Stages

Back home in New Orleans, at CRISP Farm, we have a stage with electricity where microphones and speakers can be piped in. I get a lot of ideas. According to something I once read, over sixty thousand a day. But this is a good one. We should have a monthly talent show for all ages. Five minutes each. There will be no judging or prizes awarded. No critiques. The experience will be about the experience.

            There is something that happens when someone can feel the joy he is giving to those watching him. The energy shifts. This cannot even be controlled. Take a look at Lemon Boy D in this attached video. Watch the way his shoulders move. I believe he is feeling everyone and everything around him. There is no fear. Not everybody is this way. It is my belief that by getting together and sharing laughter we can let go of those sides of ourselves that we hide from others for fear of being laughed at and mocked. In the moment none of this matters. And even if you don’t get up there, you will appreciate what the ones who did have done. You may not say so.

            Which leads me to another question about how I need to be seen, and, because I can only see the world through my own perspective, how others need to be seen as well. And did I ruin a popsicle relationship with a woman who once wanted all of our basil and cucumbers because I was trying to sell her friends nutria tacos? And was I selling the nutria tacos because I needed to be weird or because I needed to make a statement to the Eat Local Challenge people about how much food is being wasted when nutrias are shot for three bucks a tail and their carcasses left to rot in the spot where it was cut off. And then I have to ask myself what is the greater issue here? Is it my need for attention or is it the fact that we as humans have been conditioned to only eat certain things that all must be hygienic, that the very shampoo we use is killing the bacteria we need for our skin to do what our skin needs to do? But that’s a whole ‘nother story. Let’s stick to eating. Let’s stick to the fact that perfectly good meat

is wasted daily because of the word “rat”. Rats!

            Dejuan—aka Lemon Boy D—received his nickname after eating almost five lemons in three minutes, securing his spot as champion of the weird-eating contest. The facilitators had quartered the lemons. Dejuan ate nineteen. Autumn led the women with thirteen. Even the joy in the other kids who were too cool to get up on stage or do anything even though they talked a big game could be witnessed in the way they watched and laughed and cheered on their lemon-eating friends.

            Sometimes it takes time to cross over the bridge between fear and self-confidence, and it doesn’t matter what or how much good or accomplishment is within you. Some kids just got it. Doesn’t even matter if they’re good. Others suffer from Barbara Streisandism, and it doesn’t matter how good they are. Some of these kids who are the most vocal about their skills are the hardest to be found when the talent show comes around. I believe they suffer from Barbara Streisandism. Now….what if Barbara Streisand was cheered on back in Brooklyn when she was a little girl? Would she still have had to stay away from the stage for 27 years? Is talent sliding away because kids aren’t given the chance? Is the joy of being able to laugh at yourself becoming a lost art in the computer age? Could it be rekindled at CRISP?

            This idea may not help everybody, but it will bring the people together to watch. And that’s community.

            During my years of drinking I used to try to write with anyone who would write with me. We wrote with manic hands to get as much on the page as we could because there was no pressure. In the moment. There is something that is killed by the spirit of what other people are going to think of this or that and how much has to change and….how many of you have written a piece right into the ground until the first draft was ten times better than what you have pored over for years?

            There is something in the safety of that exquisite corpse style of writing. Something that allows mistakles to be a part of the process, that allows these to be met with communal laughter rather than the scorn and judgment that comes from a need to feed the ego. The heart does not separate. The heart knows no you and me. And there is joy in coming together.

            And when I get back to New Orleans I am going to have an event. It is going to start with the neighborhood first. It need not ever grow bigger. I want to get Chief Damond and all the other Indians to lead us down the block and back to the stage. And goddamn this is gonna be fun. Just look at Dejuan’s shoulders and the way the music moves him and the excitement he feeds from the people that are watching, and sure there are kids in the chairs who will judge him and say they could have done better, but he was doing it. He will tell you, “I killed it” because he did “kill it” because he was having fun.

Pissing While Riding a Bicycle through the Back End of a Rumored Tornado

I am a test specimen, a guest of this life that I've been given to record a tornado in New Orleans just past midnight. I ride through the rain on a bike with a chain that rattles every time the pedals rotate. The sky flashes gray. Bicycle tires create a wake. The brim of my leather hat collects rain drops that fall to my chest each time I bend forward.
            I follow the front tire through the one-foot puddles of the Tremé to the other side of Rampart Street where water rises and falls against French Quarter curbs.

            Nobody sleeps in Jackson Square tonight. Nobody walks. Nobody talks. The bums have found places to hide. The Cathedral steps are silent.
            Two gutter punks share a bag of beignets on the other side of a closed Cafe Du Monde. The powdered sugar coats the dough like paste. I ride through the puddles, laughing at the tourists who duck and run and hide under balconies. The sky flashes gray. Everybody drinks inside the bars of Decatur: Molly's at the Market, Coop's Place, The Alibi.

            These streets are mine.
            There's music playing on Frenchmen. I watch the rain blow like a sheet past the lamplight above the Praline Connection. A guitar rift escapes the doors of the Apple Barrel. Tourist girls gather across the street at the place that plays reggae. Everybody's afraid of this rain save me and the two people: the guy spinning the twirling barefoot girl in the middle of Frenchmen. Taxi cabs become our guests tonight. We will become the weather. I ask the couple for a cigarette.
            She looks sexy with wet, jet black hair and beads of rain dripping between her breasts.            "I'll get you one," she says." She tries, but the people inside the reggae place are unwilling to give up what they have.

            I take off my hat and get a taste of the rain. I want to smoke now. I've got that itch to go and get a cigarette so I ride past the R Bar. The doors are open but nobody stands outside. Branches blow as I cross Esplanade. The sky flashes grey. People can hear my chain from blocks away. Only firecracker thunder drowns me out. I pass Miss Lucy, the bartender from Johhny White's, who is carrying an umbrella and cursing her dog in Spanish.
            The Golden Lantern always was a standby if I needed a drink or a cigarette; I just don't want to go inside and sit. I don't want old men trying to rub my leg. I want this rain.
            I take a right on Bourbon Street. The rain hits my leather hat and drips down my soaking wet shirt. The first three people I ask for cigarettes tell me it's their last one; I can see the outlines of cigarette packs in their front pockets. Some might blame inflation or the economy. I blame the street where I ride. Nobody on Bourbon wants to share. Maybe the girl trapped in a closed doorway of Razzoo wants to free herself from the bouncer.
            She rocks back and forth as I ask for a smoke.
            "They're Ultra Lights," she says.
            I tell her that I'll tear off the filter. "You got a lighter?"
            "Only wet matches."
            I ask her, "I can get a monkey fuck?"
            She won't look at me. The bouncer doesn't like what he just heard.
            I ride on without telling them that I simply wanted to use her cigarette to light mine. I ask groups huddled under balconies smoking, big plumes blowing above their heads. How can all of them be on their last cigarette? Do people from America not give anymore? I'm a guy with a soaking wet broken Ultra Light, and nobody will give me a fresh cigarette.
            I give up. Time to ride back home. But as any smoker knows, you never give up. Then I see a man with a big umbrella in Mardi Gras colors. Something tells me he's local. I shake my hands to get the rain off of me. The sky flashes gray. He gives me a long Marlboro Light 100. He lights the cigarette he has given me. After I get his name, I tell him, "I'm going to remember you, Doug."
            I stand across from Razzoo, safe under a balcony, slowly smoking, smiling at the bouncer who is alone. His trapped girl was found by her friends as I spoke with Doug. Thunder cracks. A drunk kid wobbles down the sidewalk like a boxer in the eleventh round, gripping onto poles to prevent himself from falling into the small stream of rain and piss and puke and beer that runs along the curb. A sheet of rain blows across neon. The cigarette tastes good. Warm. Necessary.
            I can go home now. The rain feels warmer the more I pedal, but rain induced shivers make me want to piss. I'm soaking wet. More and more drops hit me.
            Two guys kiss outside Clover Grill. I tell them to enjoy the rain as I take a right on Dumaine. I don’t care about holding it any longer. At Dauphine I let the piss run down my leg, splash onto my ankles, warming my whole lower body as I am released from the noise and the smell and the people of Bourbon Street; I ride and piss , past Dauphine, past Burgundy, past Rampart, and back into the Treme.
            I become the sky with each drop of myself that I give to the ground.
           

Carrying Home

Hemingway wrote about Michigan while living in Paris, and I guess that’s just the way it goes: the yearning of the place you have left behind is what still connects you. In Atlanta, I never wake up to CJ knocking on my door, saying, “Skew me, Mr. Zach. I could get the bike pump?” I don’t tell him that what he needs to do is get a new tire or have Mr. Ron fix that leaky flat for him. CJ helped me tear up my floor for eight bucks an hour, and because he let the word get out I then had kids as young as three come to ask if I had any work.

            These kids wanted to work, like the same kids who came around the garden and asked if I had anything to do. They were asking before money was introduced. So where does the disconnect come from, at what age? When does the desire to be helpful or to make just enough to buy a bowl of Yaka mein or a bag of hot Cheeto’s go away?

            Days after we finished with the floors, Quinn came over. Quinn is my number one gardening ally. He is seventeen. You can usually find him on a motorized bicycle that isn’t his. He started a garden on the abandoned lot next to his house. Every time I see him he is smiling, but there are some kids he runs around with who have guns. Maybe he has guns. He knew the kid who just got shot three weeks ago. Maybe this is why his name is different when he is around them. Maybe this is why I stopped saying, “You seen Quinn?” and started asking, “Where Buck is?”

            I miss the morning squawks of the roosters in the middle of the street and Miss B telling me six or eight times how she got to leave and be somewhere, while she continues to stand on my front porch, sucking her teeth and pushing Jesus, patting her shaved head and telling my friends that she’s 38 when she’s really 58. She makes the best pralines I ever tasted. I give her twenty bucks for as many as she can make along with potato salad for a BBQ. She says, “I don’t know if I’m coming. It’s supposed to be hot.” I don’t say that it’s New Orleans. It’s July. It’s always hot. I’m pretty sure she has spent all the money before making the potato salad, but then my woman Carrie wants to bring pralines back to Atlanta so there’s another twenty, and then there’s some complications so she needs another twenty from Carrie because the first twenty was just for materials and the next twenty was for labor. We did get a mess of pralines and about a quart of mustard heavy potato salad. Miss B even stopped by the party. Despite the heat. She told me bring her some chicken to the front door. Not too much though. I brought her five wings and an ear of corn. “I ain’t eating that.” I was surprised. Maybe I had offended her by not bringing enough. She turned to Carrie. “I told you that white lady brought me cookies. I threw those sons a bitches in the garbage. Birds shit. Stuff fall out the sky. And bugs…ooh bugs. You got to cover that shit. At least put some furl around it. I don’t give nobody nothing ain’t covered.” I walked back to the grill and covered her shit with two paper plates and cursed her under my breath cause that’s the only way to curse Miss B.

             I miss yelling at the kids on four wheelers speeding down Lesseps the wrong way at forty miles an hour to SLOW DOWN. I miss kids chasing kids chasing chickens. I miss Autumn who says that her mama who works at Foot Locker doesn’t like this neighborhood because there’s too much drama going on. And there’s always too much drama going on. And nobody ever knows who fired the first shot. But Autumn is an anomaly. There are lots of anomalies on my block. Autumn is quiet, respectful—she wears glasses and takes time before answering questions. She does not raise her voice to four-year-old Jade. And when I tell her that she needs to be in charge of the other kids if they want to go into the garden she listens. This is her position because she is over eleven. And how can we go wrong when one child is showing another child where food comes from and “Don’t eat the green ones” and “You got to look for bugs” and “Don’t step on that” and “That goes back in the compost” and “Use the water from the barrels” and “That’s not a weed” and “Be careful” and “No running”? These kids come to the fence and ask to work. This does not mean that all is innocence on Lesseps Street. This didn’t stop the fifteen-year-old from getting shot four blocks away. This didn’t prevent CRISP’s horticulturalist from being trapped behind the fences inside CRISP Farms while the man who robbed Family Dollar hid under A.B.’s house and cops milled about less than thirty yards away, shining their flashlights on anybody who passed by and making sure nobody came out of their houses.

            There are times when I water what we call our wild area, permaculture zone four or beyond, a host to Satsuma trees, okra, squash, and similar vegetation that needs less care, and I look through the fence that adjoins the backyards of the houses on France where people of working age stand outside all day and sometimes block the flow of traffic with very important conversations and hand signals. It is odd that our oft forgotten space borders the backyards of the oft forgotten inhabitants of France Street. I am not old enough to write these stories. I sometimes wonder if I will ever be old enough. How do you capture this: me measuring three foot away from the lime tree in each direction of the compass; through the fence a man shoots heroin into another man’s arm; I dig holes and pop yarrow out of four-inch pots; the man on the stoop bows his head in reverence to the rushing of the drug; in this moment I make no acknowledgement—there is no, “How you doing?”—for it is these same men I see when parting the sea on France Street in my black truck, and I still wave, and I still say hello, but they don’t say anything, and some of them glare like they don’t know me, but they seen me back there planting, and maybe they heard that the new owner of France Meat Market is going to stop the congregating, but if they heard what I’ve heard and then seen what I’ve seen, they don’t believe much in words anymore. I want them to believe in mine. I want you to believe in mine. I want all our words to be our bond. And I wonder where this saying came from.

That's not Food

There seem to be so many things to take care of these days. I have four email addresses, three bank accounts, two houses where I spend my time, notebooks for home, notebooks for the road, the facebook, a blog, a magazine where I write stories, a website for the farm, a facebook page for the farm, a journal with nightly inventories, a phone that connects me constantly. Amidst all of this I am expected to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I am not the only one. Nobody is making me do this. I am not even complaining. This is the way the world is today. But does it have to be?

               What would the Nearings think? Helen and Scott’s journey as documented in The Good Life  shows two people who foresaw what the fast paced, profit-guided new world would produce and chose instead to live an ascetic self-sufficient life in the country. They left New York City for a forest farm in Vermont in the thirties. Those of us who still dwell in cities have been removed from the source of our food for a lot longer than I would have guessed. In the early fifties, kids were brought from a progressive school in New York City to the wholesale vegetable market around Washington Square. The teacher asked them where they thought this wide array of produce had come from. In unison, the answer came back, “From the A & P, of course.” I had kids at CRISP Farm who thought my tomatoes were apples because tomatoes are supposed to be red. These same kids were blown away when I roasted sunflower seeds from sunflowers I grew. Xavier asked me to grow Ranch sunflower seeds next time. I told him I’d try. Then his brother Malik said, “You can’t grow ranch. You got to make ranch.” So we do know some things.

               Too often I hear people say that eating organic, whole foods is more expensive. As if the alternative is actually food. In America, and throughout the world, we put value in quantity and shop for volume rather than nutrients. Sure, you can get four plastic cups of apple sauce for three or four dollars, but these apples are pasteurized, injected with ascorbic acid, and while the packages tout no sugar added, you’ll see that the third ingredient, after apples and water, is often high fructose corn syrup. Compare this to two apples at the same price. Which is giving the consumer more value?

               The pharmaceutical companies bring in billions of dollars each year while our citizens continue to get sicker. It is not in the interest of these CEO’s to become proponents of fruits and vegetables that are not filled with chemicals. There is no profit in this. There is no profit in a citizenry of white-eyed thinkers who pursue their passions without fear. Moreover, it is of the benefit of major corporations to keep us sick, reliant on the illusory health insurance provided by the cattle mills they call companies. Doctors no longer deduce symptoms by taking the whole into account. They are like the absent-minded mechanic who fixes a client’s bumper with a coat hanger and uses duct tape to keep the rear view mirror intact while assuring the worried driver, “Just keep pouring water in the radiator. It’ll be fine.”

               “Food processing, poisoning and drugging is undermining the health of American people as well as yielding large profits to the individuals and corporations engaged in processing, poisoning, and drugging. City dwellers, no matter how large their incomes and how much they can afford to pay for quantity and quality of foods, can escape the resulting dangers only by taking extreme precautions [read: extreme] in regard to what and how they eat. Even country folk will fall prey to this health menace unless they are able to raise their own food organically and reduce processing and poisoning to a minimum, or else find a means of securing fresh, whole foods, free from chemical poisons.” (Nearing, The Good Life, pp. 133) This was written sixty years ago.

               As an individual, I can grow my own food and help others to do the same. As I learn, so will they, and as they learn, so will I. This is the circle.

Coming soon: Humanure: Thoughts on Black Goats atop a Mountain in South Korea

                                  

Diabetes on Wheels Shields Marijuana

There is an old saying that a smart man learns from his own mistakes while a wise man learns from the mistakes of others. I became a landlord less than two years ago. What now seems common sense wasn’t known back then. No pets. Nobody pays me except those on the lease. It is not my responsibility to drive a tenant to the bank. While advertising my rental as an adventure in permaculture tends to bring in eager beavers with deep desires to work on the urban farm beside my property, these desires are usually pipe dreams. Pipe dreams of those smoking pipes.

               I learned something new today while cleaning out a rental property in Atlanta. My lover said not to ever let someone move into a place because you feel sorry for her, especially after she tells you she has one kid and no boyfriend. You will find out she has six kids and two boyfriends, one of whom drives one of those vans that sing songs and send kids begging for change so they can get shitty freezer burnt popsicles and ice cream bars. If you do rent to the aforementioned you will end up with vents crammed with dead cockroaches cat piss dog piss and dust. Your base boards will appear to have been sprayed with mustard and your broken windows kept from letting in rain with T shirts and cardboard. It will take gallons of white vinegar and dozens of prayers to get rid of the smell.

               Based on how the place was left, I could only assume that these tenants didn’t have pipe dreams, but they did have something hidden behind the ice cream van no longer sings. The old Diabetes on Wheels blocked the street view of three eight-foot tall weed plants growing in a 25-gallon pot. Now that’s urban farming. Urban and farming, together in the ghetto, a block from Compton Street in Atlanta. The buds on the plants smelled like frightened skunks and looked as if they were the only vegetation in the neighborhood that received consistent care. Then again, there is a reason why these plants are called weed.

               I got to thinking what we might do with the pot. My first thought was to put the plants in the back of the VW convertible we have been borrowing and drive them to Aunt Boo. He lives on the corner opposite Carrie at his grandma’s house and can often found at two in the morning singing Britney Spears or NWA or Mariah Carey at the top of his lungs in the middle of the street. When I built the boxes for Carrie’s tomatoes he invited me to his yard to see his “tomatoes”. I do not find it strange that the ice cream man used Diabetes on Wheels to shield his plants or that Aunt Boo grew his behind a cluster of bushes on the other side of a busted up sofa. (There is another story to tell here, at another time, about the pot plant I left in my kitchen when I evacuated for Katrina and how, after being accused over the phone, I told my landlord that it was a green tea plant, grown from seeds I had collected while living in South Korea.) What makes this scenario strange is that I am not interested in smoking said plants, selling the buds, or any other activity that might be detrimental to society. Quite simply, I hate to waste and like to give, yet I could be arrested for driving down Jonesboro Road with three pot plants blowing in the back seat and my lover riding beside me. I can’t with good conscience cut them down, and, thankfully there is a positive update in our story. The handyman reported that the former tenant had come the night before and, oblivious to the condition of his broken down livelihood, sidestepped the van to make sure that what really mattered was still growing. There was a time when I understood this imbalance. I still understand. It’s a matter of perspective. Pipe dreams. If you can understand this, and you want three free pot plants, you better get here before the ice cream man gets back.

              Coming soon: How we spent sixty dollars on pralines and potato salad. 

Kids Don't Know Shit

I didn’t see this as much growing up, grandparents caring for children out in public, but it was something I became accustomed to while living in Asia. It is something I see in my neighborhood in the 9^th ward of New Orleans. It is something I was forced to think about just today, beyond the doors of Wal-Mart on Tchoupitoulas, where a boy of three gestured proudly at a crouching woman who gently refused the boy’s offer of Hot Cheetos. The woman kept his attention though, as if this were her part in the family business, as if her responsibility was to entertain the child while one of her relatives painted his mother’s toenails. It looked as if this had happened naturally.

               It is this human interaction that will never be stamped out by any corporation. There we were, beneath the fluorescent lights and cheap-cheap-cheap prices, around the corner from an indoor McDonald’s, amidst throngs of cart pushers and bargain seekers, and inside this nail salon a connection was happening.

               I wrote a story once that involved a main character who got a job in a Wal-Mart (You can read it here). He was happy. He was free. It was not about making or not making money. He was a greeter, much like the woman who led me down the aisles today while I pushed my cart with one hand and drank coffee with the other. We said hello to those we passed. She was pretty sure the mason jars was past the toothpaste and towels. She was pretty sure her tomatoes wasn’t gonna make it. But she shared stories of her abundance: vines weighed down by cantaloupe and cucumbers. When she spoke of her troubles with those pesky tomato bugs, I said, “Me too.” The truth is that I have many tomatoes growing. I have found their success is based on the soil they grow in and that packing more organic matter—grass and leaves and coffee grounds and newspaper—only aids in their reach for the sky. I did not feel it my place to give this lady advice as she delivered me to the same jars that once filled my grandmother’s basement. She said maybe she’d get some. Maybe she’d make some pickles.

               I had others who had asked for advice. Miss Pat stayed by Claiborne and Mazant. She found me at CRISP Farms one afternoon and asked if I could take a look at her tomatoes. She walked her bike as I walked beside her, and then I saw CJ pass on his dirt bike—broken seat, no brakes, bent handlebars—it was one of those bikes you see everywhere in the hood, one that makes the rider more athletic—and he turned it over to me.

               Miss Pat was growing in the shadows between two houses even though she had a yard and fence and a nice big square of lawn that got full sun.

               I gave her what advice I could and promised to come back again. On my way back home, Dejuan yelled out, as I rode past with my knees pumping higher than the handlebars, “Mr. Zach, you stoleded CJ’s bike?!? “It’s errybody’s bike,” I said, and that was closer to the truth.

               Days later Miss Pat brought a lemon cake by my house to share with everyone at the festival. CJ still borrowed my bike pump every morning. Kids still ran the streets and got more athletic on their bicycles. Shakiyah still asked for carrots. Jay Daniel still said he wanted to plant some seeds cause he like to watch the seeds become something [before he lets the plant die].

               And still….Miss Nancy sits on her porch and smokes cigarettes all day long, and I imagine that she has to lifts her legs with her hands to get up from her chair. The kids chase each other up and down the street as she perches like a mother hen. These kids need her screams. Miss Nancy needs their energy. It is the kids who give the rest of us another sublet on life.

               Maybe they have more to teach us than we have to teach them. Maybe we just need to pay attention. When my niece was two I took her on a walk through my parent’s neighborhood and let her lead the way. She picked up sticks and brushed her hands over grass and chased cats and kicked a basketball. She kept looking back to make sure I was watching. For the most part she was in the moment. I felt like the BF Skinner of my generation, like a Rousseau who had done a better job with Emile. As I basked in my glory and followed Bella’s lead, I turned to see her rolling something between her hands. It was yet another opportunity for me to be in her moment, and, in turn, to be in mine. It was the simple joy of seeing everything. It was the sense of touch.

               It was a dog turd. 

Interview with a Farmer

There is a woman from Tulane University who was supposed to interview me at nine this morning for a study on urban farms in New Orleans. The text I received from Miss Cate at 9:03 said this: I came by but you were sleeping and I didn’t want to wake you. I’m around quite a bit now as my class is done so any time that’s convenient for you just let me know and I will make it work. Thank you! You have very lovely neighbors. I wondered if she meant Bernard, who smashed up a man’s car with a machete for parking in front of his house, or maybe she meant the 15 year old who has a gun, or Miss Nancy who I have never seen walk past her front porch. Maybe she meant the white gutter punks who each have six or eight dogs, or the kids who run in packs like the feral chickens. Don’t get me wrong. I love all of these people. And I think that Miss Cate might have seen something I don’t always see. And I am sure that she met a lot of the neighbors, seeing as they are always outside, always friendly, and usually short of cigarettes and money.

               What she saw through my window is quite another story. A 40-year-old man in his boxers, spralled across a mattress devoid of linen, a mask on his face as though the apocalypse could come at any minute. The room in which he slept looked like it may have already been hit. There was stucco and dust, and the floors were rough wood with nails. A couch faced a blank wall and butted up a foot away from the base board. A ladder, hammers, a flat bar and crow bar, Styrofoam cups, a Hoosier cabinet that looked like an antique—all of this strewn in no particular order. She didn’t know that I had pulled up the floors in less than five hours with two 13-year-olds from our street. She didn’t know that I had sleep apnea or that my room was filled with dust or that I usually didn’t sleep within view of the front door.

               And this is how I would write her article or interview or case study if the material were in my hands:

               A farmer is of the species homo erectus, the result of ten thousand years of walking, and has been around ever since man stopped his nomadic ways. But farming must also take its toll on the individual, for I arrived to find this farmer unconscious, lying half-naked on a bed without a thread of linen. It wore a mask connected to a machine, perhaps to defend against the oncoming apocalypse or for protection from the dust that spun in beams of sunlight. I feared rousing our subject from sleep. The stirring of arms and legs was enough to assure me that the subject was alive.

               In my field notes regarding the natural habitat of said farmer, I recorded the abnormality of a sofa pressed so close to the wall that your average-sized man or woman would have been unable to sit comfortably. It should be stated that the wall was blank. I must research whether or not staring into a blank canvas is one of the effects of working in the hot sun all day, a means of bringing the human psyche back into the comforts the rest of us call home.

               There were other curious deviations. Namely: a ladder in the middle of the room that was open and ready to be climbed, but there was nowhere for the ladder to lead. Based on the prior clinical observations of others, I could come up with no reason for this and had to begin forming my own hypotheses. I was left with metaphor. Knowing the state of urban farming in New Orleans and the pressure our subjects face trying to juggle the duties of seven people, I could only surmise that the ladder was some kind of escape. Bearing in mind our proximity to the Bywater (a haven for self-professed creatives), I had to dig deeper. I had to find out whether or not this signaled a more complex issue, a statement for all who passed by and cared to look inside, an existential crisis of the artistic kind. Our farmer was perhaps a modern day Dostoevsky, reveling in the notion that only a symbol can speak to the inner desire to feel useful, and it was this symbol that allowed me to finish the case study without even having to interview the farmer.

               This is my prognosis. The ladder is the urban farm. The ceiling New Orleans. More on this after the actual interview.