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03 August 2014

I watched her as she worked on the sidewalk with her associate trying to shake that little mouse out of the electric fan. She was barely clothed, only in her bikini, seductive under garments, in which she solicited through the dark wee hours on Bourbon Street. Yes, that Bourbon Street. That famous Bourbon Street onto which the ghosts of the whole world tramp. That Bourbon Street, of that city, the birth place of Jazz in Congo Park, of Louis Armstrong, of big Hollywood movies like The Big Easy and Easy Rider, of Hurricane KATHERINE, that virtually wiped it off the global map. Yes New Orleans, Yes, that New Orleans, into which I plunged, with all the snakes of the world on my back, from 71 years of indoctrination.

On Henriette Delille Street in the Upper Side of town I met wise 86 yr Miriam, sitting on her spot, in her deck chair on the sidewalk in the shade of a banana tree next to a big old white plastered Spanish style church, “Shake the devil off” she said. She was my latest oracle and gave me permission to use her words for this blog I am now starting.. I hugged her and moved on to find places of Jazz and Blues on Frenchmen Street. I will get back to this, as I am now pressed with another matter.

One of two remaining family members from my previous generation… my father’s half sister lay in an Albuquerque hospital with dehydration and vomiting following a serious car accident. She is a fighter. I must be there for at least moral support. This may be her last days.