10 GROUNDCOVER NEWS CREATIVE Travels with Dreamer, part 2 STEVEN Groundcover vendor No. 668 Editor’s Note: This article is a continuation of “Travels with Dreamer: The Girl in the Shiny Green Dress,” Groundcover News, March 7, 2025, page 10. Where do you stay when you're a dumb kid with almost no money, new to New Orleans, around Halloween? Did I mention The Squat? I did crash at it a handful of times. The Squat was downright scary though. I only laid there when I lost track of time and partied too late. Where I mostly crashed was across the river in Algiers. Algiers is a different town than New Orleans as I understood it. It’s not a neighborhood. What did I know? There was a free ferry that didn't run super late, like 10 or 11. It was a different world. I don't remember exploring Algiers. It wasn't really remarkable to me other than that’s where they made the Mardi Gras floats. Just off the ferry just past the levy off to the right was a pretty dense clump (stand? grove? copse?) of trees. I was never bothered there and stashed my backpack there. Which worked great — 'till it didn't. That's where it all fell apart. I, in my inexperience, stashed my stuff, poorly. I traveled pretty light, not as light as some but lighter than most. I had just the one school book bag type bag, albeit a nice one. It had a bunch of pockets and was well-made. Traveling lightly meant the one bag was packed to the gills. Had I added a wafer thin mint it would have busted a seam. It was loaded with a wide range of things a 19-year-old dude thought important. The police in Florida unpacked it when they pulled Dreamer and me off the freight train, and they spread it all over the floor for my intake. Normal travel stuff. A Star Trek novel, about four cigarette lighters, some pairs of jockey shorts and socks, a few t-shirts, a pair of shorts (jams), a pair of pants, cool rocks from the railroad tracks, a half-dozen narrow-ruled lined paper notebooks. I was carrying rocks not geodes or crystals or fossils. Just rocks I thought looked neat. Priorities right? Not even good skippers. My bag all spread out over the whole lobby. I was so nervous I forgot I had a little-used metal weed pipe, which was not discovered, in the left inside breast pocket of my sick ass tight red leather 70s jacket until we were hitching down the road three days later. Kind of heavy and unwieldy, not the kind of load you want to lug up and down the dense biomass of Bourbon Street while the party is on. I stashed my bag. Like a fool I stashed it very, very poorly. There were people partying where I stashed it and I just shoved it under a bush and called it good. I popped across the river. I loved the ferry anyway, it's in my blood. My grandpa on my dad’s side skippered all sorts of craft on The Great Lakes over the years. Boat captain was a path I deeply considered then foolishly discarded. I think it was too much school or drug testing or whatever but I didn't go that way. Too bad. I don't remember what I was getting on this ferry trip but it doesn't matter, the bag was gone. Immediately I'm defeated. My entire adventure ended in that moment: a consequence of youth, well, let's call it immaturity. My propensity to quit something if it gets hard or even inconvenient rushed screaming to front and center. I can see the scene there in the trees: the Mighty Mississippi muttering along as it has for millennia. I might have cried, it would be totally on brand. I dragged my shuffling feet slowly back to the ferry and back to the Quarter. Not sure how the night went after that. I'm sure I was sad bastard style all night. I have no clear memory until the next day. I'm all about Jungian synchronicity, and it seems the way things played out would be a perfect example of it. I remember sitting on the lowest step being consoled by Dreamer and The Girl. I was beside-myself distraught. This was all my stuff. Stuff I wanted. Stuff I thought I needed. Hell I packed it and dragged it across Michigan, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, the Florida panhandle, Alabama, Mississippi into Louisiana. Out of nowhere a black van pulls up in front of us. We three stared slackjawed as this charismatic dude jumps out the side door leaving a handful of people inside. He addresses the lightly populated Stairs asking if anyone wants to help dumpster dive and sponge their way in the van to Michigan? Crazy, right? My world has just collapsed; I'm convinced just moments before my trip is over. I'm bemoaning what to do next and Bam! this ride all the way home or near enough falls into my lap. I mean, shit, WTF? Sure seems like synchronicity right? Like what kind of crazy coincidence is that? Without a second thought I piped up. "OK, grab what you need and let’s go," he says. My stupid stupid stooopid brain flipped a switch. I'm headed home. New Orleans, anything and everything to do with it are in my rear view before I even get in the van. I've done some shameful things over the years. I like to think no more than most people. You fold in the drinking, crazy drugs, crazier friends, mental illness, and a singular selfishness it’s fair to say I've gone beyond my allotment. All of which of course cause a profound shame within me. This one is in the top 10. A second ago I thought I was totally screwed, now I’m stoked. Now falling in my lap is the perfect solution, I thought. These guys were driving straight through to southern Michigan. They were clear that this trip would be of an indeterminate length as we would need to stop often to panhandle gas money and dumpster dive food. I'm like "Whatever man, let’s go.” I turn to The Girl glibly happy at my good fortune. Smiling like an idiot, absolutely clueless to any other part of the situation beyond "ride home good,” like I discovered fire. Well, of course she's crying. This surprises me. Immaturity, selfishness, cluelessness, stupidity and a touch of cruelty take the cake, frosted with (undiagnosed, untreated) bipolar with, I suspect, sprinkles of an occult element. Or even, and this isn't like me, a desire from without myself. Well she's sobbing, ugly crying before I knew to call it that. Beside herself. From what I’d heard, an ancient Greek would have thought her uterus was about to malfunction. But to her absolute credit The Girl kept it together — amazing. She's been completely blindsided by this. We were so deep into each other, into the scene, the whole thing was awesome. What the f*ck is going on? What the actual f*ck? I enveloped her in my long neanderthal arms, pulled her to me, held her tight for several beats, pulled back, looked into her face, kissed her tenderly and slowly, got on the van, the door closed. I never saw her again. MARCH 21, 2025 Transforming to Light LA SHAWN COURTWRIGHT Groundcover writer Fertile soil for the planting of an array of new seed Frozen-solid ground to purify the soil To get out all of the unclean elements in the soil as it survived, had endured the severe cold Now see the elegant, glorious plants, the flowers of Her fertile soil The transformation of the seeds to a glorious new creation Thank GOD Almighty!!!!!! -
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