This past winter break, I took a four day family trip into the heart of New Orleans. As per usual, there was an extensive google maps album made by my mom, the marked “must-gos” a sea of green dots, holding an actual city underneath.
A street singer’s Billy Joel cover clashes with the Christmas choir practice within Jackson Square. A dance team performs in front of St. Louis Cathedral, working the crowd, voices in unison. Drops of powdered sugar form pockets of snow on the stone stairs under my legs; I’m a foreigner to beignets, not the mess. I must try “Miss River” cuisine; the concierge urges. Amongst the cooking appliances, the nudist paintings, and the warped guitars, Samuel Bard’s 1808 compendium wants to lecture me in midwifery. I don’t think I’ll buy anything at this garage sale.
With six more hours, I could have seen the entire WWII museum. The streetcars grumble loudly ever so often, a perfect chance for my shutter to open unnoticed. The man I met on the plane here is returning home, possibly for the last time, as he prepares to move with his family. The Saudi Arabian oil industry calls.
“When I started working here in 2010, we had servers from the Eisenhower era.”
Galatoire’s: I’m definitely underdressed. Galatoire’s: Gumbo might be God’s gift.
God’s gift then, eventually a stomach-ache that occupies what would have been the 7:00 brass band at Preservation Hall; it’s my fault for eating that much.
I learn what a “crumber” is. I learn a lot of things. I learn that the beaches on D-Day were split into more parts than the phonetic alphabet could name. I learn that you can fry oysters. I learn that the seat I’m sitting on will shake heavily when the streetcar comes by again. I learn that I don’t want to pay the 20% sales tax. I learn that things change.
Quickly. I spent my vacation in the slow moving, contrasting the Northeast commuter mindset. I sat; calmly resting, even when I walked. But New Years was far from calm. An unnecessary contrast. Looking at Bourbon Street on my phone, thinking ‘I was just there…’
New Orleans responds. And it will always be New Orleans. The images show the spirit of the town I am grateful to have witnessed at its most festive, yet sad to have realized how fleeting any moment is. These fleeting moments are still special, now a little surreal.
