Fat Rabbit

On the way to the East to see the Vietnamese

“New Orleans is a character.” Nasim says this after a man passed through Washington Square park with three dogs on a cart pulled by his bike and two rabbits in the front basket sitting ever so peacefully. One was grey. One brown. 

“The brown is so fat,” Nasim says. “Can you believe it?”

Right before this a tattooed waif stopped his cart-pulling bike in front of us and said, “You seen a girl with blue dreadlocks and tattoos? I smashed her guitar, but look, I found her a ukulele.” 

We ate a sloppy grilled shrimp po boy from Verti Marte and I told Nasim, to the best of my knowledge how the sandwich began, how there were poor men laid off from their jobs, at what I believed was the fire department, and how these men would stand around outside, and how one day a restaurant owner took what he had left after the business day. French fries, bread, and gravy. He piled these together and went around handing these to the poor boys. And others took note. 

Soon the poor boy was more than just french fries and gravy. In came the roast beef, the shrimp, the oysters. And like everything else about the speech of New Orleans, people could not be troubled to say an entire word so the poor got changed to po and here we are. 

There has been a purging lately, a pulling out of what is not needed around CRISP. I should have gotten a photo of the perilous stack atop the back of my truck bed yesterday. I did not tie this down. I never do. I take my chances and believe in my skills of putting termite-eaten boards and rusty wheelbarrow buckets and broken plastic shelves together in a manner that allows them to create their own unified shape that will not move no matter the turn.

We drove down Elysian Fields. I said baby, the way people from New Orleans say baby, even though I’m not from New Orleans and even though there are many pronunciations depending on the situation. One might say baby with the same emphasis on each syllable, for a quick attention getter. But if you’re really trying to say something, out comes Bay Bay or even baby girl. 

I think baby was fine for this point, stopped at a red light when a man turned over and leaned out the passenger side of a mini van driven by his wife. 

“That’s an impressive load,” he said.

I puffed out my chest. “Thank you.”

“I always had a load,” he said. “A truck’s good. You can keep a few bucks in your pocket you got you a truck.”

The light turned green and the man who made my already positive day pulled away with his wife and dreams of having a truck once again.

A truck is good for making a buck, for taking a bed full of living chips and laying these down all around pigeon pea branches and lab lab vines in the backyard of Ron Zornes. 

I created uniformity there today and had the realization that there is room for me to get more trees that I have not necessarily grown. I popped a meyer lemon and a calamondin in amongst the trimmed pigeon pea and put a guava between each of these.

My track record with uniformity is not the next. My track record with collecting things I do not need? Stupendous. But a moratorium has been issued. No more collection of anything brought to this property for a year.

I still see and want. I’m still the same guy that got in trouble for taking bricks and concrete from the dump after dropping a load years ago. 

We’re going to North Carolina soon. I told her I wanted to bring a rock back. For the energy. For I have rocks and sticks from all across the world, little altars in different spots inside and out. She said that’s bringing stuff in. 

I said, “Could you bring back a rock.”

She, knowing how much it meant to me, hesitantly agreed.

We’re going to the East tomorrow, out past Michoud on Fortier, where the Vietnamese get up early and sell what they have grown. I tell her we’re going to get a couple ducks. I don’t even consider this as off limits. It’s just ducks to me.

She says, “We’re leaving though. You put them in the freezer?”

“Live ducks.”

“You don’t have enough chickens already?”

I said, “Baby. Those are chickens. Have you ever tasted a duck egg? Oh my goodness.”

She agreed that if I could keep from bringing in anything from any pile on the street or any corner lot or anywhere else anywhere for that matter that she would buy me two ducks for Christmas. 

I’m just writing this here so that I have witnesses.