 How Lucky I Am: Guest Entry |
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When I first started this journal, back when she was known around here as Alice, I wrote an entry about my friend Shelley. It explains how we grew up together and how she was then at a crossroads in her life. In the four and a half years since I wrote that, we've done some more growing up together, and now she's found herself at another crossroads in her life. The future is uncertain, but one thing is again certain, and always certain, and that is "how brave they'll all think her at home." Home, of course, is Louisiana, and when I asked her to write a guest entry for me, it seems only fitting as she ponders where she'll land next that she submit this piece that she wrote about home.
A Tribute to Louisiana I haven’t lived in Louisiana in over 10 years. But the more I live in other places, the more I realize what a wonderful and unique place it is, and how lucky I am to have grown up there. From the people to the food to the scenery, there really is no other place like it in the entire country. I wrote this last year when I was feeling a little homesick. It’s just a small tribute to the mysterious and seductive quality of summer there. Heat Hot is not the word to describe this sort of heat. This is a heat that wraps itself around you and makes you feel as if you might go insane if you don’t get away from it. It’s so oppressive you feel like lying down and crying. Or tearing your hair out. Or simply giving in and offering yourself up to it so that it will go ahead and burn you up or melt you down into the puddle you’re sure you’ve already become. You start to see stars. Lines begin to blur, and the sky is like the blue-white flame of a gas burner on high. It’s sticky and wet, like the inside of a mouth with a fever. And that mouth opens itself up, reaches out its long, fever-ridden tongue, and swallows you up whole while you struggle in vain to get away. By now your body feels like it doesn’t belong to you anymore; you’re just standing by and watching it melt away into that puddle under the huge, bright, cruel sun. But just when you imagine that you’re actually inside this beast, that you might in fact be forever entangled within that terrible mouth, you feel a faint breeze on the back of your neck, and it’s like a kiss from the gods. You almost cry with relief. It’s 8:30, and the sun is finally fading on the horizon, and that tease of a wind on your neck is enough to make you breathe freely for an instant and almost feel sane again. With that one breath of cool air your senses re-awaken and you become aware of the smells and the sounds that are in the air around you, that have also been swallowed up by that beast of heat, only to be set free again with the setting sun. There’s the sweet smell of magnolia, Abita beer, and someone’s mom cooking Crawfish Et Tu Fait; the faint sounds of locusts, crickets, and kids laughing deliriously in the dusk; and the sight of Spanish moss hanging from the oak trees and lightening bugs making the air shimmer. And it hits you in the wake of your struggle with such force that you feel heady and faint, and you wonder if the beast was in fact only part of some terrible dream. You’re seduced by that evening air so fully that you feel drunk and in love and like you could stay awake all night if only to keep smelling and hearing and seeing this gumbo of heat and life that is South Louisiana in August. © Shelley F. 2003
I might scan some more pictures soon, but for now, here's just a little of our growing up.
I know she'll end up where she's meant to be.
About this time in ...
© Copyright 2004 elb |
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