Howdy backatcha, Otto! 3:53

Howls Nawlins? Well, if cities are to be my lovers, then this place is a vous la voux cou valentine who expiscrumdiddlyalidosiousumptiously wants me!

Ride, ride, ride. Ride, sis, ride, I keep hearing, sometimes from me, but mostly from you. And I have, and I am, and when haven’t I been seen in the green and nightly street sheen of the rain and the glow of the lights above the banjos?

Jo Jo, this Peruvian boy I met at the shelter, you’d love. He keeps calling me "madre" b/c I tell him how "the Americanos" do something or other. Still he’s a perky lad with a twinkle in his eye, but his eyes can sometimes turn so cold. Scary cold. Brrrr. He won’t say anything about his family in Peru, except that he misses them and he has to go back, which I’m helping him save for. I’m going to see if I can get his parents phone number out of him so we can call them here at work. I thought of you yesterday when he asked if I had a tape of the Beatles. Care to send a copy of The White Album to a dark boy from Peru? Thought so. Address: Me.

So, jobs, you ask? You’ll find something. Depending on what you want to put up with, and if and when you want to start another band (ahem), and how long you plan on being here. Have you seen Dad? If not, why not? When, not are, you going to? I’ll go with you if you want. It’s not as if he’d ever flip a coin over us. As if we ever needed his coin.

You’d love my place: Ground floor, deciduous trees right above my bay window, room to pace, the blankets are a little thin. Natch. More than enough room for you and your whoeverette. A decent blaster, more Nanci Griffith that I probably need. Not as nice as what I’m used to, but I keep telling myself that showers are just TOO quick. Lots of lazy mornings I lollygag in my bath singing to myself "I Want To Be Seduced" so the guys upstairs can’t hear.

Si misses you. Write her when you can and say hello to your new adopted niece. A nice niece they’ve named Nan, short for "banana" which she needs b/c she doesn’t have enough potassium in her system. Banana Republic, Dionne’s calling her.

Unfortunately, kid brother, you’re the only man who’s writing me these days. J. Dove is somewhere around Venezuela, I assume, and Vic, whom I’ve told you about, is in England without my address, as far as I know. And the only one who seriously wants to be my love was driving in the lane next to me (the fast lane) on his motorcycle last night, then when I parked he came running across the parking lot with his helmet on saying "Can I get your number?" So, don’t laugh too loud, even though I did. I’ve got work to do, I keep telling myself, but then I realize that it’s not "work." It’s just what I "do" now, which at least is something I care about rather than something that doesn’t care about me. I mean, there I was at school, if you recall, sitting hunched over books I didn’t understand, studying for a test I wouldn’t pass, which I needed to apply for a job I had no chance of getting, so I could get access to money that isn’t mine, to buy things I’ll never use, to impress people I don’t like.

So, now, ten years on, what of this amorphous Beat-hippie-punk-thrash-grunge speed of life that has drawn us away from the psychodramas of modern life and let us chisel our own dreams out of the discarded blunt awls of raw emotion? The anti-game? The only logically obvious reaction to a world mired in the present, denying the past and refusing to admit that, yes, look too far down the road and you, too, will appear as only a blip in a fancy designer program trying to hook up the lace and leather underthings of Lippy The Lion and Hardy Har Har, with Paintbox, on the cathode ray tube of glowing green eternity.

Yes’m, one day we’ll all meet in paradise, wherever that may be. And Estrelica Ash chooses heaven to not be a place, or at least not a place I’ve never seen. I’ll be the one sidling up to you from behind saying "Wonder Twins power; form of: Isis and Osiris. Shape of: Tweedledee and Tweedledum." And I’ll lay a big old sloppy wet one on the only boy born who lived, amongst us girls, who made us his brothers, anyway, as we treated him like a sister. Sisterotto. Remember how you tried using that once during Scrabble? "An Italian wind," you said, or some such BS. Well, we thought it was perfect.

And now for the dirty work: Leave Echo alone. Like you did when you were first seeing her. She needs that now. She needs to know you’re not as fractured as the rest of her life right now. Stand tall and she’s yours. You’ll know what to do, if it’s she who calls you.

I wish you Sangria, baklava, and a camel ride in Tunisia. Amnesia, diarrhea, antipasto and Micronesia.

Blaze away, Otto

Love, Estrelica