i'll meet you here tomorrow, independence day

I realize that so far I've only written about the negative aspects of New Orleans... the missing cars... the adamantly not-missing vermin. I haven't written about the bright colors of the buildings, the oaks that lean over the streets dripping with spanish moss and strings of beads, the brief, furious thunderstorms, the amazing seafood, the Southern-Brooklyn accents, the sensation of walking through a world perched precariously between cultures and times.

I was here a few days alone before Brie arrived on the fourth of July. That day I hung out with a guy named Paul Andre, whose family has lived in New Orleans since his ancestors fled the Haitian slave revolts in the late 18th century. We ate shrimp po' boys at Parkway Brewery near St. John's Bayou and drove through the city. He showed me the shotgun houses Uptown, built with no hallways, one room after the other, the big houses in the Garden District, built by Americans to show up the French in the Quarter, and the high water marks on the sides of the creole cottages in the Bywater.

We stopped at a potter's field Uptown. Paul thought that slaves were buried there, but we got out and walked around and couldn't find any markers that old. The flooding and unevenness of even fairly new tombstones show why most of the graves in New Orleans are built above ground.


Later that evening I set off to pick up Brie from the airport. This about sums up that little drive:


I didn't get out of the car much, so I don't have a picture of me waiting for roadside assistance again. Although I do have the Roadside Assistance Guy:


I'm beginning to think Isaac is mad at me. Did she not want to go on this road trip? I mean, she could have said something two months ago, instead of just being passive-aggressive about it.

I also managed to break the strap on my flip flop while I was talking to the R.A.G. Though I can't really blame that on Isaac, so maybe it's someone else who didn't want me to go on this road trip and is trying to tell me something.

Isaac and I pulled up about 45 minutes late to pick Brie up from the airport. I still really wanted to try to make it to the fireworks on the river, so even though it was now past 8, I drove a fast 50 mph on the spare tire back to the Quarter, hunted around for a while for parking, found parking, borrowed shoes from Brie because of the flip flop debacle, walked to the apartment, sprayed on poisonous amounts of OFF, grabbed a tripod, and we set off down to the river to see the fireworks. The fireworks started when we were only a couple of blocks from the apartment and stopped when we were a block from the river. So, this is what they looked like to us:


(Thanks to Ry for help with the photos and to Steph for the generous lending of the tripod.)

We decided to go ahead and walk down and pretend we were watching fireworks. People were still sitting on the riverbank, drinking (you can drink outside here,) talking, and "cooking broccoli," as our pastor's daughter Mei Li says.

Me and Brie, doing none of the above:


After that we got dinner at Crescent City Brewery, where the bill came out to:


God bless America.

Everybody knows
You only live a day
But it's brilliant anyway

I saw you in a perfect place
It's gonna happen soon but not today
So go to sleep and make the change
I'll meet you here tomorrow

Independence Day

~"Independence Day"
Lyrics by Elliott Smith