smells like peace

stolen goods & dignity

I stole a candle and lit it yesterday. I walked into the St. Louis Cathedral and saw the sign asking for a $6 donation to light one of those tiny little 25-cent votive candles and said “I ain’t paying that shit” to no one in particular. I grabbed the first ball of wax I saw and unfurled the wick before I placed it in a glass bowl in the center of a sea of flameless glass—apparently, I wasn’t the only one who found the $6 charge egregious.* 

Then I grabbed a wooden skewer, turned it over to the non-charred side, dipped it into the fire of another burning candle, and touched it to my virgin wick, all the while muttering about the news story still fresh in my head about former New Orleans priest, Lawrence Hecker, raping and kidnapping minors. And maybe something about 17 years of Catholic school tuition that more than covered this tiny little ball of wax and flame. Sounds brave, but it took me a few tries to light my candle due to the extreme shaking induced in a former Catholic schoolgirl for breaking a Catholic Church mandate.

I’ve been on a stealing spree lately.  

A few months ago, I stole a plant cutting from a Brooklyn bodega. My sister was buying a plant and I saw some beautiful variant of a purple heart plant and I snapped off a piece. Just like that! Then the shaking commenced, and I walk/ran down the block, shoving the stolen good into my bag, convinced my hand was about to be cut off like Princess Jasmine in the market. My sister called asking where the fuck I was, and then once she found me in my hiding spot, we walked back to her place where I potted my deep, dark secret, where it still thrives to this day. New growth just this week!

I don’t ever do things like that. I don’t know what I was thinking! 

That’s a lie. I know exactly what I was thinking because I’ve been thinking it for a minute. 

The way we are living is no way to live. Paycheck to paycheck (if you’re lucky). Scarce housing. A market reserved for people who don’t even live here. Who are not invested in our communities. An insurance industry that refuses to cover what little we have—appraisers who want to inflate the same. Elected officials who pretend they don’t know the root cause of our increasing natural disasters and heat. Rising costs, stagnate wages. Nothing but transactional living. It feels like there is no way to live with dignity these days.

That’s what I was thinking, and I snapped off just as cleanly as that Brooklyn bud,** muttering, again. Don’t tell me I have to pay for things like fire and foliage. Gifts to us from the universe.

With this beautiful earth we’ve been given, is this really how we’ve decided to live?

That’s what I think every morning on my walk around City Park, watching the sun break over the bayou. Watching the turtles spread out on the banks. Hugging trees to feel alive. An actual lefty liberal snowflake tree hugger. 

I woke up yesterday feeling so grateful on the heels of a beautiful Louisianahbrah event—a debate watch party where we laughed and cheered and booed together at the people vying to be our next Governor. Such a mundane thing—watching an early gubernatorial debate absent the leading candidate—and we turned it into something beautiful. A moment of community and hope and rebellion. And for that, I am so grateful.

But I also woke up yesterday feeling boxed in, restless, and broke as fuck. So frustrated by doing this work that can be so fulfilling but can also feel like such a dead end in so many ways. Not just politically, but also personally. Paying for everything out of pocket and never filling those pockets back up again. Abandoning other creative impulses and urges in service to the never-ending hope I have for this beautiful state that has given me so much. 

I know I’m not the only person to feel this way. Lord knows every activist has had this moment. 

I made a promise to myself a long time ago that I wouldn’t kill myself for the state of Louisiana. That I wouldn’t sacrifice or give up too much of myself—something I have a hard time with. So, when I woke up Friday and saw the tell-tale signs of giving too much of myself away, I decided to take the day off. 

This is what the perfect day off looks like:

I went and saw the noon showing of My Big Fat Greek Wedding Part 3 at Canal Place. I ate popcorn and peanut M&M’s and drank a Coca-Cola and had the whole theater to myself. Then, I walked to the river and sat there for a while, marveling at how low it is. I laid in the grass in Jackson Square for another little while, looking up at the wind in the trees. I went into the cathedral, stole a salty candle, then asked Mary what I should do, and she gave me the sentence “I stole a candle and lit it today,” which I immediately wrote in my journal. Then I walked my sweet ass all the way down Esplanade, taking my time until I got back home. I sat on the porch with my neighbors for a bit, then came inside and ordered a pizza for dinner. 

While I waited for my pizza, I lit incense, poured myself some tea, and decided: I’m not going to sacrifice these things anymore. And by these things, I mean these words. This writing. This creative impulse. A lot of times I feel like I can only write about Louisiana politics, but that’s not true. I can write about anything I want to write about. I can make the rules here. 

I think that’s what Mary was trying to tell me by giving me the first sentence to this essay. 

So, now I write these words to hold myself accountable to you. To promise you I will not give too much of myself away. To promise I will write what I am called to write. Have I ever told you I’m writing a memoir? Been writing it for years and planning on finishing it soon. It’s my life’s work and I’ve hid it from you for so long because I was scared to talk about it.

But not anymore.

Of course, I’ll keep doing the Louisianahbrah work (provided I can raise the money to do it) because I love this work and fuck janky jeff. But I won’t box myself in. I am a complete person. And I have so many words to say.

This is how I plan to live with dignity.

The doorbell rang and I opened the door, ready for my pizza. “It smells so good in here!” the delivery woman said, and I got confused, thinking for a second she was talking about the pizza. But she paused, breathed in the incense, her eyes half closed, and said, “It smells like peace.”

She’s right. It does.

*OK FINE. It was two (or maybe three?) candles for the $6 fee but I still wasn’t having it.

**a bud which I now know is called Tradescantia Nanouk, because when I was in Brooklyn again last week, I went to another bodega and bought two of them to make up for all the stealing (but only from small businesses—the church can pry that six bucks out of my cold, dead hands).