the big easy 1

new orleans is magical. the air here is unlike anything i have ever felt. i feel like a hothouse flower. i cannot believe it took me this long to experience this sort of world.
a day of travel is always bizarre and dreamlike. a recap:
5.30 am. awake to alarm in seattle. the sunshine and heat has given way to greyness and cool. i packed with the lights on. gave the cats some love. they always know when i am about to go somewhere. i always feel guilty for disrupting their rhythm. walked downtown, caught the bus, stared out the dirty window at the graffiti along the transit corridor, how green everything is, how the rest of the people downtown were bustling about with purpose. finished 'growing up brady' on the plane. slept sporadically. sunshine filtered onto my lap. took pictures of the crop circles in texas. asked the man beside me what they were- flat expanses of brown with mondrian, almost perfectly geometric orbs- would make a great tattoo. "the plows are mounted on a central pole, i think" he said. he was wearing a suit and jacket and played relentlessly with his blackberry. changed planes in dallas. got lost at the airport there. the sliver of reality between the skybus and the terminal emitted a steamy blast of air. the plane was late in boarding. three girls in front of me, tarted up in latest mall regalia, gossiped with southern accents. a woman with a bespangled beatles shirt and heels towered over her ballcapped companion. only one cowboy hat in the mix.
all the cool stuff en route to new orleans was on the left side of the plane, allowing me to miss seeing lafayette and baton rouge. the approach into new orleans parish is verdant and flat, resembling plush green carpet severed with canals. the mississippi is brown and often wider than the towns bordering it. the sun through the window had turned orange, reflecting on lake pontrachian...? (i promise to be able to spell it properly by the time i leave), everything hazy and dreamlike. i used the loo upon arriving, not realizing until i got up that i was supposed to replace the plastic sheet covering the toilet seat before sitting down... must not think about that. and then i walked outside, into a hot wet muck that immediately seeped into my lungs and coated my skin with unctuous scum. and i began grinning like a fucking lunatic.
the shuttle into town was full. i was in the back seat beside an older couple; in the middle row were 3 horribly obese people, barely fitting, all shiny with sweat. the sky spit rain. canals and rivulets line most of the main streets. palm trees, factory buildings, enormous churches, railroad tracks. and a lot of buildings that were half-gone, roofless, carcasses, surrounded by piles of debris and crumbling brick. we got off the freeway and into the french quarter, passing houses with red x's spray-painted on, boarded-up windows, people sitting on steps, incredibly dense flowers, rotting antebellum porches next door to ornately remodeled mansions, antique shops and men holding hands with little kids and window boxes and lanterns with flickering bulbs and cobblestoned courtyards with spiral staircases and ceiling fans visible through gauzy curtains...
my hotel is in the CBD, three blocks from the quarter. my room is fucking gorgeous. there is a free computer downstairs where i am typing this now (it is now after 2 am here; the girl working the front desk is bullshitting on the telephone; i disrupted her male coworker, who was looking at porn, to use this).
i walked around the quarter for a while. it is fucking beautiful. did i already say that? i could live here. at some point in my life i probably will. it would be really fun to be here WITH somebody. this is a town that needs another pair of eyes to take it all in. i was rather pleasantly surprised at how quiet and serene much of the quarter really is; other than a visibly drunk guy talking loudly into his phone about how fucked up he was, and the guy who looked me right in the eyes and said "you are really beautiful", the sidewalks were only meagerly populated. and then i stumbled onto bourbon street, the vegas of crescent city, all lights and mechanical-bull bars and blaring cover bands and deafening karaoke and daquiri stands and frat boys and live dancer neon... and an amazing brass band playing on the corner of bourbon and canal. amazing. i called my parents so they could hear. it almost made me cry. it hit me: it is 85 degrees, sultry as fuck, and i am standing on the sidewalk in NEW ORLEANS at 9.30pm, smoking a cigarette, living a moment i have fucking dreamed about for a whole lot of years. life is different now. but then a sleazy old man from north carolina started talking to me and asking if i was with anyone and what my name is and what was i doing, and i made up a lie about waiting for my spouse and politely left. and that is the annoying thing about traveling alone.
i always do this superstitious thing when the plane leaves the tarmac: i cross my fingers and think: "please let me have a wonderful world to go back to." who or what am i asking that of? myself.
back at the hotel, 2 hrs later than what i am used to... i ended up watching 'v for vendetta' in its entirety. i hadn't intended to watch more than a few minutes. but holy shit, that is a really fucking good movie. afterwards i stepped outside for a cigarette. at 2 am the street is dark and the air is still heavy, like a feverish panting lover- it must be 80, with 95% humidity. the old pipe running down the outside of the building was rattling from someone's shower. i pressed my palm against it, felt the vibrations, saw a star in the sky.