Buck jumpin' and havin' fun in the Treme!

 

More than a year ago, my sister-in-law Nan gave me a tip. She said, "Rent 'Treme.' It's a cable series about New Orleans after Katrina."

I finally borrowed the first season of the HBO series through an inter-library loan. We had it for one week. That meant Mike & I had 10 hours to watch in 7 days.

The Cicatrice - or, Skin Cancer & Me

One day in high school French class, I learned the word “cicatrice.” It’s pronounced SEE-cuh-TREECE and it means scar. I became smitten with that word and decided it had the perfect sound for the title of a novel.

The story smashed me in the brain box, as inspiration often did when I was fifteen. I’d write a book called “La Cicatrice,” about a beautiful young woman who grows tired of people focusing on her physical beauty. She hates that no one cares about who she really is, deep inside. One day, frustrated after another person says “My, how beautiful you are,” the young woman figures out a way to stop the world's obsession with her superficial self. She takes a sharp knife (or maybe it’s a razor – I never decided) and makes a cut across her cheek. Her hope is that if she has a big scar, people will stop focusing on her face. They'll look into her eyes and seek the soul inside.

That’s as far as I got with plot planning, and I never did write the story. I’m glad I learned the word “cicatrice,” though; it’s come in handy since I’ve become a crossword puzzle lover. Nothing is wasted, I guess.

My rather, um, overwrought cicatrice plot came back to me last month when I learned that I have squamous cell cancer on my upper lip.

The Triduum – 2012

Holy Thursday

I saw the sad thing when Mike and I were on the return leg of our customary morning walk along the Bugline trail, an old railroad right-of-way. It was only April 5 but it looked like May 5: the forest floor was carpeted with trout lilies nodding their white heads. Purple hepatica and yellow marsh marigolds were up.