Waaay Back: Louisiana

Cleaning up: An out of place boat

Ah, Louisiana. I'm thinking of going back there. Of all of the places I've lived in the U.S.A, I think that New Orleans, that damp and fated city, is the most...well, what can I say that hasn't already been said? It's a city that resonated deeply with me. I really don't even know much about Louisiana or New Orleans, just the little I found out while staying there post-Katrina for a few months.

Things that struck me: I always come back to that scent of the Sweet Olive Tree. I've smelled it since and studied it. It's an amazing smell, like the most fragrant rose mixed with blood orange and grass. But it was love at first sniff for me because I never knew where it was coming from. I'd be walking down Government street in Baton Rouge (a grey, dreary street if I've ever seen one), and suddenly this delicious smell would override the gutter animal corpses and the exhaust fumes of the passing "lemons" (I think LA has the most derelict cars of any state...judging by shoulders of US 10 littered with flat-tired heaps). I would look around, but I could never find the source. In Oakland, CA, I finally did. There was a bush/tree around my Jewel Box neighborhood, with little tiny green flowers, but you had to go across the street to smell them. The scent has a sort of ventriloquist quality.

The Mardi Gras Spirit

I love Carnival. New Orleans has the best Carnival in the USA, I think. It's not like other fun parades and street parties, where you get excited for it to happen maybe a week before, and then it happens and is fun and is over. Mardi Gras runs deep, even when it takes place only a few months after an incredibly debilitating disaster. So, this is also alluring to me. The elusive scent of a tree and Mardi Gras. I think that sounds like a solid reason to move, don't you?