Picturesque Decay
We live in a city of perpetual, picturesque decay. The New Orleans climate is rough on everything, an imperceptible ooze that ekes the life energies out of the comatose like so many syllables strung together sing-song style on a beaded wire. Then, there are the mosquitos…
It is December in New Orleans. Autumn has passed. Where it went, nobody knows. It was 79 degrees last week. Fortunes turn on a dime in this fickle city. When it is time to get away, we head to the batture.
There are no rules on the batture… Keep off the bank, barges, and all buildings? I guess there are rules on the batture after all. Don’t tell all the hobos, drug addicts, and mental patients. They won’t know what to do.
Through that marginal scrubland over there, what do you see?
The batture is perfect terrain for macaques. I am surprised there aren’t troups of feral monkeys wondering around. There must be a reason. There are feral monkeys all over New Orleans East.
There are two streets in Uptown New Orleans, on the upriver side of Audubon Park, the Zoo, the Fly. One of them is Walnut Street. The other one, further upriver, toward the suburban border, is Eagle Street.
If you don’t know where Walnut Street is, you sure as heck don’t know where Eagle Street is. Nor should you. Only people who live nearby, or who haul stuff over the levee by car or truck, know this. They have to.
