closing nola. meat.

A few things I learned in New Orleans.  

The giant daqueris sold out of the slushy like machines are dangerous.

Termites are the strangest swarm of insects I've ever experienced.  

People are open and weird and all there for the freedom to be so.  

Or stuck.

Or loyal.

And brave.  The city refracts in a way, like when light hits through glass just-so and makes you pause.  Flawed and dirty and amazingly beautiful.  It resonates like the feeling of breath and aware nerves, prickling between your shoulder blades.  It's as if some silly rusted nail has grabbed a chunk of my skin and there remains a piece of my flesh stuck to a fence.  I dream this.

More Gulf, more sweat, more meat.
Onto Ocean Springs, MS home of The Shed BBQ.  It is a bunch of shacks made of junk and they have a nutso blues festival and tasty, delicious meat snacks.  Bones fall out of everything.  Ryan plays for people who don't clap, but tip and donate and give words of encouragement. I find it hard to pass the tip bucket for some reason.  It clashes with a piece of me (haven't puzzled that one out yet).  Henry Gray plays.  We drink and write our names on the wall.  Across the driveway is a campground, but we stay too late investigating people and talk about the spill and laughing and seeing jars of oil from a journalist recently on the beaches.  Matt, the sound guy, offers us a futon and good company as we while away the night in a basement bar.  We make hashbrowns like Waffle House in the morning and depart.

images part one

many film images have been shot and are waiting development.  here is some of the work we have thus far.

new orleans and the coming tide

There is nothing quite like pulling up to a ridiculous complex of buildings in the middle of the Bywater in New Orleans and watching one of your best friends bounce out into the road to greet you.  Baked a golden brown by the sun and clutching a Pabst long neck in her fist, Lindsey embraces and then ushers us both into the dimly lit interior of her new home, as Dickie, her cow spotted pitt whips us with his tail in frantic excitement.  We step over a rusted metal fire grate that serves as a dog barrier and into "The Pearl".

I don't know how old the compound is.  The owner has lived and hosted a variety of house guests and dogs and shows and parties and insanity for the last 25 years.  About four separate structures make up the indoors, one an ancient shell of an iron works building.  Eclectic objects cover every room and the outdoors, random lights and signs from long ago, rust blooms on outdated appliances and various doors form the walls of the outside-ish shower and dining room.  Each room has a name, The Cave, The Nursery, Danger Level 2.  We are brought up the attic were thousands of rolls of wallpaper occupy cubbyholes, for no apparent reason.  We are shown our other friend Summer's recently vacated bed, in a huge attic space with little ventilation, sometimes reaching what must be 110 degrees.  Summer isn't in New Orleans for the time being, but I say a silent hello and acknowledgment to a familiar, albeit absent, presence in an new place.  

We run across the street and meet KooKoo, an older New Orleans resident, proclaiming to the sky, underneath the giant green and white parachute that is his cool outdoor area, that "you just can't bring girls over anytime! you know how horny I am!"  We laugh and are told the dangers of the creeping black caterpillars and squash a few.  Paling around in the heat makes me a little dizzy and everywhere I look are the spray painted X's on the houses, the damage from Katrina still obvious.  So much so, that when I question a group of volunteers at a coffee shop later that evening, I find that they are in town just to rebuild and not against the oncoming tide of oil that threatens the entire Gulf Coast.  It's been almost five years since the hurricane..

The coming summer and storm season are on the back of everyone's words.  It's not defeat or anything close to it, but there is a definite sense of awareness on how fragile it all is at this point in time.  I hear the words "Oil-cane" more times than makes me comfortable.  The idea is that the storm season will be one of the worst and oil will be thrown all over the town and then burn.  People laugh with a tinge of bitterness and buy you another beer, continue to make music and jokes, but in their eyes I see a little bit of resigned fear.  Who wants to leave their home, yet again, and be thrown into an unknown world of bureaucracy?  Who wants to leave New Orleans, ever?  

the change

As of June 1st, Ryan and I packed most of our possessions into the little white toaster and started heading east along the Gulf Coast.  The day out was insane.  An abrupt awakening at 10 am after a thoroughly intense last night in Austin, we armed ourselves with roommates and cleaning products and swamped out a house that was more than half full of everyone's junk.  Many trips to the church dumpster, sweating profusely over the shower scrubbing, tossing gear into the car, stressing and moving, towards a 6:00pm deadline with the landlord to get our deposit back.  Dear friends stopping by for a last hug, checks were signed, and we pulled away from the house in a frenzy of grime and exhilaration.  

To wash away the day, and just as the sun was dipping down into the treetops, we stripped down to our skivvies and jumped into Barton Springs off the twitchy, bouncy diving board and felt baptized in the weird prayer of the road.  I thought about my life in Texas thus far and the many side trips to cold water and the warmth of this boy's skin against mine, wrapped in a towel, welcoming the night.

heather mcgrath took these pictures

you should look at her work because she is rad.

http://www.heathermcgrath.com/

A cheeseburger and a parental phone call later, we found 290 South and sped into the big Texas night.  I was shaking with excitement.  At our first stop we realized I had dropped my wallet in the burger joint parking lot, but so silly thrilled with the freedom we felt, didn't even flinch and headed back out.  An ambitious idea to try and move a whole house and clean it and then make it to New Orleans in one day, ambitious and wrong.  We stopped around Lake Charles at 3:00am and spent our, so far, only night in a hotel.  One more night alone before nola.