Walk

I found the dried seed pod of partridge pea behind the Wal Mart in Chalmette. We walked Patricia Street for the first time. Birds with long beaks poked these deep into the earth. I considered the strength of their necks. I considered evolution. I considered the bend. Between concave and S curve. Feathers grey and brown. Birds I had never seen before.

We found creeping wood sorrel, which we were speaking about only the night before. I told Nasim about molokhia and asked if they grew this in her childhood. A google search pulled up the stew before the plant. She said they made something like that. Made it with creeping wood sorrel. 

God opens doors when the mind stops. When I walk with eyes open a child passes. He pulls a stake from the ground, silver, what would have once held a campaign sign, sign long gone.

“Like my gold?” he said. 

“You big pimpin’,” I told him. 

“Got it at the Dollar Tree.”

He walked on with his friend and I appreciated our introduction to the children of Arabi, around the corner from Llama Street, around the corner from a palette where I can bring the knowledge that I found in the 9th Ward and make this fit the design of a more unified grass mown street. I will take what I have in the greenhouse and spread this in spots that we decide together. It will not be a jungle. It will not be CRISP Farms. Yet it would not be possible without CRISP.

Yesterday we walked Uptown after dropping ghormae sabzi to two separate friends. I told Nasim that I knew her plan.

“What plan,” she asked, outside a cemetery named Valence.

“To conquer,” I said. “I know that you won the slow walking contest of Iran, moved on to win the championship in Canada, and that you are now trying to take over the country of New Orleans.”

“Why do we need to hurry?”

“It’s going to get dark. We can see more.”

“You can see more when you walk slowly,” she said.

In a way she is right. In a way she is pointing out one of my faults, this need to absorb and experience as much as possible. In doing this I often take on tasks and then complain about all that I have to do. A thought becomes of the utmost importance. I grab at them. I’m convinced I need a hamburger in Arabi because I saw a man in a Saints’ jersey and thought we had to go somewhere for the game despite not having seen the first eleven. Then I thought we needed to park at NOAC and walk around the CBD to watch Saints fans and Lions fans and not miss anything happening.

I read recently about two crocodiles, how they sit and wait for prey to float down the river. A water buffalo comes and one croc gets the whole thing. The other croc goes off on his own. He does not complain. The first does not gloat. This is not in their DNA.

But inside of me, and thereby inside of you, is this need for knowledge, and this need for sharing what is found, for feeling slighted, for feeling unappreciated, and so what I do is to search for more and maybe what Nasim does is to slow down. 

What a partridge pea does is to climb up a chain link fence behind a Wal Mart and display a spread of yellow flowers, and though I never saw these I have seen them before and know the gift that this plant gives is the seed that could not have come without the flowers I never saw.

This is what slows me down. I stop. I look. I want to know the beak of a bird. I want to know a hamburger and if the Saints won and what Arabi will be ten years from now. At this moment, sitting inside The Coffee House on a sofa with my love is enough, and I think that both of us can agree that sometimes doing nothing is the best thing.