Bayou Bliss...

Today we craved a bit of green. So we traveled a few miles south of New Orleans to Jefferson Parish, and walked along the trails in Bayou Coquille.


You are welcome to have a seat and let your eyes wander....
Click here, for a few moments in the marsh.

The Audobon Aquarium and...

I couldn't decide which I enjoyed more...the displays of fishes, frogs, skates, rays, corals and clownfish, or the mullets, the New Orleans Saints football jerseys, and the many personalities gawking at life underwater.
This aquarium is a true place of encounters, literally...complete with a stingray petting pool. Yes, you can pet a stingray, and even pet a baby nurse shark. Somehow, the stingrays are trained. You merely roll up you sleeves, insert your arm in the tank, make a fist and then extend your index and middle fingers. The rays swim over and hover just under your digits. Then, you gently rub behind their head. I was amazed and even amused when one of the rays protested by splashing a wing and spraying me with water when I cut my ray massage short. (That particular and seemingly docile dasyatid had a bit of an attitude.) Gabriela joined in, and massaged her own.
Here are a few glimpses from our time inside and outside of the water. If you want to massage the photos at your own pace, click here with your index and middle fingers fully extended.

Facades, Faces and other Frames...

I heard someone mention, "New Orleans is a city you eat your way through...." It is true, I have found out. (The colors and the architecture, the door frames, and the people seem to increase one's appetite.)
Click here, and pick through the (.jpeg) jambalaya at your own pace.

Ink-Congruities...

Yesterday, my eye wandered...searching for disparities and asymmetries, as we re-entered the French Quarter. As we approached Café du Monde for another round of powdered sugar and fried dough, I walked past a tourist just sitting...his purposeful self-commodification emblazoned on his right forearm. I asked if my camera could scan his barcode and he said, "sure."

Ink-Commodified Human

Moments later while under the spell of café au lait, I contemplated the alternative readings of this linear impression. A critique of consumer society? An indelible identification with a consumer product?

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Today, I strolled along Magazine Street in the Uptown section bored by the banality of one antique shop after another. Then I saw these mannequins in a storefront window and stopped, and stared.

Humanized Ink-Commodity

An academic assonance played in my head...lyrics borrowed from Claude Lévi-Strauss' text La Pensée Sauvage, and The Who's song Tattoo. The self-induced pedantic seizure distilled into rhetorical ironies: "Hey mannequin ladies...are your tattoos a brand of conviction, isolation or fraternization? Hey barcode tourist...does your tattoo make you feel plastic, metallic, or elastic?"

Audobon Park...

Yesterday afternoon, we decided to traipse through one of New Orleans' hallmark green spaces...Audobon Park. We cast a few shadows, and sat in the shade. Then it was time to head back. (Nonno was sleepy and needed a nap.)

Here are a few patches of green, and blue, and other colors. Click here, to sort them out at your own pace.


At the park entrance opposite Tulane University, on the way to the car....

New Orleans Noel...

Yesterday, our first full day in New Orleans, we rendezvoused with David and his two girls. (He traveled from Brazil to visit his parents. Last time we saw each other was over 18 year ago in Hoboken, New Jersey.) Our plan was to weave around the French Quarter, and share stories from the last few years, while drinking coffee, devouring beignets, and absorbing the local colors, sights and sounds.
Here are a few of the images from our wanderings. Click here, to trace your own path through the Cajun labyrinth....


This was my favorite array of the day....

Beignet Bound...

We arrived today in the Big Easy after a two-day road trip, and are staying at my brother in-law's home while he enjoys an academic sabbatical in Europe. We have planned to soak up the flavor of New Orleans (or what is left...post-Katrina) for a week or so before heading back home to DC.
(2130 hrs, local time) As I type, there is a live New Orleans Jazz band...singing accompanied by those unmistakable trumpets and banjos...nearby, somewhere down the street in this "Uptown" neighborhood. Tomorrow morning...the French Quarter.

Here are some impressions from our interstate journey today. (Click on the moving images to view the slide show at your own speed.)

Asymmetry and Adolescence...

Her choice of socks is playful...and girlish.

Her eyes when accidentally framed, seem to belong to someone much older...

This weekend, I appreciated her preteen form much how she displayed it...with great flexibility.

Pyrrhic Pyre, or Pyric Prolixity...

(A Haiku in Flames)

Promethean yen
emerges at night. Wax log
is Greek tragedy....

Washington D.C. at dusk...

As I prepared to head home this evening, I glanced at the sky and knew it would be a spectacular sunset. So I placed my camera on the empty passenger's seat. I'm glad I did so.

At a red light by the Tidal Basin, I saw a lone figure contemplating....
The light turned green, and I continued with my commute.

Veterans and Verisimilitude...

A few days ago at dusk, I walked along the Fußgängerzone on the northern boundary of the White House and saw him standing. This man, holding a simple wooden cane in his left hand and dressed in dark earth-tones, stood at attention. As I walked towards him, he lifted his right arm in one fluid motion, frozen in military salute...facing the presidential estate. He was a Veteran for sure...his gray hair was long, but not un-kept...his glasses unfashionable and thick. Without a word, he withdrew his tribute. Lowering his right arm, he right-faced and began walking West. His gate was steady, but the cadence punctuated by presumptive injuries...a kinesic memoir written upon battle-hardened cartilage, sinew and bone. I wondered who he was...where he had served...and why he returned to this place....

This face without a name made me think of other names that I had photographed a few days ago. These other cognomina seemed incognito, at first. Then I realized the brilliant interplay, which occurs at this monument...noms de guerre, given a face...with each visitor's reflection. I then looked around and wondered where they would build the next monument, in which direction would it face...the monument for the soldiers that died in Iraq and Afghanistan. I sighed, and snapped the picture.