Mother Goose Wabi Sabi
(as overheard at the gazebo one Friday evening, just before the micro play started)
Zora Babtiste had been setting up her CB radio do-dads for the evening's broadcast when she spotted Joe Fontenot on the gazebo steps, stroking his beard and mumbling lines to himself. The sun was dipping low behind the live oaks, and the first fireflies were starting to wink like they knew the show was coming. Zora, never one to let a curiosity pass without poking it, called out: "Joe, why do you recite nursery rhymes every Friday before the micro play? Been wondering that for ages."
Joe looked up slow, his eyes twinkling like he was waiting for someone to ask. "Zora, that's a story worth the telling."
He leaned back against the railing, the kind that's been painted white a dozen times but still shows the wood grain underneath. "I was out in Hollywood before the Great Algorithmic Reckoning, trying to break into acting. Thought I had something real to offer. Got an agent, went to auditions, dozens of 'em. Landed a few commercials, but nothing with meat. They'd hand you a page or two of lines, no backstory, no context. Just 'read this and make it sing.'"
Zora nodded, fiddling with a knob on her radio. "Sounds thin."
"Thin as pond ice in April," Joe agreed. "But those lines... they'd start whispering to me after a couple days. I'd build a whole story in my head, know what the movie was gonna be about. Then I'd watch the final thing, months or years later, and it'd disappoint every time. The message, the meaning... all twisted or shallow. One day I said to myself, 'Joe, Mother Goose knew more about life than these jokers ever will.'"
He paused, letting the words hang like moss from the oaks. "You can't smell the air from the c-suite. Notice how they always get it backwards? Make decisions that leave us wondering if they got any sense at all? After a couple years of that, I started looking for a real place to go. I'm from Rhode Island originally. I had no need to go back to New England. Wanted something different. One morning I woke from a dream about floating down a cypress-filled, moss-draped, lazy river. Knew that's where I belonged. Packed my car and headed to the one state known for such things: Louisiana."
Zora smiled. "And Belle Perdue?"
"Wasn't aiming for it exactly," Joe said. "Didn't want the loud of New Orleans or the flash of parades. Wanted quiet magic. I was on Hwy 190 when I saw the most faded old sign: 'Belle Perdue 3mi.' My car turned left before I did. Once I got here, I breathed for what felt like the first time. Got a lemonade at John and Harry's and just sat, soaking it all in. This place has the best kind of wabi-sabi, not a made-up word by the way, it's Japanese for admiring the handmade and slightly irregular. The kind a computer can't make. A bowl with a chip glued back, a lamp whose shade refuses to sit right."
He chuckled. "As I sipped, I started singing 'The wheels on the bus go round and round.' And at that moment, it was a revelation, a whole diatribe on life, the wheels going round and round. John chuckled and said, 'What, good sir?' I blurted, 'The wheels on the bus... go round... and round... so much truth to that.' John laughed again and nodded with a 'yep.' And I guess that's how it all started. Found where truth lay, or at least a truth that spoke to me, and wanted to share it with all you good folks. You don't have to get it, that's okay. But maybe when the world starts whispering to you, now you'll hear it a little clearer."
Zora tilted her head, the way she does when she's tuning in a signal. "Makes sense, Joe. The bayou's got its own sauce running through it. Myth and making, nose to nose."
Joe nodded. "Exactly. And Belle Perdue? It's where you breathe it in without even trying."
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