N.O.: The final day

Departure day. We said our goodbyes to Host. The boys shook hands, the girls avoided it.* We had brunch at a place that felt like a hotel, but after my bloody mary, I didn't much care. I felt a little uncomfortable for having ditched the splinter group last night, but perversely annoyed at the same time. Matt didn't say anything about it, and neither did I, so we politely avoided the whole topic.

After brunch, we drove through Uptown, which was untouched by floods, though damaged in some places by wind and rain. My god, what a beautiful, stately area of town.

Because I wanted to see a cemetary, the group obliged, and we found a great one on the way out: St. Mettairie's. A crazy lady on a bike started talking to Matt and Rinna, who later reported that she said, "I'm concerned about those satellites, you know, the ones that can take pictures of you. Sometimes I jump out of the shower and move around with no clothes on, and they might have pictures of that!"

N.O. has developed elaborate cemetaries in part due to the necessity of burying people above ground because of the frequent floods. The tombs are amazingly ornate and kind of crazy sometimes, to tell the truth. We all rather liked the pyramid and the Sphinx, but there was also the replica of an Irish castle, and several with stained glass. "I guess if you're going to be in there the rest of your life, it might as well be pretty," Rinna commented. Or the rest of eternity.







As we drove away from the cemetery and toward the airport, we heard the perfect acoustic ending to our trip on the radio. A musician who'd stayed during the storm had written an album during it called Hurricane Romance. I can't remember the lyrics to the song we liked so much, but it was called "Downwind of the Refinery," and it had references to just about everything we'd learned about or seen during the week -- St. Bernard's parish, the Murphy Oil oil spill (soon headed to a class action suit), the floods, etc. Matt joked, "If we really wanted to end our trip on a perfect note, we would not say anything after this song until we got back to Crimson City."

It was a long trip back, through Atlanta, but we got in earlier than expected, and I was home by 11 pm. Weary, sick, thoughtful, and so grateful to have gone.

Postscript: The NOLA four are having dinner at Evan's house next week. He's cooking with some of the spices he bought in N.O., and we are responsible for bringing drinks and photos. Social divides suck, but only if you let them get to you.

*On thinking about the interactions with Host, I wonder if he might not have some problems with women. The prof he thought was egotistical is a woman (to be fair, others have held similar opinions about her, I just disagree), and he was really sort of aggressive about teasing Rinna and arguing with me. Well. Whatever.