All in all, all is well.

[bubblegumsleaze.livejournal.com]

Just to let people know I'm still here and all is well.

I've learned a few lessons over the last couple of weeks. One is that even though in New Orleans absolutely everybody calls everybody else "baby";men, women, children, the indeterminate; just because it's nothing for my friend Paul to say "Baby, what's that place we went to had those hot s'asage poboys?" and me to say "Gene's baby, Genes."  or for total strangers to say "Whatchoo need my baby?" it's NOT A GOOD IDEA ANYPLACE ELSE IN THE WORLD.  Nowhere but in Nola does a grown  man call another grown man, particularly a stranger, baby.

We won't go into the ugly details but let it be known, if I'm ever going to go back to Massachusetts I'm going to have to go into an intensive rehab program to rid myself of new orleaniasms so I don't get beat up on a regular basis.


Cyri is head over heals in love with the city. Where I'm thinking that maybe I've had enough...that maybe it's time to go back to the family and work some new ideas, flex some new muscles, face some avoided dark rooms, and even better sleep at night without a serenade of gunshots, she's thinking maybe she's never going to leave.

I can't blame her. It's a wonderful place and she fits here like she's fit nowhere else in her life. She's already made friends, and my baby sister has just gone off the hook creatively. She paints, she writes, she does photography, and she's amazing. I had no idea at all. She's done some incredible things while she's been here. She's an amazing woman, I really love her. More than that I really really like her. And she told me a couple nights ago "You know Ryan, you're not an asshole at all!"
If that's not love, what is?

She got herself a job, and a little apartment right on the edge of the quarter and it really looks like she's staying. she's getting a little hard to understand though. She's made tight friends with a woman who speaks some kind of funky creole patois and Cyri's picked up enough of it that half the time I don't know what she just said. I'm happy for her, because she's never been happy and now she is and it's good.

I made the mad decision to stop working and live off my savings for a while. I go where I want when I want, I eat when I'm hungry, I sleep when I'm tired and I feel so much better.

Sadness creeps in though. I think about Zack a lot. I think about Pat. I think about having sent Crit away. Of all of the things she and Pat tried to teach me and show me so many years ago. Mostly I remember being in Crit's little underground railroad room off the basement of her house on Winter st, all of those nights there with them, and how much I loved them then.
I miss Salem. I miss it a lot. Do I miss it enough to leave here? I'm not sure at all. Not yet. Not just yet.

But all in all, all is well.

I'm boring  I know :)