5:30 PM ATM's, My Bicycle, and a Crow

I feel like I've gone through the drill of "staying" so many times now that there's no way I could have missed anything. And that's the danger of feeling like I've done all I could to prepare for this storm, for "staying." Then it hit me. It hit me like a tomohawk chop to the forehead, right between the eyes. I have only a few dollars cash in my pocket. I'd forgotten that electronic transactions were up and running quickly. But they probably won't be up and running in the first week after a storm like this, if it actually hits us, this storm, Gustav.

So I hopped on my bike and took a little jaunt around uptown with the final objective being finding out if the ATM's were working. It was deserted. I scooted past Billie's place. I'd heard that she was staying. But I hadn't heard from her directly. Bob's truck was there. Billie's sled was not. It looked like they were all gone pecans.

There were several NOPD squad cars at Whole Foods, in the back, in the parking garage. They came rolling out just as I rode by. They ignored me. There were a few people walking around: One hipster-looking cool cat wearing a satin Saints bebop style cap. He was walking a dog, a big dog, a blue tick-looking, tall-ass hound dog. Only this dog was red instead of gray. There was another random guy, maybe mid-fifties, smoking a cigarette, wearing a wife beater and suspenders with slacks, no shoes or socks. He looked like he'd snuck out of the house for a smoke while his "old lady" was otherwise preoccupied. There was a small contingent of people gathered on a second story screen porch, talking and listening to music. I imagined them drinking.

There was no one anywhere near the ATM. It was on and fully operative. The ATM worked as it would have any other day, well... any other day except this past Friday. This past Friday I'd gone to this very same ATM and another nearly directly across the street operated by the same bank. Both of them were on but "not dispensing cash at this time." They were out of money and needed to be refilled. I'd taken back streets all the way to the flawlessly operating ATM with avoiding the five-oh on my mind. I'd done that. I'd stuck to the back streets. The back streets were surreal. I felt the same eerie feeling, that change in perspective I get when the great majority of the people are removed from the theater. It's very disconcerting.

The wind laid down some. It's still gusty, on and off. But there are now a few dead slack periods lasting a few minutes to ten minutes or so. The color is dingy and still kind of yellow. But the yellow seems to be less pronounced. The most evident meterological characteristic right now is the near homogeneous, rolling, pale gray cloud cover zooming low overhead.

A huge, very black crow landed on the wire directly outside of my open door. He was making so much ruckus that I had to get up and saunter out to see what was up with all that squawking. He was right there, with his tiny, little, creepy, sinewy, jet black talons wrapped around that wire, the power line leading into my apartment. Did it have a deeper meaning? Was the crow bringing me good luck or bad luck with my impending power issues? Who knows? I also wondered what this crow was doing to my great grandfather's folkloric theory about a crow and the rain. The crow stopped squawking as soon as I sauntered out to check him out. He was looking at me, staring really, turning his head this way and that way, twisting his head in an impossible rotation all the while looking right at me. The bird was staring I'm tellin' ya! OK, so maybe the crow was just lost, blown off-course ahead of the storm, and not here to make or ruin my luck. And maybe he wasn't really staring at me. But he definitely was looking at me.