Old Man Winter

The first day of winter lived up to its name and blew in gusty, wet and chilly. The air around the river was chillier still, and forced me to seek refuge behind a wall instead of my normal post at the side rail where I can watch the propellers churn the Mississippi into chocolate milk with a white froth topping.

Two other cyclists kept me company as we huddled behind the stairwell. I was the only one with a rain jacket on, and I pulled the strings by my neck to tighten the hood around me. It only drew the hood further into my face, blocking my vision and tangling my hair, so eventually I gave up and conceded victory to the winter. The man beside me was in shirt sleeves. He was old and gnarled, one shoulder tilted at an unnatural angle high above the other. His beard was grey, which made him look tired. He saw me fiddling with my jacket and laughed, "You look like a Christmas elf with that red jacket." I turned toward him when he spoke and smelled liquor, not from his breath, per say, but emanating from him, like he'd taken a bath a couple of days before in a smoky, sickly sweet concoction. We proceeded to chat about Christmas and he insisted that the song had it backwards, and that only the naughty people seemed to get what they wanted. People who tried to be nice, like he was nice, never found themselves with the good things. He was a good-natured fellow in spite of the fact that he never got what he wanted on account of being so nice and all, but as he laughed and carried on, I noticed that his smile never got to his eyes.

Have you seen these people?

In her book, Down By the River, Edna O'Brien writes,

"There is really no such thing as youth, there is only luck, and the enormity of something which can happen, whence a person, any person, is brought deeper and more profoundly into sorrow, and once they have gone there, they can't come back, they have to live in it, live in that dark, and find some glimmer in it."

Once you know where to look, you can spot them pretty easily. Their eyes are drawn together just a bit at the outside corners, like they are squinting ever so slightly to improve their focus. There must be a million ways sorrow comes to the human race, and each story is a private etching that lives on so many of the faces we pass every day. We try to ignore it as best we can, but once you understand where to look, you see them every place you go.

For some, the stories of their lives take them to unexpected places. Places where people find themselves talking to an elf in a red jacket, drunk as a skunk though it's just past noon. Or on the side of a highway, holding a sign that declares you are hungry and need change for food. And maybe you do. Who am I to judge that you would use it to buy mad dog instead? And so, when the line of cars won't let me in to their lane, when the drivers coming out of the mall drive past and speed up just a little, pretending not to see me so they don't have to let me in and risk missing the light;  when, after an eternity, someone finally lets me in, but not before I feel anger and frustration rising in me over something as silly as this,  when I see you standing there by the road and roll down my window to give you three ones, it's not actually to ease just your own sorrow, but to help me remember that there is more to life than my own.

In the morning

Sometimes I swear this river sees inside me and unfurls her fingers of fog to wave at me and say, "I understand."

I saw a cotton candy sky

America's Most Wanted Pelican

This morning as I watched the pelicans glide past on their morning jaunt, one of the ferry employees, a gnarled white-haired older gent with a twinkle in his eye, came over to me and said “They don’t make good pets, you know. They’re real grumpy!” To which I replied, “What if they’re flying by saying the same thing about you right now?!”

“I AM grumpy!” said Mr. A. “I’m an old man!”

He continued, “But these pelicans is truly grumpy. One morning we pulled up to the dock and one of them sits on the ramp and won’t move. The cars can’t get off the boat cause that pelican, he won’t budge. So we called the cops on ‘im! And the cop shows up and he says, ‘you want me to do what now?’ and so he goes over to the pelican, who’s just sittin’ pretty on the ramp and he says, ‘Hey pelican! Get outta here! Go on and move now!’ But the pelican WON’T MOVE! We sat there for maybe 10 minutes just scratching our heads and finally that pelican, he spreads his wings and he just glides off. I think these pelicans come from Myrtle Beach, so I imagine that pelican was just tired and he needed to rest a little bit and ain’t nobody was gonna get him to move til he was good and ready.”

Yeah, you're so pelican fly. Uh-huh.

I wonder what it would be like to eat by diving face-first into your food.

Lately I haven’t spent a lot of my time people watching because I have fallen in love with a pelican I call Peter. Peter must live close to the ferry and he spars with it most mornings and afternoons, playing a pelican version of chicken, swooping in close to the rails, then landing with a web-footed splash into the river, letting the current carry him quickly downstream until a signal that I can’t recognize summons Peter to once again heave his mighty wings and flap back to the ferry, coming in close again, always eluding the lens of my camera in the process. A couple of days ago, Peter was simultaneously buzzing the boat and fishing. He’s a good multi-tasker, that Peter. And guess what? He got one! I spied from the railing and was close enough to see him swallow whatever it was in 2 gulps. I wonder what it would be like to eat by diving face-first into your food. Peter seems to be pretty satisfied with the set-up.

Until yesterday, Peter always seemed to be alone. But then, yesterday, while the morning fog was still rising from the river and the air was cool and smelled only faintly of diesel and garbage truck, I looked up and suddenly there were two! They took turns flying in close to the rails, then plopped down in the water with the bridge behind them, content, at least to my eyes. The second pelican is, of course, Paula.

Have you ever noticed that pelicans look like they are smiling while in flight? Not a grin, but more of a subtle, Mona Lisa smile that seems to say, “yeah, I’m flying, I’m gliding, I’m totally zen. I can see the whole world from here.”

Then I started to think that maybe I’ve finally gone off the deep end and that pelicans say nothing of the sort when they fly past me. So I of course turned to Google, typing in “pelican smile flying”. Here’s what came up:

"Super Bass"
by Nicki Minaj

...I said, excuse me, you're a hell of a dime
I mean my, my, my, you're like pelican fly
I mean, you're so shy and I'm loving your smile
You're like slicker than the girl with the thing on his eye, oh
Yes I did, yes I did, somebody please tell him who the F I is.
T.D.F mack them chicks up, back coupes up, and chuck the deuce up

I have no idea what that means. I assume someone who is pelican fly is awesome, right?

So much for Google. And the future of pop music.

Waldo is on the West Bank

Sometimes I wonder if riding the ferry is like standing in an elevator or peeing at a urinal (I'm using this particular example based on heresay, mind you) -- maybe people just don't like to talk on the ferry. Oh, if you say hi and strike up a conversation, most people are happy to chat, but for the most part, the regular biking crowd that I see every morning and afternoon mostly passes their ferry time tapping away on their phones. Now, I am a smart phone geek myself, but I don't allow the phone to come out on the ferry. I suppose I can't fault people for not using the ride as an experiment in observation. (Or maybe one day I will come across a blog with a post about a really annoying talkative chick on the ferry. )

It's their loss. I wonder if anyone saw the pigeon that flew on at Algiers this morning and hitched a ride all the way across the river, walking on the deck and pecking at crumbs. I wonder if anyone noticed how the waves on the water this evening consisted of perfect undulating ripples as if the Mississippi was made of twilight silk. I wonder if anyone else was elated to realize upon seeing the man with a long coat, big black glasses and a pointed red knit cap that they had, in fact, finally found Waldo.

What the yak scarf told me

Today was the first really cold day of fall. The sky was overcast and grey, the wind whipped through the trees and the thin walls of my house, and my body refused to get out from under the warm covers in a timely manner. As I got ready for work, I paid special attention to my layers. I wanted to be warm on the bike and ferry, of course, but not dressed to the point that I would swelter all day in the office. I settled on a big turquoise knit hat and a pink and purple scarf. As soon as I pulled them out for their New Orleans debut, I was swept up in memories. Isn’t it wonderful how a simple object can transport you to another place?

The last time I wore my floppy hat was at the kick-off for an oyster reef project last January. It was freezing and I dressed in 32 layers of sweaters, long johns, vests and my floppy knit hat. The hat reminds me of that day because I had it on my head before I gave an interview and a thoughtful colleague told me to remove it immediately—I guess I do look silly in it but it is so soft and warm and happy and floppy! Putting it on this morning the emotions and stress of that day came rushing back. It was and probably will remain one of the most wonderful days of my career. Schlepping in the mud and cold with 600 of my closest friends all working together to build something lasting out of the tragedy of the oil spill is something I will never forget. It made me happy to remember that day and the people who made it special.

The scarf is an altogether different story. I’d actually never worn it before today. It is a pink and purple floating piece of art made of yak wool. Yes, yak. A former colleague brought it back from a trip to India. It kept my neck perfectly cozy and warm on the deck of the ferry as it made its way across the Mississippi. Do you think the person who made the scarf ever imagined where it would end up?

Life is so strange, isn’t it? When my co-worker gave me that beautiful scarf last year, I had no clue. No clue that I would done it for the first time in a completely new city, at a new job with new adventures and new people. I couldn’t have imagined it if you’d asked me.

And so these were the thoughts that I pondered on the boat today.

No matter what, in your wildest dreams, you can’t imagine what your life will be like even one year from now. What new people will appear in your life and become dear to you. What people who are dear to you now may not be with you when the next November 28 rolls around. The future is completely unwritten. And that is a wonderful and scary thought.

The conclusion I came to with my hat and my scarf is that a wise person looks to the past to determine what is most meaningful in life, what really made an impact, and plans for a future that allows space for more of what mattered before with a little room for what you can’t yet imagine. That being said, looking backwards is a waste and looking forward is folly if it doesn’t make your present a wonderful place to be. And right now,  on this boat, in my ridiculous hat and so soft scarf, with the wind stinging my eyes and the sun sinking behind me, I am perfectly content to be just where I am.

The river keeps many secrets

Yesterday afternoon I watched a piece of driftwood bob in the brown green water from the rail of the ferry. It moved away from me swiftly and I was astounded once again, reminded of how powerful this river is. From the bank, it looks deceptively calm, and when Moby and I walk along the levy in the morning, it is hard not to give in to his obvious desire to be let off the leash so he could run down the embankment, building momentum to leap into the water like he loves to do in every other river we have ever come across together. But I know that the soft waves that lap the shore can carry off dogs and people as easily as they do driftwood and so we stay on top of the levy, grudgingly.

Watching the water take the wood to a final resting place, the location of which can only be guessed at with any level of accuracy by pointing south, I thought about how many logs, people and dogs this river must have claimed for its own.

This is going to sound macabre, but I was intrigued by this thought and later that evening I googled "suicides Mississppi River". The singer Jeff Buckley came up, of course. But technically he drowned in the Wolf River, I think. And technically it wasn't a suicide. We think.

The poet John Berryman committed suicide by leaping from a bridge into the river in 1972. According to some reports, he waved at onlookers on the way down.

Dream Song 14

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn, ...


But the result that turned up that I couldn't get out of my mind was the story of two young lovers who flung themselves, hands clasped, from a bridge in Alexandria, MO in 1909.

I thought about Herman and Belva all night. What happened that night to make them jump? I looked and looked but I couldn't find any other information about the couple except for a short notice in another paper that they had been found 3 days later on the bank several miles downriver, arms still entwined. It made me sad. There is so much life to live, and so much gets wasted. What if this is the only chance we get?

This afternoon I got off work early and headed home on a much earlier ferry than usual. As I wheeled my bike off the ferry and rode the first curve that would take me towards home, I looked to my right and saw a young couple walking down the hill toward the Algiers Courthouse.  He had a bushy beard and a dark suit on. She was wearing red flats, a knee-length white dress and a short veil. They were holding hands, and I smiled at them without thinking. They waved in return. They looked so beautiful walking in the sunlight.

I wonder. Do you?

Where I been, what I seen

I've been running around of late and haven't been riding the ferry as much as I would have liked, but I have been collecting snippets of fun here and there.

Since last we spoke...
I went to the National Aquarium and saw a cool jellyfish exhibit!

And I splashed in the Gulf of Mexico!

And I saw a ton of beautiful things and people on the ferry when I wasn't gawking at jellyfish or getting my toes wet.

Like a man with an iguana on his back. He rode in with the nimble lizard on his head but I couldn't sneak a pic then!

And I saw a pair of perfect rainbow shoes!

Which reminds me, I ALSO saw a perfect rainbow from my office window!

I watched the night roll in with an inky purple that made sky and water indistinguishable.

Then I saw the City come alive in lights.

I watched a huge orange bullet streak across the water.

I finally learned what a Pelican State is.

So, yes. It's been a good couple of weeks.

On the Road, the sequel

This morning a mysterious man on a motorcycle pulled onto the ferry and parked in front of me, facing the French Quarter. His bike was laden with gear bags and what looked like a lovely picnic basket. He kept his helmet on and as the cars piled up I found myself looking at him for longer than was appropriate, wondering if I was seeing him at some point in an incredible adventure on the open road. Where was he from? Where was he going next? Was he reading Jack Kerouac by the glow of his headlights every evening? Did he sleep at motels with retro neon signs or under the decidedly un-neon twinkle of stars? On and on I went, and I said a prayer to the universe for his safe travel as he pulled off the ferry and into the big wide world.

This afternoon on the ride back to Algiers, as I leaned against the rail and thought about the day, onto the ferry rides my mystery man, bike still carrying his gear. Apparently his adventures took him to places he could reach in a day. Or else he just can't pack light.

"They will always be going to jail"

I am learning that people who are from here divide their lives into 2 distinct periods, "before the storm" and "after the storm". Even after experiencing Hurricane Katrina myself, I have failed to understand what a profound impact that day had on the fabric of this community's culture and identify.

Today I talked to Stuart. We were on the ferry together yesterday morning, too, and this morning we struck up a conversation. Stuart works at an Italian clothing store. He's just recently moved back to take care of his ailing father, having moved to Florida after the storm.

Before the storm he was a bail bondsman and, while the retail industry is a comfortable enough living, Stuart is taking his continuing education studies and preparing to be relicensed as a bondman. His reason for doing so is beautifully perfect.

"People might not always be wanting to buy fine Italian clothes, but they will always be going to jail."

Truer words were never spoken.

Fog rolls in

Guess what? When the captain can't see the ferry can't go. I learned this after waiting patiently as the fog tickled my cheeks and made me wish for a blanket, a book and a cup of coffee. I wasn't the only one waiting. The gate was up, there were no signs saying, "we give up! go back to bed!"...I listened for the sound of the engine but only heard the water lapping below me. I looked through the grate and watched the water carry a plastic bottle closer to a new home on the shore. The real estate market seems to be very tight  at the ferry terminal for an upstanding piece of litter like this bottle, but I imagine it will push its way in somehow.

Something moves in my peripheral vision and I spy a white egret hunting for breakfast. The sky and the water are the same shade of grey and I wonder if the egret ever gets confused about which way is up.

Finally, a gentleman parked beside my bike on the ramp exits the vehicle to relay the news he just learned,  (probably on NPR, because he looked the type, happily) the ferry is out of service because of the fog.

Back up the ramp I go to contemplate how best to get to work. I decide that I will wait for the bus as it would take the same amount of time as driving across the bridge and then I'd have to pay for parking to boot. But the bus was late and by the time I got to the stop the ferry was running again, the fog having retreated in advance of the morning sun. So, it was the ferry after all.

PS. That evening I learned that the ferry also doesn't run in high winds. Fickle beast.

Sun on My Spokes

A chat with Jerry Leon

Jerry Leon's teeth rotted out when he couldn't brush them after the storm. Ask him and he'll tell you. He doesn't mind, though. Jerry Leon's 71 now so teeth aren't as important as they used to be, and besides, he's had plenty of trouble to cut those teeth on. Like that time he was working for the steamship company out of California, working his way from waiter to cook (hand raised just so to show the perfect balancing technique of a man accustomed to carrying a tray full of drinks on a creaking ship), and, when he came home after a long trip, walked into his house only to find that his wife had moved without telling him, and then, boy howdy, did Jerry Leon have some explaining to do to the new husband of the home.

There's a restaurant you should visit, says Jerry Leon. It's by the African clothes store. Are those your real teeth, he asks? They're so straight and shiny. 

No, I can't tell you the name of the restaurant or the street it's on, continues Jerry Leon. You see, it's because old  Jerry can't read. But he's made it through just fine so far, he knows how to read other signs. 

What signs would those be? 

You have a glow about you, says Jerry, so I'll tell you. I'm old and I have to tell what I know to people who want to hear. 

Think clear thoughts when you cross this river, girl. Because if you dream of muddy water, bad luck is coming your way. 

I'm a little in love with Jerry Leon by the time  the boat docks and I watch him as he slowly makes his way off the boat. I have a feeling we'll be seeing each other soon. 

Sometimes you have to look hard to see something odd or different. Walking down a typical street in a typical town, glance at the people walking ahead of you. Besides wondering how the 80s have made such a head-scratchable comeback, you will notice that everyone looks kind of similar. They are rushing from here to there with nothing to recommend what complex and interesting people they are sure to be on the inside. The woman in the classic, sturdy heels with her black bag. The man in his khaki trousers and button down shirt. They are rushing to work, or to pick up the dry cleaning, or one of the thousand other mundane tasks we all take part in.

But. New Orleans. Here the odd seems to be everywhere I turn. New Orleans lends itself to the odd. And what's better, it's not even the flagrantly odd that I am bombarded with. It's the subtle odd, the "one of these things is not like the other" charm that almost everyone here (at least on the ferry!) seem to posses.

Case in point: The man waiting for the ferry with his pet on a leash. Nothing too odd about that until said pet jumped into the crack between two barriers and had to be lifted out by the neck, at which point the howling got my attention and I saw that it wasn't a little puppy on a leash, but a black cat.

Wonderfully odd and a reminder to look closely at life unfolding around me.

Here is the unhappy feline gazing wistfully at the crevice from which he came.

The first trip

A lovely view for a commute, no? The rumble of the diesel engines below tell me different, but looking out over the water for my first ride across the river I can't help but imagine I'm a traveler from another time, crossing the Mississippi to see what adventures await me on the other side. I have been captivated by rivers as long as I can remember, but there is something almost magical about this one. Coming across the ferry to Algiers for the first time and then wandering down the levee and seeing how fast and wide this river is shifted something inside me. It's like I remembered to exhale when I saw all that water, all that possibility. I knew I had to interact with that river every chance I got. 

So I found me a place on the West Bank, not heeding anyone's warning about the inconvenience of the ferry schedule. As many have said, if you are going to be out past midnight, you'll have to take the bridge instead-- quelle horror! To which I respond, my dad always said nothing good ever comes of staying out past midnight!

My first ride was perfectly breezy and exciting. I didn't know pedestrians had to go up top, so I had to do the ferry walk of shame back from the ramp. Tourist! I imagined the locals sneering. Yes, but not for long.