Quid Pro Quo
They say heat advisory in Western Orleans. I don’t know what that is, but here in the city, next to the police, in the four thousand block of Claiborne, my old black Tundra just couldn’t take it anymore. The same Tundra that took me twelve thousand miles, around both coasts, running along the edge of Canada before I ever thought I might find love there. The same truck that held the same lady, the one I told how I knew she really loved me when I asked her to grab a bag of leaves from State Street, and she got out, in her little black shorts, and she slung that black plastic bag into the back.
This truck was the first I ever made payments on, the first that shined when I bought it, that was clean before the tons of logs and sticks and mulch and leaves. This the same truck that picked up things I did not need like old chairs thrown away for a reason and wood that would rot in my yard. This baby knew the dump and she knew the airport and she knew the West Bank and Lafayette and she knew the scent of Banjo, the way he lived in that passengers seat, the way his head rose only when he smelled food.
A truck will leave a mark on you. And maybe this is the same as those times when I would call Banjo’s name, months before he died, how I would think it was the end.
And maybe this is wishful thinking. Maybe I am ready to let the truck go. Maybe I need to slow down, stay close to the house, go door to door, find ways that kids who have only bikes can find a way to live by healing the soil.
In permaculture, there is talk of zones. One being right outside your door, a kitchen garden if you will, a place for herbs and greens and easy access. These zones then spread so that five might be a wild field beyond you in the country. This is different in the city. Zone two might be the neighbors directly bordering my lot. And zone three the neighbors beyond, and so on.
I have always thought of starting where I am and moving out. In everything. And maybe the end of this truck is an attempt to direct what I’ve been unable to do on my own.
On another note, I’d like to share a thought I had this morning about the nature of thinking and the nature of art. How I am often unable to finish. How perfection is a vest worn by fear. How art rests in the eye of experience.
What if I were to take what might seemingly be a defect and turn this into something that benefits me? What if I were to create and let the person having the experience of my creation decide when said painting, sculpture, plant, box, piece of writing, painting, etc. is done. Let the experience pay for the creation.
And so this salon of which I dream is an idea unfinished, a Bob Dylan song that might change each time she is played, a Van Gogh painted over with another Van Gogh, or a deaf man playing the piano.
And this? This is perfect.
