I don't have my cables to connect my camera and upload images- but I must share my appreciation for the neighborhood around my son's new school. He registers today at Loyola. Loyola sits on St Charles Avenue, which is an oak-canopied road with trolley tracks running down the middle. Across the street from the campus is the Audobon park... (and a zoo?) St Charles Avenue is lined with everything from beautiful mansions, elaborate church complexes, taverns and shotgun houses with lively front porches. Everybody is so nice and conversational... from the trolley captain to the hotel desk clerk, to the people at the next table at the restaurant. For dinner last night I had Catfish LaFitte... an oral sensation to die for! Incredible! Kent and I walked half way back to the hotel before catching a trolley car, and we just enjoyed the perfume of blossoms in the air, the hum of insects, the glimpses of the crescent moon through the oak branches, the greetings of other pedestrians, and the architectural beauty of the houses we passed. We are a long way from home, but I feel this is a good place for Kent right now.
If I could have done one painting for my daily painting yesterday, it would have been my thick white china dinner plate... the ochre-orange crusted cat fish drenched in a pale white lumpy sauce garnished with tiny burnt orange deep-fried shrimp, resting on a bed of swirling yellow mashed potatoes and, perched precariously on the upper right edge, a side bowl of dancing black beans garnished with speckled dashes of rice grains and green rings of scallions. The plate would be floating in a dark blue-black sky with oak branches lined in silver and giant velvety white and yellow magnolia blossoms and, of course, a glimpse of the moon through an indigo window of branches. I would paint all this on the airplane ticket and campus map. I would ignore the urge to dwell on my sons eyelashes, his restless legs, his adams apple full of nerves.
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