Should I Move Now? — On Moving from New Orleans to New York City

A view of Carrollton Avenue from the streetcar

As I peer out onto S. Carrollton Avenue where I've made my home for the past two years, I decide to rechristen my neighborhood, "The Path Where the Oaks Begin".
At the intersection of Palmer Park and Carrollton, the palm trees end and the oaks begin (but they end too, further down and over on St. Charles).

I came to New Orleans after ten years (more or less, with a brief hiatus abroad) living in St. Benedict, Louisiana.

There my life was directed by an horarium (literally) and circumscribed by a 1200 acre loblolly and part deciduous forest (we had both low-lying magnolias and tall proud pines).

I was a seminarian destined to be a Benedictine and a priest. But, that career choice did not quite bloom into a permanent life decision. My advent into the secular world was a half transition.

I had a car and a bachelor's pad but I still worked for the Church - a la the Christian Brothers.

I like to say my last two years as a civilian have been my own Teach for America.

I turned in my last lesson plan last week, said goodbye to my adorable students, and have decided to rid myself of Nola.

The next few weeks will be a transition time for me.

If you've been a faithful reader of stones of erasmus, I thank you.

I will continue to post, of course. I disconnected my home Internet so my online forays are limited to iPhone 3G splendor and desperate dashes to the corner hot spot (password: shangrila).

I'll try to document the transition to the best of my ability.

Be assured unsolicited words of encouragement are welcome.

P.S.: I'm not sure where I'll be living in the Big Apple but I'm eyeing anywhere along the Red line in the Bronx or even Morningside Heights. I've even considered Staten Island, Jersey City, and Harlem.

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Short Story: "Secret Incognito" (A Piece of Stones of Erasmus Juvenilia)

"Secret Incognito" is a short story by Greig Roselli (© 1996)

A YOUNG BOY DECIDED TO ENTER A FIELD.

Stone monoliths soared into the sky with shards of rusty metal and broken glass beneath.  The enigmatic structures beckoned the lad; the eight slabs of concrete called to him.  Stains of derision from his family clung.  He climbed the fence (which had a clearly visible sign stenciled in red: “NO TRESPASSING!”) to escape for a while. He penetrated quickly to elude the threatening noise of the close traffic. With quick steps, he had already entered the depths, but he wasn’t afraid. Rusted metal, a browned apple core, and aluminum scraps riddled the bare, gaseous earth. Thorn laden brambles engulfed the concrete slabs. A can of Moxie lay entrapped in one of its clutches. Concealed in the twisting vine one could find secrets and lost memories. All of a sudden it seemed an adventure to explore this vast void, to maybe find a truth. A way to prove to himself there was more to life than bitterness and homework. The collected, curly-headed youth looked upward: tall monuments to fallen bridges that once traversed mighty waters stood before him. Huge pieces of masonry, stacked one on top of another, looked enticingly climbable. He scaled it with much agility, using the large rusty appendages as an aid. A bead of sweat etched its way across the boy’s face: the first sign of effort, true gusto, true vigor.

Repost: Why We're All Glad English Carries Gender Type Information

Photo by JW on Unsplash

A repost from NPR by Jessica Love of a story about grammar - when gender sometimes matters in language.

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When gender sometimes matters in grammar (and why grammar examples are fun). This is the funniest grammar story since the panda in the bar.

Last year, arriving late to a departmental Christmas party, I was immediately greeted by a waifish 10-year-old with pale skin, delicate features, neatly braided long brown hair, and a stuffed clown fish.The girl solemnly informed me that her stuffed animal was dying of diphtheria. “Oh no!” I cried in mock horror. “Is your fish contagious?” Perhaps fearing I would launch into a speech about how young ladies should be careful around contagious fish, a fellow graduate student quickly interjected, He’s sure the fish isn’t contagious. I asked him that same question.” And that is how I learned that the strange girl with the delicate features and the long braid was in fact a boy. How deftly pronominal information is delivered, and gleaned, by fluent speakers! How different the entire situation would have been were I a speaker of Hawaiian or Persian, where gender isn’t marked at all!

by Jessica Love, Excerpt from I ♥ Pronouns

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Seven Exciting Interview Questions for David Gordon Green

In this post, I imagine an interview with the film director David Gordon Green.

David Gordon Green, American Film Director, and Producer

David Gordon Green is most famous for his hash success Pineapple Express. He once said that McCabe and Mrs. Miller is the most beautiful movie ever made. He also wrote and directed George Washington, a film about black youth in an impoverished southern town. This earlier work interweaves the kids' lives, pursuits, dreams, and the consequences of choice and fate.

I liked the film so much, I concocted an interview I'd like to give:

1. You mentioned in an interview with Charlie Rose, that you were okay with making "C's" in school. Do you think creativity is different than academic achievement?

2. In your film George Washington, there is a scene filmed in an abandoned school, completely filled in with kudzu, making it invisible from the street. As an artist from the south, what do you think needs to be done to rejuvenate our educational systems? George Washington depicts kids who are brimming with life but cut at the buds because of societal limitations. It reminds me of Steinbeck's novel Of Mice and Men. What do you think?

3. You seem to capture the beauty and ambiguity of youth so accurately, and differently, than any other artist, I have seen. What is your vision for youth in America, especially in the wake of Columbine, 9/11, and No Child Left Behind?

4. Whatever happened to the Confederacy of Dunces? Is it a cursed project?

5. Have you ever dabbled in fiction?

6. How is your house in New Orleans coming along?

7. One final question. Will you marry me?

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Why A Running Car is Sexy (with Apologies to J.G. Ballard)

Please excuse me if I find a running car sexy, especially if it's dirty and used, coke cans scattered across the dash, spilled on rotten cushions, the sound of a radio whispering through its slightly cracked window somebody's car — someone with a soul, with possessions, an eroding history pitted inside a car, still running.
  And me, a tad bit voyeuristic, watching and waiting, the culmination of will-they-ever-come-for-the-get-away or will the car just stall there, idling?

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How Five-Year Olds See Adults Who Try to Talk At Their Level

Movie Review: World's Greatest Dad

Read a movie review by Greig Roselli about Bobcat Goldwaithe's dark comedy World's Greatest Dad (2009).

Two scenes are striking in Bobcat Goldwaithe's World's Greatest Dad (2009). THE FIRST is the scene where Lance Clayton, a beleaguered middle-age writer-cum-high school poetry teacher (Robin Williams) finds his strangled son, dead in his bedroom. The scene is doubly jarring for the viewer because, one, the first fifteen minutes of the film deliberately sets you up to despise the kid (Daryl Sabara, played with an acute douchebag factor). Kyle curses like a sailor, looks at scat porn, calls girls at school whores, proudly glorifies his own insouciant stupidity, uses his dad and his best friend Andrew to his own benefit, and is pretty much openly non-repentant about his deeds -- to the point of rebuffing every ounce of care his dad, Lance, has to offer.

     Second, is the cause of the boy's death (basically he dies via auto-eroticism). Go figure. Goldwaithe goes through extensive pains to make sure you absolutely hate this kid -- but at the same time -- when he is found in his bedroom, despite the embarrassing circumstances -- the viewer feels for Lance and the grief over his dull, insipid son. Even a douchebag son's death elicits authentic catharsis. Wow. I don't think I've seen this in cinema in a long time. I think this is partly due to Williams' engaging performance. Williams is an actor who can make you identify with the absurd. Think of The Night Listener, for example (which has eerie parallels to this film). The entirely silent soliloquy of finding the dead boy, checking to see if he is alive, releasing him from his makeshift noose, and mourning over his dead body was a genuine cathartic moment.

"The Dispute": Flash Fiction

Two dudes fight about what's better, bikes or boards.

BMXers are better for sure.

Nah.

I say, skaters.

BMX is an art.

Skateboarders just have that one board.

Bikes are intricate. Gears. Pedals. It's a craft.

More technical and you have to work 'em out.

But skating is like negative space. It is about the nothing between you and the board.

What?

You know what I mean.

No, really, I don't.

It's like - I don't know. Fuck.  

The skate park is empty except for Neil and Bryce. Neil kicks at the open gravel with his worn out tennis shoes. Bryce pumps air into his tire. The day is harsh. The air smells like turkey sandwiches and mace. The old garage-turned-park is grungy. A huge peace sign adorns the back wall. Metal siding decorates the corridors. The skate shop is closed. The place is closing down.

Hey guys, we're closing the place down. Time to get out.

One last go?

Hurry it up.

Bryce props his bike on the descending floorboard. The ground is uneven and raw. The place used to be a boat building company. Recently constructed by a Ph.D. student in urban planning to ostensibly curb violence and drug dealing, kids come to hang out mostly on weekends. Bryce walks his bike up the ramp. Saddles his bike as if it were a well-trusted friend. It is the force of gravity that propels him. The downward swoosh. His body does nothing. The bike moves with the flow of the earth's downward pull. Braced to the bike like a friend, he kicks off the ledge. The ramp takes a novice biker to the ground fast. After a few tries, you learn the ramp. You learn, like a Zen koan, the simplicity of the curves. The ramp is like a parabola. Arriving, at the other end the rider gives himself the needed push to make the trick. It is at this point the rider must fight gravity's pull and not let it take him. Bryce leverages the bike a bit to give it the control he needs, kicks it up and he is flying through the air as if he were to stay afloat forever. Nothing enters. His mind is a blank slate. As if he does not exist. That's the nice thing. The erasing of thought, he thinks. You don't have to think. Bryce hits the rough edge of the board's terminus. He spins the bike around on one wheel, bringing himself to a stop; adrenaline, like a rush from inside of him escalates and he wants to go again.  

Dusk is like charcoal. Both friends depart. Neil does an ollie in front of the ice cream van, as if to say, "Fuck you." And we get it then. What Neil said. It is the empty spaces. It is the nothing that exists between me and the board; the ramp and the air; my bike and everything else. Maybe I get it maybe I don't. The dude who owns the van is yelling at Neil. Neil laughs. We all laugh and joke on our way home about Bryce's stunt.

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Quote: Cheever on Marriage

 “Liza sent us a wheel of Brie.” “That’s nice,” she said, “but you know what? Brie gives me terribly loose bowels.” He hitched up his genitals and crossed his legs. “That’s funny,” he said. “It constipates me.” That was their marriage then - not the highest paving of the stair, the clatter of Italian fountains, the wind in the alien olive trees, but this: a jay-naked male and female discussing their bowels.

John Cheever, The Falconer

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photo credit: canarygirl

"Short Story": Søren’s Problem

image credit: sacrevoir

ON A WOODEN, MOLDING PARK BENCH in Dante Square I watch people, in cars, or scurrying to the subway entrance, pass the bruised statue of Dante Alighieri, slightly smaller than a person, standing amidst some guarded poplars and dogwoods, a singed bronze laurel atop his head, an open book in his hand: abandon all hope ye who enter here; his hard eyes peer ahead to the steel, adamantine buildings, beyond the trees, etching out a damned vision. I do not smile as I sit, nor do I frown; I just sit here transfixed. Images. Pastels. Dot-matrix printouts of experience. A feature-length film queuing in my brain, snapshots of Christine placed between the frames. I snip the celluloid, hungry and bone-weary. I have a story to tell. In the Cinema Paradiso of reality, a guy runs up to me, a runner on his beat. He stops his stride and backs up a few feet, looking over my head.

Quote of the Day for a Recession

In this quote from Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle, an unwritten law about capitalism is illustrated.

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Notes from a High School English Teacher: Letter to my Students

Copy of a high school teacher's letter to his students about their final freshman year writing project with an addendum of quotes:

Valediction

    IT IS OFTEN said, "words are like bullets."

    While, this may not sound true - how can a word be like a bullet? - it is VERY true.

    Our words matter. Like a bullet, words can DO something. Cause destruction. Words can cause a revolution. Words can shatter. Words rock.

    Here we have a collection of your words, strung together to make a PORTFOLIO.

Words matter.

    Writing has not yet deserved a funeral. But a resurgence.

    SO

    It has been a quirky, productive year. Even Susie Q agrees. Bon Qui Qui also concurs. Even, Mr. Roselli, that unkempt teacher, who barely gets his grades in on time and wears mixed-match clothes, seldom shaves, and looks like he is married to a coffee cup, agrees - words matter. Keep writing.

    I remember all of you:

    Especially these random things:

    1. Raised hands; 2. fixing my hair; 3. plushy fish dolls; 4. Au Revoir Les Enfants; 5. Oedipus at the Museum; 6. Mr. Hebert's benign interruptions; 7. Mr. Stabiler's talk on Greek Mythology; 8. big words; 9. "imitation is the best form of flattery"; 10. "familiarity breeds contempt"; 11. Google Hacks; smartboard mishaps; 12. "Y'all are hot (higher order thinkers)"; 13. "A MANNNNN?"; 14. literary rally champs; 15. "Hey, I know what hyperbole means!"; 16. "Thunk is my word!"; 17. "Does reading about Lady Gaga count?"; 18. "You're making us read this .... sophisticated newspaper ...?"; 19. "Can we read the Inferno? I like hell"; 20. "How can a guy survive on a lifeboat with a tiger? I mean come on."; 21. "Mr. Roselli, you need a hug?"; 22. "You know you love us."; 23. "OMG! I love that book!"; 24. "This may sound funny, but I wrote this paper last night. But, it's brilliant."; 25. "You guys are sick!"; 26. "You know, it reminds me of an episode from Sponge Bob ..."; 27. "Give me back the pen, buster."; 28. A severe whooshing sound; 29. pile of sweaters; 30. Free Writes!; 31. interactive notebooks; 32. scotch tape; 33. indecipherable handwriting; 34. chronic sleepers; 35. overachievers; 36. underachievers; 37. "Hitch your wagon to a star! Or, what's a heaven for?"; "Can you exterminate the lights, please? Or is it terminate? I can't remember." 38. There's a difference: To be is to do (Socrates); Yabba dabba doo (Fred Flintstone)
G. Roselli

New Orleans, LA

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