So much of what this town is actually comes from what it is not. Or at least not on the surface. We have our Yats, our cratered streets, our crime, our streetcars, our French Quarter and all the other things that make New Orleans wonderful, aggravating, romantic, dirty, artistic, stark and any other diametrically opposed extremes we live with each day. It’s the being hung in the balance that many of us live for — that feeling of being suspended someplace between what honestly was and what can be. Between the sun and the moon…

Bullshit.

I went down to the swamp today. By “swamp,” I mean Lafourche and Terrebonne Parishes — Houma, Des Allemands, Raceland and some others. I was making a couple of deliveries to what is my biological home (at least for half of me). I love these trips, which take place a couple times a month — because I feel most connected and alive there. Being an adopted child, I know only what little my biological mother left in terms of information on sheets of Official Paperwork back in 1954 — that my father was “Acadian” — and my physical self appears to bear it out more and more as the years go by. At least two dozen times in the past 5-6 years, various strangers have told me, “you look like a Thibodaux.” Maybe I am. I’m a big believer in genetic memory.
Dat said (excuse the vernacular — it’s easy to pick up), so much of what this city is comes from the various bayous that surround it. In less that 40 minutes from the CBD, one can literally get lost forever in Bayous Gauche, Des Allemands, Cane and the many others.
I like knowing that and being close to that reality. Not that I want to get lost. But I think much of the allure of this city is knowing that you can get lost if you really want — despite the Hustler Club and the Hibernia Bank and Entergy and even the S&WB.
It’s nice to create our own realities, as so many of us find easy to do in New Orleans — to either begin again or create some sort of barrier between ourselves and What’s Out There. But I prefer going to the swamp and being close to Real Life — where you can hide from the day-to-day but you can’t escape What Really Is.

By the way — I passed a really neat mashed-up alligator in the median on Highway 90 between Des Allemands and Hahnville. The thing must have been 8 feet long. Some vehicle ran over its head. Highly cool. Kinda allegorical, really.

Related posts:

1. Up from the swamp
2. Swamp Moustache Season
3. The Bonnet Carré Spillway’s moment to shine
4. Another world
5. Close to home