New Orleans - Day 3 - constant struggle

Fortunately, the streetcar is operational again

One prevailing theme in Louisiana is that things do not work as well as they used to. Today I hitched a ride to the DMV express, to renew my license. I waited in line 10 minutes to find out that the network was down, which meant no license. I had no vehicle so I had to wait for my ride and about 30 minutes later he arrived and the connection had just been fixed, so we chose to leave and I wasted my time.

Another example is Walgreens. We dropped off a common prescription and the wait time was 4 hours.

In the minds of the people, there appeared to be a constant stress that manifested itself often enough. For instance the people I stayed with were living a very regimented life and trying to control their environment as much as possible to the extent that they lost the spontaneity of life and the fun that comes with it. When my friend and I returned to his wife one hour late after visiting the French Quarter she was furiously upset.

New Orleans still has many of the same offerings as before including restaurants, bars, souvenir shops, live entertainment and strip clubs except that there are far fewer people frequenting these establishments. Again there was the random checkering of functionality. One restaurant in the French Quarter was opened and fully operational while the one next door was boarded up and would possibly never open. The French Quarter in general though, was more fortunate than the rest of New Orleans and the architecture did not suffer as much. In addition, much of the money used to revitalize the city has been funneled into the French Quarter.

The ride to and from Baton Rouge was not entirely pleasant. At some point the boys went off on a dissertation of their experiences with rats - how to experiment on them, how to capture them, how to kill them, etc. Then later they bitched about the spanish accent of one of our lecturers. He was understandable if you gave it a little effort but they refused to try. It is typical that these people don't embrace other cultures as much as tolerate them.

The funny part of the commute was our morning stop at Starbucks. Our carload laughed ridicuously when I ordered a grande drip with one packet of raw sugar and 1/2cm of whole milk and ordered them 3 root beers, because Starbucks does not sell Coke. Why? Maybe it was the humour of ordering coffee in a fancy way in an environment that was anything but fancy.

My overall impression of Louisiana today was that there was a constant dark weight and feeling underlying life and that there were breakthroughs of fun and humour rather than constant such activity.

Today I was asked why I feel better in NYC, why it is a better fit for me. I realized that I needed the connectivity with other people and through them, with the world. I knew that I could never again live in the periphery of civilization, isolated. I need to be central.