 Its Own Continent |
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Last night I drove to New Orleans after work to have dinner with my superfox of a boyfriend. Because of heavy traffic, it took me an hour to go twenty miles out of my own city, but after that it was smooth sailing.  I noticed some damage in Jefferson Parish and felt my stomach start to tighten. An entire side was blown off of what looked like a storage facility. The windows were broken on the Galleria. Lots of roofs had blue tarps. As I drove into the city, the entire downtown area was lit up by the setting sun. It was bright and sort of beautiful.  I reached the split and thought about what it would be like to get off the interstate and see the Lakeview area. That made me feel positively nauseated and terrified, and I was glad I was proceeding towards downtown.  I took the Superdome exit, and suddenly I just had to stop the car. The reflection of the sun off of the Superdome was casting an eerie yellow glow that filled the air. It was surreal and strange. I felt like I was looking at a filtered photograph. There were no other cars on the road, and it was like I was the only person alive. Like there was no life. The Superdome was so bright in the glare of the sunlight that I had to squint my eyes and just take a few deep breaths. Flashing through my mind were images like this and this and this and this and this. For a moment, it was like I just couldn't find my breath. But I found it, and I couldn't hold the camera still enough so I steadied it on the top of my steering wheel and shot a photo through the windshield. I felt like I shouldn't be there, that I shouldn't be stopping to look. I felt sick and sad and a little bit scared. I didn't like the yellow light. Soon enough, I found my boyfriend and we walked through the French Quarter to have a drink at Lafitte's. We walked slowly because I stupidly still had on my work heels which I can't walk in without getting blisters to save my life. There were piles of garbage lining the sidewalks, so I quickly learned not to breathe through my nose. Even with the stinkiness and the many dark establishments, there was something great about walking by so many familiar bars and eateries where the lights were on and the music was playing -- live music, in several places, as well as music videos on TV screens, like at Bourbon Pub & Parade, where Avril Lavigne and Kelly Clarkson were blaring. It was dark and cool in Lafitte's, little candles flickering on the bar, and my beer was ice cold.  We walked back to Bourbon House to eat dinner. We ate here several months ago, and it was nice to be back.  It's still lovely, and obviously there aren't any oysters right now, but this time we ate dishes from a revised menu with plastic silverware and dishes. Our water came in a bottle, and there was a giant jug of water in the bathroom to use when washing one's hands. I enjoyed my redfish amandine and especially the vanilla ice cream with raspberries for dessert.   I met an employee in the bathroom who told me her apartment flooded and that she was so happy that the restaurant had reopened the day before. The restaurant was full of people who looked like out of towners who'd come to work there. One of them was dining alone next to us and asked if he could read our newspaper. Some were in military uniforms. All seemed hungry and glad to have a place to eat. As I left and drove toward the interstate, I noted the empty marquee at the Saenger and felt a twinge of sadness. The lights on Canal Street faded to black just as I made my turn. I crossed the line from where there was brightness to where everything became invisible in the darkness. I gulped and carefully made my way across intersections where there were no traffic signals and no signs of life. I drove out of Orleans Parish and breathed a little more easily when the lights came on when I crossed into Jefferson. It is not an original thought, but I love New Orleans. I love it for my sister, whose beautiful old Uptown apartment I'll never forget and for all of her Halloween parties and her favorite bagel shop and park. I love it for my aunt, whose school will be restored and rebuilt and who I hope will live to see it happen. I love it for my entire family, who's gathered there every Thanksgiving for our entire lives as we've watched each other grow up and have babies and endured tantrums and will readings and basketball games and broken windows and just about every insane display of family love and hate that any family goes through on Thanksgiving. I love it for all of the concerts I've gone to there, especially for how I sort of started feeling myself coming back to life during a sad time that night at the Shim Sham. I love it for all of the stupid drunken nights I had there with various groups of friends in high school and college. I love it for all of the Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest weekends I've spent there, like the one when we found out that my friend's dad had committed suicide when we were sixteen and we took her to the French Market to buy her a new marijuana pipe and I held my friend's head on a Riverwalk bench while he barfed up his poboy and we all almost got hit by a streetcar and the time we found $250 on the floor of the bathroom of the Old Absinthe House and spent it all on Shark Attacks at Tropical Isle and the ones with group karaoke experiences and when Gena showed her tits for a t-shirt but only after asking, "Short sleeved or long sleeved?" and when we cut school our senior year of high school to see the Indigo Girls perform on that first Thursday afternoon Jazz Fest show and for all of the Mardi Gras weekends spent on the porch of the Columns Hotel. I love it for the nights spent in the damn Pat O'Brien's piano bar even though it's a tourist trap because I love it -- I love the orange wedges floating in the Hurricanes and I love how people stand up and sing along with their arms around each other when the song they requested about their team or hometown gets played. I love it for Jackson Square and how much I love to walk around it, watching the painters and street musicians and always stopping inside Faulkner House in Pirate's Alley. I love it for the lighting of candles in St. Louis Cathedral. I love it for the way it felt to be surrounded by family and friends and strangers in that thick crowd of disbelief and bliss that weekend when we won the game. I love it for every memory I have of showing New Orleans to an out of town friend for the first time. I love it for the Saenger Theatre and all of the shows I've seen there, really just too many to name, and for the stars on the ceiling. I love it for people from everywhere who also love it, like a man I sat next to on a plane this summer who told his wife that New Orleans is "like its own continent -- a very peculiar and special place." It is not my home and I don't know how it feels for people whose home it is or once was and would never pretend to. I realize that sentimentality is annoying sometimes, but I can't help but be sentimental after going back. It's just a place that I love, that has been a short drive away my entire life, and it's been home to my aunt and uncle and cousins and my sister and now it is home to the man I love. And it holds so many new memories for me that I've made with him not included above and that are too precious to list in this space. And it's become so much more in my mind than a place for holidays and crazy fun beautiful times. I've now grown to see it as a place where people live, where people work, where people go through the daily grind of grocery shopping and afternoons in the coffee shop and paying bills and waving at neighbors and wondering what to do about all of the cats who keep showing up on the front porch. For so many people, it's so much more than memories of special, wild, unusual times, as wonderful and as lovely to me as those are. For so many people, the ones who grew up there or who are from somewhere else but have adopted it as their hometown, it's so much more. The mundane, the miraculous. It's everything. Those of you reading this from closeby or far away, please go back. When it's time to go back, go back. Move there and get a job and help it to rebuild itself. I'm serious. Or come to Mardi Gras and come to Jazz Fest and spend lots and lots of money. Eat in the restaurants and shop in the stores and just breathe it all in once the good smells come back -- the coffee and the seafood and the spices and the sweets. Walk down the streets, and help it to be something of what it once was and what it still is underneath the piles of trash and rotting homes and broken hearts. 
© Copyright 2005 elb |
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