what now

what did I do today. I went to westwego, la to the department of motor vehicles, it's in the smallest building and you have to walk around to the back where you're surprised to find it isn't at all the david lynchian experience you'd hoped for but a quiet smalltown city hall experience, endless waiting room all quiet with one or two voices on a cellphone and then the waves of murmur, people getting up to go because their ticket says J85 when we're only at J16, let's be honest. I was trying to read this ernest hemingway story called up in michigan when dan came traipsing through to say it wasn't going to happen today. or any other day, I didn't say. Let's go get a thanksgiving po boy, he sighed. and then he got on the phone with his folks and said he'd need a new birth certificate. this is the first time I heard the voice of his father. he had a nice florida drawl I could tell. sometimes I can taste it on dan, and it's like beach and it quicksands one in. sometimes I don't trust it, which shouldn't be, in fact I distrust that I distrust. no matter. but we didn't, we went to his house, we had to, he's getting $ in the mail and his peacoat, its 49 degrees outside, it's like burgeoning wintertime, louisiana style. it's alright with me, it really is... but for some reason I can't fathom it. I am a hard-to-please. I am like the version of me I regretted years ago. I watch myself with the hands on the wheel, no traffic to speak of. how hungry am I, will there be a second chance for a thanksgiving po boy? is it thanksgiving yet? 

I took some offbrand nyquil about 15 minutes ago. My left nasal cavity cleared itself. 

I went to the thansksgiving po boy place, I thought I'd get us one. I even made danny call them to order it ahead of time but guess what, me & everyone else. so I drove on over. I realized as I got on orleans avenue that I knew where I was, connected the 7th ward to treme to bayou st. john to mid-city to uptown. I keep blowing my nose against this hawaiianprint skirt I've been meaning to dye olive green. a sexy beyonce knowles song called speechless comes on the headspeakers.

The line for thanksgiving po boys snaked through the restaurant. way more people in line, reading menus, applying lipgloss, smartphoning than those eating po boys at tables. it felt almost empty of spectators, just mad paraders. I left. I wasn't even mad, but I did leave, it was like the dmv all over again but without numbers. this is a terrible lovesong but it's straight r&b '93 style but who wants it like that right now?

I went to rouses. I liked it immediately because no one cared about parking places anymore, everyone was shoved together against the yellow lined drive and I knew it was not the legal place to park but that no one would do a thing. it was a small triumph, the first of this holiday season. it's strange to think that I might have moved to nebraska. I almost never think about that anymore

In rouses I got cranberries which were floating in a red pool, scooped them up with a slotted spoon. some satsumas, couldn't find a fucking orange! save for a bag from- get this- california! can you imagine? with florida just around the corner? 

The drungs are starting to kick in. left nostril totally clear, right, hmmm... I lit the end of my hippie smoke and another shitty beyonce knowles song comes on- rather die young

Then I went back to dan's and I drank tea and we talked, I laid on his couch actually and we ate all these cookies his mom sent to him. I'm sorry I'm such a sobby I mean snobby person sometimes.

Anyway I hadn't had anything to drink since I had this one beer on sunday when we saw the puppet show about the history of the red light district of new orleans, which was amazing. and I only had a la 31 roasted dark ale and so tonight I dropped aja at her place with the firepit for tomorrow's feastparty. she made me a hottoddy and it was great... I only worry I might not be able to taste thanksgiving. but there are worse things.

the runs

When I was 24 I moved to Portland and lived with Jessie (& it's her birthday on tuesday) and Adán and Jon and that weird blacksmither who was into fractals and TOOL & made business cards out of razor blades. Some of us drove to Battleground, WA where we met four ducks & we packed them in wire duck cages on newspaper. It cost us $40 for the four of them. They shat all over the newspaper on the way home. We'd built them a pond with a heavy expensive tarp beneath that we covered with rocks and took days to fill with water. They each laid an egg every day. The young ones would lay in weird places, underfoot sometimes or hard to find in the blackberries, and the older one would push them into piles with her beak & try to hide them from us. I started waking up everyday to the quacking of Candace who was the bossy one, big & mottled with shiny violet feathers & she'd quack & nip at all the others and take all of the food. She was the one who liked to push & hide all of the eggs so we couldn't take them, but we were hungry. I found her one day sitting on a nest she'd made beneath some scrubby bush with 18 eggs neatly snugging beneath her splayed duckbody. I left her 8 of them so she wouldn't feel like it was all for naught. We ate duck eggs every day. They had such a strong foul beautiful deeprich flavor. They had the biggest yolks, goldorange yolks that greased all down your throat & oiled up your palate. I nearly choked every time. I used to like running yolks, but those were those of the meager chickens so I never know what a real yolk could be. They kind of ruined me because I like really strong intense food but the duck yolk is far stronger & tougher & more rich & foul than I'll ever be.