once
I watched a painter work in new orleans, near the iron fence that encloses jackson square. she used a cardboard palette to mix her paints-- greens, red and yellows like fresh rainbow chard, the sounds of beyonce coming from what I could only assume was a phone. her voice muffled, as if she were singing through a sock. across the way, amber light on buildings, a scene that begged to be painted.
once
I peered inside the windows of the saint roch chapel in new orleans and found a small, soft chorus of prosthetic limbs. the insides of another southern poem, a hundred different stories (at least), dangling.
once
while riding bikes down royal street in new orleans, we came across the famous lady louis with her clarinet. it's true. she really does hold those crazy high notes like nobody else in the world. I saw it with my own two eyes, heard it with my own two ears.
once
I spent a few days with friends in a skinny three-story flat on the back end of an ancient building in new orleans. when we first arrived, we ran our hands over the golden peacock wallpaper on the first floor, joked about who might fall while climbing the rickety red spiral staircase that led to the second floor and laughed when we saw the old wooden ladder that led up to the sliver of sleeping space above the tiny kitchenette. we spent most of our time on that second floor, though. eating brown butter drop donuts from the bakery down the street, talking about all the things we should be out doing instead of laying around eating brown butter drop donuts.
my own version of a barbie dream house is what it was. gently decayed, slightly oddball in all the right ways. as if my nine year-old self somehow combined powers with my forty-something self and magically conjured up the place and said, here. this is for you.
once
I spent a few days in an old victorian house in new orleans where I did not want for hot sauce.
once
I took the train home from new orleans and found myself riding past old cemeteries at sunrise.
which, of course, felt like the soft insides of a southern poem.
once
I sat with two friends at a small white table at cafe du monde in new orleans. we drank cups of hot coffee with chicory and ate beignets until our fingers were sticky with sugar and evening light dimmed to blue. I noticed our server outside the cafe on a smoke break, perched on top of a cement street bollard. legs dangling, cigarette dangling. I wandered outside, asked her how long she'd been working. too long, she said and I nodded. I looked down, noticed her boots. pointed my camera at them and she smiled.
powdered sugar, she said.
I can't get away from it.
it's everywhere.
everywhere.
things I brought home from new orleans:
a pink fan
a stack of polaroids
the envelope that held our room key
the cork from the bottle of champagne we drank on the night of our anniversary
the little gold foil piece too
a napkin from the napoleon house
a patch I bought for ava (but will probably keep for myself)
two woven candy-colored bracelets that called my name
the paper bag that held our leftover beignets
three anniversary photobooth strips
things seen today in new orleans and beyond:
alligator jerky
a painter's crusted palette
a wall of bottled hot sauce
donald trump voodoo dolls by the dozens
clumps and sprinkles of powdered sugar on the sidewalk
a message scribbled on a pink wall on st. claude: 'baby, went to frenchmen street-- love, boo'
a man in an ivory wool suit with matching fedora
bayou after bayou after bayou
houses on skinny wooden-legged stilts
roads swooning with live oaks
signs urging the world to vote for someone named 'tater'
a roadside memorial cross accompanied by a dozen small silver spinning pinwheels
a carpet of tiny white daisies along the shoulder of the road
another fiery farewell sunset in my rearview mirror
things seen today in new orleans:
neon colored wigs
bone white grave markers
a welcome, sprawling canopy of live oaks
a man on a bike, wearing a cotton bonnet the color of milk
a man on a bike, wearing no pants, no pants at all
homemade milk crate basketball goals
a lemon yellow pothole with the words 'love me tender' stenciled on it
an older couple sitting on the high bench outside outside hansen's sno-bliz, legs dangling, feet not touching, eating sno-balls
a collection of old memory jugs encrusted with bits of buttons and shells and beads and pieces of remembered things
a man in tortoise shell glasses pecking away on an old typewriter at breakfast
a window with the words 'no peeping toms' carefully painted on it
the dark insides of an old dip-and-dunk chemical photobooth
the candy colors of the bywater from the seat of a bike
the candy colors of the french quarter from the seat of a bike
a crazy vivid tangerine pink bittersweet farewell sunset
things seen today in new orleans:
tiny hand-painted matchboxes
tiny pink blooms on our courtyard table, like confetti
two men in wide-brimmed straw hats, holding cameras, taking pictures
a dragonfly resting on top of a woman's teased head of hair while she read a book, completely unaware
bright orange koi in the little courtyard fountain
the brightest, orangest house I have ever seen in my life
magnolia branches and pillowy clouds, as I floated on my back in the pool
a clawfoot tub filled with flowers
a somber chorus of ghost bikes
a wall full of books and light
a wall full of whiskey bottles and light
a bright red sock near the bus stop
a bright red street car on st. claude
a trashcan with the words 'you deserve to be here' scribbled on top
and what I can tell you about my time last year in new orleans with friends is that, in the simplest of terms, it made me glad to be alive.
and not just because we took the train down and talked and talked (and talked) and stared out the window at all the tiny southern towns along the way. or because the place we stayed at felt like a hundred year-old three-storied dollhouse complete with a cherry red spiral staircase, a bed tucked up in the attic and a wall full of old mirrors.
and not just because when we ate beignets at cafe du monde, we realized that everything (and everyone) seemed to be covered in a fine dust of powdered sugar, including the boots our server was wearing. or because when we wandered into a downtown casino and I gambled for the very first time in life, I won exactly one cent. and have the payout receipt to prove it. or because we rode bikes down magazine street all the way to audubon park and felt like we were nine years-old all over again.
and not just because music was everywhere and everything tasted like love and for exactly 72 hours, we meandered up and down streets and through old cemeteries with no particular route or schedule in mind.
not just because of all these things, but because (and this is not news)-- real time with real friends is like nothing else in this world and the older I get the more I realize how profoundly important it is. cheaper than therapy and with more laughing and if you do it in new orleans, there will probably be breakfast sandwiches made with doughnuts.
(one)
(two)
(one): taken with the holga (while riding a bike!) in new orleans, september 2014. saw that cloud of white hair, that blue polka-dotted dress, pointed that plastic camera and said a prayer. so many of my photographs are prayers. both before I hit the shutter and after.
(two): taken with the holga (while standing on a concrete table) in panama city beach, florida, november 2015. I said a prayer while I shot this one too. though mostly because that concrete table I was standing on boasted a sizable, ominous crack.
both were submissions to roll film week back in july over on flickr. flickr, ye olde harbinger of ubiquitous internet photograph sharing. I hold onto it as tightly (and unapologetically) as I do blogspot and goodreads.
september third rolled around last year and we realized, hey-- we made it. we made it to twenty. we made it to our twentieth wedding anniversary, which is no small feat because as you know, marriage is hard, marriage is tough, marriage is not for the faint of heart. it's radical and magnificent and it is not to be entered into lightly. full disclosure: there were a few years there I wasn't sure we were going to make it.
but we made it. not without a few bruises, a few tender spots, but we made it. and we celebrated the heck out of it with a road trip, just the two of us, down to new orleans, the city where we honeymooned two decades ago. we celebrated with a room at the same tiny old french quarter hotel we stayed at back in 1994, with the wooden green shutters and the quiet mossy courtyards and gurgling fountains fat with goldfish, the small curvy swimming pool and continental breakfast (which, by the way, is exactly the same as it was twenty years ago: croissants, orange juice, coffee, newspaper). the smell of the place-- something like old wood, powdered sugar and humidity is also, somehow, miraculously the same.
and things were the same in new orleans, but they weren't. just like we're those same two kids, but we aren't. and we celebrated this, the way things stay the same (but they don't) with beignets and bike rides, followed by an afternoon swim followed by a catnap followed by street music followed by po-boys followed by moonlight. and while there wasn't a bottle of champagne waiting for us when we checked in like there was twenty years ago, there was this: a second-line wedding parade that poured out of our hotel the exact moment we arrived. a bride and groom, a cavalcade of big brass horns and people waving white handkerchiefs and paper fans and plastic solo cups and before we could get our luggage out of the car, before we even knew what was happening we were swept up in it. and we marched along side the thing, as if the parade was our parade and the musicians were playing for us. the bride twirled her white cotton parasol and the wedding party drunkenly lifted plastic cups and we thought, well, this was us. twenty years ago, this was us. minus the second-line parade, of course, but teeming with hope, floating along in that completely different plane of existence, the one reserved solely for the newly wed, those perched at the beginning of the beginning, who can so clearly and confidently see years into their spectacular infinite happy forever.
I wanted to pull that bride aside and tell her things. I wanted to tell her all that I know now, that it will be hard. that things might crumble a little bit, things might actually crumble a lot. the floor will feel shaky sometimes and there will be cracks, they will demand your attention. it will be work, real not-kidding-around hard work. you will walk through a little fire, you won't be able get around it. there are no alternate routes, no shortcuts. you'll just have to walk through it and let it melt and shape you, the both of you. but it will be worth it, all of it, and if you're lucky, if you really work at it, you'll make it. and you'll celebrate your twentieth wedding anniversary with a wedding parade that is not exactly in your honor, but you won't care, not really, because you made it. you made it. and you can't wait to celebrate the next one, you can't wait to celebrate again.
and again and again and again.
(number 20 off the list, properly celebrated)
