Here It Comes Again

"My love, it's late autumn
and my face is changing, too."

"Your Face" from Barry Gifford's BACK IN AMERICA, Published by Light of New Orleans Publishing

* * *

Praise glorious days! Cold blue sky, tourists skittering everywhere. Lunch with scribe Dean Paschal (BY THE LIGHT OF THE JUKE BOX), who signed his book bought earlier at Faulkner House, where once the great Faulkner slept and shot BB-gun pellets at habited nuns vacating Saint Louis Cathedral next door. The author-inscribed book was a host gift dedicated to "Toby & Lily," two dogs with whom I sit, and their master, who cooked for us all on Christmas Day, a glorious day, indeed.

A week later, the Earth wobbled round the Sun and yet another year passed. Where this one will end nobody knows, not even Art Bell.

Near last year's end, the wobble seemed to scrape hard against the edges of the Universe, from earthquakes and killer tidal waves in the Indian Ocean to Landslide's sanctimonious Second Coming in Washington. At home, we championed curious voting machines without recount-able trails; and who knows what kind of elections in Iraq, where locals keep blowing up the election workers.

Still, we are here, cold one week and in short pants the next.

We cowered under the Christmas Day snowflake in the company of good friends and old dogs, at such a succulent dinner party -- a Reveillon! News of closed bridges, overpasses and entire highways filtered over cell phones and radios, keeping us mindful that the outside stairs to Squalor Heights could be growing un-navigable. Sleet stood on them when we came down, and it was hardly melting. A broom brushed away the slush, but might it not turn to impenetrable ice that could easily send old blowhards like me toppling fathead over heels into the courtyard below? I left early and got home safely.

Next morning, slate roofs outside the dormer windows were white, and some game soul with a six-inch snowman smiled up from the street below. I wanted for beads to toss down.

Cold mornings that followed Christmas were spent breakfasting on eggnog and garlic bread spirited from the dinner party, and listening from under down comforters to "Imus in the Morning," on the radio.

For the holidays, "The I-Man" aired old shows. On one segment, "No Spin Factor" Bill O'Reilly was a sad laugh. "No-Spin" smugly leapt onto support for the President's aircraft carrier war-done-done stunt. Then he and Imus loosed loads of laughter on Hollywood-ers, who had not lock-stepped with them to such "easy victory." Alas, by 2005, it turned out the president's "easy victory" was only visible on television. Can that O'Reilly spot a spin or what?

Imus said the U. S. death toll was (then) about one hundred. "No-Spin" said what really upset him was that one-hundred Americans gave their lives to free Iraq, and the ingrates ran out into the streets and looted. What upsets me is that those who follow fools go to foolish places.

And what about that millennium computer thing? It has been five years now, so have we survived, or just forgotten it for greater fears and newer spins?

All in all, a lot of good laughs last year, as we wobbled one more time round the dance floor. But Merciful Lord, have you looked at the calendar? Mardi Gras falls on February 8! There is not a moment to squander, open the Medicinal Red and lift up your shirts.