This all happened, Sunday morning catch-ups turned to stats rundowns, when the Saints were still going for a shut-out season, and I admit that I was a hesitant hold out amidst all the faith and jingoism. But not because I’m not into football – I don’t fully understand it myself, but I’m one of those guys who can chant “Rudy” for a while and feel better about most situations. And I almost failed 5th grade because I was out in the street every night with the neighborhood crew shooting hoops and playing tackle in W’s yard (after W moved) – not only forgot about specific homework assignments but lost grasp of the concept of homework entirely. I still see those guys around when I go home, except it’s been a little weird since one of them got out of jail – armed grand theft – and told me that he thought about all our fun times when he was locked up. I liked playing ball, but otherwise we had dissonant memories.

But that’s another story, maybe. Some people have complicated relationships with sports. I’m not one of them; you could say I mostly eschew them these days. I didn’t play much football after everyone started highschool and that was a pretty easy groove to settle into through college, where I started off at The College of William and Mary. And: I honestly had no idea we had a football team. A visiting girlfriend asked what the fuss was about when we happened on some gameday tailgating on the way to the stocks or whatever and I said “it must be a track meet.” Zero Tribe Pride – missed out on Darin Sharper (#42). Would’ve missed out on him anyway; he’s seven or so years older than me.

Then I transferred to University of Florida and lived next door to The Swamp. Directly next door. New Orleans Saint Bobby McCray (#93) was a Gator, and I must’ve seen him practice because I ran in The Swamp almost every day and I think we were the same year, but probably never in a game because I scalped my tickets for a ridiculous amount of money to a nice couple who didn’t mind paying premium to see what felt like UF’s only losing season. Tray and Wendy B-. I remember them particularly because we had to keep going back to the ATM for the Miami game and then I dropped $500 in twenties in the middle of a spirit parade. I had six inch black liberty spikes at the time and felt like a total asshole money grubbing in the middle of University Ave. But paid cash for my first electric.

Then Boston College. I’m not sure there are any Saints that were Eagles, but BC was home of Doug Flutie, originator of the Hail Mary, my favorite play (both metaphorically and in the game). I even wrote a super cryptic poem about it, published it and everything – “hail marys every play,” the first line of which addresses what I’m trying to get at here in a roundabout way: “college ball gets a bad rap in the coffee in cemetaries set – italian v-necks trumping orange spice breezes and morning bloody mary’s, ripped brim caps and whales so wide you dream of scrimshaw.”

Which is to say: we’re not really the kind of people who care about football. And excuse that “we” if you care deeply; you know what I mean. But, for a lot of New Orleanians this Saint’s thing isn’t really about football. It’s about Katrina and vindication and not losing. It’s cathected and divine (I know I use that phrase too much, but this is a benediction). Which is funny because before they started winning games – Post-Katrina – we were all pissed because the city was spending millions of dollars to keep the team in New Orleans. And thousands of people were living in FEMA trailers and agitating for a scaling back or altogether dissolution of the Saints franchise. Because then it was a franchise, not a team, and I think everyone thought it was going to turn into a Utah Jazz situation.

You don’t really hear about that now, though, because the Saints have become bigger than themselves, bigger even than a team. If you take Kermit Ruffins jams as gospel – and a lot of people do – they are New Orleans. But not for me – I’m a little removed; it’s been a long time now since I’ve lived in the city and I don’t necessarily need or want a football team to Vindicate, or signify The Vindication of, New Orleans. But all those people down there, the ones that are superstitious as hell and who, against their better judgement and caught up in the moment, hung their forty dollar fleur-de-lis branded psychic hats on a football team that didn’t even register enough to disappoint me in my formative years when I cared about football…

I hope the Saints win it for them.

• synesthesia (writing)
• the week i got stolen
• AMR Podcast #22: Poetry of Departures/Two Feminists

Not surprisingly, this track is from when I was 21 – from a tape I got through an ex-girlfriend from a prep chef who was friends with the singer. I actually had, I think, a live demo version – which got stuck in the car I ended up leaving with my non-wire mom in New Orleans, so she ended up listening to it for a few months with STOP ANIMAL VIVISECTIONS and KILL YOUR T.V. stickers on the bumper. Now the radio’s broken and instead of fixing it she has a transistor radio you have to hang out the window, which is more rock and roll than the song, really.

Anyway, this is the last you’ll hear from me about it. Just felt like a Christmas Miracle to finally get the sound down.

• AMR Podcast #25 – Introducing Bat Matthews
• Against Me!: I Was a Teenage Anarchist (EP)
• Weekend Primer: Tom Gabel – Heart Burns

It’d been a slow grow, and not creeping either. My first novella, My Life as an Aerophyte – pre-Zeitoun, by the way – was post-Katrina rootlessness fictionalized. And there are one or two observations I feel like I can make about rootlessness and nostalgia four years of interiority later. Namely, most people get a grace period before that real self-shattering nostalgia kicks in. What you want is geriatric nostalgia – long pans and muted symphonies, a life behind. So, if something goes terribly wrong and you’re saddled with nostalgia at 24… what comes after?

I hadn’t realized there was a post-nostalgia. I thought I’d be forever cursed with flashing soft and hard eyes, always homesick for something and fighting to keep my feet just barely on the ground. But driving back to my childhood home – a temperamental transistor radio propped out the window; my old car’s been living hard without me – I saw New Orleans for the first time without candy-coating and realized I wasn’t nostalgic anymore.

And the only thing worse than being weighed down with nostalgia is what comes after: idle absence, no sepia-tone to get heavy-hearted about. Not being sick over a frame that held a photo the mold got of a house the mold got too. Just not identifying anymore. The streets I lit votives for post-Katrina, the one’s I promised myself I’d live on – renovating a camelback, planting gardenias and drinking Abita on the porch – were just streets.

I bought The Road at a Hudson News after our flight back to New Jersey was delayed – two more fat crows in the sky. But I didn’t have to count any crows for future-glimpses; Bank of America was doing that for me. On my second day back in the office I got a call from an Anti-Fraud Agent about some irregular charges on my account – my card had been compromised; I’d been twinned.

While I was in New Orleans feeling like I’d been somehow robbed, someone somehow robbed me. Rented a car, bought some Ray Bans, drove to Vegas, got a bunch of fifty dollar subscriptions to bottom-shelf skin sites. Up through the part about roadtrip I was half-checking my pockets for wayward chips – I’d been romanticizing those Pueblo-style McMansions just a week before, brown turf on the front lawn and road bikes in the garage.

Was I overheard? Did the livery driver, pulling up to a sketchy Banco Popular en route to the Hudson Tunnel, sense a need for tangible reinforcement of looming ontological issues? Or was this a wake up call? A sort of get-a-hold-of-yourself-or-someone else-will?

• AMR MUSIC MONTH: “Rebecca True & Charlie Kind”
• The New Orleans Saints: A Benediction
• synesthesia (writing)

Click for AMR Podcast #22

In this podcast: Merlitons (see picture)

• AMR Podcast #21: The one about the sharks
• Triangulating Happiness (2007)
• mr. feathers flies again (2006)