Lekshe's Mistake

Code

I was trying to tell you
about the code.
Did you understand?
I want you to.

Like blueprints, information is embedded
in the lines and symbols
and even in the paper itself.
(the crispness of the letters, or lack thereof:  the steadiness of the hand)

It's not that I can't read it. I can,
like I read the hummingbird outside the kitchen window. like that.
I know what it is, but who knows what it means?

Complex statements--
object, object, subject, blame.
Exclamation points in all the wrong places.
The refusal to explain.
None of that makes sense.

See how the light comes in the window now that you moved the wall?
That makes sense.

Night over New Orleans

I won't see Jackson Square or Woldenberg Park or Magazine Street--not even the French Quarter, except for what I can see out the window of my room.

I --would-- like to wander down to Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop, a tavern built in 1772 and rumored to be America's oldest drinking establishment; but I wouldn't want to be there till 3 AM or so and I have to be up, working, at 7 AM, looking like I slept somewhere besides the sidewalk on Bourbon Street.

So, instead, I order the chef's special up to my room and enjoy the inky darkness as it settles against the shoulders of the river. I like the silvery lights shimmering on the surface of the water and the occassional sound of a boat's horn. It could be today. It could be 1902. 

It's not Fat Tuesday nor any other holiday, and still, just inland from the mosiac of land and water, swamps and alligators that make up the flight path to New Orleans, hoards of tourists wander down to see and hear and taste the soul of the city that retired the streetcar named "Desire," only one slim year after Tennessee Williams made it famous.

They paved Paradise and put up a parking lot, right? And if they don't, mother nature comes along and drowns it every now and then. We are a small race and a skimpy blip in the continuum of being.

Even so, I am glad to be alive, to be travelling, to see this city, even from the 21st floor of a hotel whose name I have already forgotten.