On the title of this blog/the nickname I gave to myself:
Notes of an Itinerant Daughter is inspired by/a smushing of two well known literary works, Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin and Notes of a Native Daughter by my beloved archnemesis, Joan Didion. Itinerant Daughter came about because I happen to work for an egomaniacal writer whose essential paralysis has not quelled his wanderlust at all, and so I am dragged from place to place in search of the muse, if you will. In the past eight months, I have “lived” in three different places (question: how long should you reside somewhere before you can say that you “live/d” there?), all pretty interesting in their own right.
Now I’m back to my “Native” urban land, and am happily much more appreciative of what this city giveth and taketh away than I was before spending time elsewhere. People love to talk about the authenticity of this city (from my own travels, I’ve determined a little more than most other cities.) It’s not the way it used to be, they lament, all hookers and peep shows and real diversity, not this gentrified BULLshit. The issue is that of course, no one really wants to live in a cesspool, and no one is willing to get rid of their comfy jobs and replace them with gigs as streetwalkers. Can you imagine tearing down the various Le Pain Quotidiens in favor of fifties-style “cafeterias”? In the end, does anybody really miss the old Apple, minus out of work pimps? Those of us who like grit (myself included, even though I maybe just talk a big talk) have to settle for glimpses of the ephemeral “Old” city. I was fortunate enough to get one the other night.
My friend MH and I were in a park downtown eating Thai food and hopping from one small jam session to another. We ended up finding a pretty decent one, with just the right amount of bongos, and parked ourselves next to it listening to the band’s rendition of Wild Horses. A man with a thick Jamaican accent (who, I swear, was the actor who played Sanka in Cool Runnings) walked up to a resting drummer. The two clearly knew each other. They slapped hands.
“Mon, ChiTown just got arrested!”
“Shit, man!” the drummer responded. “What happened?”
“Some cop saw him parking his car, said, ‘You can’t park there, sir!’ ChiTown says, ‘Go fuck yourself!’ and the cop says, ‘Excuse me?’ and ChiTown says, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, fuck your mother!'”
It’s good to be “home.”
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