December 2011
7 posts
a memory before bed - "you're not special"
I played the saxophone for a year when I was ten. I might have been good at it, too, but I already played the piano, and I knew I was better that. As a keyboard player, the issue of “what should I do with the school band?” would haunt me for awhile. In the elementary marching band, my role was that of banner holder, in high school, I played xylophone — piano, xylophone, same...
VERMONT FRAGMENT
(MAY/JUNE, 2006)
When I returned to Vermont, the first thing I did was have surgery on a hernia I gave myself a two Februarys prior after my hospital dispatch and an irresponsible weight lifting regime. Lately it had been more visible than ever on my lower-right pelvis, and if I coughed or laughed, it would pop out like a tumor. Since my health insurance was running out [soon], this was my last...
"WOAH YOU'RE HERE!" - TEXAS FRAGMENTS
(TEXAS, 4/22/06)
The next morning, instead of taking I-10 west across Texas, I took the less-direct but more scenic Highway 90, stretching from Houston through the southern Texas desert. The terrain was desolate and rocky, sometimes flat, sometimes immense and mountainous, giant hedges of earth colored like brown sugar. Birds that looked like vultures coasted in large, calm circles against a sky...
VERMONT ARTICLES
ONLY HUMAN - EASTER IN NEW ORLEANS
(NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA, Easter Sunday 2006)
My Hyundai snaked through the narrow streets and cobble-stoned corridors of New Orleans, Matilda serving as tour guide from the tiny tomb of the backseat, legs folded in against her body, and Ernesto sitting disinterestedly in the passenger seat. I couldn’t use my rearview mirror because someone had smashed it the night before; I wasn’t sure...
LOUISIANA FRAGMENT
(ST. BERNARD PARISH, LOUISIANA, 4-12?-06)
It was the only sign of life for miles. THREE FREE HOT MEALS A DAY! EMERGENCY COMMUNITIES. MADE WITH LOVE CAFÉ AND GRILL.
I parked the car and walked toward two enormous domed tents.
They guarded a small city of camping tents, Army tents, porta-potties, and even a few teepees.
Tractor-trailers had been converted into giant refrigerators, powered...
TALES OF BILOXI
(BILOXI, MISSISSIPPI, early-April 2006)
While working in the houses of the dead and displaced, we met those neighbors who survived, and furthermore, who chose to stay, living in campers and FEMA trailers, and often they would come out and tell us their stories — stories about bodies in the streets and people drowned in attics. One day they decided prepare us a crawfish boil as a gesture of...