Rambling Thoughts on New Orleans
I ran across this piece I wrote on one of my morning walks while I was in New Orleans for Saints and Sinners this year. I thought some of you might enjoy visiting my rambling thoughts. :)
As I walk out of the hotel there are crisscross patterns of brick surrounded by a framed containment of matching bricks. The inner bricks follow in a zigzag pattern and wrap neatly around the metal grates and manhole covers. Here on Toulouse it has an artsy feel, even though harsh weather and age has taken its toll on the rust orange and sunny yellow painted hotel. Beneath the layers of painted black iron balconies the black shutters stand out drastically from the bright colors of the walls and windows. It’s all so different, but together it creates a place I called home, even if just for a few days,
Around the corner on Rue Dauphine the clean city smell falls prey to the pungent aroma of alcohol and strong cleaners. The sidewalk is gray and lifeless, cracked so badly in places that the cement gives way to piles of dist and debris. The feeling of art is lost to desperation, struggling to hold itself together, to hide this wound, one of many in the city.
Near the center of Rue Dauphine the sidewalk becomes a pattern of heavy stone, much like that of an ancient English dungeon. Through the air of sadness and desperation I feel the will of the city and its children, to hold it together, to survive.
Across the street is a whitewashed building, and under its triangular steps is a grate of black painted iron. She waits there, the angel holding the offering bowl, her eyes lowered and a sad smile on her white marble face. Is she asking for gifts from those who pass her resting place, or are the cluster of dirty pennies, dimes, and nickels a message for those who would listen, her offering to us, her wisdom? A child has left an offering for her on the grate, a little green plastic army man, a prized possession, or a forgotten plaything?
Even in the areas of the greatest sadness and loss in the French Quarter, I see iron balconies dripping with well cared for greenery. In this hot and humid place what great arts of love it must take to keep such lovely container gardens lush and full of life?
As I turn from Rue Dauphine to St Louis. The grey stone turns to a tan bricks mixed in shapes of rectangles and triangles, like a creative children’s puzzle, once again returning the feeling of art to my travels. Eventually the tan creation gives way again to the simple red brick, a sharp contrast in its neatly patterned appearance.
One thought comes to me here. This is a place of great transformation, of constant change. No matter what befalls this city from the violence of a chaotic storm to the constant abuse and violation from the daily throng of uncaring strangers, this city and its people survive. The strength and the power that exists here in the land and the hearts of its children is nothing less that inspirational.
As I pass the open shutter like doors of a local tavern I watch as the man inside spray his floors with a high pressured hose. The filth of the tourists filters down the tile stone floor and into the street, washing away the memory of the evenings plunder and repugnant frivolity. These people that swarm the streets night after night, day after day, they can never see the beauty and the magic that lives here. They come, demanding the servitude of the city’s working class, yet unwilling to look these people in the eye and over even one sincere smile.
This place is a place of water and fire, or intimate metamorphosis. No matter what tourists or nature herself throws at this city and her people, they find a way to survive. I feel a kinship with this place, remember the storms I’ve faced in my life, the times I used whatever I could to peace myself together to go on, to make it another day. Isn’t that all we want, any of us, to be loved and cherished as those that truly appreciate this place do? Don’t we all want to make it through the hard times, and come through to stand in out own beauty?
You can even find love here, for a price that is. Or at least that’s what the signs spell out as I turned from St Louis onto Bourbon Street. The pictures in the windows are shocking at first in their eroticy, but then this is not the Midwest. We don’t have topless and bottomless sex shows broadcast out in the open for all to see, public advertisements for lap dancing, moderate prices. There is a freedom there that makes the streets feel like they are so much more exotic and exciting than any other place I’ve been, or even imagined.
You can’t come here and not have this city affect you in some way, not if you’re really paying attention. Sure, there are those that walk through life with blinders on, the kind that never see the true beauty of any place, just what they can get out of it to satisfy their current needs. They ignore the sadness and pain of this place, or simply turn away in disgust, but even in that which is difficult to look upon there is its own truth and wonder.
I will always remember my time in the French Quarter, and hope soon to visit her again, like coming back to a new friend.