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There is a to do list!

I never replied to Hawaii. Why would I spend five thousand dollars for five days at a writing workshop when I can sit in my bed instead with a beautiful woman and discuss what has been done and what has yet to be done?

They closed down the France Street Meat Market. You know they didn’t sell much meat anyway, but drugs went in and out and around that place. One day a young man got shot in the doorway. They mopped up the blood and kept on selling expired chicken. They were always kind to me. Even gave me free coffee a couple times.

I don’t know the entire story of the way things go over on Needle Street, and I don’t wish to. I hope only to keep my lot across the street low and growing so that the fruits of my labor might be seen. You see, there are trees that I have started from seed. And likely I have told you some of these stories before. In these stories come revelations and lessons. Maybe that’s why they’re called books of the bible.

The one that keeps coming back to me is sitting in this back kitchen, when there was still the asbestos tile and other tile on top of that, and popping open a pomegranate. There was the way I took the aril from the seed, and in the middle of this realized that I was not the one about to plant these seeds. There was something far greater at work.

I got these pomegranates from in front of the house of Nick Caldarera in Lakeview. A man gave me a whole box, said he hated them but his grandpa loved them.

You might ask what it is about seeing something you started from seed produce its own fruit. Maybe this something cannot be explained. To not know what color the flesh will be or what the taste might be like. To know that year after year you have fed the soil, to know of all the sweat and energy and hours you have put in so that these guava might be shared.

This is more than taste. This is more than knowing how to grow the right way.

Imagine a future where the sidewalks are shaded and maybe there is the possibility of some of this at Xavier. 

So much has taken place on Needle Street. From the days when kids came from all around the United States and asked for gloves while working so their hands would not get stuck with needles.

I stood looking over the balcony tonight. The cat’s claw stretching around hackberries, rising up from the neighbors on the left side of my house and coming close to the roof, and I see this and think how fast that vine grows, and I see this and think how often it seems I’m playing catch up.

The beauty as well as the difficulty is that in New Orleans, everything grows. Everything includes these vines that will wrap around and take over as soon as you turn your back.

I took down much over on Needle Street this afternoon, while folks sat across the street and spoke of charges they had beat. The meat market shuttered. Less traffic on the block. And way way back on the cinder block wall there is a green hand and some roses where I had Elery paint, You Grow Girl. You know you can see his work all over the world.

What is it about looking at things that draws the eye, that makes you want to keep looking, that makes you want to look deeper? What is it for me about the inability to get rid of what is not needed?

Here I take cues from my mom. My dad threw everything away. Didn’t even need to be broken. 

I know the freedom that comes with clearing away what is blocking me from God. I have written about this. I have prayed about this. I know what comes when I take down waist high growth of Johnson grass and Bidens Alba on Needle Street so that the edges can almost be seen.

My knees aren’t what they used to be. My right ankle sometimes feels about to pop. My wrists get sore in the mornings. Yet each day I work to get stronger. Each day I sing the praises of abundance, but lately, I wonder what and when abundance is too much.

We had a festival here. For five years. The 9th Ward Festival it was called. My friend Beau liked to joke that it was the annual clean Zach’s yard festival. And so it was. And so it goes. 

And so, I will continue to grow.