What it means to live

For the first couple of months I was here, I felt grimy and overwhelmed pretty much all of the time. Everything about NOLA is pungent, overripe. I'd ride my bike from here to there, constantly assaulted by the smell of diesel fumes, urine, decaying garbage, and the evidence of one two many hurricanes (both the drinking kind and the weather kind). I'd wait at the ferry terminal in the evening and sit on the yellow wall to watch a rat or two scurry around in pursuit of dinner or love or the meaning of life and wonder how I could ever let my guard down in a place so overstimulating.

But now it's been almost six months of getting to know this place, and though my neighborhood garbage truck still smells like vanilla-scented decaying flesh, I'm starting to feel more comfortable in the swirl that is New Orleans.

This place is alive. This place knows what it is to be alive. I was thinking about this earlier today on the ferry ride to the Quarter. There are other cities in the South with good music, good food and good people, but there is just something different about New Orleans. I think the city's extreme joie de vivre has to do with several things, two of which I'd like to explore today:

1. The Mighty Mississippi. This river brings new ideas and products and people and diseases through New Orleans at an alarmingly fast rate. Cholera, the blues, bananas, travelers, artists, grifters, oil, and on and on. I imagine that living next to such a fast-moving body of water has to affect people, too. There is a constant flushing that has to be cleansing on a subconscious level, leaving one feeling inspired and open to new ideas. At least it feels that way for me.

2. New Orleans and her people are always on the brink of destruction. For every wonderful thing the river brings, she brings hard things, too. Disease in earlier times and  too too much water on occasion. Swirling storms threaten the city from the South for half the year, every year, sometimes working in concert with our hubris to wreak havoc that one can't rightly comprehend unless one was unlucky enough to live through it. And those are just a couple of the natural forces working against the people of New Orleans. There seem to be plenty of human-instigated challenges to go around, too.

And yet the city goes on, embracing people down on their luck and those whose star is rising with equal love and abandon. It's almost as if this place knows that life is only a temporary respite between the darkness from whence we came and the darkness to which we must all return. With the knowledge that the end could come at any time,  the city, and the people, live with a throbbing vibrancy that colors everything about this place and makes it overwhelmingly beautiful despite it all.

Elements of a good morning

Sunshine, coffee, river, peach danish (still warm from the oven) and a ferry ride.

Our Global Hope

Look, the "Global Hope" bulk oil carrier is in town. I'm sure that's an absolutely accurate name for the ship.



Ship's details here (one of my favorite new sites to visit!):

http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/shipdetails.aspx?MMSI=351673000

What do you see?

I know it's supposed to be someone lifting a man overboard, but to me it looks like a lady in a ball gown on a boat! Strapless, cause that is tres chic!

What freedom wears

I remember my dad telling me once that there is no shame in an honest day's work for an honest day's pay, only pride. At the time I was working as a laborer at a large plant nursery for 8 hours a day in the blazing heat of summer with a father and son from Mexico, Esteban (father) and Jose (son). We watered plants, cut them back, made small repairs around the greenhouses, moved plants from one place to another, transplanted established plants to bigger pots, and every once in a while propagated plants, taking cuttings from healthy plants that would then grow into new baby plants. It was exhausting, hard labor. I'd drink 2 gallons of water a day and come home at 5pm only to take a shower, eat a sandwich and collapse into bed, exhausted. I did this 5 days a week for 8 hours a day in the summer. Jose and Esteban did it 6 days a week for years on end.

One evening I talked to my dad about how hard they worked, how they could work circles around me. Some days, the only way I made it through the day with its sweat and dirt and sun, always the sun, was to remind myself that I was going to college, that one day this wouldn't have to be my life if I didn't choose it. But for Jose and Esteban, this was as good as it could get. No retirement, no health insurance, just back breaking labor until they couldn't work any longer. And yet, they came to work every day happy to be there, working hard everyday and clearly taking a lot of pride in what they did. Pride in one's work, no matter what it is, was an important lesson that I am grateful to have learned early on.

Last Friday I encountered two delightful souls on the morning ferry ride. One was an older gentleman who clearly had spent most of his life in the sun. He stood beside me on the rail, taking pictures of the city with a small digital camera. I don't think he noticed himself doing it, but when he took a picture of something he (apparently) liked, he gave a little grunt of happiness. What I loved most about this man was his outfit. He wore a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off and a pair of cut-off jeans. The jeans were wrangler-type work jeans, and they still bore the evidence from years of starch and ironing in a crease in the front. Perfectly starched and creased cut-off shorts. I imagined this man a recent retiree enjoying his freedom after decades of hard work. I pictured him heading home after his last day on the job, walking into the kitchen to get a cold beer, then rummaging through the junk drawer to find a pair of scissors. With the blades in hand he walks to his closet and systematically removes all of the legs from his pants and the sleeves from his shirts. FREEDOM!

The other man was on his way to work. We remarked politely about the beautiful weather. (Here is where I have to tell you that I don't actually use people's real named on this blog, for obvious reasons. This man gave me what I am sure is a nickname, but it is so apt to him that clearly I can't use it, either. So I regret to inform you that I will have to use a different animal than the one he told me).

This man had a thick thatch of chest hair, a somewhat long head of hair (and chops) and eyes that were very alive. He looked just like a panther, I thought. Then he stuck out his hand and introduced himself as  Panther. It was my turn to grunt in happiness! Panther asked me what I did for a living, I told him and then reciprocated. He told me, shamefacedly, that he worked in construction, that he was in "limbo". My heart twisted for him because he was so clearly embarrassed that he didn't say, I don't know, "doctor" or "lawyer". Immediately I felt myself wanting to tell him that there is no shame in making a living, only pride. But I stayed silent and we both went on to make our way in the world on a warm spring morning.

Excuse me, but...

there's a cucumber in your bike basket!




(I don't know why, but this just made me laugh for some reason!)

Big boat, bird