"Mary, take the child, the river's rising
Muddy water taking back my home
Won't be back to start all over
Cause what I felt before is gone.."
I usually have a pretty good sense of what I would like in a place, so when 2 years ago me and my husband decided to go to New Orleans (about a month before Kathrina), I was ecstatic. I so loved the idea of New Orleans from everything I've heard, I was sold on it already. Well, as far as expecting good times, my sixth sense was off on that one, WAY off. It might have had something to do with the fact that I was in my second trimester and my hubby doesn't drink, though there was more to it. I want to try and recreate what I felt there, as I have never ever felt this way about a place, and I've been to some strange cities before, not to mention growing up in the strangest of them all..This isn't "prose", its merely a recollection..
It was hot and humid, not in the nice Caribbean breezy way, but more in a sauna atop an open sewer way. The spring was in full feverish bloom, flaring up allergies we never knew we had so bad we could barely talk between sneezing. The air was thick with smoke, spilled beer, and some kinda sickly sweet concoction..basically, there was no air. We stayed at the prized French Quarter at a friends "summer house" which was a euphemism for a gaudy moldy love shack with its centerpiece of a high and DAMP bed drowned in red velvet pillows. Scented candles galore round the bed, bath and freaking beyond. The windows were painted shut..No air there either. We'd wonder the city in a midday haze hoping the festive mood of countless drunken others would rub off on us, to no avail. We were sober, sick, poor, and looking for fun in all the wrong places..The highlight of that day was an afternoon siesta in our repugnant retreat when after we finished making love (we had to pass the time somehow..) the street erupted in cheers and, as I stuck my head out, a full blown parade marched by -- horses, big band, beads, silly hats and.. dead serious faces. It looked like they're off to sacrifice the drag queen perched atop a cakey float. I scooped up the beads and wished I could down a hurricane or two..
Next day after a breakfast of buttered grits and fried eggs and bacon we decided to venture out of touristy Quarters and explore the famous old cemeteries. Must have been all the cholesterol plaguing our brains. We got there all right, gleefully chatting each other up, completely oblivious to a change of scenery as we went..My husband's quite a history buff, it's pure pleasure to explore museums and anything of historic interest with him, such as a cemetery full of nobles, so we took our time and the sun was out when we left, alone, on foot, an hour walk away from Quarters. And then it hit us. Broken glass everywhere, abandoned houses, cars, filth, creepy looks from the project windows..it was a war zone, a ghetto so blood chilling spooky we almost marched back into the cemetery. A police car cruised by. The window rolled down and a big black cop took a long look at us, idiots. "Tourists ?.." And as we frantically nodded, went "Good. Now get the fuck out of here, FAST". And at that point we ran. We ran as fast as two white people (one pregnant !) can run. Later found a note in a local tour book than one should never visit that part of town unless on a guided tour..
Day three was full of indigestible food and a few surprises. Thus, my husband bumped into a charming acquaintance of his -- a punk girl that studied art with him back in Chicago and now lived here in one of the abandoned buildings. Imagine a very dirty Barney in leather skirt, dreadlocks and Doc Martens, she was a joy, smart as a whip and certainly one of a kind..The local market with its alligator-on-a-stick, turtle jerky and souvenir voodoo shrunken heads proved too much for my pregnant metabolism, as did a sight of big fat flies circling a heaping plate of famous beignets at an equally famous and crowded local coffee joint.
Then there were the museums, with their provincial art, recreated parlors and trinkets and sad tallies of many many many deaths..too many for such tiny a city. There were blown up period photos of flooded grave yards, dead and dying children, quarantined hospital wards, typhoid, yellow fever --that, mixed with the occult, voodoo, slavery. And it dawned on me then just WHY New Orleans with all its garish glory just wasn't getting through to me. Its aura was still that of death and disease, it was everywhere -- stifling, suffocating, oppressive. All that jazz..and "I see dead people".. :) No wonder the "ghost tours" sold out like hot cakes, those were real ghosts, I bet, they're on payroll there :)) But seriously..I was mystified at how uneasy I felt in Big Easy. And then there was the River. The River I'll carry in me, always, grateful, and at a loss of words to do it justice. It is truly amazing for a foreigner to catch a glimpse of this Mark Twain's Great America. The city's long dead, but the River is still larger than life, in all its might and splendor. Can't put this in a museum. Can't contain it (obviously..). Slow and steady as its undying blues, it will be there long after the last Mardi Gras.
Interesting after-thought-- my beloved St. Petersburg is too built on swamps and mass graves and saw more blood shed than a small country, and it too used to make me anxious and physically sick, I had the worst asthma which resolved itself completely when I moved here. St. Petersburg, with its ghostly pallor, its dark labyrinths, and its Dostoevsky, and New Orleans, all flushed with fever, with a sacred River running through its decomposing flesh..