A trip to the Doctor.

Saint Joan of Arc, pray for us.

The doc gave me the diagnosis.  I am invisible to x-rays.  As if I didn't have enough enough hereditary quirks to escape notoriety.  His office is in a boarded up shotgun off North Robertson Street downwtown of Elysian Fields.  I had to crawl through a window to get into the waiting room, but his rates are reasonable, even if his front door is boarded up.

After a battery of tests and procedures appropriate to a general physical examination to establish a person's current state of health, Doctor Omphaloskepsis (he seems to be of Greek-and-Creole descent) told me, without mincing words, "You are radiolucent."

It is a benign, congenital medical condition reported in 0.00051% of the global population.  Its complications, as reflected in morbidity and mortality reports, are statistically nil.  My doctor advises me that, if I do, indeed, suffer complications that impact my activities of daily living, I should increase the lead in my diet.  Sometimes, the cure is worse than the disease.

As he put his X-ray spectacles back in their case, he looked at me ruefully.  "This is not a disability that you cannot overcome with appropriate, professional oversight.  I have some fishing line sinkers in my tackle box back home.  If you put one between your cheek and gum every day for a month, the prognosis is favorable.  Make an appointment next week and we can review your treatment plan.  I will dispense the medicine then.  The cost of a sinker is $1.56 apiece, and you will be receiving thirty of them.  Remember to bring $468 in cash or money order, as well as the fee for the office visit.

My radiolucent nature has never been an impediment, so I declined to undergo the prescribed therapy.  Dr. Omphaloskepsis did listen to my head with his stethoscope, and he diagnosed me with an accute case of confabulation.  His recommendation for this:  a good night's sleep every night.  Ascelpius may be the good of medicine, but Hypnos an Morpheus swab balm when and where it is most needed.

After a night in listening to the pulse of the New Orleans' musical spirit in five venues at the end of my street, it is time to try correct my radiolucent symptoms.  I need a little, doctor-prescribed shut-eye.  I predict a lot of lumber will be sawed in the Odditarium tonight.

-Don't do anything Whalehead King wouldn't do!
Baleanius Rex!

New Orleans, Excelsior!

George' Bank herring from off the coast of Canada...

George's Bank is located off the coast of New England.  It is a fabulously fertile fishing ground that gave the Commonwealth of Massachusetts one of its symbols, the Sacred Cod that hangs in the Statehouse.  Can a cold water fish really be at its best when dressed in Louisiana spices?  Some would say yes.  I like to think so.

I was born and raised in Connecticut, a small state many people confuse with a city in Ohio when I travel cross-country.  Whether they it is Cleveland or Cincinnati or whether they there really is a Connecticut, OH, I've never bothered to ask.  Ohio was once a part of Connecticut's Western Reserve, but that is a story for another day.

As I discussed yesterday, I have lived in a number of cities and I would like to spend today's post discussing why I feel New Orleans is best.

Dawn east of New Orleans East

I headed out to Bayou Sauvage before sun up this morning.  I took Interstate 10, which is elevated above most of the rooftops it passes by.  All of the 9th Ward smelled like pancakes from just after Elysian Fields Avenue to just before the Industrial Canal.  The air was rich with the scent of pancakes and sorghum.  On the way home, around 8:00AM, my nose detected neither.  The moment had passed.  I wonder if this happens everyday and why.

I did manage to capture a picture of the sunrise which I've mounted above.  It was a beautiful, fragrant morning.  Out there on Bayou Sauvage, even though it's within city limits, you forget the city except for the irregular sounds of traffic on Chef Menteur Highway.

A beautiful motorcycle.

I've been driving around New Orleans trying to find an active American Legion post.  There don't seem to be any.  The American Legion website lists addresses for seven posts.  I visited six, the other is in Algiers.  None of them were open.  In fact, only one of them still seemed to exist, on Magazine Street, and I've never seen it open.


I'm not sure if this is sloppy bookkeeping by the Legion or if this is a post-Katrina phenomenon.  Most of the addresses looked they were never designed to host a fraternal organization.  The exception was on St. Claude Avenue which now seems to be a commercial event hall.

Founded after WWI, the American Legion saw a boom in membership after WWII, naturally.  Since then, the organization has seen its membership age.  I've often been the youngest legionnaire in the room and I'm not as young as I used to be.  Like many things, New Orleans fabric maintains vestiges of days and institutions gone by.  I don't know if I blame the Army Corps of Engineers' levee failure on this.  It may just be that the American Legion lost its relevance to New Orleans life.  It was tough to find an active post in Boston, a city with double the population.

In other news... My Little Ninja motorcycle has developed a disturbing rattle after being driven to Baton Rouge yesterday.  I'd like to blame the atrocious New Orleans street conditions but it seems long, highway speeds and the Little Ninja don't mix.  The same thing happened after I drove it down from Boston.  I bump and am jostled to smithereens on side streets all over New Orleans but so far none of the damage has been permanent.  Who would have suspected that the highway would cause another trip to the mechanic?  Oh well.

About the stickers that appear on that beautiful, trusty motorcycle in the illustration at the top of the page:  The ones over the foot pegs are detailed above, if not in perfect focus.  These flags represent my household.  There is a German flag and a Connecticut flag, representing the points of origin of the immigrants who ride this stallion and have chosen to make New Orleans their home.  The Louisiana flag is self explanatory in this context, it's where we live and love now.  For those who don't know, the Louisiana flag is the one portraying the pelican in its piety.

If you're curious what that red spot is on the front fairing, well, its a voluptuous devil.  If that's not an apropos symbol of New Orleans, nothing is.  Better the devil you know than the devil you don't.  I'm learning everything I can about my new city.

Cheers!

WK

A human metropolis

I visited Bayou Bienville again, a melancholy visit.  I've been to this part of the Lower Ninth Ward before but this morning didn't make it any less surreal to see.  I brought company with me this time and while we sat on the levee overlooking the brackish marsh that is Bayou Bienville, my companion could only say, "This is such a lonely place."

Lonely indeed.  Not only is the bayou an expanse of unrippled algae mats punctuated by decades-old, dead cypress stumps; in the other direction are the overgrown, abandoned blocks of the north side of the Lower Ninth Ward.  The land isn't totally abandoned to nature, but the scrub grass and shrubbery are running a slow motion, quiet riot over evidence of civilization.  Bushes overtake half the roadways.  We turned down one street and had to turn back, the pavement had dissolved into muddy, impassable sink holes.  It is quiet in this part of New Orleans.  Too quiet.  There are inhabited homes scattered along the remaining grid of streets but they are few and far between.  It must be lonely to live there, especially if, half a decade ago, you were used to having neighbors.

I stopped for gas on North Claiborne Avenue and found the best price I've had the pleasure to pay in a long, long while: $2.34 for a gallon.  While filling the tank everyone who walked past between pumps and cashier said hello.  Even in this part of New Orleans where the evidence of tragedy is self-evident for anyone with eyes to see, people partake of common courtesy and humanity.  As usual, we chatted motorcycles and weather while the gas pumps filled our tanks, mine much quicker than anyone else's.

"Hope you don't get caught in the rain," one man said.  "No thunderheads yet," I replied, looking up. "Not yet, but they're coming.  Keep dry," he answered.  "Will do.  You too," I said.

We took North Claiborne home.  My companion said, "The Ninth Ward is still devastated so many years after the fact."  I couldn't do anything but agree.  The further you get from downtown in that direction the more proof you see that work needs to be done.  Tourists don't see it.  We don't really see it where we live, but the wounds inflicted on the city remain deep and raw, undressed.  If they are being addressed, it is a slow process and most probably a painful one.  It is a black mark against the federal government's reputation as much as the oil slick currently polluting the Gulf of Mexico.

I have a lot to learn about my new city, the good about it as well as the less so.  I remember my New Orleans moment on the corner of Humanity and Metropolitan Streets.  I hate to keep bringing it up but it cemented my view of this city, one that is bittersweet yet full of hope and the scope of life.  I am a stranger in a strange land yet I feel I'm home even if I don't speak the language fluently.  Sure, I'm part poseur and neophyte.  Sure, I romanticize what I experience.  Struck with so much culture shock traveling from block to block, how can I be anything else?   I cannot apologize for being what I am not.  Like New Orleans, I can only strive to be better than what I am today.  Time will take the measure of this man as it will take the measure of this city in the face of all odds against it.

With Union, Justice, and Confidence,
WK
Qui Transtulit Sustinet.

A New Orleans moment

I don't watch a lot of television (any, really) but I do know about HBO's Treme series.  It was advertised on little cards in every rinky dink motel I stayed in on my trip from Boston to the Crescent City.  The motels invariably crowed on their signs, "Air conditioning.  Free HBO."  Thinking about it after the fact, I should have seen if Treme was on those nights.  I could have turned on the air conditioning too.

One of the series' writers is on record as saying, "New Orleans manufactures moments."  I had read this awhile ago and it stuck with me because it struck me as true.  I had one of those moments today.

After six days on the road, cradling clutch and throttle, I indulged in some much needed sleep today and after reading the Times-Picayune front to back over coffee at Mojo on Magazine Street, I spent the morning and early afternoon exploring.  It was in the Bywater neighborhood, south of St. Claude Avenue that I thought, "Man, I love this city.  It's so beautiful and full of surprises.  It's a feast for my soul."  There were more surprises ahead.

I headed north and found a different world altogether.  At first I couldn't decide if I was seeing the effects of Hurricane Katrina or the effects of urban blight in a poor part of town.  It was Katrina.  Five years afterward, the damage is still there, the wounds not scarred over, just scabby and painful to witness.  Whole blocks offer sights that will break your heart.  The disaster extends farther than I realized and lingers longer than a nation with a short attention span knows.

I am not making these street names up.  New Orleans street names are things of pure poetry.  I was in an area where all the homes were abandoned, boarded up, collapsing, destitute, depressing, overgrown with weeds and fetid with mold.  On the corner of Humanity and Metropolitan Streets, one house has been refurbished to the point of not only being livable; it looks new.  On the front porch two boys, maybe fourteen or fifteen years old, were playing trumpets.  All around was wreckage but these two boys were blaring out infectiously joyful jazz scales.  I stopped the motorcycle to listen and they became self-conscious and stopped.  I flashed a thumbs-up and continued on my way.  As soon I was down Humanity Street a bit, out of sight but not out of earshot, they started up again, really letting their horns wail.

Call me soft-hearted or soft-headed but I had a lump in my throat when they started playing again and I can't really explain to you why.  I don't know what this episode means but I imagine it is the first of many New Orleans moments that will unfold as I live here.  New Orleans casts a spell.  It inspires great love.  I am hardly familiar with the city or the culture yet but I've caught that same bug that infects so many other people upon contact with this place.

Boston is a city that inspires fierce loyalty, mostly when compared to New York.  It is plump with historical accomplishments and intellectuals to build off them.  Every Bostonian will be happy to point out what an enlightened and progressive city it is, a world leader in technology and learning and regulation.  New Orleans is content to be itself and flourish in its eccentricity, a world apart from anywhere else on earth.  I can't yet say what the defining characteristics of a New Orleans citizen are.  All I know so far is that they know how to enjoy twenty-four hours and then another twenty-four.  There are many worse things for idle hands to be doing.

Where Humanity and Metropolitan intersect, I got a taste of New Orleans, something indescribable and mysterious, the riddle of the city distilled into a poignant, enigmatic moment.  I am going to love it here.  I don't worry for my soul but I'm concerned about my sanity.  Too much New Orleans might score the flinty New England nature off my psyche.  I didn't decide to move here to be reborn, but I am falling under an enchantment.  May every day be as humbling, bittersweet, and enlightening.