It was seven days twice over
(a fortnight, they used to call it)
sick in the city of serendipity.
Transfixed in the path of
those nameless denizens
rushing down corridors –
Innocent, mad and hex-marked.
Lost girls cross-eyed, hare-lipped
and strange, disjointed speech patterns..
All the lost time spent staring
at the door, the floor,
at the back of a stranger’s neck.
No standing, no blinking –
the list of possible offenses goes on
for miles.
This kind of motion is a secret.
The only things that are truly alive
in this grey jungle are the slender
gingkos ablaze in leafy turrets of
yellow and gold against mirrored
windows and cold dark stone.
The city, in a (coco de mer) nutshell:
I swooned deeply before all of the
following – Oedipus and the Sphinx
Violas da gamba et violas d’amore
with their cupid’s heads and
sympathetic strings!
Sweet almond perfume and
odor of roasted chestnuts sold
by street vendors –sadly, I forgot
to buy some – I weep.
A trip to the circus, which also
always makes me tear up.
Fireworks have a similar effect.
Smiling red-haired Svetlana
and her dancing doggies, cats
and doves all in harmony
and feathers, sequined finery.
An exhibit of Wunderkammers-
ivory memento mori crawling
with worms, lathe turned treasures,
serpentine goblets, coral trees,
narwhal horns and camera obscura.
O and Evolution and Obscura!
Princesse Seze and the Russian Baths,
full of radiant heat, sullen muscovites
being beaten with oak leaves!
Moon moths of Vietnam.
Blue morphos and blue poison dart
frogs, the Dendrobates azureus,
my love I would lick, I would load
my poison dart gun and take aim..
The Comic Grotesque show at the
Neue Gallerie was enormously inspiring:
Grosz, Klee, Schiele, Heartfield et al.
And blood orange tea and chocolate
mandarin marzipan confiture at the
incomparably lovely Cafe Sabarsky.
Kicked out of Cafe Reggio for playing dice.
Kicked out of Max Fish for smoking –
I lost the heel of my shoe to an adventure
that started in Odessa and ended on the
steps near the Punjabi cab stand
eating the spiciest samosas in the world.
My seven year old 2nd cousin, Miriam,
all green eyes and wild curls asking me
“So, what exactly are the lotus-eaters?”
Good question, kid! I told her a long story.
I was in the bathroom at the
Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station
when I found out that you had died.
Sitting on a sofa shaped like a giant set
of lips speckled with bleach stains.
My gasp echoed over the sterile blankness
dissected by black lines and metal doors.
All day I saw you plummet from skyscrapers,
your descent was as refracted light
cascading from towers of steel and glass.
I left New York this morning and am now
at my Great-Aunt’s house in Chicago.
It’s snowing and I think this place is haunted.
So many dears I just left, my wee appleseeds.
I’ll come back one day soon.

My grandfather and I are taking another trip
this November- this time to New York and Chicago.
I’d like to frolic with any of you in those cities,
and if anyone has advice for things of interest
I must not miss, please do bring it to my attention!
Also, any reccomendations for reasonable hotels
downtown that are in nice, cozy neighborhoods
rather than in midtown (where we currently have
reservations, blast!) We need elevators and bookstores.

Here are the dates:
NYC – November 11th – 24th
Chicago –  November 24th – 30th

Oh, and- here’s something very exciting:

If you find yourself in New Orleans this week,
please attend the Oak St. Z’otz Grand Opening-
It looks amazing, and there will be so much
fantastic music and delicious treatses..
Pandory and I will be sitting in with Mister Ratty Scurvics
and his Invisible Gambling Jews for a song or two, hip-hip!

Also, come see the Tigerlillies play on Saturday-
 mlle.   will be trapezing it up before the show..

Due to an unprecedented peak in temperatures,
all of our beautiful pumpkins became
exceedingly moldy, insect-ridden
and befurred with a thick blue fuzz.
Poor lumina luna moth, too-
the pale green pumpkin also suffered
a similar fate: early this morning
(or late last night, depending)
our band of unruly revelers
hurled them at the morning buses,
those horribly noisy
smoke-spewing monstrosities.
The poor bus driver was
really given quite a start.

Do you like our owl?
   -It’s artificial? 
Of course it is.
    -Must be expensive. 
  Very.
      I’m Rachael.

Also in attendance were Sweeney Todd and Margery Lovett:

And a dastardly villain wielding an antique polaroid:

Witness him attack an adorable red velvet cake!
Will he try and take a bite, or tie her to the train tracks?

We were witness to an apparition of the Holy BVM,
Star of the Sea, Mother of Heaven, Queen of Angels, etc.
(otherwise know as Mlle. )
Note her hands folded in a particularly pious
attitude of prayer and devotion..

At some point in the evening,
she left heaven to become a showgirl..
That Mary, ever so versatile!

During our wanderings and perambulations
we engaged in a bit of “faire du leche vitrine“,
literally licking the windows- behind which
glittered an array of sparkling chandeliers
and gorgeous stained glass lamps and lanterns..

Ooh la la!

All in all, it was an eminently enjoyable Halloween-
We all made wishes at the end of the night
blowing out the candles on top of the red velvet cake
before we sliced her up into dainty pieces!
She assured us before we ate her that
each and every one would come true.

Ever had the secret wish to raid my trunks and closets?
Now is the time, kittens-
I am letting go of an enormous amount of frippery,
vintage clothing and what-not..
It is time to thin my trunks and line my pockets.

Auctions up on Ebay

Also, I am having a Rummage Sale this weekend-
for those living in New Orleans,
it will be held this coming weekend,
October 30th and 31st.
From 8am-until 6pm.
Corner of Royal and Mandeville.
Massive piles of vintage clothing 
and incredible treasures!

Please to come play dress-up and buy all my things.

Giant thorny lilypads from the last days of summer.

Hello, spider.

These days are falling out of my hands-
losing ground, losing sleep over
a strange sea change, eyes below
the waterline scanning the horizon
for ghostships, for terra firma..

Despite the return of a deceptive swelter,
damnable dog days that leave one
gasping on the floor, unable to move-
a bitter tease, nasty tricks the weather plays..
Well, I didn’t quite believe it yet,
restrained myself from pulling out
the cinnamon and chenille and all.
Snow plum and white persimmon teas
to drink with nutella and rosejam, yes.
Soon, soon we shall see.
I smoke too much and sleep not enough.
Too many changes in quick succession
for wee goatly me to take in:
Will it be Vve. AET, rather than Mlle.
from here on out? Well? Will it?
The dissolution of four and a half,
five years has proved itself in the pudding.
My days are spent not in peaceful respite
behind the glass, smiling and nodding-
but instead packing up tiny Houdinis,
miniature pinheads and dentestates,
handcuffs, hourglasses, bell-jars
and the like, ad nauseam, ad infinitum..
I now wear a timepiece on my wrist
with which to count the hours.

I found an owl to complete my costume-
can you guess what I will be?
If you get it right,
you shall have more than
your share of candy corn
and mallow pumpkins, I swear.

Miss Pea made a new friend,
the lovely Pumpkinetta!
She beckons you into
my parlour..

May I also have the pleasure
of introducing the orange and
befurred denizens of our manor:
Mister Frankie Lee, Jr. and
Count October of the Infinite Darkness,
yes, the bunny- we call him Toby
as in: “Toby, or not Toby-
that is the bunny!”
If this display of interspecies love
and harmony does not incur
an acute case of spontaneous
aortal aneurysm, then you
may well be a robot.
With robot cancer.
Cancer for robots.
Any old robot will do.
(Sing along to the tune,
“Private Dancer”, please)

Yuri Lemeshev, accordionist
extraordinaire, of Gogol Bordello
also is an enormous fan of my cat.
You should be aware that my cat
is 21 years of age. He is very ancient,
but also very spry- with very loud voice!
He can buy liquor and vote and all.
I wouldn’t display him gratuituously,
except for that truly, he is exceptional-
He’s been my friend since I was five.

Can you feel the love, people?
I feel faint.

I discovered the Witch of Leda Court back in 2004, when I still lived in New Orleans.
It was another life. I was off on an excursion to the Botanical Gardens and the Sculpture Garden
with the man who would later be my partner of seven years, though at that time I had no idea,
no inkling of what would later transpire. We were innocents, in the garden – friends. Now, 8 years
later, we are separated, and revisiting this golden olden day is strange, as if someone else lived it.
The pictures were lost for a long time, but I decided they wanted to be put back into place, that this
little snippet, a fragment of a life in New Orleans, pre-Katrina, pre-love and loss, wanted to be made
whole again. Or, at least – seen. I had a message a while back from a neighbor or relative of the woman
who lived in the house, explaining what I didn’t understand before. They wrote:
“Her name is not Mary Fortenberry. It was Beullah Roussell. (Mary is a neighbor she didn’t care for.)
Beullah was found dead last week. She was a tortured soul in life. May she finally rest in peace.”

Somehow, summer has slithered away –
sliding from my side like a sweat-soaked slip,
a sheath of dead skin, dull chrysalis.
On this last night of September, I recall
a convivial sojourn, and spy adventure
I had a few weeks ago, to Leda Court.
This street has held much mystery for me –
the houses seem to be holding their breath,
and everyone there has a secret…

At the end of the dead-end street this little
white house caught my eye…
Every window curtained tight,
and crazy handwritten signs posted
everywhere – KEEP OUT!
and this one:

I had to step into the yard to read the
sign in the window – it gave me chills
as soon as I made it out…

Who is Mary Fortenberry, and what did she do
to deserve such vituperation?
The neighbors say it was Mary that
made those signs – that she’s a crazy
witchy old lady with 40 cats.
I wonder if the sign is meant
for her daughter? Most peculiar.
I’m so curious, but I don’t want
to bother her or make her more crazy.
As I turned away, I saw a curtain rustle
and a snippet of gray face peer out.
Maybe I ought to bring her some biscuits.

On to the mysterious Luling Mansion…



This is one of my favorite houses in New Orleans.
I always get a distinctly creepy feeling from it,
and like to drive by and try to spy on whatever
arcane denizens might be up to sinister deeds.
Well, I’ve never actually seen any arcane denizens,
not on the grounds anyway.
But I’m sure they’re in there.
They probably just don’t come outside
because they are albino, and have pink eyes
and are blind like cave fish.
They only come out at night to boil virgins
in these enormous cauldrons.

Why else would someone have
a giant cast-iron cooking pot
in the yard? And don’t tell me
it’s for making molasses,
because I don’t want to
hear none o’ that.

Oh, and it used to belong to the
Louisiana Jockey Club –
Clearly, evil is afoot.

We walked in the garden, we looked at all the sculptures, we took pictures. We weren’t in love, yet.
Suspended in space, in time. Liminal states. Before then, before everything changed and the storm
laid waste to the garden. I remember we wondered how these sculptures fared, if the weathered it.

Terrifying chrome monkeys, reaching hands, a moment of love – coming together, sliding apart like mercury.

I didn’t bother to take note of the artist’s name, and also these pictures are astonishingly poor quality.
They were taken with my very first digital camera, which was kind of a P.O.S., or at least it seems so now.

A display of medicine bottles. Lots of random things at the New Orleans Botanical Gardens…

…Like this. Pretty wonderful.

Me dancing with a spider made by Louise Bourgeois, a fly in amber, forever dancing – caught in-between, another time.

I wanted to have a tea-party on these lily pads. I want to go back to that time when the sun was shining,
and we didn’t know anything about anything. Instead, I’m back here in New Orleans, older and wiser,
and treading water in a murky pond. I’m learning how to swim. I’m haunted, caught in webs of golden
threads, filaments of memory, of the shadows we used to make, not touching, so easy. Back then.

All is well and we are safely ensconced in
the centrally air-conditioned and fluffy bunny
carpeted bosom of suburbia- with a million
channels and fountains of doctor pepper
to sustain us ’til we head out back home
this evening- barely a drop of rain I hear
even grazed our dear city!
I suppose all those heathen incantions,
feverishly mumbled prayers and
lit candles did their business-
many thanks to all those who thought of us..
Aside from the hysteria and panicked flight,
this has been a lovely little mini-vacation-
All of us bringing instruments with,
as we were unwilling to risk the chance
of water damage or looters..
Hence the motley line-up was:
Myself – fiddle
J-bird – drums
Olivia – keyboards + accordion
Haley Lou Haden – ukelele + tambourine
Ratty – guitar + cello + flute

If we run out of dosh, we can always play
until people pay us to stop- so far we’ve been
going by any of the following:
“Awesome Death Wish”
“Troubadours for Jesus”
“Frozen Delight”
or “Conquering Word”
I’m leaning towards the first one.
In the meantime, we’ve been gorging ourselves
on incredible Mexican food, aguacate y horchata galore
buying pretty dresses at thriftymarts and lolling about.
We also visited the Rothko Chapel and the
incredible Menil Collection, which if you’ve never seen,
you really had better- my swan, what a wonder!

“The Menil Collection is indeed an imagined museum…
the American embodiment of Malraux’s mythic ‘museum without walls.’”  
  Bertrand Davezac, former curator of
Byzantine and Medieval Art

“A museum should be a place where we lose our head,” said Marie-Alain Couturier, the Dominican father who initiated a renaissance in sacred art in France in the 1940s. Alas we rarely lose our head in a museum. Great museums are overloaded with masterpieces and we are bombarded with information that distracts from contemplation and remains foreign to the magic of a great painting. And what is art if it does not enchant? Art is incantation. It is the fusion of the tangible and intangible.
Dominique de Menil, 1987

The most revelatory part of the collection
(for me, that is- Ratty was most taken in
by the golden icons- which were really
quite something indeed..) were the WITNESSES-
an ongoing exhibition of objects either
owned by Surrealists or similar to objects
in their collections- never have I felt so at home
in a museum..Surrounded by ornaments,
curios, magical relics and natural wonders-
I could have peered ’round that room for an age
and not seen it all! The narwhal horn spiralling
up beside the terrifying spiked “wildman” costume,
a case with a stuffed red-legged honeycreeper
and pale-headed rosella, not to mention the dance
collar made of electric blue tanagers, sacred bundles
and an incredible array of camera obscura-
thaumatropes, phenakistoscopes,
anamorphoscopes, zoetropes, stereoscopes,
praxinoscopes and phantasmagoria..
Drawings by psychotics, cadavre exquises, astrolabes-
a skull-faced child’s death mask and collar made
of metal ex-votos, phallic stone pestles,
mickey mouse kachinas and funerary couples..
I could truly go on forever about it,
but then I had to leave and go see
sweet Joseph for a moment- he always
makes me cry when I see him there!
His blue swan for Tamara Toumanova,
a homage to the Romantic Ballet!
Little glass bottles and liquour glasses
filled with blue and gold powders, shells
a lacy feather, objects in black ink..
And then Max Ernst! And then I was dragged away!
Kicking and screaming!

I’ll make another pilgrimage there one day,
and I recommend you do the same-
should you ever find yourself presented
with the opportunity to do so.
Now to pack my ancient and
most excellent feline back into his box,
stow the instruments and ourselves
and hie back to the road, back to our
city that still stands, work and projects-
oh hooray! Upon my return I shall prepare
something more rousing, I hope.

These are the faces of my fear-
A roaring deluge hurtling towards
our delicate teacup, perched so
precariously between the devil
and the deep blue sea-
or the big brown river
and the lake, as the case may be..
I think I’m warranted a little drama,
a little paranoia when a storm of
this magnitude is ambling its
mighty way in my vicinity.
We’ve battened down the hatches
and though I’m putting off
the agonizing task of choosing
what I will take with me-
the tiny cache of treasures I can’t
afford to lose and a change of clothes-
I think I’ve narrowed it down to
my mother’s fiddle and my doll,
Annathema that Violet made for me.
And a small box of precious photographs,
if there is room. I can only hope it swerves
eastward, and our town, our lovely home
is spared this monstrosity..
I love a thick sassy storm, I truly do-
but this is the widowmaker kind
that turns my marrow to slush
and I’m not fucking around.
I think we leave tomorrow morning
and head west, to avoid the logjam
when the mayor announces
a mandatory evacuation.
And if I’m wrong, and all we get
is some tossing limbs and a heap of rain-
well, I’ll be jumping for joy in Texas.
I don’t like the idea of New Orleans
underwater and torn to bits.
Please no. And thank you.
And just think what a lovely day it was-
golden and elysian, gamboling with
a few of my favorite dears-
wasn’t I just getting my ass kicked
at air hockey a few short hours ago?
Oh golly, but these things do
throw me into quite a tizzy.

Recently, a very nice thing was bestowed upon me, by the ever-entertaining  . It concerns one of my favorite new words, “OCTOTHORPE”, which was brought to my attention by that inimitable rake, Mister .

To read more about the Octothorpe, please accompany me down this dim corridor.

To read the thing that wrote, please meet him at the station.