O' Divine One- Where art Thou?

There were a handful of reasons why I left Berlin in 1993 and returned to the States, each framed by earlier events that are explained in my memoir, Echo Between Us, but today I recall the whirlwind of my German memories in which I was immersed.

The best part of being in Europe was everyone I met. Bright young women and men, all artists, who measured their lives with the passion they expressed, buzzing and beating their wings around town- to me Berlin was a hive.

I've never met people in the usual traditional ways that people meet- I've made a habit of talking to strangers, and one of those strangers who became my friend, Benjamin Rawitz, I pay tribute to- an extraordinary man, who was born to play the piano, who was a regular at local concert stages but his influence went beyond that, a musician's musician with graceful nimble fingers and a kind gentle soul.

The first time I met Benjamin Rawitz, I was standing in a long line at KaDeWe, the largest department store in Europe. Expensive, luxurious, a shopping paradise and a legend, I also was a proud credit card holder. I inhaled the scent of leather, as I waited to buy myself a pair of mahogany kidskin gloves, a man watched me with quick curious eyes. “entschuldigen, ist dieses die Linie”? I asked in my wild broken German with a Spanish accent. Benny rattled on and I held up my hand. “Wait, do you speak English”, I asked, to which he smiled mastering charm. Detecting a french accent, I learned he was an Israeli living in Brussels.

How I remember that day, the encapsulation of everything I love most about this world: we walked out together passing the perfume counter discussing music, books, and the arts. It was drizzling slightly and down the street we went, I was laughing. It was fall, a season of my content.

Benny and I became quick friends and we had a friendship that was pure and simple; we recognized our tribal markings and discussed spirituality and the after life while sitting in sidewalk cafes together. We added all the things we aspired to do. When he left the city we developed a stronger tie slowly over time on a lost art- letter writing.

As time marched on we learned of each others artistic triumphs and disasters but none was so unfortunate that it stopped either of us from dreaming and living our each respective passions.

As any writer is aware, writing requires one to spend great lengths of time in monastic solitude. I enjoy this period when my mind spins more plots than my fingers could ever type, a ritual of silence. During one of these periods Benny's last card came to me that read- “A little bit of luck never hurt anybody.... I'm waiting to hear that something positive happens to you”!

Then I got the news, it was late August of 2006, Benny was dead. The tender man who would not swat a fly, murdered, his battered body in the basement of his apartment building; his nose had been broken and the frontal bone of his face smashed.

For three days in my own private war, I would talk to God, wail and twitch, begging for peace for Benny's soul. As a current passed through my body, feeling the voltage of violence that I abhor, every one of my muscles tensed. I battled with my mind even more, not wanting to see the ugliness of a brutal, barbaric murder, and yet seeing it every time I closed my eyes. Both my body and my mind writhed in unison, reaching a final end. I prayed that in his life he would remember a soft human touch; a simple handshake, and the flesh of another person without the psychological physical torture in the confines of his final hours from two perverse misfits who didn't have an ounce of respect for life.

Benny's killers were brought to trial and incarcerated. Today one of them, a minor escaped after having killed his baby daughter and her grandmother. This tragedy indicates that the laws in Belgium are too permissive and law enforcement officials have to do everything in their power to find him immediately; since his disturbed dark side is a threat to everyone he comes across.

Thumbing through Benny's photos of India, I miss you Benny. These words come to mind, from the revered Hindu text and philosophical classic, the Bhagavad Gita, “He who sees everyone in himself, and himself in everyone, thus seeing the same God living in all, he, the sage, no more kills the Self by self.”




Listen to Benjamin Rawitz-Castel playing Schumann
http://www.fototime.com/ftweb/bin/ft.dll/detailfs?userid={0B199B1B-2F0E-4CAA-A55A-0F96A12EBFCF}&ndx=1&slideshow=0&A

Swampland Beckons where Voodoo and Magic charm a Spell

Whenever people ask me where I live, I say “Las Vegas,” and pause a beat, and add “Not near the strip”. As if defending myself that I am not a gambler, nor a drinker or a smoker. It elicits opposing reactions; a blank stare, a sneer or downright hostility. Pity maybe, but never, ever envy.

Las Vegas once the wild west was intended for cowboys, and if you have ever been to a city social event, the chaos and lack of organization still musters a dog and pony show. Then came the Mob and the casinos and nightclub scene gave rise to a little city with dirt roads. Those who lived here at the time reminisce about those good old days- how the Mobsters generously provided locals with free food and drinks and there was one schoolhouse where everyone rubbed elbows. I call it Provincial. Decades later, with the arrival of Howard Hughes came the corporations and federal money outlaying master-planned communities otherwise known as suburban bland.

Personally, I don't go to the shows, all the has-been that come to town listed in the newspaper make me turn the pages faster than a flash of animation. But the worse thing about being in the desert is not the heat, I can live with temperatures rising but I can't live in a intellectual and cultural void where the days have such a sameness to them, a hypnotic placidity, like a pool where nothing ever falls, not a leaf, not a particle of dust. I float on this pool. The quiet rhythms of existence would have driven me to desperation a few years ago but my restlessness hides under the surface and the only way to combat the missing and necessary stimulation for my survival is to break away to places where culture, beauty and nature thrives.

Having been asked to go to New Orleans over a decade ago, I declined but two years ago when Steven and I planned a business trip to Biloxi, my mental fantasies conjured images about steamboats going down the Mississippi carrying Mark Twain and Scarlet and Rhett on their honeymoon. After Katrina the French Quarter was still in tact and despite all the rhetoric about danger, which has never stopped me from going anywhere I vocalized my idea to my husband and a week later-presto!

New Orleans, is nothing but festive. Just as I had been told, it is like Paris in the 19th century, because the French Quarter or, the “Vieux Carre," is in both the geographical and the chronological sense a different place within the larger entity of New Orleans, which is not really part of America. The architecture isn't French either, it's Spanish, on the model of Cadiz, like a mini-Havana.

But like everything about New Orleans, is a layering of clashing histories like a Napoleon (still served fresh at the "Croissant d'Or" cafe on Ursulines Street). And I find two new cliches rush to complicate its jelling reputation: vampires and writers. Anne Rice bought mansions in New Orleans from the riches the Vampire Lestat brought her, and her presence drew the Vampire wing of the Goth-tide to her Halloween Balls and to a revived Mardi Gras season. Mardi Gras itself, a proven revel that outranks Venice and draws level with Rio de Janeiro, colored deep red with vampire blood.

Every time I walk out my door I am blocked by mobs of tourists on vampire-tours led by awful unlicensed tour guides who sometimes come to blows with each other when their rival crowds intersect.

Writers drawn to the mystique of other writers who had lived on the ill-lit streets of the Vieux Carre, flock to New Orleans; the annual William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams festivals swell phenomenally year after year. And poetry venues like the Gold Mine Saloon are premier stages for young dreamers. Now I am in my element.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is being filmed on the streets during our visit.

The two steady charms of New Orleans are music and food. From the jazz to the latest indie combination bands of R&B and nouvelle retro explode with energy; Jazz Fest packs more great music than any other city in the world. We stroll into an intimate club, Snug Harbor where we listen to a blues band then head over to the Spotted Cat, a rustic club, the place is packed with memorabilia and upbeat people. So we make our way in and finagle some ringside seats, a rattan settee near the front front window while I people watch. Musicians jam while my husband, also a musician is intent on watching, eyes are fixed. At the end of a number the bass player, a robust guy with gray slicked back hair, dressed in black pants and a black turtleneck, moves between the parting crowd with supreme confidence walks up to Steven shakes his hand and says, “I love you man”.

The bartender slung a towel over his shoulder, and calls out.
"Hey Joey, where ya been?"
"Oh hey good ta see ya Max. Me and Sheri jess got back from Arizona. We wuz at dis place northa Phoenix. Some place called Zedona. It's got dem rocks an shit. And got lottsa dem new age types runnin around all in dem vortexes."
"No kiddin'. So ya hadda good time?"
"Yeah, was allright. Played some golf, drove around some and bought some stuff. So listen, gimme a Johnny Walker Black onna rocks, ana Chardonnays fur my frenz, will ya"? He pulled out a fold of bills and dealt Max a twenty.
"Sure ting, boss."

We thank Max and later when we leave walking down the street a woman standing along the curbside gently pulls me into a club placing a washboard over my head handing me a pair of thimbles. A Zydeco band behind me plays Cajun music but to my ears its a mixture of two steps, reggae and rock n roll while I jam with them. Laissez les bon temps rouler. Let the good times roll!

Our next and final stop, is the rustic and candle-lite Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop, an atmospheric piano bar, it's crumbling plaster makes it appealing and kitsch, and it's the oldest bar in the U.S.

The powers that be in New Orleans are full time and are in business- a city known for jazz and voodoo, and the fading glory of Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and of bohemian pleasure done Southern style.

The next morning after a visit to Cafe du Monde to savor the world famous beignets, a fried doughnut sprinkled with powered sugar we pack a few things for a day-trip in our rented car that we did not need in the French Quarter. We take sight of the huge engineering failure known as Katrina that let in the waters of Lake Pontchartrain and drowned a myth, bringing to the surface instead the rank poverty and misery of a huge city that tourists never knew, a city ten times the size of the mythical burg carefully crafted out of travel guides. The sobering glimpse of the formidable challenges the city faces with debris, destruction, boarded up houses, potholes, malfunctioning street signals, is a visit to a third world country, right smack in the United States.

Another twenty miles and a drive through the suburbs where all is quiet with private schools and SUV's and zoning patterns clearly laid out by the signs of stillness. Spanish moss stands on either side of the Destrehan plantation done in a simple West Indies style built in 1787 by a free man of color. This discovery coincides with the book I'm reading, The Known World by Edward P. Jones that takes an unflinching look at slavery with all its moral complexities. A costumed guide leads us through the tour where we discover tea was kept under lock and key.

By evening, we find young chefs make hip new restaurants by re- and de-constructing Creole cooking, and ever-roving gourmands in search of new tastes descend rapaciously on New Orleans. A gastronomical lover of seafood, I sample etouffee, a spicy Cajun stew of vegetables and seafood, it's served room temperature. The tastes of most foods would read like a scroll, the ethnic diversity makes me glad I came hungry. It could make a food lover adopt the city as a new home.

As we leave the city we pass old cemeteries, and I reflect that I'd like to be buried here. I love the fancy dress and my eyes like a four year-old light-up to the sparkle. Sensory expression is everywhere. The city is alluring, funky and artsy. Not a typical southern city, it honors its European heritage. Then I'm reminded of a song that plays in my head used in funeral marches. The joie de vivre is so contagious where a spirit lives on.