hello patti ann, September 11, 2001 Brooklyn, NY
can you believe how life is. it just goes where it wants. what nerve. sorry it has taken so long to write again. i've been in shock since this morning when i woke up and heard the tv on in my living room. the first plane had pierced american soil and i was all snug in my bed sleeping heavily about three miles away. it didn't seem real until i stuck my head out the window and saw the smoke and the people running across the bridge. i ran into one woman who had just gotten across the bridge, she was in shock. she didn't know where she was. then it was real. realer than i ever wanted it to be. this wasn't what it felt like when i studied American history. this was frightening. i'm strong though. i've been in my own sort of boot camp during the making of my record. we all knew that life was about to change. i knew we couldn't go on cruise control forever. I hope you're well over there. i'll probably be moving back to new orleans soon. it's just not good here. there are guys with backpacks on the subways. it doesn't feel right anymore. it would be nice to see you more. i am of no use to ya'll over here. no use to the kids. no use to louisiana. i'm excited about the challenges that lay ahead. glad that i have them. thankful to be free to go head to head with em. i'll be fighting til somebody takes me. hope you'll be right there with me. i'll talk soon.
love,
dut
It's one thing to make a vow and another thing to live up to it. When Joey died in the factory explosion, life became something completely different. I had finally gotten around the fact that grandparents die but tragedy was something completely new, well maybe not completely. For whatever reason God, the creator or whatever you need to call him/her wanted to expose me to death. He wanted my face up in it. Like the time me and my cousin Mudgun were sitting with Papere and we heard a loud screech and when we got out there time stood still and there was a kid suspended in mid air who had flown off the back of a motorcycle and was plunging to his death right before our eyes. I wondered if I would have run fast fast and dove if I could have made a play to save him. It was a recurring nightmare for years. Rest in peace little Brandon.
It was easy living up to vows when playing sports. It was a little more difficult being a little smaller than most but if you wear bigger shoulder pads and work harder and have that god damn mountain on your back because of these vows, then you play big. It's easy because we grew up with balls in our hands and that's all we had to do in Grand Point and I was much younger than Joey who taught me to throw floating passes over the defender. What a clown he was. So funny. I don't think I can remember him ever being mad or angry or mean to anyone. He taught me to wear my hat high on my head and throw pitches down the pipe. Little leaguers had no chance, I was learning from the best. The Poirrier's were well known athletes along the river and taught me and my brothers how to dress for games and wear our baseball stockings correctly. We invented so many games. My favorite was garage ball. The batter stood in the garage and the pitcher just 10 feet out of it and pitched against the wall where a big square strike zone was marked by tape. In order to get hits, we had to hit line drives and home runs had to soar really low and just carry. I loved making all of the older ones proud.
It's easy in sports, because your coach gets up on a table and gives you the speech of a lifetime to get you to rise up way more than you ever could on your own and then your teammates are there to boost each other up. When my playing days were coming to an end, I left McNeese State after a year and realized I wasn't 6'4" and that my real work was just beginning.
In south Louisiana, football is king, it's what we do and how we express ourselves. I was a bit lost without sports for awhile. I loved to practice and to feel improvement and see the results. I could be quiet and just let my play speak for itself. Louque men are traditionally pretty quiet and I wasn't much different. I began to have all these thoughts of trying to piece the dots together....all these things I saw but I started to let it go. The task was too daunting. I had no idea what to do with all those things I had learned in sports and life or what to apply it to now. I think many in the River Parishes can relate to this.
The "911 Letter" was one of the last letters I wrote to Patti Ann before I moved back to Louisiana from New York but many came before. Years before, when I first moved to New York, Patti fell ill with meningitis and lost her arms and legs just like that. Those beautiful legs were gone. I was pissed. I mean it was enough to take one kid from his mother but to almost take another and leave her so helpless! It was hard when I went home to visit and I saw her for the first time.
When I went back to New York I began writing letters to her. What do you tell someone who just lost so much? I knew I needed to be there for her somehow but in the end she was there for me too. Looking back, in a way, I became the coach standing on the table in tears trying to will his team with their backs to the wall to get on the field and play. I was on the table for both of us. I wanted to express all these things I was seeing but didn't know how and it would take so much strength to get through the insecurities of being a guy from Grand Point, Louisiana in New York making a record for the first time. When I was getting weak and the years were passing since my vows, Patti became the person who wouldn't let me turn from them. She held my hand as I told my Grand Point story and helped me to believe in it, to believe that we were artist too. Americans.
Everyday moments became the moment right before the big game when your coach's speech is almost biblical and the walls are coming up around you and you must persevere. I became like my old coach, "Coach Tim" for Patti. I stood on the table and told her she could throw farther into the wind and that if she stood in the pocket just a little longer everything would open up.
"Sisters, human life is the unforeseen, everything is transient and egoless. Only the world of Enlightenment is tranquil and peaceful. You must keep on with your training." -Buddha
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