New Orleans. I first traveled there at the age of about eight. My family: My Grandmother and Grandfather, my Mother and Father and my Brother traveled across country in two Buicks from Dixon, California, to Wethersfield, CT in one summer.
One of the places we stopped at for an extended period of time was New Orleans. I remember it being exceedingly hot and humid - we got there in late July, early August. I remember getting a snocone and being very grateful. I think it was grape. I can almost taste it. I remember later that day, hanging out by the shore of the Mississippi River with my parents, drinking a Hawaiian punch out of can, as they drank a beer out of a can and just watching the river go by.
We took the riverboat and the streetcars. We walked the French Quarter. We visited the graveyard with the Voodoo Queen's grave and left money and etched nonesense symbols onto the front of her grave and generally creeped ourselves out. These memories are vivid. I can even remember going across the street to the gas station and meeting up with my Grandmother who was finishing up a Pepsi. Incredibly vivid. She was so cute. I remember.
No one from that trip is even alive, except for my Brother.
I have a dear friend, and last summer, she told me she was in a rut and it was four in the morning and we just got finished watching a horrible post-college movie (Reality Bites) and eating Ramen noodles. I wanted to help her. I always want to help. I asked her if she could do anything what would she do? And she answered, "I would go to New Orleans, and take pictures". So we did. The next day. We just packed and went. We took pictures. Hundreds.
I had nothing on my mind. I had everything on my mind. What I wanted was to help a friend and nothing more. What I needed to do is get out of Denver and get some space to think about a girl. I realized on the trip that I really and truly loved Her and wanted to be with Her, but school was really getting tough. I came back from the trip and asked if we could take a break until I had graduated. It was too much to do both and she was worth my entire focus. She was.
She said she would wait. She said that she was in Love with me and I, I was in Love with her, I remember looking at her while lying down in my bedroom in a horribly uncomfortable basement apartment on Capital Hill. I remember her in my arms, talking to her and holding her till the morning. Vivid. All my memories are vivid - but all I hear about now from her is that I dumped her after the trip and didn't ask to borrow her pack correctly. I understand about the pack, I just called her up and flat out asked her without telling her why, I was just so excited but she won't live it down. I thought I had her trust. I feel she's still jealous of the girl I went to New Orleans with - but I never did, nor have I ever tried to even kiss this friend - it's a person I Love, but I'm not in Love with her and it hurts it hurts it hurts to know that something like that got in the way. Some things aren't about being comfortable with one person and not the other, some things are about helping, no matter how uncomfortable it gets and it did get uncomfortable - my friend and I were talking via notes one night. We were sleeping in the same bunkbed, but we were talking in notes. It wasn't always comfortable. The notes said, "I don't want to talk this way". I don't like when people assume what's really going on. Because it's always wrong.
I had one goal in New Orleans. I wanted to send a postcard from New Orleans to my Grandfather who was still living, but had recently lost his wife. I wanted to give him a postcard that says, "Hey Grampa, I'm in New Orleans, I'm thinking of you and the trip we took together so many years ago" So simple and honest. I got his address from my Sister and sent the postcard. I sent the postcard, but found out later that I was given the wrong address and he never received the postcard. The postcard I sent, my only goal, wasn't received. I didn't do it for any reason, but to make someone happy - I like to do that. It shows that you're thinking of them. You're a thousand miles away, but you're thinking of them, thinking how they've changed and made you who you are, in the place that you can remember so vivid, in a place you didn't know at age eight existed. But your postcard fails in reaching the person and they go away, because that's what people do. They leave a will - they leave their legacy. They leave it to people that think about them, but their legacy wasn't left to you at all. A little money was and thank you yes, but no legacy. Just because they didn't think you meant anything to them. Because they didn't receive a postcard? I certainly hope not. People forget. They forget the roadtrips you took with them and the skateboard ramps you built with them and the garden you helped them build and the Sunday dinners you tried your best to look nice at. And there were gnoccis - Grandma made the best. The italian cook. The perfect baker of lemon meringue pie. Gone now.
This is a picture of me, taken by my Friend. It's a picture of me acting as if I'm turning the doorknob affixed to a family gravesite in one of the cemetaries in New Orleans - this one in the Garden District. As the story goes, this is the gravesite that inspired Anne Rice, the author of trashy novels about Vampires, to create the character, Lestat. She used to live a few blocks from this very grave. The doorknob was to allow Lestat access to the outside world and to sneak back inside when needed.
I'm not a big fan of trashy novels about Vampires, but I have an ex that is. I took the picture and immediately thought: maybe I should send this picture to her. I haven't talked to her in so long and we left on bad terms, but maybe I should send her this picture and just write, "Hey- hey I know you hate me. I just hope you're doing what you want to do and hope maybe to see you again - alex"
I never sent the letter, or the picture. I knew she didn't want to know me now even from a distance, or care that I was thinking of her. She doesn't care because she is probably so full of hate for me that she'll never get over it, or she doesn't think of me at all now, not even in hate. "We never existed", is probably her current status on, "us", which is false - we lived together. Sometimes, you just let that be. People go away, because that's what they do. So Dhalia, there's your picture and your words. Stay silent.
This is my Friend. We're enjoying the first, of two dinners we had that night. I ate at least a half a dozen oysters and I was absolutely high. It's true. About the afrodiziatic qualities of raw oysters. I Loved everyone. I can't tell you how many crawfish we had together. Pounds. Like I said, first of two dinners that night. It was our last night. And in the morning we had beignets as alley cats meow'd for our attention. That's the other thing I really remember about New Orleans when I was eight. Getting beignets and chocolate milk. They cooked the beignets in these giant cauldrons and you could see them doing it, because the wall was just glass. You could see them doing it as you sat down in the patio outside in wrought iron chairs.
My friend got so pissed at me the first time we were looking for the beignet shop. So fed up that she stormed the opposite direction of me while I got us absolutely lost in the French Quarter. We eventually found it and all was forgiven as she found out how good they really are. Sometimes, things should be forgiven when you find out how good things can be. I think.
This is just a picture of the street corner somewhere in New Orleans - well it was at Josephine and Constance, if you want to be obviously exact. I took it because my Girlfriend then lived on Josephine and I could show her the picture and say, "Look! If you lived in New Orleans, that house in the background would be the house you would be living in!" She's not my Girlfriend anymore and she doesn't live on Josephine. I don't have her address now, so all postcards I could send her would be lost. It's vividly lost. Sending unmarked postcards to a Loved one that doesn't give you the respect to just call you back would be a severe performance, art that imitates life that is life itself.
I saw this sidestreet and shortly after, we stopped for lunch. We got grilled cheese sandwhiches and root beer floats. On my phone, I text'd my Girlfriend and asked for her address (I never called her on the trip - space and all) so I could send her a postcard. I realized I Loved her, as I walked around New Orleans, taking pictures.
It seemed perfect.
I wrote on the postcard that I was thinking about her, because I was. Right there. I text'd her and then wrote the postcard. It was put in a mail slot in the Garden District. Blocks away from Anne Rice's house.
So I don't know what, if any of the above is left. The city seems that it may be destroyed. Neither of these ex Girlfriends will even talk to me. Both swore that this would never be the case. Swore. "I promise" My family from the trip, less my Brother are gone too. My Friend - my Friend and I still Love each other, in friendship only, still.
People go away. Because that's what people do. Places seem to go away as well, although not as much as people - but usually both go away slowly and not really fast. Time sometimes seems to go slow, but some times it goes really really fast. It seems it hurts more if they all go really really fast. I'm not sure if there's a reason for this, all the time, why some things stay, and other things go. The World, if anything, can be a pretty complicated place. You can disassemble the situation, split hairs and point fingers, but it doesn't stop them from going in th end, now does it? And when it goes, when they go, it's up to them to come back, not yours. If they or it wants to, it will. Love demands it. Love demands much in Life.
I never wrote about my trip to New Orleans last year. I wanted to, but didn't know why I never did. Sometimes, I guess, it seems that there are more important things to do that to write. I almost never write about my trips, even though I was originally inspired to write by Kerouac, whom life seemed to be his Road.
So there you go. It all seems to be fully in the past now. But it's vivid. Always vivid.
