Ain't No Post

 I would like to tell a story. I just can't think of one right now...

I wasn't surprised to find this laying in the road, the same day I read about The Law of Attraction in "The Secret;" not surprised at all. There was an unopened bottle of Balsamic vinegar laying not far from this copy, which had been run over by a car, giving it character, in my opinion.

 

Poem Home

Below is a link to a poem by my friend Becca Griffin. I never knew she wrote poetry, never mind that I believe it is the best poetry I have ever read.
This particular one disturbed me. Are there really people who think that Rush Limbaugh was spreading "hatred?"

With Barbra and Becca Photoshopped circa 2011

Some of the other poems, especially "Ain't No Poem," which I commented on (I never noticed the link to her poetry blog before, on her Facebook page, but since I have been practicing "The Secret," I have been finding all kinds of positive things).

The Poetry of Becca Griffin

It is Friday and "hurry up, the sun is going down, and it's cloudy so the sunset will seem to come even sooner, so hurry to the Fresh Market for some kind of alcohol. It will make you ravenously hungry -remember pulling entire steer spines out of the the impeccably clean trash cans on the side of that 5 star steak house, and biting the tenderloin right off the bone? -that would be after having busked for 3 hours, with the decision to call it a night being made after my blood/alcohol level teetered past the "can still play" point and I missed a chord or something...
I could get a bottle of good wine, Bogle "Old Vine" red blend, vintage 2017 (a very good year, from what I can tell) and then could pick up a few scraps of the oak wood that is still laying everywhere from Hurricane Ida.

These, I could carry home and place in my grill, after moving it off the Sacred Heart property, and on to the Sacred Heart Church property.

Our building is supposedly still owned by the Catholic church, they are just leasing it to whatever groups are involved in the removal of homeless veterans from the streets of New Orleans. So, there have been times when the security detail working here has told residents not to mess with that church building, it might be part of their instructions.

But, with the wind and rain of Hurricane Ida also blew in kind of a new norm, with the security people having gotten used to seeing people building fires and cooking food all around here.

I could try to adhere to the Mandarin Diet for at least tonight.

That would mean putting tin foil down on the grill and bending up the edges to make it into a very shallow dish, fit for containing the olive oil, vinegar and hot sauce that the whiting fillets will be doused in.

That's right; whiting fillets, the fish of the Mandarin Diet.

From when I was "living" in Mandarin, which is a subdivision of Jacksonville, Florida a city that looks like a country when you see a map of it divided into its 23 or so "areas," or "neighborhoods.

Mandarin was about the 3rd from the top in the economic pecking order, with the community on the beach being the "richest" area, strictly economically speaking, and Mandarin only behind the Epping Forest area in value, because the latter sits on water, also, just the St. John's River instead of the Atlantic Ocean...

But, using a loophole, the people of Mandarin, many of whom had large houses at the end of cul-de-sacs behind which was "nothing but woods" for maybe a half mile in some cases, had gotten those woods declared "protected wetlands," which meant that nobody was ever going to come along with a bulldozer and take away their nothing but woods; it would be a federal offense to do so.

So, the smart homeless guy realizes that, despite the name, it isn't very wet at all back there; it's a hardwood forest! Hard woods for cooking over a fire of the kind that are sold as cooking chips, in hickory, pecan, red oak, live oak...I'm salivating now just thinking of it.

And, getting slightly nostalgic thinking of how my sweetheart, Karrie had learned so quickly which woods to gather during her dawn raids of the nothing but woods every morning.

Whiting was just the everyday fish that I could afford. Being homeless in Mandarin meant, though, that the dumpsters I dove into were just a bit cleaner and had better food than what I might have found in the city. Plus, the competition is much lower for it.

There were unofficially 7 homeless people in Mandarin, and many of the residents got to know us, from seeing us around. They seemed to be happy with 7. It gave them a sense of wonder: Where to they go, every night..? and, with such a manageable number, a chance for people to kind of adopt one or more of us.

After having talked to us at some point, perhaps trying to humanize us, it seemed like, whenever they came across something, or were ready to throw away something, like a chair that had gotten a tear in the upholstery, they might decide that they will instead give it to one of the homeless guys and then might ride around with it in their trunk until they spotted one of us. 

You would be walking down a street and hear a horn toot, and someone would pull over and say: "Here, I've got something for you," and then open their trunk to reveal maybe a canvas chair (for sitting around the not house) or, even in one case a very nice tent. "My ex-wife loved camping, but my new wife hates it..."

But, Thursday afternoon would be the time when the seafood department would do some kind of major rotation of their stock, and would throw out a lot of fish, still sealed in the Styrofoam, with the price that the people in the other world would have had to pay for it, on it. These would still be cold, and I would sometimes make it back to the camp with about 25 pounds (not counting the ice that I might have thrown into my fish carrying cooler) of fish in dizzying varieties.

Somehow a lot of "wahoo" would be discarded. This was usually in a large Ziplock and might still be partially frozen. I loved wahoo. "Wahoo!," I would half sarcastically yell whenever I discovered it.

But, back to the present...Although we got to cook red snapper, grouper, halibut, and even scallops, snow crab legs and lobster, over the fire of red oak or hickory, the whiting fillets have been my go-to fish.

So, with the Bogle and the fish on the grill, with some kind of broccoli to go with it and perhaps a big ol' portobello (sp?) mushroom, I would be enjoying an "It doesn't get any better than this" moment...

But, I really am going to have to quit drinking.

I could get the wine while telling myself; "Hey, at least I'm not pawning my guitar to get another hit of crack, or at least I haven't tried crystal meth from a black guy who has advertised that particular product to me on a few occasions.

I remember crystal meth as what Jay the Really Loud Singer used to use. He would play all night Friday into Saturday morning and then still be playing that night. He usually would whip out say, 350 bucks, and brag about having made 350 bucks with, I guess, the 65 dollars for the gram of meth being just the cost of doing business.

Johnny B. was another one who would achieve 18 hour busking sessions and bring in hundreds of dollars.

The cost of doing business...