play and ideas: "Hot people read poetry," and other reflections from Flora Cafe on Royal Street, New Orleans

"Hot people read poetry," says the words on the bathroom wall at Flora Cafe on Royal at the Corner of Franklin, parallel to Dauphine Street, close to Desire. With plants and used books piled about, taking over the place, people drinking delicious tea and cakes, burritos and smoothies, perusing flyers for local events, a man plays piano in back, oil paints about the place, a sign for community garden under threat on the door. I sit reading the poems in the loo in this our NOLA home base.

"Those born with desperate melancholy, dull bitten claws grasping for the end ..." says one bathroom poet. I feel those claws.

"Jackson is sexy,” notes another, confirmed by still another observer. “Facts yo."

"Find a poem in your pain. See the sunshine through the rain. Reach for that attitude of gratitude."

“I luv to jack to off” says the spray painted words on the wall down the street, in an amorous confession, a revolt of sorts says my friend Brad when I tell him about it.

The poems were many on the way to the cafe, strolling on a sunny Sunday morning.

Greeting the cat on the sidewalk with a meow, another in the garden, in the back of a bookstores.

Still we found our way to this point, the light shining into the cafe.

Just finished talking with Mom, back in Princeton. She’d just arrived home, from the cab to the flight to the car back, stomach still full from the meal at Galatoire’s the night before.

A lifetime ago, it feels.

She was here yesterday, this morning, even now, a crossroads between worlds.

We all are, in the future, in the past, same water, same way, some way.

Up and down the Mississippi, the Northernmost part of the Caribbean, where Pirates drunk with rum disembarked, fever spreading up the river, Mark Twain looking at the locomotion, contending forces and contradictions, into the continent, out to the world, France, Spain and the Americans swapping deeds, bodies still for sale for much of it, through insurrections, liberty, egality, fraternity, Spain taking over before the French came back, making a sale, Natives punching back, claiming a few scalps of their own.

Everyone in town is talking about the inmates who escaped on Thursday, some 11.

It was an inside job, says one bar tender,

Negligence, another.

No one was watching.

Maybe here, maybe in Mexico by now, having a drink in Juarez, I theorize.

It's all here, a window to the city, here at Flora Cafe, a tree outside, roots tearing up the sidewalk. Looks like it's from San Juan. A few people sitting outside, a couple of Black girls in back comparing notes, Big Daddy’s bar catty corner to us.

I think of all the Big Daddy’s I have seen, including one on Bourbon Street, where we saw the Black girls dance years and years ago, 16 years old with a dollar and a dream.

Flyers for self help groups for bad haircuts adorn the door, advertising events of the day, a critical mass is coming, twerk church this afternoon, a prom from doom the night before.

It feels like the patio in Thomasville or Vieques. I guess we’ve all been here.

Mom and I talked about that trip here in 1976, when the trombone played in my ear on a Sunday morning at Commander's Palace.

“There is your church,” said the trombonist quietly playing for just me.

I saw Mom smiling, a glass of wine on the patio here in ‘86, looking about with Dad, a last happy moment before it all fell apart.

We spent the afternoon walking through Jackson Square, looking at junk shops in the Vieux Carré, at the voodoo shops, past 722 Toulousee, where Tennessee Williams lived in 1938, down Decatur, where a man played steel drums, and Dad got me beignets.

I look at the tree outside, its roots cracking the sidewalks, those days, these days, now here with Dodi, who came here with us before the storm when she was little, then in high school, two times then, two times in college.

Jazzfest, beans and rice, into the future, the blues carrying us, with banjo notes, a solo violin, gypsy jazz, warming us.

Mom walked down Royal Street six decades prior, looking at antique shops, purchasing lamps that would be part of her bedroom for years and years, back home, looking at those lamps, along with the story.

Will and I walked down here after Dad died, his ashes making their way into the great unknown, from the Mississippi to forever.

Poetry screams from the bathroom walls, reverberating through our minds.

A Confederacy of Dunces, hotdogs and absurdity in the park by the square.

“I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century,” wrote John Kennedy Toole, in his homage to our times. “Apparently I lack some particular perversion which today's employer is seeking. ”

Other lives, Other Rooms, out of Truman’s typewriter, no one to complain that he clanked on it all night, without disturbing everyone, as it had back home in Alabama, drafting a new chapter in Southern gothic sensibility.

Faulkner was busy throwing beer cans off the balcony in Pirate’s Alley, during his six months there in 1924.

“This is the perfect weather,” says the college kid, in town from LA, warm with a breeze, getting away from the East, planting roots out West, tearing them up East, finding something new. We talk about people along the way, other lives, other voices we encounter that alter us, the crusty punks with their dogs, the bartenders, who give her free cokes, the boy camping in LA, our waitress on her way to Cleveland, her dad a cook at Antione’s.

I look at the crumbling buildings, with their oil lamps, vampires lurking in the shadows, along the Esplanade, along the Elysian Fields, among the trees, an apocalyptic movie set, after the zombies take over.

The water encroaching, dreams flowing, and common ground receding.

Mark Twain’s steamboat in the distance.

Mom imagines not waking up, not able to move.

I fear the knock on the door.

America, a horror long coming.

We can see it here, in this place, in its roots beyond time.

We talk about the escapees that got out of jail on the way to the airport, with Wayne.

The stories are many.

I read through Lyle Saxon’s Fabulous New Orleans, stories of wave after wave of people coming, a history of this city, Creole and Cajun cultures mixing, native insurrections, slave revolts, revolutions, the Spanish and French that formed this city, before that fateful day in 1800.

“The day of the transfer of Louisiana to the United States was a day of mourning in New Orleans,” writes Saxon (p.161). “And it is easy enough to understand this. New Orleans is a city which considered itself highly civilized. At the time of the transfer it was nearly a century old and it was exclusively Spanish and French. The Creoles did not know what to expect of the Americans and they expected the worst… The feeling was New Orleans had been handed over to the vandals.” For Saxon, “The thing the American resented most was a certain paganness in the Creoles…’Eat drink and be merry for tomorrow you die.’... “Now the two contending forces - snobbishness on the part of the Creoles and intolerance on the part of the puritanical Americans - there was immediately discord.” (p, 162-3). Yet, over time this flow of bodies and ideas created something else. “And now… an endless flow of men came swarming down the river, and overland to New Orleans…” ( P. 165).

Between Georgia, where Mom and Dad met, and Texas, where Dad worked, we stopped there a lot, finding something there.

It was something we were still doing, even this weekend.

Friday afternoon,

Mom and I thought we'd have a simple weekend away to eat and stroll through New Orleans, feel the heat, one more time, maybe a last time. With rain and transit strikes on the way out of town, I wondered if it was a damn fool thing to do. Between rain, transit strikes, flight delays, followed by decreased flight delays, back to more delays, Mm and I sat to chat in a bar in Newark International. 'I'd rather drink a beer than water,' she told me. A seasoned traveler, we talked about kids and the lumps of the road, survival strategies, and still more delays, Mom becoming more animated with each step, making common cause with a pilot returning from Lima, Peru. Still fun to be here, there, even now.

We sat drinking for hours, before our flight finally got us there.

Arriving into the heat, we drove into the hot New Orleans night. . The college kid met us in NOLA. We walked into the night. Walked down Chartres to Decatur looking for a snack. Turtle Bay, a laid back pub, was still serving gumbo. Greeted the crusty punks and the guys playing heavenly music at the bar on the Esplanade, violins and soul. Thinking about the mixes of people and flavors Cajun and Creole, from the Caribbean and Acadia, Sicily and South America, the crusties jumpin trains, the hipsters, drunk, kids getting late light snacks, steaks and frites, people sleeping on.the streets with their dogs. 'I'm so glad you were open,' I said to the waitress. 'We serve food till 5 every night. Keep us in mind.' Ahhhh NOLA. Good to be back.

In the morning, we talked about the French quarter fest, on our way perusing antique shops on Royal Street to Flora Cafe back to Commander's Palace, a nap and a stroll to a few voodoo shops, past the hotel Montellione where Mom used to stay here, to Galatoires, where the college kid first ate two days before the storm in 2005. ‘I'm just entranced with all the New Orleans food,’ she tells me. ‘It's just like I remember it,’ said mom, looking about the old restaurant. Waiters in tuxedos, some look like they are from Paris, a few African American, with dreams, looking like they are from a Prada catalogue. We share shrimp remoulade, with crawfish, seafood gumbo and pompano. Best restaurant in town. And wander down Ramparts off to Kermits, into the warm night, taking in the breeze, reflecting on our years of trips here. Grateful to be here.

Sunday

We spent the morning on Royal, at Flora Cafe, walking the streets of the Marigney to the Bywater, with the water encroaching, up and down St Claude, up to the Julia Gordan art show at the Good Children Gallery in New Orleans, pursuing the black and white photos:

“Julia Gorton, known for her iconic documentation of the No Wave scene and underground punk culture, is expanding her ongoing portrait project, a series of photographs featuring the everyday (and nightlife) faces of divergent communities across the country (and London.) Show up, hang out and become part of this project.”

We keep walking down Ramparts, through a secret entrance from the bridge through the Music Box Village, an play space amidst the trees on the water off Ramparts. Kids were everywhere in this “experimental musical architecture’. With 16+ "musical houses" to date, the outdoor sonic sculpture garden is both an interactive art-site and a performance platform for one-of-a-kind concerts, artist residencies, and interdisciplinary works.”

‘You know how to find the end of the world,’ we asked. It was closed last time. Up the levey and around, she tells us... we follow her instructions, past the train tracks to a decommissioned base, losing its battle with the water, past the labyrinth, to the memorials, through cuts in the fencing. Maybe the escapees are sleeping inside, I say, gesturing to the ominous old base, turned squat. We stop Bacchanal where the tangiers combo are playing, and out for more jazz and crawfish for Ashley, back down St Claude, where our friend told us a man was shot after we left on friday. Down past the railroad tracks, the bands played St James Infirmary. The dreams lingered in the trees...and so did we.

We wish we could stay.

But it all changes, we move through time.

Get older.

Last year, I was with the high school kid, back home, downstairs, home from college, back from Boston.

Wondering, is it a journal or poem?

And reading Bukowski’s homage to the city where I’ll live in the future: