coming and going, part one: coming

Music: American Analog Set: Set Free Over the past week and in or around three cities, I've been relearning the importance of friendship and brotherly/sisterly love. Emotional memory--yoked to the body and the sensurround of living--isn't as easy to recall for me as it is for actors and artists, but having moved to a new place this kind of memory is much closer to consciousness, and so I've been very grateful for other people. My trip to Minneapolis was refreshing, a kind of recharge of sorts. Mirko and Tim were marvelous hosts. I spent some time with my advisor and his wife, Betty, and we enjoyed a lovely time together eating and talking and catching up. Betty and RL were like my parents--or as they would probably say, like my grandparents--while I was a graduate student at the University of Minnesota.

I next drove to Houston for lunch with my pal and Verizon Goddess Macylicious, then on to Baton Rouge and spent some time with friends and colleagues there. I stayed with my marvelous host Roger Lamar, who provided a clean house and good cheer. I miss my friends very much. I do not, however, miss the traffic that never existed while I lived in Baton Rouge (I mean, it was pretty bad; it took me twenty minutes to get out of a parking lot off of Jefferson Highway, and I was flipped off by a granny who thought I was trying to steal her parking space). I had red beans and rice at my favorite eatery and watering hole, the Chimes. I partied it up at Gary's house for Andy's 35 birthday. I made love to a goat on the roof of a . . . just joshing. No goats.

Someone special reminded me that I get nervous and that it is fun to be nervous (gallery of select images of the visit is here).

I'm now at my parent's home, after a long, nine-hour drive from Louisiana. I'm sitting in the kitchen typing away, while my mother is making breakfast. It's a lovely scene, and cheering, although my feet are cold and the cat just puked a heap of un-chewed food on the rug next to the island in the kitchen (and I'm pretending not to notice; it's not my cat). It's great to be home, although My Father the King has already laid into me about coming home with no one again this year (next year I'm hiring a overweight transsexual heroin fiend to accompany me as my bride).

My drive through Biloxi and lower Mississippi was more moving and difficult than I expected. For more than a hundred miles on I-10, there were thousands of orange bags filled with debris lining the highway; billboards were skeletons of twisted metal; I saw a McDonald's sign, the M of which had become a pretzel; seas of trees were snapped like twigs; and some casino had repaired a series of billboards that read, "we will rebuild" (sign one) "together" (sign two) "we are strong" (sign three) "together" (sign four; and so on). It was unexpectedly moving, and remembering that scene yesterday, I'm reminded of the highlights of my Baton Rouge visit: sitting in the Chimes with my former colleagues and seeing their long, long faces--exhausted, weary, thankful to be done with a semester that never seemed to end; seeing friends at Gary's cheerful, drunk, merry with weariness, and the joy of loving and caring for others when you have nothing more to give. These people love with a vengeance. Is there a way to love with a vengeance without death? I guess not, in the larger scheme of things: it’s the font of literature, if not utterance itself.

Happiness is a worn Gunn, in some sense: driving long distances gives one lots of time to think and recollect. My most pressing concern at the moment is figuring out what to get the parents for the holidays. I've purchased a giant piñata Santa Claus to fill up with small presents. My plan is to make my parents whack him with a miniature Louisville Slugger on Christmas morning to re-engage the Oedipal circuit.