Bad Spell
Everything had been going so well. Then, last night, we went to Celebration in the Oaks. I remembered that this ended in tears last year, but I thought I was in much better shape now. This year I couldn't even get worked up enough for tears; I just shambled numbly through Storyland and the Botanical Gardens, barely seeing the colorful statues and rides I used to love, not rejoicing that the water-damaged Flying Horses (carousel) were once again operational, not caring about the lights or the spectacle or the happy faces of children, not feeling the magic one damn bit.
"It's like putting jingle bells on a rotting corpse," I said to Chris.
"That's not a fair thing to say," he told me, and he was right. The only rotting corpse in the vicinity of City Park last night was me. I have allowed my imagination and my spirit to rot to the point where I can barely stand to be around the things that used to inspire me (cf. the final scene of D*U*C*K, set at Celebration in the Oaks:
As they walked into the Botanical Gardens, an endless array of tiny lights seemed to stretch before them, multicolored and dazzling, repeated in the long reflecting pool. Stars were never visible in the night sky here, only the purple glow that hung over any brightly lit city, but this must be how they would look if you could see them. Things to count, even though counting them all was impossible. Things to wish on.
In the panoramic shimmer of lights, water, and sky, Rickey thought he could glimpse the future: true love, great food, Bobby Hebert coming to eat at his restaurant, the Saints winning the Super Bowl, the city of New Orleans standing whole, strong, beautiful forever.
This now reads so much like a failed magical spell that I really should have known better than to go to the damned thing. As it was, I ended up where I usually end up, at the statue by the wading pool, which you can find posed with a smiling 12-year-old John Kennedy Toole in the Toole collection at Tulane:
"It's like putting jingle bells on a rotting corpse," I said to Chris.
"That's not a fair thing to say," he told me, and he was right. The only rotting corpse in the vicinity of City Park last night was me. I have allowed my imagination and my spirit to rot to the point where I can barely stand to be around the things that used to inspire me (cf. the final scene of D*U*C*K, set at Celebration in the Oaks:
As they walked into the Botanical Gardens, an endless array of tiny lights seemed to stretch before them, multicolored and dazzling, repeated in the long reflecting pool. Stars were never visible in the night sky here, only the purple glow that hung over any brightly lit city, but this must be how they would look if you could see them. Things to count, even though counting them all was impossible. Things to wish on.
In the panoramic shimmer of lights, water, and sky, Rickey thought he could glimpse the future: true love, great food, Bobby Hebert coming to eat at his restaurant, the Saints winning the Super Bowl, the city of New Orleans standing whole, strong, beautiful forever.
This now reads so much like a failed magical spell that I really should have known better than to go to the damned thing. As it was, I ended up where I usually end up, at the statue by the wading pool, which you can find posed with a smiling 12-year-old John Kennedy Toole in the Toole collection at Tulane: