Selfish Selflessness

There are moments were… where I feel that I don’t really exist.  Not in the same way other people do, at least.

I’m just a figment of their imagination.

I’m just a vassal or channel for their emotions, thoughts, and energies.

I’m just a byproduct and their mundane, petty, daily lives.

Little more.

That Paddle Wheel Thumpin’

Now, to catch up on recent events…

EVENT #1: Jazz Fest, Saturday

Every year, the town I work and attend college in has an Arts and Jazz Festival.  I’ve been wanting to go for years, since I first fell in love with the town.  But every year I have to work, or see family, or something else equally dreary.  This year, however, very early shifts at work gave me the opportunity I’ve been waiting for.

My mother (and co.) wanted to go, too.  Of course she enjoys the family outings and the fun and food and hooplah, but as we walked around last Saturday, all the rest of us close on her heel at her demand, her true reason for attending Jazz Fest became clear: find Tommy.

Tommy, my friends, is a source of information I will have to take an entire seperate post to discuss.  Believe me, I intend to one day, but likely not today.

Finally we found him: Tommy, my Dad’s biological father, and my brother and I’s biological grandfather.  He had his art booth set up in a corner by the rec center. For the first time in nearly 17 years, we talked to him.  This man, this rather easy-going old man with a face like a smoothed tree’s, this man who once fell in-love with New Orleans after falling out of love with my grandmother, whose blood courses through our veins.  This “poor, starving artist,” who bikes everywhere he can and is leaner than any of us has been since we were five.  My dad shares his large nose, his bushy eyebrows and big, toothy smile, his easily-tanned lightly-buttered skin, and his legs with hairless patches as smooth as a baby’s bottom.  My dad easily towers over Tommy.  My brother and I have milder versions of our father’s bushy eyebrows and big nostrils, but our mother’s genes are strong and overpower our father’s in the department of physical appearances.  My dad, my brother and I also share Tommy’s  love for art… of course.

Tommy was interested in my interest in art.  He offered to hang out with me sometime in the future and give me a few pointers he picked up from his own life experiences.  Sweet.

Overall, my mother was quite pleased.  Her and her little peckish, round, hen-ish self.

EVENT #2: Jazz Fest, Sunday

I met-up with Rose and Liz the following day and returned, once again, to Jazz Fest.   Unfortunately by the time we got there many of the booths were already packing up.  Apparently they don’t quite like to stay late on the last day of the festival.  Duly noted.

Before arriving at Jazz Fest, I was hanging out with Rose (“Turtle” sometimes at work) and her girlfriend, Irene.  Rose was smoking a bowl while running around the apartment to get ready, and every time she left the room she thrust her smoking glass pipe into my confused, smiling, waiting hands.  As a result I got a little high myself from many absent-minded half puffs and hits.

We met Liz at the parking veranda for one of the buildings at my uni.  This was the first time Rose (my co-worker) and Liz (my really good friend) had met, but the meeting wasn’t really all that eventful.   It was then a short walk from there over to the festival grounds, and any nearer parking was already hectic and utterly taken, so we walked half a mile while talking mildly, pleasantly.  Liz was uncharacteristically quiet and I was uncharacteristically not.  Likely a combination of the high I was feeling the very sweet spiked cola drink Rose had handed me for safe-keeping while we walked around.

This time I ran into Tommy again, and the conversation was a lot easier and less forced because my mother (and co.) were not around.  Not only Tommy but his daughter (my half-aunt) Cali.  Cali is attending the other uni in my lovely college town, and her greatest interests are art and English, just like me.  She is also bisexual, even though this was not quite said out loud at that moment.  So we all had to stop and ponder to what extent genetics was to blame for all of this.

After that little family reunion I rejoined my friends at the other (meager, remaining) boothes.  We walked around for just another hour or two before realizing there was little left to see and deciding to head home and part ways.  And that was that.