Time for delicious holiday foodstuffs? Nope. Time for incessantly repeating carols on retail PA systems? Nope. Time to panic? Maybe.

My friend Lori Luza just posted her Annual Holiday Pre-Rant. This is not the kind of thing people look forward to, is it? I mean, there’s probably something [...]]]> It’s that time of year again!

Time for delicious holiday foodstuffs? Nope. Time for incessantly repeating carols on retail PA systems? Nope. Time to panic? Maybe.

My friend Lori Luza just posted her Annual Holiday Pre-Rant. This is not the kind of thing people look forward to, is it? I mean, there’s probably something wrong with me. However, I have to say that I’m relieved that I’m not alone. I used to think very few people “got it” around the holidays.  Lori not only re-emphasizes that we really don’t need to hear “Little Drummer Boy” 187 times in the grocery store before Christmas, but that maybe a few of us have different priorities this year.

Picture this: New Orleans, 2004. My husband and I had saved up enough to move to what’s called a “mixed income” neighborhood. To us, this meant “longer walk to the bus stop, but fewer drug dealers.” It was great, but we had pretty much used up all our resources doing it. It was the end of the semester, so the student loan money was running out, and James didn’t really have a high paying job back then. I remember being sad because my grandmother had passed away a couple of months prior. A lot of stuff around late 2004 – 2005 is hazy for me, actually, but I’m going to tell this story anyway.

One night, I saw on the TV page in the newspaper that A Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie was coming on. We decided to splurge on two pizza slices and some tallboys and watch the movie. (Yeah, I know, a beer snob with a tallboy: we ate on $20/week back then. What do you want from me?) The message of the Christmas special, of course, is that as long as you have your family and friends, you have everything that really matters. The problem, I thought, was that throughout the whole movie, a Lexus commercial kept coming on. You know the one where the wife goes outside and there’s a big Lexus outside with a bow on it? (Not the pony one. The other one.) I can’t remember what the narration was: something about “What they really want for Christmas.” It was really depressing. No, not because I couldn’t have a Lexus, but because we were watching this cute holiday movie, and every ten minutes it was being interrupted by a message that said, “Fuck togetherness! What you really need is a Lexus.” Seriously? This is legal? What are we doing to our children? Not only could I not relate to the Lexus commercial, but that year, I could hardly relate to the other gift-giving and traveling commercials, either. The one where the nuclear family shows up to the huge well-lit house and is greeted at the door by three generations of other family members – and a dog – seemed like it came from another planet. And let’s not get started on the jewelry commercials. If “every kiss begins with Kay,” then my husband and I have broken laws in at least six states.

As my friend references in her blog post, even articles aimed at reducing holiday stress can seem like they are aimed at people completely unlike ourselves: What do you get the uncle who has everything? How do you deal with airport delays and visits to two sets of grandparents? I have a reality check for that sort of advice: your average person isn’t worried about that stuff. The average person is worried about whether or not he can even get his kid a present this year. She’s not worried if the pumpkin souffle will collapse; she’s worried that she can’t afford everything on the Christmas dinner shopping list. Another couple could both be laid off; they’d love to be delayed at the airport, because it would mean that they had somehow been able to buy airline tickets to see their families. Your average person may not even have anyone to go visit, and wishes she had to worry about stocking stuffers.

There are many people who face the holiday season with a sense of dread. The airwaves and environment start pummeling us with holiday messages before we even realize what’s going on. Maybe you’re not part of a culture that celebrates any holidays. Stop and think for a minute how it might feel if everyone was shoving Christmas down your throat if you don’t celebrate it. I’ve seen people handle these sorts of issues with a variety of strategies, from weeks of planning to “if it gets done, it gets done, otherwise, who cares?” I have friends who celebrate “Season of Giving” to “Season of Bitching” and everything in between. I hope you celebrate (or don’t celebrate) this season without stress. I hope you find time for personal reflection or at least a little quiet. Most of all, I hope you can keep your priorities at the forefront, and not let the small stuff get in the way.

Let me begin by stating that I currently reside in Austin, Texas, which is a pretty cool place. I have nothing against it. I’m not “doing it wrong.” I’m just not as in love with Austin as I am with New Orleans.

I was [...]]]>

A well-known residence in the Garden District.

Let me begin by stating that I currently reside in Austin, Texas, which is a pretty cool place. I have nothing against it. I’m not “doing it wrong.” I’m just not as in love with Austin as I am with New Orleans.

I was born in new Orleans, and I spent some of my early childhood and later, early adulthood there until Hurricane Katrina happened. We intended to go back, but circumstances (mostly financial) prevented us from doing so. Still, not one day goes by that I don’t think about New Orleans. Carnival Season began January fifth, and from then until around June, I’ll be pining for that city extra hard, and not just because of Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest. I’ve got a couple of theories and a few legitimate reasons why I can’t stop missing New Orleans:

Theory:

• New Orleans was “taken away” from me. Because I didn’t leave New Orleans voluntarily, part of me must feel that somehow it was “stolen.” If we could have found a way to return without having to live under a bridge or something, it might have been different. As it stands, in my emotional life, I kind of feel robbed.
• I spent some of my early childhood there. We all have hazy, sun-dappled childhood memories. Mine smell like live oak trees in humid weather and are filled with various NOLA accents. My grandparents and relatives have NOLA accents. I think I imprinted on the place like a baby duck!
• Before I left, I was finally easing into adult life. I had a part-time job and was finishing my B.A. degree. My husband and I were thinking of buying property at which to reside for at least the next ten years. I had several very close friends whom I saw every day, and legions of casual acquaintances whom I ran into regularly. Three days before I turned 27, it all suddenly dissolved. It was as if the previous years I had spent building my life had never happened. Keep in mind, I was lucky. I didn’t own a family home that was destroyed, or lose a loved one to the flood. It was still difficult to cope.

Legit:

• Don’t care what you say, there is no other city like NOLA. I have traveled many places in the U.S. and all over the world. New Orleans is truly unique. It’s not just the food (we’ll get there, I promise!). The combination of cultures and attitudes, having simmered slowly for 300 years, has created an environment that is impossible to duplicate.
• The food. The city has some of the best eats I’ve ever had, and trust me, I like to eat! In NOLA, you can get an excellent Bloody Mary not from a mix, a high quality po boy on fresh bread for the price of a fast food meal, French pastry made by a 6th generation French pastry chef, in-house ground lean beef and house made Italian sausage at the corner store, tamales made by a real Mexican grandmother for $.50 apiece, and a 5 course meal at a world-famous restaurant, all in the same day and in the same 8 mile radius. I know because I’ve done it.
• The history. 300 year old architecture. The oldest continuously operating open air market in the United States. The birthplace of Jazz. Oldest continuously operating street railway system in the world. (The world!) There’s more, so much more that it could (and does) fill numerous books. The history of the city is one of the most fascinating and diverse of any city in the United States.
• Something for everyone. It’s not just the French Quarter and Bourbon Street, y’all.  There are museums and historic sites so you can better yourself culturally. The Audubon Zoo is absolutely amazing, as are the Aquarium and the Insect Museum. There is usually some kind of festival happening on any given weekend. Did I mention the food yet? You can go to school if you want. You can go sailing or fishing on Lake Ponchartrain, and while you’re near the lake, you can drive across one of the longest bridges in the world. And of course, no one says you can’t just go rat around the French Quarter, or go ahead and spend an afternoon at the casino, if you want!

After Katrina, when we would go back, it would make me so sad to see neighborhoods still in ruins. I went back last year to visit, and when my friend and I drove on I-10 over parts of the city at night, we could see large dark neighborhoods which still hadn’t recovered and may never recover. These are the neighborhoods where people were too poor to fight the insurance company lawyers who said they didn’t have a claim. They are the neighborhoods that were so-called “mixed-income,” where regular Joes like you and me made their homes, but couldn’t afford to come back.

Louis Armstrong sang it, and I feel it. I do know what it means to miss New Orleans.

When I lived in New Orleans in 1996, I worked at a place in the 200 block of Baronne Street downtown. It was in [...]]]> Naw, I’m not gonna talk about this PC game, even though I heard it was good for some Co-Op Zombie killing fun of an evening. I just liked the title.

When I lived in New Orleans in 1996, I worked at a place in the 200 block of Baronne Street downtown. It was in a bank building. We worked on the ground floor, but we supported some clients on the upper floors of the building. For some reason, when you called the elevator to go down, it would stop even if it was on its way up. If you got in one that had the “up” light on, you would first have to go up, then down to your destination floor.  This was true even if someone below you had used the elevator to ascend, and then left it.  So the elevator doors would open into an empty elevator, and you’d get in, and although you pressed a button for the lobby, the elevator would still go to the top floor, open, and then close and take you back down. Even if no one on the top floor had called it, which was usually the case. I don’t know why the elevator behaved this way and didn’t know why then.

The true mystery probably had something to do with the everyday machinations of elevators, about which I know nothing. However, I maintain to this day that that elevator was haunted. The top floor of the building was not in use. It was a dark, grimy, disused office space with low ceilings and a definitely creepy cross-elevator door panorama. I only saw what the wall across from the elevator looked like, because absolutely nothing could induce me to leave the elevator on that floor. When I was alone in the elevator, and the doors opened on that floor, with its silence and general aura of a “prime zombie spawning point,” I would actually squeeze my eyes shut and plug my ears against the silence until I heard the elevator doors close again.

See, there was never anyone on the top floor to call the elevator. Therefore, why would it continue to ascend after someone had used it to get to one of the lower floors? Why not stop there and wait for someone else to press the call button? I was irrationally afraid of those few moments in the elevator on that top floor, so much that I took pains to avoid them. If alone, I would not get into the elevator unless I was certain it would descend. Still, sometimes the elevator would trick me, and I would end up on that top floor, frantically pressing the “close doors” button. The worst was when someone else was in the elevator with me and it took us up there. I had to act like I wasn’t terrified that the abandoned office floor was going to eat us both. Sometimes I wondered if they were just as afraid of that floor as I was, but I never had the courage to ask. I mean, after all, it was just an empty floor. Silly to think something was lurking in the unknown darkness to devour anything stupid enough to pass beyond that rectangle of light shed by the open elevator doors.

Even sillier to think that maybe that elevator took everyone in the building up there, one by one, alone. And the abandoned floor replaced them. Silly to think that all those replacements are now living their lives, having children, going about their business. Waiting. Utterly ridiculous. Right? . . . Right?

My interest in writing stories began in the first grade, I think. We had to practice our handwriting [...]]]> A writing exercise, that is. Thought I’d take myself for a walk down memory lane. I’d love to hear your thoughts about when/where you were when you decided to do something you love to do, too!

My interest in writing stories began in the first grade, I think. We had to practice our handwriting every day. “Today is Wednesday,” we would write. “We studied math today.” Sometimes, we would get creative and talk about what we had for lunch or if we did arts and crafts. I always made an “A” in handwriting practice. One day, we made paper hats out of paper plates. The kid in class who was always seeking attention glued his paper lunch sack to the top of his hat and put construction paper headlights on it. I was impressed. I felt that such a monumental creation had to be immortalized in our daily handwriting exercise. “We made paper hats. Brent’s looked like an awtomowbeel,” I proudly wrote. I asked the teacher how to spell “automobile,” and she told me to “sound it out.” I tried my best. It was the only word I had ever misspelled on a class assignment in first grade. Dejectedly, I took my “B+” home to my mother. I think I might have actually wanted to cry a little bit. I was sensitive like that. Also, I was easily embarrassed. My mother looked at the paper and we read it aloud together, like we did almost every day after school. “Well,” my mother giggled, “at least you had the right idea!” She seemed pretty happy, actually. What I didn’t understand then was that she was proud to have a daughter who even attempted to spell “automobile” on a first grade handwriting assignment. I think that was the first day I started wanting to tell stories. I already loved to read, and it was exciting to think that I might be able to put words on paper and describe my world for other people to read.

So what have we learned in 2009, Christine?

Well, Non-specific Writing-Persona Addressee, we’ve learned many lessons in the past year. In no specific order whatsoever:

My worst vice in this department: hanging on to people. The hardest relationship lesson I ever had to learn was that some people move [...]]]> I admit it. I am a sentimental slob. I have always had a hard time letting go of things that were once pleasant, or loving or secure: relationships, situations, cars…

My worst vice in this department: hanging on to people. The hardest relationship lesson I ever had to learn was that some people move on even when others who care about them don’t. Sometimes people I cared about moved on and didn’t have the good grace to let me in on it, but that’s probably a different story.
Recently, I’ve had conversations that both confirmed my tendencies to remain attached and also revealed their folly, respectively. The first, on New Years’ Eve, was with my former roommate at LSMSA, Margaret. We didn’t talk about this subject per se, but I had a great time with her, and it sort of reaffirmed my faith in myself, I guess. Which is what spending time with a friend should do! Margaret is really fabulously cool and intelligent. She’s working on an M.D. Ph.D. (almost done!) and all she really did was talk to me as an equal, if that makes sense. The holidays this year were kind of horrible for me. James was in New Orleans working on a tugboat because we were having a terrible time finding jobs. I would link to a previous article, but the hackers got that one! Anyrate, just having a decent, interesting conversation with someone who wasn’t hellbent on impressing or insulting me was a very healing thing. Monroe is sort of, um, deserty in the decent conversation department.

The second conversation I had a few weeks ago. It was with a person who shall remain nameless. We had had a falling out about the time I met my husband. This person seemed to want to resume our relationship, but they also seemed to think I was, well, deluded and stupid. In any case, I was not spoken to as an equal, by any means, which is sort of ironic, because um, well, just think about it. Pot, kettle, that sort of thing. A lot of people who know me know I am many things, but hopefully they know I am very self aware. Sometimes bordering on self-obsessed… but that’s a different story as well.

We color things with memory probably more than we should, but it’s the price we pay for being sentient. It’s good for creativity: one of the best things to do when you’re trying to start writing is to write about your first memory, or write about your childhood. I have learned that it’s important to let go when something is over, but I have also learned that I don’t want to let the good stuff go without a fight. I have had to let go of good friends as well as people who refused to realize that I had grown and changed in some way. Still, I tried to keep the good friends: I contacted them repeatedly and made overtures of friendship and desire for renewed contact if things had fallen off a bit due to distance. Some of them just chose to go away, and that’s cool, that’s their choice. What I’m going for here is simply to encourage you to go ahead and call your roommate from college you were so close to once, or your friend you said you would call back sometime last year but never got around to it. You have at least a fifty percent chance that they will be happy to hear from you.