Advice to the Angry New Orleanian

And let's face it. Who around here isn't secretly or overtly pee-od about somethin'?

I feel like my daily life involves some kind of search for a reason. Anything to rationalize our choices to stay here, and do what we are doing in this crazy place and time. It's pretty tiring, this silver-lining search that is often time fruitless, and still, many times yields an opportunity to be grateful.

For whatever reason today, there was just pissed-ness. Followed by the perfect therapy.

All you out there struggling with your feelings, I tell you to buy yourself a piece of rusty wrought iron. The flea market on River Road just across from Jefferson Playground is crowded with metal forms twisted into animals, welded into garden decor of towered trellises and weathered window boxes. I found two such boxes for a recent project, not knowing how they might affect my psyche.

I spent the better part of the morning scraping the rust of the two windowboxes with a wire brush. Never mind that the thought of scratching metal on metal usually give me goosebumps, I proceeded with great energy. After about 10 minutes, I stepped outside myself, and could see the intensity and anger that was poring out of me as I furiously moved over the metal at lightning speed. I don't think it wouldn't have been surprising to hear me cursing next at the metal thing. But I scraped and scratched, and felt like a Tazmanian devil twisting out of over the box, peppering everything around me with the dust, and possible lead, poisoning my veins, and I LOVED it. It felt damn good.

I watched myself, and puzzled at the stark contrast of my approach to Kevin's: tenderly exfoliating the offending rust from each little spire or wisp of iron, while I was clearly at war. I'm not quite sure who won, but afterwards, I felt a tremendous relief, and snickered at the IRON-y with which I gingerly dropped the plants into the windowboxes ala Stepford wife...and thought, "Well, now. Doesn't that look nice?"