The air in Louisiana is demanding. Not like anything else that I’ve encountered before. Markedly humid, it seems; thick with bravado. A gust of hot wind beckons me as rain begins to fall—and I come to realize that it’s going to be a particularly long, dismal summer.
I can’t tell you with certainty that I could ever imagine, and much less find, myself in Louisiana of all places. But it’s been an extraordinary year, for Christ’s sake! One cannot sit still for any second longer. We move and we will continue to move, not knowing what lies ahead. Because fate and time wait for no one. This is the so-called fish mentality.
Upon my arrival to Grand Isle, I’m met with more rain; part of the untimely fickleness of Southern storms. I couldn’t help but feel inundated by the weather, left to be blanketed by the warmth of the neverending bleak sky. Was this really Kate Chopin’s Grand Isle of parasols and pompousness? It was a completely different sight altogether, contrasted with observations made earlier in the day. The past two hours on the road had been riddled with images of sprawling green fields, dubious politics, and sounds of the coastal South: strange, bawdy country music and croaks from a handful of small, noisy egrets. (Oh, Los Angeles! How I miss you so.)
The great, philosophical pelican.
Still, I admit that there are some things to be admired. By the next morning’s wake, I take note of Grand Isle through a closer look; a friendlier, yet rather honest second impression: it is a zone of astounding peculiarity, with its kitsch, nautical charm. The wooden walls of our temporary beachfront homestead are adorned with teal seahorses, jellyfish, and flimsy fishnets. Awkward and out of place (we’re in Grand Isle, not the Bahamas), but endearingly charming nonetheless. Quite like someone I know.
I was not anticipating this experience to be totally transformative, matter of fact. Frankly, I expected to present myself under a sly guise of frivolousness. Self-reflective, sure; not entirely existentialist. Introspective, but done in a chic-tinged mode. Reading The Awakening led me astray.
““I’m going to pull myself together for a while and think—try to determine what character of a woman I am; for, candidly, I don’t know.””
There is a certain morbidity found in The Awakening, conjured by feelings of dead-end dread and wistfulness. Stylistically voyeuristic, readers are caught between the rugged tumultuousness of Edna’s inner turmoil and the unraveling of her personal affairs. Edna is innately alone on her path to 19th-century self-discovery—forced to pry herself open under the watchful eyes of the sun. She ultimately struggles with the oppressive weight of societal expectations, along with traversing the roles of her many relationships that come along with it: a wife, a mother, a lover, and a friend. I gather it to be characteristics of the female ennui: fatalistic and romantic; cruel with excess beauty. Something I’m rather familiar with.
By the third morning’s wake, gloom sets in. To bask in the heat of a melancholic summer—is quite intimate and sensuous. I suppose I know too much and nothing at all; I’m only a young fool. As I head out to the beach, I begin to scout around for seashells in a sort of weary stupor. Not in the mood for love, but in the mood for quiet contemplation and solace.
Graves, graves, graves.
I think about my recent graduation from USC, the countless directions I could take in post-grad life, and the unsettling nature of change; whether or not it will take ages for me to be able to bear it. I watch as birds and blades of beachgrass soar and sway in the wind. Time moves so slowly here; at a sea snail’s pace. The water is a pallid, somber shade of gray; oil rigs haunt the distant horizon like ghosts. Everything is quiet in this corner of the world. Even the wind, at times, appears to quiet itself. The heat begins to lull me to sleep—and I find myself to be the strangest thing under the sun.
Our subsequent trip to the Grand Isle cemetery further invokes this sense of dreariness. I walk listlessly along the many raised graves, each decorated with withered plastic flowers and tattered flags. Each tomb, more or less, bathed in a bleached bone hue; paint chipping or peeling away. Some are the shade of lithium. Marble statuettes of saintly figures are scattered throughout the markers. Tall oak trees covered in swaths of ivy encircle the tombs. Most of the surnames are in French, indicative of the state’s great Creole roots. I marvel at the beauty in the spiritual and the mundane.
““But the night sat lightly upon the sea and the land. There was no weight of darkness; there were no shadows. The white light of the moon had fallen upon the world like the mystery and the softness of sleep.””
All the world seems to be asleep. The night is a deep shade of black. So dark that it swallows the depths of eyes. I look out toward the ocean from the deck, wondering why there isn’t a single star in the sky. It is perhaps that drowsiness and the scent of salt fills the void of stars. And if there is just one star, can there at least be another? I bring myself to go to bed, despite the slight restlessness that inhabits the mind. I wonder if change is as forgiving or merciful as the moon. Had I been Edna, I would have much preferred to swim at night—in search of the missing stars.
Upon my departure from Grand Isle, I come across a wonderful sight by looking out the car window just briefly: a small gray and jagged fin just above the water, near the marshy, olive reeds. A tiny shark making its way through the vast gulf. Could it be scared, this singular and minuscule shark? Swimming around in these profound, warm waters all alone? I wonder what direction it's headed in—and if I could one day follow.
Until then: safe travels, my friend. I’ll see you again, I’m sure.