A Taste of Chataignier Run
I’ve been wrapped up in this scene for the last couple weeks, contemplating a history, and imagining the fear and confusion of my 9 near old aunt in the face of tradition and intimidation:
Bobbie was carving cities out of dirt with her sisters underneath the family’s second shotgun house. A crew of drunk white men on black horses approach. They come tumbling down the road in waves of colorful flowing costumes, each with pointy hooded masks. My grandmother: Mary Rose – Ms. Da – Momie, tells everyone to get inside. The Capitaine is belligerent. He wants her to give him something. Some ingredient for the evening gumbo they are not invited to eat. His crew circles around the house banging on the side panels with a force they are not aware of. His pale hands direct the horse’s front hooves onto the sore steps of the front porch. Bobbie could smell the sweat of the horse through the thin crack in the window. Fortunately, Mr. Poulard released a chicken next door. The chase begins……
Nikki is showing me…
Internalized limiations flow in many directions. Modes of repression formed in this plagued dichotomy. What is this crutch? Why is it so addicting? Each day spent unraveling habit and expectation still worries me. What can be said of the stregth we lack? An absence of consciousness or is a collective strength missing, a cause to move forward, a universal acknowledgement of harmful patterns. Some internal and external enlightment. After all “we” all decry this inaction. Are we drained by the comfort of appearances? The traditions that have become sacrosant standards of…being?
this week felt like…..
Loose energy juggled between three spaces:
job, book, writing,
chosen and needed responsibilities
Each inhibiting the other.
Its Tuesday and I’ve run out of time.
I’ve come home to an empty quiet place.
My body more fatigued from the second day
Of blood flown down and out.
Between burned out, stressed out, spaced out
I crave the taste of community, connection with one and all
In the moment, escape is not possible.
I resist the warmth of fantasy.
Curl up with fatigue
it’s midnight and I’m alone.
Go to sleep. Go to work. Go to the studio. Go home and sleep again.
The Call
Vanessa took a deep breath after accepting the collect call charges from the Lafayette Parish Sheriff’s office. It was another sticky July evening at Muma’s house. Everyone was inside listening to Aunt Tracy’s old softball stories. From the porch swing, she could hear the sound of their laughter echoing beneath the news from her oldest son. Phillip Monroe Jr. had been arrested for the second time. His younger brother, Darrell, joined him. Vanessa clenched her fist around the phone as the words burned into her imagination. The portrait of her two babies handcuffed like their father, uncle, and cousin before them produced a flood of angry tears. After all the questions, excuses, and blame had been laid out; Vanessa wiped her eyes and walked inside the house wearing her most austere expression. Surrounded by her mother, sisters, and nieces she wondered what to say of the men in her life.
friend
The energy from your new space has followed me to this moment. Restive, anxious, and increasinlgy impatient, I sit at my quiet desk hopping from one distraciton to the next – failing to move forward from this familiar daze. The shoulda, coulda, wouldas come pooring out after being around you. Although my optimism and clarity has been fluctuating since the end of those formative years, I experience a specific version of empathy and perplexity when I’m in your presence: feeling incapable of saying enough and being enough to help better anything. I shrink every time, small and quiet. Thank you for making me feel needed, even when I prolonged the wait for your true comfort.
I don’t really miss the way things used to be any more. Now I’m filled with this incessant longing for change – with less routine misery and more life, and a day when you and I have a deeper stronger, balanced connection.
body reminders
I dreamt a few days ago that a woman in a classroom told me that I was pregnant. This happened again the next night. I awoke with semi-conscious paranoia at such an impossibility. Sunday night I thought of how scary it would be to be a virgin mother. How unfair it would be. What option would you have: not to let a phenomenon happen? I wonder if any of this pondering brought about ‘my time’ 2 weeks earlier than expected. The first time in a long time I make an effort to remember the exact dates it started and ended – still result in the unexpected. Maybe my body doesn’t want me to know. Or was it the work of simultaneous menstruation. My roommate had begun hers and I was surrounded by women all weekend. What pheromones permeate through space and cause signals? I wonder if it has to do with some strange biological reproductive competition or cooperation. Like our chemicals adhere to homogeneity for beneficial purposes? Our bodies act without us. Start and end without our consent. I need to flow with it more. Run with the vessel that holds the inner most part.
Cramps and aches and blood, for this latent process. Something so embedded is really an ephemeral possibility.
My eyes are finally adjusting to things.
Although it pains me to come to reality so late it seems.
Later than others I wish to be and be with.
Looking back at all that could’ve been by now, isn’t going to help.
The daggers of the now are sharp
But I must seek optimism.
Find new ways and new energy
New time.
I’ll never define me, become anything if I keep dreaming like this. So rigid and empty are images of a better, perfect person.
Filled with visual culture and fragments of authentic perception from others.
Those that must be right and those I ride off as untrustworthy. The dangers of a niave misanthrope.
I can do anything now, dancing at the edge of aesthetics
It’s going to be difficult. No flash of genius, just tough learning.
Must open up, escape what I can, must open up.
Letting go of jealousy and the envy I feel.
I envy her support and clarity.
I hate needing help. That is the show of my perfectionism. I hate admitting that I am at a loss.
I can’t fix this alone. I have casted the walls to high, and when I open doors, the truth washes over me, bringing about shame but ending in awakening. Shameful ignorance. I am ashamed for still needing the light, when I want to be capable of anything and everything, effortlessly.
What is the idea of personal growth. Confidence, knowledge, ambition?
I think that when it finally becomes clear, when I’ve dug past this restless sciolism , I will be satisfied.
Oh Beginnings….
I find it difficult to focus, commit, and decide on most things. After 23 years of dancing around reality, I think it’s time to come forward. Several friends at several different times over the past year recommended I start a word press. It’s hard to believe how squeamish I am about sharing with others, even in this medium. I’m not certain if there will be any thematic or stylistic string to these writings, but there will be something from me here, as often as possible.
I spent the last 4 years at USC lost in fragments of words and images. I know some valuable skills came out if this time (both academic and otherwise). However I can’t say I’ve gained any cohesive knowledge of much of anything. Jumping from one concept to the next under the umbrella of Humanities has left me feeling more lost than when I went into college. No other undergraduate focus could be plagued with as much vagueness and generality as the English department. Keeping so busy, every academic end was the beginning of something that was never fully realized. Every essay, exercise, and even my thesis feels like a blueprint for something better, someone better. There’s this incredible frustration that has come with dissecting creativity: it seems senseless if you aren’t contributing anything besides criticism. I’ll attempt to overcome my doubts, negativity, and restraint long enough to begin sharing more of myself with you – friends, good people, world – in ways I never gave myself permission to before.
I hope you will read from time to time.
Desi
