Marching bands

horns and drums coming down the street - a specifically New Orleans feeling

for a reminder of what these schools have gone through, to march again, read this

(the Christmas parade down Canal street last weekend)

Message to the Muse

biking along Prytania thinking of a poem i heard last week at the Gold Mine's 17 Poets!

...nine muses,

all in all,

and four alone

are just for poetry.

The gods were telling us

it would be hard.

Or were they telling us

it would be hopeless?

from Daniel Reinhold's MESSAGE TO THE MUSE

Who to trust in New Orleans

the tour guides are often looking in the wrong direction, reciting facts that tend more to creativity than history. i have more confidence in the mules, who seem to know what they're doing.

evening, New Orleans

rain and horseshoes on the wet pavement, trains and long long boat horns, shouts for the Saints game and sirens, always sirens, a passing car with bounce blaring, and a calliope disappearing against the wind.

Algiers bonfire - FLOODWALL

as the fire took hold last night of the cathartic bonfire installation by Jana Napoli - a structure of drawers retrieved from Katrina-decimated homes

New Orleans vs the cockroach

winter or summer, the occasional bastard-bug pauses to adjust its top-hat and continue along a French Quarter sidewalk.

postcard by lee kyle

Cafe du Monde

after the beignets have disappeared - the tell-tale icing sugar trails out of the Cafe du Monde and into the night

Cafe du Monde, after the beignets

Frenchmen Street

washboard percussion played with thimbles on all fingers - heading out into the cold night i couldn't resist taking a last photo

Wednesday night at The Spotted Cat on Frenchmen Street in New Orleans

November New Orleans

Only hours after I moved into this apartment on the edge of Tremé, a 'Second Line' marching band went past my door, taking flowers to the cemetery for All Saints' Day.

I feel a bit like Colette in her Palais Royal apartment--she called the place "the tunnel" because of its shotgun layout. I spread books and various cooking ingredients around the kitchen & work there, because the kitchen door gives onto a sunny courtyard.

The tattoo parlor down the street has its air conditioner running. Four entirely black feral kittens peer out from under the fence, tropical flowers are blooming, and the palm trees rattle in the wind.

I woke up to the roving fruit vendor who drives past every morning around 9am. Her megaphone makes her sound like a muezzin, except her call to prayer is "I have pine-apples, I have cante-lope, I have sat-sumas..."

Last week, the mayor finally reopened Louis Armstrong Park, with the Tremé Brass Band playing, Congo drumming, dancing, sacred smudging and Mardi Gras Indians in blindingly-bright embroidery & feathers.

Now, to cycle across town, avoiding the worst of the earthquake-fissures that linger six years after Katrina. Collecting details, trying to understand a little bit about this city so thoroughly inhabited and worn by its past but also determined to be present. I'm more awake here than in so many other cities where life is definitely easier (what a misnomer, 'the Big Easy') but less alive.