My Best of New Orleans list, goes something like this…
Warm, sultry air put in motion as a gentle breeze. Hot sun blazes through the moist air and is brighter than I thought the sun could be.
Every morning, I awake filled with excitement at the thought of a simple stroll in glorious Audobon Park – massive, distorted trees, covered in lichen. How it felt those mornings just to walk beneath that shaded haven. Feeling so safe, comforted, alive as I haven’t felt in a long time. Exotic birds with ebony beaks cluster by a pond; a paved trail is flanked by a foot-trodden one; Spanish moss hangs from the thick tree branches, and sways in the breeze, like green, tree-ghosts.
And, speaking of ghosts, this is a city that takes Halloween as seriously as it deserves to be taken. This is a city that celebrates life by acknowledging death. Mid-October in NOLA and all of the glorious homes are decked out with giant, black spiders, zombies, skeletons. Even the most humble of abodes takes the time to cover bushes and trees in cobwebs. Halloween in New Orleans – a citywide ritual in a region rich with voodoo history. Magic pours out of New Orleans in more ways than one.
Awe-inspring, yet somehow humble architecture that speaks of culture, history and centuries of mixed memories. French colonial homes and archways; intricate steelwork fences. And what porches! These are the porches people speak of when they memorialize the south. Great, big landings that lay still in the warm evening air, beckoning for a sit and talk. Rocking chairs. Painted doors. When the sun sets, lanterns flicker – there is that magic again. But what I notice most in the architecture is the infinite variety. This is not a town built over night during some era of prosperous returns, planned and realized by the hands of a few architects. This is a town that has grown under the feet of Native American, French, African, Spanish, British, and Caribbean folk.
Neighborhood streets are a maze for feet and wheels, as though little earthquakes have disturbed block-by-block. Concrete has risen in revolt; tree roots grow against the pavement. A quick drive to the store feels like a countryside adventure, as we slow down to avoid potholes the size of small mammals.
The sloowww, Big Easy.
Music, a way of life. Loud, brassy sounds of trumpet and saxophone. Wailing like this: “oooohh ooh waaa oohhh weeee”
Southern men with impeccable manners and warm smiles. Deep affection encumbered by nothing. Complete presence, because in New Orleans, it could all be destroyed tomorrow.
Bourbon. Chicken fried steak. Fried, then fried again. Oysters, crab, crawfish. Gumbo. Blackened catfish. Blackened everything. Black everything, black city.
And now for some pictures. Unfortunately, these are almost exclusively from le Vieux Carre, the French Quarter, and not from the parts of the city that convinced me that I could live there tomorrow, if not today.
