There’s a Joke Here Somewhere

I was born on a Sunday. And so the sun knows all my secrets. This great big star; a guiding force in my life. It keeps me warm.

But there was hardly such a thing on my last day in New Orleans. Somebody had scissored the sky just enough for the rain to fall. And it fell and fell. I wanted to spend some time with the sun. The Southern heat, despite our differences, would come to know me—understand me—a bit better as time went on.

““You could tell by the way that he talked, though, that he had gone to school a long time. That was probably what was wrong with him.””

— John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

I dreaded leaving New Orleans. What excuse is there left? Leaving New Orleans meant facing risk. Lots of it. More ebb than flow. There exists uncertainty and change. We risk touching the face of misery and hostility. A fear that has plagued me for God knows how long. I hate this fear more than I hate writing. Andrew wants me to be more honest; I suppose that’s a reasonable thing to ask. Writers contradict themselves all the time.

““When Fortuna spins you downward, go out to a movie and get more out of life.””

— John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

One of my main objectives on this trip was to strengthen my sense of mindfulness. A process that I would do so alone. I often seek out solitude because there can be something beautiful about it. I wanted to dig deep into pockets of soil. Sketch each cloud. Count each leaf. I did these things fairly well, I think. (Have you read any of my work?) And so I’ve come to realize that I like spending time with myself. Very much, in fact. Being in the company of my own presence is worthwhile. There is something of value with self-exploration. Each corner of the mind has its multitudes. It’s quite fascinating. Who knew?

The sun had kept to itself, making hardly any appearances throughout the day. It can be a shy little thing when it wants to. By noon, I’d take my small list of errands with me outside, heading towards the St. Charles streetcar. Clunkiness sounds sweet. On my way down Magazine Street, I notice how out of place everything seems to be. Charming and quirky and out of place. There’s an unspoken liveliness in everyday people, particularly in the thick of some fuzzy overcast. There was more pep to my step. I figure it’s all the jazz.

At the antique mall, I find vintage furs, comics, rotary phones, records, dishware. I don’t know where to start. I stroll around, not looking for anything in particular. Just gifts for my family. I visit the vintage shop a few doors down. There are racks on racks of band t-shirts and college sweatshirts. I take a look at the hat selection, noticing a blue-brim hat that says ‘Fishing is not a matter of LIFE and DEATH—it’s much more IMPORTANT than that!’ And I agree. I’d come to purchase it for my brother. Before making my way back to the streetcar headed towards Canal Street, I make sure to take in the live oaks that line the cobbled Garden District streets one last time.

In the Quarter, I hound each souvenir shop in search of a stuffed alligator keychain. It’s virtually impossible to find any for some strange, obscure reason. Is this not New Orleans—have I gone mad? I needed one for my mother’s new set of keys. I feel like Ignatius huffing and puffing about.

By Fortuna’s doing, I manage to stumble across the Historic New Orleans Collection, a museum and research center with free admission. It contains a small set of exhibits that detail the history and culture of New Orleans. I take my time traversing each one, entranced by the Southern allure. One exhibit, titled ‘Unknown Sitters,’ presents a selection of unidentified portrait subjects. Each figure has a soulful look in their eyes. And each figure has a story.

Across the St. Louis Cathedral, I enter another gallery, this time with the works of George Rodrigue, known for his ‘Blue Dog’ series. Just pieces of blue dogs with piercing, yellow eyes. I feel as though we need more art in the world, good or bad. (This statement conflicts me at times the more I think about it. I refuse to think about it any longer.) Where there is art, there is life.

I end the day by purchasing a 1997 copy of James Baldwin: Early Novels & Stories at Dauphine Books. James Baldwin always had something to say, and he was right most of the time. If there was such a person who could provide me with the answers that I’m looking for during this transitional and transformative period, it would be him. There is a quote about mirroring love somewhere.

““My life is a rather grim one. One day I shall perhaps describe it to you in detail.””

— John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

As I type this last blog, I would have arrived back in Los Angeles. I find that the birds chirp the same. And the sun is there to greet me home. Yet, I have a newfound sense of bravery and autonomy, which I had not known up until this point.

I don’t know what life has in store for me. It can take days, weeks, months, or even years for a revelation to happen. It’s a matter of time, of perseverance, of swift tenacity. It’s the fish mentality. You just swim and swim. Murky waters, clear waters, any water. I think back to the gulf shark I saw a few weeks ago—its fin against the sun; its glossy, wet and smooth skin; silvery, almost iridescent skin. The way it moves, perhaps not knowing what lies ahead.

The sun is a star. But the stars, they wane and they change. Distant and tremulous, moving from one sky to another. How delicate and beautiful they are, for they do not know; these spheres of gaseous light.

Fools on Parade

Green leaves on pebbled ground are romantic, I’ve realized. Scattered leaves fallen from decrepit trees. Romantic in the sense that it brings you closer to earth. My fulfillment lies on these leaves. I pity the unobservant and the naive.

““He is a moviegoer, though of course he does not go to movies.””

— Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

I hate you, William Faulkner!

The best beignets in New Orleans are not found in Café du Monde. It is a perverse lie. Please believe me when I say this. My time in Café du Monde is spent sheltering from the rain, listening to the rumbling of ferocious jazz bands on the street. Cracks of thunder as loud as a streetcar; the watercolor sky washed in smokey blue. There is the clack clack clack from the rusty, unsuspecting mules. Rain is romantic. The beignets are not. I feel sleepy; wilted like a flower.

I’m starting to regret this trip. It’s not the city, no. Oh, it’s not. It’s the writing. I must confess that I hate writing. Writing is a selfish lover; one with many faces. Taking and taking, not giving, exhausting all emotion. And it is a lover that I continue to return to. But, I admit: seeking out the city for literary pleasures and indulgences is exhilarating! It's a license for licentiousness. Living life in New Orleans as a striving (and starving) writer is a rather fantastic idea. Fitzgerald, Williams, Capote, Twain, Whitman—these freaks of nature; my compatriots. There is neurosis in the air. It makes me want to take up smoking.

Notice the books with the interesting titles?

James Baldwin—the man that you are.

After the rain clears, I walk over to Pirate’s Alley. Sweat and smoke and soap. I come to Faulkner House Books, the nook where Faulker once resided, now a small bookstore. I’m just itching to read some Baldwin. Rows and rows of books. It makes me delirious. I ignore the fact that I’ve hated William Faulkner since I was seventeen years old; feelings which still persist. Around the corner, there is a blue wall with framed photographs and texts and letters. Southern greats like Williams and Lee with their moody stares. I chat with the owners for a bit before leaving for the Hotel Monteleone, the next stop on my literary pilgrimage.

Inside the foyer, there is a shrine dedicated to the writers who have visited and mentioned the Hotel Monteleone. Capote, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Williams, and the like. Does this particularly inspire me? Perhaps slightly. I am still unsure of what to do with my life. I’ve thought about taking an amicable break in my relationship with writing. Yet everybody keeps telling me to write. Write, write, write. Oh, but you must write. Yes, it is one of the few ways of expressing myself. And yes, it is a vessel for exploration. But I’m tired. I want to desperately sleep and dream and listen to Herb Alpert.

Returning to my hotel, Kevin, the elderly and zestful hotel manager, gifts me a set of bead necklaces by draping them around my neck. Christened by the beads—and thus accepted by the city—without the need to jump into the Mississippi.

I came to New Orleans to escape existential dread; the ravenous kind; the one that’s been gnawing away at my insides. To forgo the philosophical and reacquaint myself with everydayness. The very opposite of what Binx Bolling sets out to do in The Moviegoer. I've since been lost in the mystery of finding myself in Los Angeles at such a strange, liminal time. New Orleans would be the cure for my blues. I would learn how to coexist with the world. Every whistle of the wind, every beam of light, every sprig of grass—I would come to learn how to love these things. But the closer I approach my departure, the more I want to pick up Nietzsche again. I do not want to ‘search’ for anything per se, I just want to be able to live contemporaneously. Living in the moment is what they call it. Take each day and cradle it in my arms.

I like talking to Kevin. He calls me ‘honey,’ ‘sweetheart,’ ‘baby.’ We share moments of life and death with one another. I listen to him ramble on about piling mountains of crawfish, Lake Pontchartrain, and forgotten marital prospects. I ask if he’s ever visited Mexico. “Yes,” he says with amazement, eyes wide as stars. He tells me about his clubbing days in Tijuana. And then we talk about the losses in his life. I nod; there are layers to my sadness. You lose a part of yourself and there seems to be nothing else. Nothing but grief and shame.

“You’ve got to live your life,” says Kevin.

““The everydayness is everywhere now, having begun in the cities and seeking out the remotest nooks and corners of the countryside, even the swamps.””

— Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

I love you, Narrative Studies.

It is June; so bright and so sweet and so full of life. On my way to Audubon Park, I stop to admire the trees. The ones whose limbs look like hair. I notice the various ducks and geese resting peacefully under the shade. The fields of pale pink touch-me-not. Turtles sunbathing on logs, heads held high. Our group heads to the gazebo. Class is in session.

We open our discussion. Has Binx come to find the meaning of life? Of course not. He resorts to the allure of the mundane. But what is the meaning of life? There is certainly some of that in Audubon Park. Wasps zoom in and out of our seminar space. I ignore them because I am fixed on the crows that hop and laugh about. But I cannot stop thinking about how tired I am. Could we, under the human condition, ever come to find the meaning of life? I don’t think there is such a thing possible. And yet, why do we try?

Andrew proposes this: if there were such a thing to be found, is it not within the very idea of love? Love that we not only give, but the kind that we receive. The love we receive from other people. The kind we receive from the people that love us, and that, presumably, we love right back. Is that not it? And is it not enough?

I want to throw up; this is our Sermon on the Mount and nobody knows it.

I make a swift effort to put on my sunglasses.

The Problem We All Still Live With

““When you come from a mythologized place, as I do, who are you in that story?””

— Sarah M. Broom, The Yellow House

I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams.

The sun breaks at noon. Light seeps through the leaves at Congo Square. The wind is eager to pass; young and snappy. I sit under a live oak in order to feel. Cicadas cry; it is both gentle and mighty.

Many things seem to follow this life. Gender is one of them. Class especially so. And, unobjectionably, race. Gender, class, race. Sometimes in that order, other times not; because it can arrange itself a bit differently, and often does. For the unfortunate, they are what you call slim pickings. These things will always follow—and it is so haunting.

You cannot help but position yourself to think this way. It is glaringly obvious. The city talks if you listen. Sitting down in Congo Square, taking in the sun, and listening to the wailings of the cicadas—you simply cannot help but to think.

Of course, these are things I’m already familiar with. Ask me how or why. But exploring New Orleans—where every corner tells a story—can change or move a person. I really do believe that.

It’s all around us: pockets of the dark past; an ink that bleeds and continues to bleed, staining each page of the book. Nearly every major street in the Central Business District once held slave pens. Tall and wide gray, white, or black buildings situated on every block. Hotels, civic or corporate buildings, restaurants; all once the sites of open human markets from the not-too-distant-past. I can look out from the window of my hotel room to see one at any time. And there are many windows to choose from.

““We played hiding behind the trees a heap and played in the moonlight. We played tag. We picked up scaley barks, chestnuts, and walnuts.””

— Josephine Hamilton, a formerly enslaved person

The land on the Whitney Plantation is vast. It is an expansive property. Dragonflies hover and whirl. They are blue and green. Upon entering, I’m given a lanyard with a pass. It displays the statue of what appears to be a young girl named Julia Woodrich. She has my mother’s name.

I walk around the self-guided tour, stopping by at each marker or monument. Walls with many names. I try my best to read them all.

The chimes. Oh, the chimes.

Near the big main house, tall oaks blanket the space. Each limb as long as the Mississippi. It occurs to me, with eyes fixed on the trees, that I can hear the soft sounds of chimes. Around the corner, I see wind chimes swaying, the breeze cradling it along. Birds and other bugs sing along with the chimes. I am transfixed because it is so beautiful; everyone else walks on by. It is ethereal for what it is; a glimpse of light that pierces the dark.

I arrive at the quarters. The small statues of children posted outside are gifted with toys, coins, and other gifts. I wear my sunglasses for the rest of the tour.

““We are all born into histories, worlds existing before us. The same is true of places. No place is without history.”
”

— Sarah M. Broom, The Yellow House

Look closely: it’s a monarch butterfly playing hide and seek.

Have you ever cried at the sight of a butterfly? I watch as a little monarch butterfly flutters around, before hiding in the leaves of a tree. I take it as no coincidence; monarchs are a symbol of home—monarchs migrate annually to Michoacán, Mexico. Not too long ago, I learned that there is an enslaved ancestor on my father’s side, particularly through my grandfather. I will never be able to know their name. But I’d like to think it is them. 

I come to the memorial of the 1811 German Coast uprising. Each head and each name on a pike; all murdered for a righteous cause. The heat suffocates and makes me cry. I feel the weight of the pain; my chest swells. I still have my sunglasses on as I leave. At the gift shop, I purchase a cookbook for my father. 

Sarah M. Broom’s 2019 memoir The Yellow House traverses the places we call home; each crack and crevice that binds history to the self. Broom expands on the significance of the titular Yellow House, the seemingly lively and unruly house she grew up in, located on 4121 Wilson Avenue in the then-promising neighborhood of New Orleans East, a section of New Orleans that is now systematically overlooked due to its overwhelmingly Black and middle-class population. The youngest of twelve children, Broom, the prodigal daughter, inevitably faces the push-pull effect tied to generational trauma; a desire to leave home that is left to be confronted and reckoned with.

My visit to Wilson Avenue is cornered with low expectations. Like Broom, I come from a mythologized place—Los Angeles. And yet, it is a version of Los Angeles unconventional to the mind; devoid of Spanish-style dreams and sweet-smelling citrus trees. I am an other; there are no stars in this part of the sky. I count time with each passing train. I feel as if I cannot leave.

William Frantz Elementary School.

New Orleans East is stuck between wetland and wasteland. 4121 Wilson Avenue is a desolate and solemn plot of empty space. Abandoned and left to die. The streets are scattered with seashells. It is awfully silent, save the rowdy rumbling of cars on the main road over. The legacy of Katrina lives on with every sprawl of reed. 

Next to the Lower Ninth Ward, I come to a stop at William Frantz Elementary School, a monumental landmark and cornerstone of civil rights. It is the location where Ruby Bridges, then six years old, became the first Black student to integrate the previously all-white elementary school in 1960, part of the historic ruling of Brown v. Board. Quite honestly, this was one of the most surrealist moments of my entire trip. It felt otherworldly, standing across from the very place that moved me as a child. I initially learned about Ruby when I was in elementary school, having watched the 1998 television film sometime between the first and third grade. Watching the semi-fictional Ruby cower in fear due to racist death threats struck fear and sorrow into my own heart. 

Those feelings never left.

From the Edge

Past the feeling of restlessness that is hidden within the marshes, beyond the lily pads and pond skaters, there is New Orleans. Eeriness veils the heavy air. I get called ‘baby,’ ‘ma’am,’ and ‘miss mamas.’ There is a waft of musk mixed with sweat and smoke and soap. It is where the strange and the peculiar reside.

A small French courtyard.

My head is on fire. It is my first morning in New Orleans. The French Quarter is hot and humid and sticky. I wear Yves Saint Laurent (Libre, to be precise), which finds itself unable to penetrate the atmosphere. Notes of lavender, orange blossom, and white tea accord—just cannot compare. 

The streets are crooked and misshapen; narrow paths that are cobbled and lined with moss. I hear the clack clack clack of clattering feet and hooves. There are bloodied pelicans and sickly pigeons and inky crows. Beads hang from the scraggly limbs of trees that cast shade. Pots are perched precariously on iron-wrought galleries. The fountains and fences are French. Wisps of flame take up space inside black lanterns. Church bells ring every hour. All I see is pastel stucco; cornflower blue or banana brûlée yellow or powder pink. Occasionally I find speckled caladiums. Everything reminds me of Mexico.

I walk around in a slight daze. It is my third morning in New Orleans. A deep pounding resides in my chest; the heart a tremor. I feel like running past the sun; in a desperate, morose way. Just running and running.

““But this sadness was not painful, nor was it passionate. It was something rich, however, and almost sweet, like the fragrance of the jasmine and the roses that crowded the old courtyard garden which I saw through the iron gates. And this sadness gave a subtle satisfaction and held me a long time in that spot; and it held me to the city; and it didn’t really leave me that night when I went away.””

— Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire

Mary—my, oh my.

At the New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum, the trembling stops. My heart is at ease and at a gentle rest. Portraits of priestesses mark the thin walls. I stop by the sculptures to take a look. Carved figurines are standing still and firm; made from teeth and shells by the Ekoi people. In another room, there are working altars set and displayed; saints closely surround and guard the center. Candles and crucifixes are adorned with dollar bills, particularly on the main altar. It’s me and Mary. I leave some coins on the lace mantel scarf.

I approach the altar made for Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans. She’s a healer, it says on the display. Using the sheet of paper I was given earlier, I write down a few requests for her. I stuff and wrap a few more coins before tucking it away on a small stump, knocking at it nine times (one of my lucky numbers). Closing my eyes, I begin to pray. Do I believe? I would like to.

““It was as if the very air were perfumed and peculiar there, and I felt an extraordinary ease walking on those warm, flat pavements, under those familiar oaks, and listening to the ceaseless vibrant living sounds of the night.””

— Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire

The heat follows us well into the night. The moon is hung high. I follow my tour guide, hoping to dance with ghosts. I find no such thing, but the shadow of Jesus on the back of the St. Louis Cathedral; its silhouette nearly touching the sky. We continue walking, passing through a crowded alleyway. It smells like sweat and smoke and soap. “Pirate’s Alley,” she says. Of course.

The ceiling of the St. Louis Cathedral.

Near Muriel’s in Jackson Square, we listen to stories of the ghost that haunts the establishment, a spirit named Pierre. A small table is set out for him to eat. For a $50 reservation, anyone can join him for dinner and some wine. Someone in our group claims to have snapped a picture of what looks to be an orb; the ghost of Pierre. We gather to look at the picture as the phone moves around from person to person. I inch my face closer, aiming it towards the screen. It looks like a glare or speck of dust to me.

As the tour closes and I make the walk back to the hotel, I hear faint whispering in my ear. I look back—and no one is around.

On a Saturday, I make the effort to explore Bourbon nightlife. I set out to find the secret vampire bar that is only accessible by password. I quietly slip away from my cohort, leaving them at the Cat’s Meow. I walk over to the bar next door, a snazzy and densely crowded pub named Fritzel’s. A jazz band booms. I move towards the back, exiting a rotten-looking door.

In the outdoor corridor, I find a fellow dressed in black sitting in a chair, smoking a cigarette. He looks up at me silently, his eyes piercing my skin. Hair wavy, long, and disheveled, as if he had been sleeping in deep, green waters. I tell him the password. He presses me for more. I add that I received it from Boutique du Vampyre. We make further eye contact; his eyes an electric blue. I tell him I have no other thing to give to him. “Then there is nothing for you here,” he says. I nod, turning back towards the pub in shame.

I like your nose, Nosferatu.

That had been my first mistake—lying to a vampire.

On a Monday, I make my way to the French Quarter for my tarot reading, scheduled at 6 pm. I come across Boutique du Vampyre, land of vampire galore. I quickly scan the shop, chatting up the shop employee. I leave with no password.

Inside Voodoo Authentica, the walls are painted an ochre red. They are covered in feathers, African masks, jewelry, beaded tapestry, and other Haitian trinkets. The shop is fragrant and aromatic. While I wait, I ask the employee a few questions regarding their gris gris (talismans). He manages to pronounce my name correctly; the only person to do so. The reader then calls me for my reading.

I sit down and introduce myself. Before the reading starts, she prepares by dousing me in Florida Water, spraying it all over my hands. It smells aquatic; citrusy. It lingers. My finger had a small cut; the scent of the wound masked by orange blossom. She begins to shuffle.

“You are an old soul,” she says. I nod.

“And you’re in your head too much,” she adds. I nod again, this time quicker; a little more colorfully.

As I leave the shop, a lone saxophonist starts to play.

Aren't You Even Gonna Kiss Me Goodbye?

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.””

— Kate Chopin, The Awakening

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.””

— Kate Chopin, The Awakening

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.