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....