Voodoo on the Bayou
Things happen in New Orleans that don’t happen anywhere else. Do you have a bayou where you live? We have Bayou St. John. Yesterday wasn’t St. John the Baptist Day, which is when the voodoos usually come out to the Bayou. That was a week or two ago. Yesterday was the feast day of someone you’ve never heard of.
I was in St. John the Baptist Church the other day, my first time. Speaking of saints many people don’t know, I saw the most beautiful life-sized statue of Saint Lucy at John the Baptist. St. Lucy has the most beautiful eyes. I can look at her forever. I don’t know why I didn’t take a picture. I know Paula likes St. Lucy as much as I do.
I was minding my own business at the blue bridge across from Cabrini High School when three ladies in white caught my eye, and not for the usual reason. They had stepped out of a classical painting of the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone. The eldest wasn’t all that crone-y. It’s 2025. I can’t remember the last time I saw a crone that wasn’t a kitchen witch.
To cut a long story short, around the bend between the blue bridge and the magnolia bridge, a bunch of voodoos had gathered on the bayou’s bank. Some were the real thing, others were wannabes. Even adults play act at being something they are not. It’s how we learn. Some people never stop learning.
Our Lady of the Rosary Church was in the distance.
There was a real altar with candles and everything. It was 7:00PM. The church bell tolled. A dog barked. On Harding Street, a block away, a car alarm went off, unexplained. There are very few streets in America named after the 29th President. R.I.P.
The Voodoo Priestesses were there, the real ones, not the marching troupe, so whatever was going on was legitimate voodoo, not the woo-woo kind of voodoo. Everyone was wearing white. I was wearing black so I didn’t fit in. hadn’t been invited.
The guy who was walking the dog that barked at 7:00 sharp hadn’t been invited either. People dressed all in white were in the know. People dressed in street clothes had something else to do, but just happened by.
In New Orleans, the dead outnumber the living. We live in a grand necropolis.
