Alan Gutierrez

What is your guiding principle in your life? Mine? I don’t have one. I never know right from wrong. My gut fails me because it is too busy reporting with a klaxon call the slightest hint of abandonment. What can a person to in the world of reason to guide them?

“I also realized—and this was more important to me—that I would consider the book or film a failure if people in these worlds took in my story and felt that I did not get their existence, that I had not captured their world in any way that they would respect.” from an Inteview with David Simon the creator, writer and produce of HBO’s The Wire.

I quit coffee once. It was before I moved to New Orleans in 2001. I am going to quit again. It makes me nervous. It is an expensive habit. When I am renting space at a coffee shop, I’ll drink orange juice. This morning, I had half a cup, to stave off any headaches. Now I’m sitting here at Bayou Coffee House with a small glass of OJ.

According to this Girl and Cat cartoon Large Mediums found via David Weinberger, television did not become conscious of itself until the Simpsons. I recall a Road Runner cartoon that was oddly self-reflective. Two boys in a Road Runner cartoon watching Road Runner cartoon, eventually speaking with Wile E. Coyote through the screen about his fetish for Road Runners. At seven, it struck me as out of the box.

“When it came time to come home, FEMA didn’t do nothin’. It was Providence. Providence.”

Two women sitting out front, not long after the sun goes down. They have opened mail. Probably bills.

I am mildly buoyant upon hearing this. After an evening of sinking. I love my city. I have a profound sense of place.

I am sad and lonely. Something that I’m going to have to learn to ignore, or learn to live with. It’s a feeling, but not quite the same way a rusty nail in the foot is a feeling. The latter is a feeling that cannot be ignored. Sad and lonely, I feel but I’m not buying.

I wrote my own little review of the “The War of Art”, recently, which invites me to think of sad and lonely as a manifestation of resistance. Resistance being that which keeps you from responding to your true calling.

Imagine if you will, I move to San Francisco. I’d be beyond consolation within a week. I would be sad and lonely and living an expensive life devoid.

I live in New Orleans. This is the best possible place in the world to live. At least I got that going for me.

I got a flat on the Western Flyer I keep meaning to tell you about. The rear tire was flat. On St. Phillip, around the corner, a man on his doorstep sees me wheeling my bike. He says, uh oh. I say, it’s slow going now. He tells me this is the wrong neighborhood for that to happen. I say, really, why? This is my neighborhood. He asks if I’m going to the French Quarter. I tell him, no I’m going home, I live on Dorgenois. Hey, says what? I say, I’m your neighbor.

The flat. I have a tire patch kit that Musa Eubanks gave me when I visited. It came with the light that he attached to my bike. Courtesy of the Metro Bicycle Coalition, and perhaps, Providence.

I’m not sad and lonely now, but as I came up on the Bayou, I felt sad and lonely. I talked to myself aloud. There was no breeze on the footbridge. Nothing but a hot stale hug of humidity.

There is something that I’m doing that is fundamentally flawed, that is evoking this absurd sadness and loneliness. It doesn’t have meaning. It’s something obvious. Like I’ve been lifting with my back, and not my knees.

For example, it could be the case that I need to schedule more down time. It could be the case that I need to invest in friendships that have no political significance. It could be a metaphysical boondoggle. Not enough manual labor?

Terrible thing about this outlet. This outlet. The one you are now reading. Terrible is that it’s an outlet. I’ll put down a track of sadness and loneliness, because it’s not the sort of thing I’ll talk about. It’s not the sort of thing I’ll have fester. I’ll simply commit it to writing. It makes it odd to encounter people who know me through these writings. Exuberance I live. Defeat I write.

It’s crept up on me, because of certain economies that I’ve enforced in the last two weeks, that will be lifted at midnight tomorrow. There are plenty of events in New Orleans that are zero-effort gatherings. Like, say, house gutting. Ah, the scent of lead. You don’t have to dress up. Yummy Gatorade.

You’ve got an opportunity to invest your time and energy into someone else’s home. This is an opportunity you are fool to miss.

Bacchanal on Sunday’s is zero effort. It is no longer a secret. It is packed.

Arrive. Order. Eat. Talk. Leave.

Economies, however, have made weekends sad and lonely. The sad and lonely terrifies me, because it is what I was for thirty-three years, consistently, with no reprieve.

For all the imagined complexity, it was nothing more than sadness and loneliness.

The flood changed my priorities. If I’ve been sad and lonely these last two years, I didn’t care to notice.

Feeling flush, without actually being flush, I stopped by Terranova’s, as I pushed the Western Flyer home. Wheat bread, Zapp’s BBQ, an orange, and a Toostie Roll. It was $5.17. Outstanding. You’re less expensive that Save-A-Center. (Oranges: $0.79!) I produced my Visa check card. The clerk tells me theirs a $12.00 minimum. I ponder further groceries. He’ll pay it the next time he sees us. Then this procedure ensues: The receipt is given for me to sign. That is placed somewhere behind the counter. Another receipt is printed, upon which a smiley face is drawn. That is given to me as a reminder.

The trap of sad and lonely is that once sad and lonely sets in, it becomes a secret. Every time someone asks, how’s are you doing? I must lie. I must say fine. I can’t say that I’m sad and lonely. Or I could, but I don’t have the courage. I lie and lie and lie. I’m doing fine.

With these feelings of sadness and loneliness, it seems as though I’m teetering on the brink of quiet desperation.

Which is another aspect. The battle to not feel sad and lonely.

I’ll always recall a cold winter night in Ann Arbor, a thin veil of snow swirling over the asphalt of the Twin Cities bank parking lot. I am walking across this parking lot. I’m walking back from an office to an apartment at 3:00 am on a Saturday. I stop thinking about software. In rushes, what I would then call depression, but what is really sadness and loneliness. I stop. I look around.

I feel the sadness and loneliness seeping into my body, taking on it’s physical manifestations. I feel the weight on my shoulders. I feel the hollowness of my chest. I feel this just as I feel the pointed cold air in my nose and lungs. I am awed.

It is a lot of sadness and loneliness. Quite possibly a lethal dose. I, however, have acclimated.

In that parking lot my observational detachment fades. I recognize that Sunday will be given to escape. Tomorrow, in the dead of winter, I’ll walk across the Diag eating ice cream, because fat and sugar alleviate sadness and loneliness, because cold on cold is an affront to the cold. Later, I’ll eat more ice cream. I’ll watch a movie at the State. I’ll watch a movie at the Michigan. Then, I’ll eat more ice cream. Soon, it will be Monday. Glorious Monday.

It feels like it’s creeping in. First the weekends can be sad and lonely, but as I noted, I couldn’t go out. Now the evenings are getting sad and lonely.

Because, right now, I cannot dial it in. I cannot feel it at all. I’m lost in these words. I’m happy.

Sadness and loneliness are insidious when I give them harbor. It’s the harboring that gets you.

Let me say this, then: Things are going so well, I’m having to really rifle through the attic to dig out some dusty old ways to fuck up.

Many little kindnesses. To be sad and lonely is just absurd.

In in a lackadaze, as I am every weekend. I didn’t make big plans to work this weekend, but I don’t have any money, so I can’t go out as I usually do. I’ve got it in my head that I’m going to do some programming, but I don’t see that happening. In the future, I’m going to have to have my weekends much better specified if I expect to get anything done during them.

In response to Bart Everson’s post Ugly, I considered the following. In addition, it might be further consideration about the nightmare I had, where I’d found I’d returned to Michigan to live. A Michigan booster addressed me in the comments, and I’ve neglected to respond.

I have a very confused sense of place. I live in New Orleans. I cannot leave. I cannot live anywhere else. I had a conversation recently, where I was asked how long I plan to say in New Orleans. I said I plan to die here, so the duration is any one’s guess. The follow up was a request to give three reasons why.

1. I am unemployable anywhere else.
2. I have absolutely no means by which to leave New Orleans.
3. After two weeks in any other city I am profoundly depressed. Since living in New Orleans this is much worse, because I am aware of the depression.

Which is to say that I am trapped in New Orleans.

Yet, I am delighted to be trapped in New Orleans, since it gives me the sense of place, and an entitlement to that sense of place, that I did not have before.

There is no sense of place to which I can return, no place to return. I am from Detroit originally, but my family left in 1976 when I was four. If I say that I’m from Detroit, people in the know will ask, are you really from Detroit? Which is to ask, which suburb of Detroit do you come from? By taking part in the economic evacuation of the Motor City, I’ve relinquished my claim.

I am from Huntington Woods, a suburb of Detroit. A nice suburb, but there is no sense of place. It is lovely housing stock, but it is housing, only housing. There is no place to return, no place to visit. Scotia Park? Burton Elementary? I sat in the park across from my childhood home a few years back, and was concerned that I’d get reported for loitering.

I’m learning how to enjoy my weekends.

On Friday evening, I wandered down to the recently reopened Fair Grinds, on Ponce de Leon off Esplanade, with my computer, with the intention of doing work. There was a band on the sidewalk playing and people where up and down the street, drinking wine from the wine shop, Sip, listening to music.

I’d wanted so dearly to do something anti-social for a change. The day had already been given over to PovertyPalooza at the Pierre Marquette Hotel. It was a burst of mingling with dear people, among a group who’s ambition was palpable. A dissonance that is exhausting.

Almost alone in the shop itself, I’ve unraveled my bluey, and laid out the MacBook, when Jared Michael Zeller taps me on the shoulder. I’m out the door in a few short minutes to get caught up with him. I want to regale him with tales of the orgy of self-congratulation at the Piere Marquette.

This corner of New Orleans has sprung to life now. Across the street at the fabulous and financially challenging restaurant Dega’s, Jeane Nathan is supping with her husband Bob Tannon. I must tell her how much I enjoyed her question about poverty earlier in the day. Not a question of course, but when the 1 Economy MC Rey Ramsey began to take questions, Jeane Nathan thanked him for the forum, and then made a number of, run of the mill post-flood political statements, that must have been in violation of Rey’s admonishment to not talk about political issues during the dialog on poverty. Public housing closed and going to waste, was what I recalled.

Indeed, Jeane confirmed that one of the muffins was calling cut, with a finger across the thought while Jeane spoke. My estimation of 1 Economy Corporation went down the last notch, from misguided to an all too clever scam. Invite your funders to a Donahue set, and walk through the audience asking them how they are alleviating poverty. A dog chasing it’s tail.

On Saturday, after a morning at Fair Grinds contending with task anxiety, I set out to teach an Internet Workshop on publishing at ThinkNOLA. This was an event hosted at Melanie and Ken Ehrlich’s house.

Ray Broussard stopped by to give me a ride. He was gracious enough to pick up the tab at Liuzza’s by the Track, where he had a catfish po’ boy and I had the phenomenal bbq shrimp po’ boy, with fresh cut French fries, and an Abita Amber in a frozen glass.

Melanie and Ken have a new home, the only one on the block, in their Gentilly neighborhood. They are across the street form the Holy Cross site. That has got to give them some hope for someday having neighbors again.

We had a little classroom already setup, coffee and cookies. K.C. King arrived. I proceeded to give a lecture on ranking and show them Google Analytics, to stress the importance of publishing. We all took a page on the Wiki and began to learn the ins and outs of Textile markup.

It went well. We decided to meet again next weekend and work further on the website.

Saturday night I was out until the wee hours, and rode home listening to birds chirping. I’d met Mimi Dimassa at Mimi’s on Franklin. But, Mimi doesn’t own Mimi’s. Mimi is developing a project to build homes using sprayed concrete. I interested her in the Road Home Unconference. I hope to hear from her this week.

The next day, I was dragging for being up so late. It was good to have been up late on a weekend for once. Not really the best way to spend a weekend however. I much preferred my Sunday night at Bacchanal, for the second weekend in a row.

It was packed. I ordered salmon and sat with the people with whom I stood in line. Exchanged stories about migration toward New Orleans with a woman that was also a Detroit toddler.

Then hours drifted by while I sat with another gal I’ve known these many months. We spoke with a couple visiting from Tennessee, first about New Orleans, then about immigration for a tick, and then onto the Iraq war.

Thus, I’ve heard two very kind things said to me this weekend. Melanie Ehrlich ended the lessons on Saturday saying, “I feel so empowered.” What a strange thing to hear from Dr. Ehrlich.

Then the kind fellow from Tennessee said that I should work for the State Department. Yes, I’m sure there was a subtle joke at my expense, but a much better way to end a discussion than to have to “agree to disagree.”

That was the weekend that was. Last weekend. it has taken me this many days to write this piece.