Lacey I had three good writing days in a row, but the city snared me again today. I served as chauffeur as my roommate, who is a bit hard up now, ran some of his errands – getting a W-2 from a former employer, then a trip to H&R Block to get his tax refund as soon as possible (he was recently fired from his last job and is about broke now). That took a bit longer than I thought, and I came back home a bit scattered in mind, as the slight frustrations of traffic had built up a bit. But it was not a profitless excursion, either for him or me.
get Aurogra without prescription I stepped into the yard of a self-described “junk shop,” where I was looking at some animal pelts hanging outside (pelts are a particular interest of mine). Among the skunks and coyotes there was one I did not recognize, and I exclaimed with delight at discovering its name (nutria! a foul little beast, always in season around here). My exclamation caused a bit of stir which made me aware that just a few paces from me was a woman painting a brightly colored sign. I then heard a tinkling sound, and saw that a man was removing Heineken caps from a huge fishbowl, whacking them with a hammer and nail, and putting them aside. Besides the sign the woman was painting there were several others drying in the powerful winter sunlight. They said things like, “Laissez le bon temps rouler,” “Who died and made you Elvis?” (which I considered getting for Johnny, though I thought it might be taken the wrong way), and the ever-offensive “Oh No! Not you again!” I had stumbled onto the workshop of the famous Simon of New Orleans. The signs were not overly complex, but they were undeniably lively and lovely, and I found myself wanting one. The fact that there priceless, though, indicated that they were not cheap. My favorite was a photo of one of his older pieces, with what appeared to be an Orthodox priest holding one that said “Dieu voit tout.” I later met Simon himself, who significantly was not painting. So much of his work comes rather from the “scuola di Simon,” rather than the man himself. He himself was French, with a thick accent and the jovial presence of a man who has made a fine life for himself by doing nothing that complicated but pleasing everybody with it.
Attached was an antique shop run by his wife, filled with the most bizarre and lovely objects. My favorite was a hollow alabaster globe (which could be lit up) etched with Grecian drawings as if it were a white-figure kylix, four in all, such as Thetis’ supplication to Zeus, and Heracles and Deianira. It was lovely (but it was also $1600). There was also a lovely print of an artist’s sketch of the “Pallas de Velletri,” which was quite beautiful and also out of my pricerange.
But I spoke quite a bit with the proprietress, who like so many people around here was filled was absolute zest for the city. “I’ve lived all over, but I always come back.” She loved the fact that I knew Latin and was Catholic, and told me all about the St. Joseph Altars of the city (“they’re in people’s homes; just check the paper, they’ll tell you who has opened up their home. And they’re so beautiful.”) and the “Irish Channel,” the area immediately surrounding her shop. The vacant corner lot adjacent to the shop became notorious in New Orleans lore as the final resting place of Vera Smith, the “iconic victim of hurricane Katrina.” She had laid in the corner lot for several days before neighbors buried her with the simple epitaph “Here Lies Vera. God help us.” “There was a little monument out there for her, but the owner of the lot was trying to sell it, and he couldn’t, and he thought it was because it had some kind of voodoo power – because they think the dead have power – and so he had the monument destroyed. I tell you there were people coming by all the time, kneeling down in front of it, crossing themselves as they went by, taking pictures, leaving things, you name it. And I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve heard about that woman – she was killed by the roof of that building collapsing over there, but now I hear that she was run over by people fleeing the city, or she was shot by looters, or her body just floated there, or all kinds of things.”
I have had this feeling before, that before my eyes was unfolding the same human force that created the shrines of the martyrs. In another age, there would have been no way to find out the details of Vera’s life, and anyway the Church would have realized that the details were not as important as the fact that this spot had power. She would have been enrolled as a martyr, the story concerning her life which would have been most emblematic of the city’s whole Katrina trauma would have become her biography, and that way the people’s experience would be focused in a single place, served by a single shrine, and been vindicated and sanctified by the God who had heard their cries. The Church would have bought the property (or at least protected the monument) and let the cult grow.
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