extemporaneous, a melody could be custom-tailored to solve any problem. A piper could invent, on the spot, a tune that would lure little children into the mountains...or another tune to lure little mousies. Gods could easily send wind across the tops of river reeds to seduce bathing nymphs. And Orpheus' gifted strokes of the lyre were said to induce trees to uproot themselves so that they might follow him.

A raucous and roaring battlesong rouses the fearless warrior in a young boy. A love song arouses the fearless lover in a young girl.

Melodies give voice to the ineffable. They attempt to express a vast and dumb emotion in words. Try to capture the fathomlessness, the capriciousness, the confusion of human feelings in any language. Or spend your time at more fruitful efforts, like persuading an elephant to swim in a teacup.

Words are effective organizers, but with use their creative capabilities become palsied.

Music, on the other hand, improvises. Speaks to parts of the person that words are unable to touch.

Cellos make my chest ache. Drums make my heart pound.

Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughn and Billie Holiday are sirens who lure me into meditations on love and heartache. Rachmaninow excites me like thunder and calms me like rain. Orff taunts me. Duke Ellington and Artie Shaw lead me down the garden path. Tom Waits makes me laugh and then breaks my heart and then makes me laugh again.

That's magic.

Learning to tune a guitar.

I taught myself how to tune a guitar this morning. The feeling rated up there with pitching that first tent. It's nice to feel competent. I like the idea that I'm capable of learning things without any help whatsoever. It makes me think that if I were ever on a deserted island, I'd be just fine. I'd figure out how to hunt and gather. I'd build a little treehouse out of bamboo with working water pipes and a dumbwaiter, weave a welcome mat out of banana leaves, and use moss to stuff a mattress. I'd use a conchshell to make music, and I'd make paint from soil and bark and maybe even dung. It would even be fun. I've read Robinson Crusoe. I like the idea of that sort of solitude.

I've decided, since I have my father's neglected guitar at my disposal, that I'd teach myself how to play. Why not? I don't have much else to do. I have a couple of songs that I'd like to learn. Maybe "The Heart of Saturday Night" and "Gun Street Girl," for starters. Maybe some classical tunes also. Then I'll start to write my own songs and become a big singing sensation. Or maybe I'll just play in my bedroom for myself. Either way, it'll be nice to make my own music.

I'm also talking to a local coffeeshop owner about displaying some of my photographs. They're not great by any stretch of the imagination, but I don't have too much competition here. Some, I'm sure, but not like I'd have in New Orleans.

And, finally, I've decided to start looking into graduate school. It's time to face facts - I'm never going to be a very useful person. I majored in English and Philosophy. I think that says a lot about my desire to contribute anything practical to society. And so I think that I may as well follow my long-time dream of becoming an absent-minded professor of the liberal arts. To ensure that I don't accidentally began serving a purpose, I've decided to go to school for Cultural Studies. That should do it.

Black and white. 

Berries. 

Uninspired

I'm feeling uninspired. I have absolutely nothing to say. So here's another song that Memaw sang to me when I was a little girl:

Charlie McCarthy loved Rosie O'Day,
and every night beneath her window he'd say,
"Rosaday! Rosaday!
You're daring, you're charming, you're lovely,
and that's what I mean when I say,
'Rosaday! Rosaday!
You're my fillamadilly, schinamarusky,
baldyraldy, boomtooty, booomtooty, boomtootyay, OLAY!'"

Wait. I do have something to say. I've been singing "Row Your Boat" to Fain lately, and I can't help but feel like there's a hidden message in it. Like a koan. Look.

Row, row, row your boat,
gently down the stream,
merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
life is but a dream.

Life is but a dream? What does that mean? All this time I didn't think that it meant anything, but now I can't quit thinking about it. Wondering.

Down the whole.

The music scholars of the Middle Ages were so concerned with the lost music of ancient Greece that they never bothered preserving historical records of their own music. The folks of the 1700s, enamored with the new romantic literature, were fascinated with the fantastic, and untrue, histories of the troubadors of the Middle Ages and forged troubador music to suit the romantic tendencies of their audiences. And there were several attempts to scrounge up a history and "discography" of actual troubador tunes. But, again, less attention was paid to the contemporary history of music in the 1700s.

It's strange that we never consider the times in which we live to be historical. One day my collar bone might be dusted with a fine brush, turned gently in the hand of a loving archeaologist, laid in a metal pan with a notecard that reads: female, 21st century. Professors and scientists and anthropologists might spend time contemplating what I loved or ate or wore. They might say, "She was from the Southern region. We can tell this by trace amounts of a substance, known in those days as 'grits', that we found nearby in an intact melamine dish. Therefore, we can guess that she was conservative and wore hoop skirts." It's hard to say how much they'll know. We might assume that weblogs preserve our thoughts and ideas for posterity, but it ain't necessarily so.

One day, I will cease to exist as an individual, when my collar bone and scapula come loose beneath a heap of dirt and Florida grass, and I will become a part of the culture into which I was born, a part of the historical legacy of the whole. My personal feelings will be supplanted by what is known as "Southern, American, woman, mother, etc." We only have these few years before we're swallowed up by impersonal history to be who we are as individuals. To make our own personal myths. To write our own personal histories.

40,000 Years of Music

I recently felt compelled to learn music history. I don't know why. I was just moved to do so. The resources at the local library were limited to books written before the 1970s, so I chose a tome written by a Frenchman in the 60s called 40,000 Years of Music. Mssr. Chailley, the author, is an expert and proud of the fact, and so, to a woman who can't tell a tetrachord from a tetrazinni, much of the book is unintelligible. But, the parts not written in Latin, are fascinating. And so I skim and glean.

Up to a point, music has no history. It has existed, of course, for 40,000 years, as evidenced by cave paintings in France that depict a bow harp still used in Africa today. But, music, the strains of music, the notes that tickle the air and then disappear, well, they disappear. And, though, surely, there are some strains that have survived through tradition, none of those first notes can be recaptured with any certainty. No one recorded them for posterity.

Art leaves traces on limestone cave walls, on clay pottery shards, on papyrus scrolls. Literature leaves traces in many of the same places. There are clues about music's history hidden within these texts, in the form of stick figure homosapiens plucking at bow harps or Greek courtesans strumming lyres, but the tune itself can never be heard. It has been lost forever.

Even musicians are unknown. Until the troubadors of the Middle Ages, musicians were not stars as we know them today. A mother sang to her child to lull him to sleep. A lover sang to his sweetheart to stir her love. Hunters sang to prey to instill fear and panic. Musicians were people going about their daily lives, but answering the rhythm found naturally in their pulses and breath with audible replies.

The troubadors wrote romantic autobiographies to accompany their songs. Somehow, hearing a love song sung by a man who had been dashed on the rocks of unrequited love made the song sweeter. Hearing a song of adventure from a man who had been imprisoned by a sultan during the Crusades made the song more exhilirating.

But still, there was no history of music. There was the beginning. There were these little thumbnail portraits of musicians, fictional and spectacular as they may be. But music from the past was forgotten as soon as it was heard. Gone forever.

I read and thought in bed last night, and I was again reminded of Pacheco and the line: the wind is the sound the world makes when a moment dies. And how appropriate that music should accompany us and move us and light memories in our minds like paper lanterns. Only something as ineffable and ethereal and transient as music can capture those same qualities of our lives.

And can there be anymore a history of the individual, her brushstrokes, her musical strains, her moments, than there can be of a prehistoric song?

Lullabies

When I was a little girl, my grandmother, or Memaw as we say here in the south, tucked me into bed with stories of Tweetie, the little bird who lived in the mimosa tree in her backyard. Tweetie was a young bird who loved to watch me climb trees and have picnic lunches and who was anxious to join in my fun. But, alas, Tweetie's mother told him that he could not play with me because he was a bird and I was a girl. It was just a poor match, I guess. Nevertheless, Tweetie was hard-headed and made valiant efforts at least to mimic my playtime. And, as one might expect, they ended with limited success and a valuable lesson of some sort. I probably fell asleep before that point. I don't tell Fain Tweetie stories. I doubt he's old enough. But I do sing "Fish and Bird" to him every night at bedtime. And also a song that I adapted from a Mother Goose rhyme about a ship captained by a duck in a jacket with a crew of bescarved mice.

I also sing a song that Memaw sang to me. I don't remember as many as she sang. She was, and is, a vault of mysterious tunes from eras past. And she has a lovely voice. I loved to hear her sing, and this particular song I begged her to sing over and over. It explains, I think, a lot about me. So here it is, as best as I can recall.

In love she fell, my shy bluebell
with a passing bumblebee.
He whispered low, "I love you so.
Please give your heart to me.
I promise you that I'll always be true.
Please give me your heart,
your heart, I pray."
She bent her head.
"I will," she said,
and, lo, he flew away.

Red 

Bois du Boise

Battle Park is a little forest area in Rocky Mount. As I remember it, there is a creek, or it may even be the Tar River, there are big gray craggy rocks, pines and black gum trees, walking trails, and several small waterfalls. My dad took me there a couple of times when I was a young girl.

Over the years, however, it's taken on an ominous atmosphere, at least in theory. "Don't go to Battle Park," locals warn. If you ask why, they'll look at each other and shake their heads, unable to even put into words the sort of wickedness that takes place there.

It's not just Battle Park. I believe that most towns, especially smaller ones, have the forest on the fringes of the settlement. It must be a very ancient and engrained sort of superstition or fear of the unknown. It has to be placed firmly somewhere. It's no good to have a general feeling of dis-ease, and so we find some dark mysterious place that seems like a good hiding place for anxiety. In my hometown, don't laugh, it was the little strip of wooded land that ran the back perimeter of the golf course. And the culprits of unidentified evil deeds were satanists. I remember clearly the stories. "Don't go out back of the golf course at night..." they lean closer and whisper..."satanists..." head nods and finger shakes. And, of course, I believed. Why wouldn't goat-slashing satanists hang out on a golf course? Would a soy bean field seem less ridiculous? Or the parking lot at the car wash?

But wooded terrain, as thin a strip as you may find, is still frightening to many people. There's still that element of the unfamiliar, the untamed. Werewolves, witches, cults, men with hooks for hands, where else would they spend their time? And I'm not making fun. I'm thinking in terms of Joseph Campbell and the idea of the collective unconscious in myth-making and of the myth of these shady groves of enchanted beings straddling our small towns and golf courses, always threatening to spill into the common areas and the greens, and of how much better we feel to shove all threats into these dark spaces rather than believe that the dark spaces are out in the town, that werewolves don't need a full moon and a tree for back-scratching anymore.

Sunbeam

Some people inspire meditations on what it means to be a human - alone and misunderstood. Of course, that's not what it always means. Some people are never alone or misunderstood. Some people even seem to understand others. Or never question that others are the same as they are. There is no fortress of solitude. Toddlers are right when they think that there is no use in lying since mommy knows all anyway.

Sunbeam was one of the most beautiful people that I've ever seen, though some who knew him may raise an eyebrow at that statement. I speak purely from the perspective of a sometimes artist and eternal lover of the uniqueness of individuals. Sunbeam died recently. I asked the bearer of bad tidings what killed him, but it was a rhetorical question. It didn't matter. It could have been anything. Or nothing at all.

Sunbeam was old, but not as old as he appeared. He had no teeth and his lower jaw and chin jutted out in a look of perpetual defiance. He had some cottony hair that was gray and white and black, and sometimes he had stubble on his face. I loved Sunbeam's face. The planes of his cheekbones and forehead, the skin just below his eyebrow, the lines of his nose could have been carved from bubinga or mahogony or cocobolo or walnut. A myriad of shades of brown or reddish-brown or dark brown or deep amber-gold were the molecular brushstrokes that made him. And, like a polished carving, his shades glowed sometimes from just beneath the surface. Thinking of his face, I wonder how people can be defined so simply as white or black red or yellow. His eyes were the color of very wet soil and the whites of his eyes were yellowish from age and hard-living and horrible mixtures of tap beer and schnapps. And he had a smile like a kid at Christmas in a house full of toys. I really loved his smile.

Sunbeam, I think his real name was Henry, was born in Mississippi. I know that much. It took several years for the language center of my brain to adapt to Beamese, a pidgin English that was just barely comprensible on any level. But I did learn it, and by learning it I learned that Sunbeam was from Mississippi, which sounded more like "mizpee." But you learn these things by listening if you care to learn at all. He wrestled a circus bear as a teenager. And later he fought other men in the streets. His hands gave him away. They were gargantuan and they looked as if they would ache. He lived in Florida for a time with an Indian woman who was apparently crazy. According to Sunbeam, women were all crazy, but the degree of craziness could be ranked by ethnicity, with Mexican women being the most dangerous and white women being the least. He warned me on several occasions that I should never give a Mexican woman a knife or an Indian woman alcohol. I try to bear that in mind on a daily basis. He worked at the Sunbeam bread factory in Louisiana for ten years, hence the name.

When I knew Sunbeam, he was for all means and purposes homeless and drunk. He carried Viagra in his trucker hat, and his sneakers had holes in the toes. But he tried to look dapper. His v-neck white t-shirt was not as dirty as it might have been, unless he was on a bender. His navy Dickies were not shabby. He always wore a dark blue blazer, even in the heat of a New Orleans summer. And he was a gentleman. He would sit quietly at the bar where I worked, and he would jump to my defense if he felt I was being threatened. Sometimes he dozed with his lip poked out, and I would have to wake him. He would deny sleeping at all, and he was tickled when I asked him if he was meditating. After that, when anyone would tell him to wake up, he'd say, "Not sleepin', medtatin'." Well, it sounded something like that.

I was sad when I heard that he'd died. I could never look at Sunbeam without being confronted by the solitary nature of being human. So many people must have been disgusted by him. Just a drunk. Just a homeless piece of waste. But, really, he had a mother. He had a father. He had lovers and friends. Somewhere along the line. He wasn't always what he became. He was a little boy in Mississippi in the 1950s, attending a small church, swimming in ponds and streams, climbing trees, wrestling bears. It makes me sad that we become what people see and that all of the people that we have been, the more loveable people, the cleaner people, the happier people, are shed in favor of the person that we are at last.

Naming a motor lodge.

I first fell in love with these old one level motor lodges while living in the mountains. Generally speaking, they're unattractive gray-white concrete block buildings with concrete terraces where no roses grow. The rooms smell empty and scrubbed even of air. They are cold and the sign indicates this with the promise of "air-conditioned rooms." Conditioned air. Skinner would be so proud. The ice buckets are covered in a paper that resembles brown wood, and the paper peels with age around the bottom. The Gideon's bible is faithfully tucked into a bedside drawer. And they are motor lodges, not hotels or motels. Motor lodges. I see, in my mind, a wood-panelled station wagon parked outside room number eight. Father leans against the bumper, a pipe hanging from his mouth, his eyes fixed thoughtfully on a pamphlet for Crystal Caverns or Stone Mountain. Billy and Susie chase Scamp, the little tan and white terrier. Mother is unpacking ham and cheese sandwiches on white Wonder bread.

What I love about these old lodges are the names. Take away the signs - hand-painted or simple neon - and any concrete heap could be any other. But the signs are so hopeful. I love "Whispering Pines." That one's up near Cherokee. The three neon green pines are bent just at the tips, one whispering to the next what the wind just whispered to her. Then there's "The Rose Bud." Or "The Indian Maiden." Of course, that one has a lovely shining squaw, thin with black hair that blows in the same direction that the pines bend. "Thunderbirds" are ubiquitous with their red and orange native symbology painted or glowing on the sign, whether you're driving along Rte. 66 through the southwest or Hwy. 95 through the southeast. And the clever "Dewdrop Inn" would feel out of place in any but the most rural areas where that sort of joke can still hold its own. Anywhere else and it would be crushed by the cynical with their eyes like steamrollers.

There is something light-hearted and whimsical about these remnants. They nestle into wooded areas with farmer's markets and crafts stores. They don't concern themselves with terror alert levels. Or free coffee. Or doughnuts. All they offer are cold, empty rooms. But those rooms are the closest thing, in my mind, to a cloister or a monk's cell. You enter and the conditioned air freezes off your worries like warts. Plink. They fall to the ground. Beyond the door, beyond the state forests full of whispering pines and crystal caverns, there are problems. But within the concrete walls of the motor lodge, you are as safe as any fifties child in a nuclear fallout shelter.

And they also remind me of Lolita and Humbert Humbert. And that can't be a bad thing.

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta." Vladmir Nabakov

Without a doubt, one of the greatest paragraphs in literary history.

Bitter Sneeze Weed and Baby Snapdragons

Driving through Georgia and the Carolinas is driving through Impressionist paintings. Red and pink and burgundy poppies and cosmos dot the streaks of green grass and blurs of goldenrod and yellow crownbeard. And you fly by at such speeds that they blend together, muddled colors on Indian paintbrushes. Blue sailors adrift in seas of swamp milkweed. I love that North Carolina's Department of Transportation has an actual program for growing wildflowers. That means that someone, probably several someones, are being paid to beautify the highways. What'dya think of that New Orleans? Suddenly the squalor at City Park - the chicken bones, Popeye's cups, limp condoms stowed beside baby ducks nests and bayou reeds - doesn't seem so idyllic. Funny how that works.

But still I miss you. Smelly feet and all.

Autumn Leaves.

Pardon the obvious. I'm leaving for North Carolina in the morning. I drove through the town today with an aching chest, eyes straying from the forward position that I tried to enforce. To places where I laughed with people that I loved. To places where I cried. It's sad but necessary.

Next time I write, I'll be somewhere new. Happier. In most ways.

Light 

Pet names.

I went to high school with a girl named Anna who was incredibly beautiful. I always thought that she looked like a model. Long, straight hair that didn't stick up or frizz and was the exact color of honey. An aquiline nose and Cupid's bow lips. Tall and thin. There were many times when I wished that I was Anna. I didn't know her well, but I liked her because once, when she passed me in the hall, she said, "Hi, Autumn." A little thing, but I liked that she used my name. I go days without referencing anyone by their given name. And in New Orleans, use of generic pet names like "baby" or "sugar" make learning names superfluous. Which is nice if you're forgetful. But it can also make a person wonder why we even have names if no one uses them.

Boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, and wives have pet names, too. A lot of people fall back on "baby" again. I'm not partial to it. I'm not a baby, and I don't like to be called one. There's a drawl to it that I find irritating. It's a simpering sort of pet name.

Bryan, my ex, called me "toots," which was fine given the nature of the relationship. It suited him. More bonhomie than boudoir. Not romantic, but not entirely without a certain quaint charm. I definitely prefer it to "baby."

"Sugar" falls right in step with "baby." I'd expect the person who calls me "sugar" to smack grape Bubble Yum as well.

I like "sweetheart." It's old-fashioned, but it suggests what a term of endearment should express. Fondness. Not many people use the term, and I would imagine from most modern mouths it would sound strained and anachronistic. But I'm sure someone out there could pull it off. And it would immediately call to mind an old black and white film, Cary Grant wooing a lady half-reclined on a chaise lounge hidden by large potted palms. Or a Victorian era heart decoupage, pale pink with scalloped edges. That sort of thing.

I think that it's interesting that we rename the people that we love. And I wonder why we do it.

In more superstitious times, mothers calling their children in the early evening would use pet names because they deemed using a child's "Christian name" too dangerous. If the fairies or the trolls or the gnomes knew a child's true name, they held a certain power of him.

A name, random as it may be, ill-suited to the wearer at times, cacaphonous or ridiculous, is still a powerful talisman. I can think of names right now that make me smile because they belong to people that I care about. The name calls up an image of the face, the voice, the laughter. The name is the little tab in my brain that, when pulled, reveals my own personal, miniaturized version of the person to whom it belongs.

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet," Romeo said. But I wonder what the haphazard scrambling of letters that resulted in the otherwise meaningless word "Juliet" did to his heart.

Pianos and Poetry

I enjoy typing, especially since I've begun using all of my fingers. For years, through college essays on symbolism and empiricism that were put off until that last painful night, I typed with two fingers, both pointers. Some keyboards are more melodic than others. I prefer the clinky, loud ones. I feel like Mozart or Rachmaninov when I type. Funny because I loathed piano lessons as a child. Today I'd pay large sums that I don't have to own a piano. Funny how time changes you.

I would like to write a poem. I've been thinking about it for days. I decided not to write it during the month of bad poetry writing because I'd like for it to be a good poem. In my mind, it's already beautiful, poignant, nostalgic, whimsical. There are images of emmer fields, papyrus-laced river banks, moss-clad tumbling walls. It's a story in my head that I'd like to get on paper. It's been in my head for several years. But I can't seem to force it out. No matter what anyone else tells you, childbirth is relatively simple compared to the birth of a brain child. There's simply no backing down when you deliver a human child. Yes, it's much more painful than rhyming or scanning, but there is no trepidation.

I faked non-contractions when I was delivering Fain. Despite the spiking lines on the machine hooked to me, I swore to the doctor that I wasn't having contractions. I didn't want to push. It hurt. But there's really no stopping a cramped up child with a will of his own who is anxious to see the world. Poetry or novels, on the other hand, are far more content to live within the spacious alcoves and ballrooms of the mind. There's just no pushing them out. Although, I suppose Whitman or Millay might argue another side.

Crab Boil and Crawfish

I took Fain for a short walk this morning. The stinging catepillars were all washed away with yesterday's rain. I won't miss them.

We passed K-Jean's on Carrolton and the smell of crab boil and bagged crawfish was overwhelming. At one time, the odor would have made me ill, but today it made me nostalgic.

Funny how leaving a place alters your perception of it. "San Diego Serenade" comes to mind. "Never saw the east coast 'til I moved to the west." I feel like I'm seeing, smelling, hearing this city for the first time, maybe because it's the last.

I do remember those first days here. That sense of displacement, confusion, limbo. Whenever I stand somewhere for the first time, I feel disembodied suddenly. Maybe I'm the only one. I've felt it in the woods when it's dark. I've felt it walking up stairs to a new bedroom.

As if the newness pushes me outside of my body. Does that make sense? As if all of the stimulation - the faint odor of cat dander or mold or pine needles, the sight of cracks in the plaster or snails creeping over dog food or a chipped cup, the texture of humidity or a breeze or static electricity, the sound of strangers talking in another room or a crow on a telephone line or a creaking floorboard - as if all of it pressing into my sense organs is too much and the rest of me has to make room by waiting outside in the hall. It's a strange sensation.

But then, after mere minutes have passed, I become acclimated, the foreign becomes familiar. Too familiar. On occasion, I might be startled into that old stranger-ness by a tree strung with washed out gray teddy bears or egrets perched on bare cypress, but for the most part I am at home. Which means that I am unaware.

Now, leaving, I feel like a stranger again. I see things, smell things, that didn't move me weeks ago. I wish that everything was always new.