The First Hours in New Orleans

Dear Sarah and Brandon,

I watched Leah comfortably, with quiet aplomb, surf on the dance floor tonight – her shoulder pressed into a spin after being caught from another, her unused arm cocked at half-mast like Lucy’s always was while her feet lovingly smashed invisible cigarette butts into the floor.  The next number, the violin-playing band leader announced, after he had passed his own cigarette around to the drummer before putting it out in the stage floor, was a challenge for the dancers, a track from Andrew Bird’s Bowl of Fire and their first album, Oh, The Grandeur; and they launched into the strange, fast polka of Oh Vidalia.  Leah attentively skipped around the dance floor and I went for my phone to take a video to send you, and I had left it at the apartment, and I was also glad for that for a second.  The place was called Always.  Then we took our bikes slowly cruising through the warm night to Mimi’s for the late kitchen.

This is the first place I’ve been that is the actualization of the vacuum getting filled by the squatters and smart artists and people hoping and thriving on the new start.  The couple slowly making out at the next table makes me think of Barcelona.

I think of you always.

Love,

Timmo