Spring Sights, Sounds, Smells
Mar. 27th, 2011 03:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ezekielsdaughter Friday was one of those spring days in New Orleans when I throw open all of my senses during my walk to lunch and hope that I don’t step in dog poo on my way. (I would swear that every resident of a new downtown apartment is issued a dog when they move in,)
Sights, Sounds, Smells
I cross Lafayette Square (http://tinyurl.com/6hz7pg3). The square is anchored by a statue of Lafayette ringed by flowers and steps. Each corner holds a slice of New Orleans. A couple cuddling on one set of steps. A student, book in hand, on another. A homeless guy in dull khaki rests for a moment on one step. Tourists are peering up at the statue at another. The flowers are the ubiquitous pink azaleas. The people are wearing spring and summer colors: fluorescent yellow, nautical blue, red, orange. The park is littered with whimsical sculpture. The benches that where giant eyes were on loan; they have vanished, But giant blooms of purple flowers are still in the south wing. There is a bunny bench on the north side of the park and someone is deep in a book while sprawled there.
The lawn guys are trying to cut the grass and they eye me along with every errant tourist. A piece of debris could easily go shooting out of their massive riding mowers. They eye me and step lively away from the sound of rending blades. In the next block, stone mason are polishing the limestone blocks that ennoble one of the glass towers.
What makes me tipsy is making this walk, seeing these sights and imposing on them a helicopter and time collapsed view of the scene. The park with its myriad paths that cross in diagonal lines, the real flowers, the ceramic hub-cab sized flowers, the tourists and the stone mason and his assistant on their hands and knees. The sound of the streetcar as it trundles down the street, a real danger that travels at only five miles an hours. Easy to neglect when you pause to watch a face-painted clown rush to the bus stop and his job in the quarter. The smell of cut grass and yes the smell of urine in the bushes of a smaller park because there are no public restrooms around.
Sights, Sounds, Smells
I cross Lafayette Square (http://tinyurl.com/6hz7pg3). The square is anchored by a statue of Lafayette ringed by flowers and steps. Each corner holds a slice of New Orleans. A couple cuddling on one set of steps. A student, book in hand, on another. A homeless guy in dull khaki rests for a moment on one step. Tourists are peering up at the statue at another. The flowers are the ubiquitous pink azaleas. The people are wearing spring and summer colors: fluorescent yellow, nautical blue, red, orange. The park is littered with whimsical sculpture. The benches that where giant eyes were on loan; they have vanished, But giant blooms of purple flowers are still in the south wing. There is a bunny bench on the north side of the park and someone is deep in a book while sprawled there.
The lawn guys are trying to cut the grass and they eye me along with every errant tourist. A piece of debris could easily go shooting out of their massive riding mowers. They eye me and step lively away from the sound of rending blades. In the next block, stone mason are polishing the limestone blocks that ennoble one of the glass towers.
What makes me tipsy is making this walk, seeing these sights and imposing on them a helicopter and time collapsed view of the scene. The park with its myriad paths that cross in diagonal lines, the real flowers, the ceramic hub-cab sized flowers, the tourists and the stone mason and his assistant on their hands and knees. The sound of the streetcar as it trundles down the street, a real danger that travels at only five miles an hours. Easy to neglect when you pause to watch a face-painted clown rush to the bus stop and his job in the quarter. The smell of cut grass and yes the smell of urine in the bushes of a smaller park because there are no public restrooms around.
