Tag Archives: New Orleans

We Got Close Once In New Orleans

Posted on by Bill Chance

“I see you drinking at a fountain with tiny
blue hands, no, your hands are not tiny
they are small, and the fountain is in France
where you wrote me that last letter and
I answered and never heard from you again.
you used to write insane poems about
ANGELS AND GOD, all in upper case, and you
knew famous artists and most of them
were your lovers, and I wrote back, it’s all right,
go ahead, enter their lives, I’m not jealous
because we’ve never met. we got close once in
New Orleans, one half block, but never met, never
touched.
—-Charles Bukowski

Fountain in a cool interior garden, New Orleans, Louisiana

Fountain in a cool interior garden, New Orleans, Louisiana

Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player

Posted on by Bill Chance

“The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected. The commonplace person begins to play, and shoots into the empyrean without effort, whilst we look up, marvelling how he has escaped us, and thinking how we could worship him and love him, would he but translate his visions into human words, and his experiences into human actions. Perhaps he cannot; certainly he does not, or does so very seldom.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

Gold Magnolias Freret Market New Orleans

Gold Magnolias
Freret Market
New Orleans

Dirty French Fry

Posted on by Bill Chance
Gold Magnolias Freret Market New Orleans

Gold Magnolias
Freret Market
New Orleans

The Gold Magnolias performing Dirty French Fry

Something Like Happiness

Posted on by Bill Chance

“I would like to bring to people something like happiness. I would like to discover a method so that if I want it to rain, it will start right away to rain. If one of my friends is ill, I’d like to play a certain song and he will be cured; when he’d be broke, I’d bring out a different song and immediately he’d receive all the money he needed.”
― John Coltrane

The Gold Magnolias New Orleans, Louisiana

The Gold Magnolias
New Orleans, Louisiana

Saxophone player with The Gold Magnolias at a concert at the Freret Market – New Orleans

Restlessness of the Soul

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Dreams and restless thoughts came flowing to him from the river, from the twinkling stars at night, from the sun’s melting rays. Dreams and a restlessness of the soul came to him.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

The city has made incredible strides since Katrina. However, New Orleans is still full of abandoned, vacant, and decaying properties. One of these is the old River of Life Hospital, on Jackson, across the street from the condominiums with the New Orleans Gargoyle Sculpture.

I didn’t venture inside – though it looks like there is some art there.

This place isn’t a hurricane victim, however. It’s been vacant since 1979. Hopefully, someone will find a use for it soon.

River of Life Hospital New Orleans, Louisiana

River of Life Hospital
New Orleans, Louisiana

Glimpse the Joyous Isles

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Three or four times only in my youth did I glimpse the Joyous Isles, before they were lost to fogs, depressions, cold fronts, ill winds, and contrary tides… I mistook them for adulthood. Assuming they were a fixed feature in my life’s voyage, I neglected to record their latitude, their longitude, their approach. Young ruddy fool. What wouldn’t I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

Rotterdam Express Container Ship New Orleans, Louisiana

Rotterdam Express
Container Ship
New Orleans, Louisiana

Today’s technology – the amount of useless information available at your fingertips is breathtaking. Take this ship I watched sail up the Mississippi – there are a number of websites which will tell me where the ship is at any time. Right now The Rotterdam Express is underway in the North Sea off the coast near Dunkirk.

I might check in from time to time, imagine the adventure.

Cannot Bar Its Path

Posted on by Bill Chance

“One who knows the Mississippi will promptly aver—not aloud, but to himself—that ten thousand River Commissions, with the mines of the world at their back, cannot tame that lawless stream, cannot curb it or confine it, cannot say to it, Go here, or Go there, and make it obey; cannot save a shore which it has sentenced; cannot bar its path with an obstruction which it will not tear down, dance over, and laugh at.”
― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

Capt. Billy Slatten Towboat Mississippi River New Orleans, Louisiana

Capt. Bill Slatten
Towboat
Mississippi River
New Orleans, Louisiana

Capt. Billy Slatten towboat information

“Whoo-oop! I’m the old original iron-jawed, brass-mounted, copper-bellied corpse-maker from the wilds of Arkansaw!—Look at me! I’m the man they call Sudden Death and General Desolation! Sired by a hurricane, dam’d by an earthquake, half-brother to the cholera, nearly related to the small-pox on the mother’s side! Look at me! I take nineteen alligators and a bar’l of whiskey for breakfast when I’m in robust health, and a bushel of rattlesnakes and a dead body when I’m ailing! I split the everlasting rocks with my glance, and I squench the thunder when I speak! Whoo-oop! Stand back and give me room according to my strength! Blood’s my natural drink, and the wails of the dying is music to my ear! Cast your eye on me, gentlemen!—and lay low and hold your breath, for I’m bout to turn myself loose!”
― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

Human Beings Would Not Be Human Without Them

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Any technological advance can be dangerous. Fire was dangerous from the start, and so (even more so) was speech – and both are still dangerous to this day – but human beings would not be human without them.”
― Isaac Asimov

Gas Space Heater, St. Charles Guest House, New Orleans, Louisiana

Gas Space Heater,
St. Charles Guest House,
New Orleans, Louisiana

A cold snap came through New Orleans the day after Halloween. When we came back to our room in the old guest house in the Garden District an unseen Prometheus had lit the gas space heater in the bathroom, filling the cracked and colorful old Art Deco tile designs with a warmth of blue, red, and orange.

Where the Sun Sails And the Moon Walks

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Farewell,” they cried, “Wherever you fare till your eyries receive you at the journey’s end!” That is the polite thing to say among eagles.

“May the wind under your wings bear you where the sun sails and the moon walks,” answered Gandalf, who knew the correct reply.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Annotated Hobbit: The Hobbit, Or, There and Back Again

Central Business District New Orleans, Louisiana

Central Business District
New Orleans, Louisiana

This is the eagle on top of the Duggins Law Firm building in downtown New Orleans.

Watch With Glittering Eyes

Posted on by Bill Chance

“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”
― Roald Dahl

While in New Orleans over Halloween we stopped at the New Orleans Lager and Ale (NOLA Brewing) company for some free beer (yes, this is truly the best of all possible worlds) and ran across a street magician plying his wares amongst the slightly tipsy crowd. He would attract attention with a spinning, levitating, and ultimately, flying card. Then he would run through a series of close-in slight of hand magic – mostly card tricks. At the end, he would pass the hat for donations.

It was worth the price of admission.

Street Magician New Orleans, Louisiana

Street Magician
New Orleans, Louisiana