NOLA

It's easy to love a city in 36 hours, especially when you go to exactly the area designed to make you fall in love with it, especially when the city is New Orleans, which seems to have been created strictly for pleasure: food, drink, sex, music, heat, magic. The celebration of life with the subtle, underlying awareness of (and resistance to) death is everywhere we've been here, and we haven't left the French Quarter. The people are incredibly warm, but maybe it feels different than other parts of the South - people just greet you in the street. Men just greet you in the street - not even trying to chat you up. They see a pair of pretty girls and just want to say hello and have a good night.

Years ago, I formulated a half-baked emergency evacuation plan to New Orleans. I had been making serious messes in my life, and just wanted to go somewhere else - do something else. I'm not sure how that would have turned out - it seems like New Orleans could be a dangerous place to escape, because all the pleasures I mentioned earlier can be so easily used as escapes in themselves; escapes that become a lifestyle, that obscure the path to the other things I wanted at that time - things already obscured by layers of my own lack of self-awareness and care. It might have taken longer for me to clean up the messes I was making - but maybe not.

Either way, coming here now that I'm 30-something and have my shit mostly together, coming here when I'm less than a year away from graduating from my MFA program, coming here when the cold of Boston - all the different colds of Boston - have only started to thaw, and were cracking my bones for six months, makes me long and long and long for this place. I know that it's not all the French Quarter; I know that New Orleans has been hurt, and badly, by the past few years, but I think I need to live in this city. More than New York, which would work for me, which would provide opportunity to me - I think New Orleans could thaw me out, bring back something living in the Northeast has slowly been diminishing.

Anyway, this kind of reflection isn't so much about what we did in New Orleans, which was eat, drink, and be merry. Of course, we went to Cafe du Monde and had beignets and frozen coffees, which were amazing, of course. We walked Decatur street, did some shopping. But really, it was the food.

Jambalaya, crawfish etoufee, gumbo ya ya, red beans and rice (the only beans and rice I've ever tasted that I'd even think about putting up against my grandmother's), fried crawfish tails, creme brulee, white chocolate bread pudding - and crawfish! The whole kind that you eat, then suck the heads. (This was way more troubling to me than I ever could have anticipated; for someone who eats meat as often as I do, I had a lot of trouble tearing the head off of something - even something that just looked like a huge red bug - and sucking/tearing its insides out. It was kind of a violent and sad process. Yes, I understand that factory farming does much worse than that, but I don't chop the heads off of cows or pigs and de-rib them.)

Anyway, needless to say, the food was amazing. Like, out of control. The French Quarter itself is beautiful; the architecture here is gorgeous and romantic. The intimacy of the buildings - two or three stories, balconies, very close together, if not connected - reinforces the sense of friendliness of the area, and even in the heat, walking around was a pleasure. It was a smorgasbord of accents, especially Southern ones, which was really lovely to listen to - there's something about a drawl that works well with the heat.

Bourbon Street was as full of life and flavor as the food. There's music everywhere, color, people, drinks - I'd really like to come back some night when I can really go the distance. As it was, since we're getting on the road in about an hour and a half, we had to go to bed early, leaving at midnight - which was clearly still the warm-up period for Rue Bourbon. Even on a weeknight, it was jumping, so I can't begin to imagine how it is on the weekends - or at Mardi Gras. It's almost terrifying to contemplate!

Vita Coco should open up a whole store in the French Quarter.

I feel like there's more to say - I feel like I need more time here, I want to learn this city and love it and live in it and write in it. But for now, it's time to get ready to get back on the road again, to find the next adventure, see the next place.

But I'll be back.

Music and the Deeper South: Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana

Joy and I love music.

A person's attitude toward music tells me a lot about them. Well, maybe that's too broad. But what I can say is that if a person values music as much I do, it can be a very reliable and potent way for me to connect with that person.

One of the things I like about Joy is that we value music differently - or maybe it's better to say we assign different levels of priority to different elements of music. But just the fact that we can easily talk for hours about music - the things we look for in songs, the way we connect to different artists and genres, the divergences and overlaps in our tastes, preferences, and ways of enjoying music - makes traveling with her enjoyable in itself.

After all, music is a pretty integral part of any good road trip - and music is a major theme of this road trip in particular.

We went to Nashville because it's a music town. We drove like hell to get there, crashed at Joy's very gracious aunt's house, and had a nice brunch there with her hilarious and lovely cousin. While we didn't get to explore the more musical aspects of Nashville, I found the parts of it we did get to see charming, pretty, and interesting. Flood damage is still evident in places, but it was good to hear from Joy's cousin that volunteerism was rampant in the city after the flood, and that the recovery seems to be going well (though people apparently get understandably twitchy when they see rain in the weather forecast).

From Nashville, we went to Memphis, where we took a little walk on Beale street, which was just a great little place. Live music seemed to be coming from everywhere, a beautiful noise swelling and rolling into the street, alive and spilling into every corner of the experience. The music seeped into the cracks of the place, cemented it together. It was palpable, and it was genuine. What might have seemed gimmicky in some other context, in some other place, was very real and a true pleasure in this corner of the world.

On top of that, at a place on Beale Street called Pig, we got truly amazing - I mean insanely succulent, flavorful, perfect - barbecue. Man, pulled pork is a gift from a higher power, I am convinced of this. Also, sweet tea and corn on the cob and the best onion rings I've ever had, and pecan pie. (The restaurant was aptly named!)

After nomming at Pig, we took a rogue trip to Graceland, which was already closed for the night. Fortunately, the area surrounding Elvis' former home is always there, and we got to see the strange and slowly fading phenomenon of Elvis worship. The folks walking around were predictably older, and there were few enough of them, though they were still there. I didn't know about or expect the wall covered with messages to Elvis, declarations of love for him and for partners/boyfriends/girlfriends/whomever.

Mississippi was beset by bored cops (we saw ten cars with cherries flashing stopped by the side of the road, where a lone black man was handcuffed, sitting on the ground, looking resignedly put out), heavy rain (I had to pull over and let Joy drive), and amazing lightning storms. In general, Mississippi was really empty and didn't seem to have much going on, which was kind of creepy. We drove fast and faster, and after about six hours (about 2:00 AM), arrived at our hotel in the French Quarter of New Orleans.

So now we're in our very pretty, nice-smelling hotel room, sleepy and comfy, each of us on our computers. Tomorrow morning, we sleep till we feel like it, get some breakfast, and explore NOLA a little.

Sweet.