The Beauty in the Big Easy

I spend the majority of my time in front of a computer screen. It's unavoidable: I have a day job in email marketing, and a every-other-time-of-day job keeping Floodmark spinning. So I find it necessary to hit the pause button and run off into the blue for a weekend, now and again. If any writers find themselves in the same boat, I highly recommend you do the same.

I'm in Jackson Square. 

In January, I took a whirlwind trip to New Orleans. I had visited family there when I was very small, and only remember the strangest details: my sister jumping from the dim car into the sun...and a pile of fire ants, the courtyard of our motel at night, and a boat-slash-restaurant on the river. 

What I had managed to retain as a child did not prepare me at all for New Orleans. Even after researching activities and things to see for weeks, I still had no idea. When you hear other people talk about New Orleans, you get the sense that it's a fun place. And it definitely is. But truly, there is no way to describe the atmosphere to someone who hasn't experienced it for themselves. It's pure magic. The the sake of this post, I'll give it a whirl.

A small portion of the large collection of this and that I accumulated in New Orleans.

The French Quarter, where we stayed, is the oldest part of the city. I was instantly charmed. How could I not be? The balconies created finely wrought awnings on the corners and sidewalks. The street names were embedded into the street corners with tile. Much like Europe, people stood outside restaurants and bars calling for your attention. Everything is uneven. The signs have paint chipped off them. The buildings are colorful, whimsical, and friendly. Bourbon Street was half a block from our hotel, and it was unapologetically bawdy. Jazz was seeping from the cracks in the buildings and the streets. I work in the Loop in Chicago, where there's an emphasis on the color white, steel, and glass. In January, it was also a winter wonderland -- the Monday before my trip saw wind chills at -25 degrees. When I arrived in the French Quarter, I felt like Dorothy in Oz. I was free from the steel and snow and screens that dominate busy Chicago. I was set loose in an infamous, notorious, historical, whimsical city with no laptop to haunt my daily plans, and no schedule to guide me except my whims.

Good gravy, wouldn't you have walked around with your mouth open, too? I turned to my boyfriend, also taken aback by our first glimpse of the Big Easy, and thought: "Toto, we're not in Chicago anymore." But I'm young, I'm in love, and I was in a city that openly adores itself and leisure and jazz music. The culture shock was welcomed. 

Naturally, the first move was to find food. And let me tell you, food is as much an artform as poetry, music, or painting. I lived on a primarily seafood and beignet diet while in New Orleans that I miss on a daily basis. I ate with a relish and an abandon that, as an Italian, I recognize as a culinary experience that transcends the hum-drum daily task of consumption. I tried more new food in 4 days than I have in the past year. My normally conservative, selective taste buds were singing hymns whenever mealtime rolled around. 

It rained that first night, usually not a great thing on a vacation. But we didn't mind. In fact, we welcomed it. The rain fell harder than I ever remember seeing rain fall. It assaulted the streets, fell in dense, staggering sheets onto Bourbon. We stood under an awning by the Maison Bourbon, listened to jazz, and watched the rain. It was one of those simple romantic moments that have no business being romantic but are anyway.

New Orleans is a city that lives with the dead. Death is simply everywhere. In the French Quarter, it's widely accepted that you could be taking your morning coffee six feet above a skeleton. The police have a little rule: if they uncover remains accidentally that have been there for more than 50 years, they cover the body back up and move on. Have you ever seen a Jazz Funeral? I caught the end of one, when they were playing "When the Saints Go Marching In". It's this lovely celebration of life and death and very, very strange to a Midwesterner like me. Strange in a good way. Strange in a way that ultimately makes sense. I also was able to go into St. Louis No. 1, the oldest cemetery in New Orleans. Seeing these mausoleums and step tombs and wall tombs, and hearing about how the dead are interred was incredible. Remains in New Orleans are constantly getting company in the afterlife. Tombs are works of art or crumbling heaps of stone. I saw many "XXX" markings on tombs here, and our tour guide told us that they were wishes on the tombs of practitioners of voodoo. It was a large part of why the cemetery was closed to the public in 2015 -- as you might imagine, the Catholic Archdiocese who owned the cemetery wasn't thrilled at the vandalism. And did you know that through the years in New Orleans, many cemeteries were moved? I asked my tour guide how one moves a cemetery. He put air quotes around the word "move" and said some guy found seven caskets when he dug a space for his in-ground pool in a neighborhood near St. Louis No. 1. The caskets were reinterred in tombs in the cemetery.

***

I'd like to begin the show and tell portion of the post. I'm eight paragraphs in, and I'm realizing I can't tell you all the things I want to unless you have a few hours to spare over cocktails. So, I'm going to describe my Top 12 Mental Snapshots, some of which I have photos to accompany.

This one is a freebie: two sculptures I loved at NOMA's sculpture garden.

 During my time in New Orleans, I saw a number of extraordinary and beautiful and strange things: 

1. A grinning woman with nothing on her torso but body paint at 5PM on Bourbon Street. 

2. A lovely drag queen who winked at me and invited me in to see the show. (With so much to ultimately see on Bourbon, I had to decline.)

3. A quiet, elderly man observing Jackson Square with his hands clasped behind his back in the afternoon sunshine. I managed to snap a photo of this one:

Originally I was waiting to get a shot without lots of people, but my boyfriend and I agree this is better. 

4. I don't want to reveal too much about this one, but I had a supernatural experience of sorts. Our hotel was one of the most haunted spots in the French Quarter. (Note: we didn't know that until our hotel was featured as the grand finale on our walking Ghost Tour. So that was interesting.)

5. The currents of the Mississippi River. More unusual and striking than you might think from the shore. 

6. A full moon against a black velvet sky over the river from the top deck of a paddle wheel boat while jazz floated out from the dining room. Very specific because it was so memorable. 

7. Beignets. It's like someone fried a cloud and doused it in more powdered sugar than should ever be acceptable. I had to refrain from requesting a spoon to eat the massive pile of leftover powdered sugar. (Something I had done as a kid in New Orleans.)

8. An old gypsy psychic, bundled up in Jackson Square. She gazed at me gravely, and then nodded to the chair across from her. I gave her a small smile but kept walking. I always want to have my fortune read, but know that ultimately I would rather discover the pieces of my crazy, unpredictable life all on my own. I was too happy where I was to need word of the future.

9. The tomb of Marie Laveau, voodoo queen. On that note, I saw a lot of voodoo shops, and even explored a few. Definitely a place that sets you on edge. I purchased two things at voodoo shop, and even now am captivated and slightly suspicious of them. 

10. The smell of incense. It was everywhere. 

11. The multiple times I was pulled aside in New Orleans and told I had an innocent face. Often, I'm told I look much younger than my 24 years. But in New Orleans, the remark had a different flavor and it happened a lot. There were even some people who didn't say it to me, but who stared too closely into my face during conversation or in passing. Their expression was...seeking? wonderment? I'm honestly not sure. So often I think I'm passing unnoticed in a crowd -- but there were moments in New Orleans I felt very bare. I tried to avoid my instinct to close up.

Looking innocent also means I was carded at least twice everywhere I went. 

12. During our ghost tour, we met and chatted with some folks from New Zealand. We talked about travel, ghosts (of course), and most importantly -- books. We spoke in a way that you can only speak to strangers -- slightly guarded, but open in ways you cannot be with people you know. A sense that you can say anything and it will pass because you'll never see the person again. I recommended Norman Maclean's "A River Runs Through It". It thrills me to think that someone somewhere in the world is experiencing that story at my recommendation. I realized too late we never got their names. 

***

There's a general idea that you find the right places at the right time. I'd like to expand  upon that: sometimes you find the right place at the right time with the right people. I was lucky enough to find New Orleans at the right time with the right person. Trips like that are transformative. It's more than just blowing off steam -- it's a realization that so much of this world spins without you, while you're busy typing late into the night, or on the phone discussing this or that at the office. So little of our lives are spent on a whim. Even less of our lives are spent on a whim with people we love. After we return home, we walk a little freer, see the saxophone player on the street corner and smell rain, and maybe we dream about beignets. The idea of an alternate life dogs your well-worn path through the day. If we're brave we can gain more from these experiences than nostalgia. Perhaps we might gain a renewed commitment to being in the right place at the right time with the right people. Perhaps we learn a little something about ourselves, and the places we might go. Or maybe we realize that diets be damned! a life without donuts is not a life worth living.

You'll never know unless you try.