Reading On

The landscapes were unbelievable.  I learned how to put together a video I am proud of. The city of New Orleans was disgusting, beautiful, magical, nostalgic, and many other words.  The books were well chosen.  The experiences are memorable.  Each day was well planned.  The humidity was exhausting and I took a long nap most days.  All these I will take with me, but the one thing I will miss the most is waking up every morning and finding these amazing people to bond with.  

We didn’t get as much done as we should have but each and every one of my classmates were such a joy.  

If you can, take the time to bookpack.  There is nothing quite like reading where you are.  You will also feel very accomplished to get so much reading done while you travel.  I would like to give you some experiences I had that I could never have had without being in New Orleans in this very moment.

Confederacy of Dunces-I could never have explored Bourbon Street and seen the licensiousness of the people living here and the visitors.  A local waitress we got to know is opening a strip club for old people in her free time.  There is just this sense of crazy, kooky, wild existence filled with inebriation and adventures similar to the journeys of Ignatius.  Little episodes you would never see in Los Angeles.

The Awakening-Made me consider the impact we have on the environment and the freeing effect warm weather can have on the mind and body.  Edna was freed by the environment and became introspective, fleeing the busy grind we all live.

Interview with a Vampire-gave me a real sense of the historical development of New Orleans.  I considered what life would be like if I was immortal.  Would you pursue a life of lust and greed and earthly pleasures or tackle long term philosophical existence of the supernatural.  I did not finish the novel but it did give me goosebumps imagining vampires lurking in the ill lit quarters of New Orleans.

Coming Through Slaughter-I got to see what a Second Line Parade was like. Reading the book, I envisioned Bolden breaking out of neatly organized rows.  But the Parade is a mass of people and music.  Descriptions of events in books pale in comparison to real life events they are based on. And I got to see a film at the Prytania theater about Buddy Bolden, very well shot!

Moviegoer-was an experience reading for a second time.  Being around a group of thoughtful people, all in college on the edge of careers I questioned my life and what I put in my notebook was:

What if you had to write a bucket list of what you want to do in life?  Are you an outsider?  Do you fit in?  Do you want to fit in?

With life and death, what do you really believe in?  You should know your ambitions, yet the fragility of life remains.

A Lesson Before Dying is my favorite book of the course.  I got to meet the author and I felt I truly found a little point about looking and not seeing that I enjoyed exploring that concept.  In a moment of looking but not seeing, I almost got hit by a car here in New Orleans.  That gave me some perspective on what really matters in life on my walk home. 

Same Place, Same Things-I want to read more of the short stories.  Going to Tom fiddle shop, we got to see the vitality of the community. Everyone came once a month to be together. Grandkids from Alabama were running around. The reaction by the community towards the Texan makes sense now that I see how close everyone is. 

Thank you for reading along.  Thank you to my classmates for making this time fun. Thank you, Andrew, for a truly amazing experience bookpacking and I’m excited to explore America’s novels more in depth.

Small Place, Big Family

Our last section of the class we read “Floyd’s Girl”, a short story from Small Place, Small Things by Tim Gautreaux.  We are in Lafayette, Cajun Country.  The area is filled with more swamps than we have seen yet and is a rather small place compared to New Orleans and Baton Rouge. I liked getting away from the bustle of the city and expensive restaurants.  I took this time to decompress from the past few whirling weeks and read as much as I could from Gautreaux’s collection.  

The story of Floyd’s Girl is Floyd chasing down a Texan man who his ex-wife is living with.  His daughter, Lizette, has just been abducted by the Texan.  In the process, Floyd barrels through trees in a giant green tractor, borrowed a car, got knocked down.  He raced around, knowing which routes the Texan would be taking his girl.  He grabbed an airplane and caught up to the man only to get in a bloody fight and the Texan beat up by T-Jean’s grandmére.

This story is rather different than the novels we have read here in Louisiana.  The other books seemed to be unable to read without an existential crisis and crying, or profound thought.  Floyd’s Girl and the other short stories truly capture life in middle of no where Louisiana.  Racing around to find Floyd, his only option was to climb into

“The only machine left, a heavy international M, retired because it was too old to pull and ate gas by the drum”

The land is littered with rusting equipment and falling apart homes.  He crashes through the shed in his rush.  This novel gives a sense of what the place is like. As we drive through, we notice the lack of care some places have. Whether this is from destruction of hurricanes and lack of funds to rebuild or not, it is still eerie to see these model homes next to these rotting homes. Some appear to be lived in by squatters or families unable to rebuild parts of the house.

The people are worn out, but just as hardy as the land.  And God loving too.

“When Floyd was a baby and she held him in her lap, he was like a tough little muscle made hard by God for a hard life ahead. He was not a mean man, but determined enough to always do a thing right when it counted.”

The people in the novel are hyperaware of the state and the systems around them. As our tour guide from a Cajun Pride swamp tour said, you aren’t truly taught anything in school. All the practical knowledge and innate senses are taught at home and outside explorin’. Floyd chased the Texan, not looking at the speedometer, feeling his way around the flooded asphalt and sensing the rubber. In his minds eye, he knew routes to beat a man with a 20 minute head start.

Then there is the sense of roots in Louisiana. Communal connection and extended families is in the book and our adventure to Tom’s Fiddle Shop. At Tom’s Fiddle Shop we were welcomed to the sound of music and smiles. I was expecting some awkwardness, as we were a group of 13 intruding on this family and friends event. Immediately four kids were talking to Tara and I and fake sword battles ensued. The ten year old, Sebastian, was extremely interested in the course and was already on a mental track to be a data scientist. Three of the kids came from Alabama, they were grandkids of Tom’s, and more would come in later weeks. I met one woman who was from San Francisco and summed up the reason why I like Louisiana so much, people are so welcoming here and it is rather laid back. You could never enjoy music like this as a community every first Sunday of the month in Los Angeles. People here say hello while passing the street where that is anathema to California.

The alien nature of worship of Texas seems anathema to every narrator we have. Each character we have see into them minds of in the novel worry about Liz being in the differently worshipping Texas.

“There was something wrong with a child living there who doesn’t belong, who will be haunted for the rest of her days by memories of the ample laps of aunts, daily thunderheads rolling above flat parishes of rice and cane, the musical rattle of French, her prayers...”

The people here are honorable and friendly. This is what I aspire to be. In this Cajun culture, I have been thinking that everyone is laid back. But when it counts, as the story shows, people in Cajun culture will stop at nothing to get what they want and protect their family.

Traveling back to New Orleans, I can imagine racing down the road in Floyd’s borrowed car. Ironically enough, a yellow little seaplane did pass over our heads heading out of the swamps to our right, just how I imagine Floyd flying down low to get the Texan. The experience of reading a story while racing in the same area the characters are beats any description or photo that could be offered to me. While there is not as much introspection on reading this, I got a real understanding of the Cajun lifestyle, family values, and urgency of living life to the fullest by being here on the ground reading along.

Read On!

Shell driveway

A Lesson Before Seeing

This novel had the greatest impact on me.  Not only were the characters very real, but I felt the issue of recognizing someone for who they are is an issue today.  Everyone should read this book and take the opportunity to meet Dr. Gaines while he is still alive.

“I was not there, yet I was there.  No, I did not go the trial, I did not hear the verdict, because I knew all the time what it would be.  Still I was there.  I was there as much as anyone else was there.”

— Ernest J. Gaines

These very first lines of the novel, A Lesson before Dying, by Earnest J. Gaines set up an issue that stood out to me throughout the novel.  Describing his experience at the trial of Jefferson, a man sentenced to death for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Grant Wiggins felt removed from the environment.  He is looking, but not seeing.  He is listening, but not hearing what is being said.

In the trial, Jefferson’s defense attorney places him as less than a man, an African American thing, a hog.  The rest of the novel is Grant convincing the imprisoned Jefferson he is a man, a human being, before his death.  This word defined Jefferson for the jury who sentenced him.  The issue of looking yet not seeing is what I took away from this novel.

“Gentlemen of the jury, look at him—look at him—look at this. Do you see a man sitting here?...Do you see anyone here who could plan a murder, a robbery, can plan—can plan—can plan anything? A cornered animal to strike quickly out of fear, a trait inherited from his ancestors in the deepest jungle of blackout Africa.”

Grant’s aunt does not look at him because he does not practice Christianity as she would like.  Grant is effectively condemned in her eyes for one decision of his. 

Gropé, who is murdered in a shootout, did not like Brother and Bear from the start, just by looking at them.  They had intended to rob him.  He truly sees who they were and meant to do and died because of it.  Only Jefferson is left standing and is sentenced to death for murdering Gropé. 

Jefferson’s own godmother during court is “not even listening.  She had gotten tired of listening” (4).  She later tries to get involved and impose her will on saving Jefferson so she can feel good, but she was not even present in the courtroom.

In the streets of New Orleans, we walk by homeless people, beggars, and scammers hoping to scrape out a meager existence. Veterans and youths tap dancing away. 

Looking has to do with seeing, with recognizing one another.

“I had told her I was no teacher, I hated teaching, and I was just running in place here. But she had not heard me before, and I knew that no matter how loud I screamed, she would not hear me now.”

Grant, who disliked teaching, felt this angst to get out of the city and go somewhere else. Yet, in teaching Jefferson to believe in himself as a human being who is worthy, Grant also learned his own worth. In trying to see and understand others, we can also grow.

The issue of looking but not seeing is present historically but also has repercussions today.

We often in seeing confine what we see to a term-homeless, slave, a statistic. We judge books and people by the cover.  As the book wrestles with Jefferson being seen no more than a hog, we struggle to go against being seen as mere stereotypes.  We are human beings.  

Taking Dr. Gaines work further, I took the work to mean we need to go beyond our senses.  This can be related to knowing but not understanding or even doing. We know not to litter, we know to recycle, yet we are fine with destroying our planet. We know racism is a problem, yet we don’t understand it fully and deal with it.  What separates us from animals, from being a hog, is our mind.  We can look, but it is our brain that processes that information and uses it, it translates it into seeing.  If our head is not in the right place, as many characters were in the novel, we do not see and comprehend what is presented to us. 

This book and the experience along with it will be my most memorable part of this bookpacking journey.  No literature classroom including this novel could help me truly understand how little we see how little we understand.  Being in a foreign place like New Orleans and Baton Rouge shocked my mind into seeing the city and the people around me.  No statistic or academic language can make me feel what I saw and heard.  That is the beauty of bookpacking, being on the ground and empathizing with those we meet.Book packing allows you to not only be on the ground to experience the place and see sites of interest, but you can see manuscripts and visit authors unlike any other way of access.

 Yesterday, we got to meet Dr. Gaines, his wife Dianne, and the director the Gaines Center and her assistant. Interestingly, he lives on the very plantation he grew up on. The church on his property is the church he learned in between grinding seasons. He first got his creative streak writing letters for the elder sharecroppers. He eventually moved out to California to get educated but got drawn back to Louisiana for a teaching position in Lafayette. He moved back as he found himself coming more and more to the graveyard his relatives are buried, where he now welcomes people each year to maintain the the graveyard with him before exchanging stories and food. He continues to write and I could really see his passion and how writing has become him. His role model growing up, with eight siblings, was his aunt who raised them. She was handicapped and crawled around the house taking care of them. Ernest was truly an inspiration and it was an honor to meet him.

Read On!

An original manuscript of Jefferson’s journal entry, my favorite part of the novel

The very church on the plantation where Ernest learned as a child

The Awakening Struggle

An early morning on our last day in Grand Isle

“But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult!”

— Kate Chopin, 'The Awakening'

The beginning of Louisiana and Edna Pontellier’s awakening are exemplified by this quote from The Awakening. Being here, able to drive across the swamps and stay in an air-conditioned home, astounds me. To build up this state before motorcars, powertools, and industrialization is a feat in itself. We are learning about the culture, history, and geography that helped form Louisiana, yet there is still a disturbingly vague understanding of what life was like building this state out of the mud and water. This blog post is on struggling with realizing our position in the world and the potential dangers along with the beauty of existence that conflict brings about.

The environment is a driving force of experience and practicality on Grand Isle and the surrounding bayou. Exploring the holiday island of Grand Isle, every home and most structures, such as the fire station and school, is raised higher than fifteen feet. There is the yearly danger of strong storms dumping rain in the populated man made “bowls”, overflooding of the Mississippi breaking protective levees, and water from the Gulf of Mexico being driven into the region. Hurricane Katrina broke through a levee that no one expected the storm to come from. While large storms are well known, there are many things that are considered, or learned, that one would not expect. Buildings are built with hip roofs with every side having a lip edge to drive rain, and potential rot, away from the walls and foundation. Playgrounds and other things important to a city but recognized as a potential loss are being built by green materials to reduce waste. Sewage, power, and buildings have to be specially protected and up to code. Graveyards are built above ground. While these measures do not interfere with daily life, I noticed these permeations of protection and I am sure they are appreciated when the storms do come.

Our housing built upon columns to protect from flooding

A hexagonal hip roof

Grand Isle divided by storm and sunshine. The islands dark and mysterious past is overshadowed by the holiday fun

A significant part of this struggle we cannot ignore is the community’s past. The very island of Grand Isle has a tumultuous history-as home base for Jean Lafitte and his pirates, brutal slave estates, and vacation city as leisure time and economic wealth boomed. The state is founded on blood and pain; and the state is struggling to remember its history.

Imagine building this bridge, even with modern tools

A meshed in reprieve from the mosquitoes and heat

While modern technology makes it so that where we live does not matter, the warmth and weather has a profound effect on our lifestyle. Languishing, life in Grand Isle has not a care in the world.

The environment and leisure is freeing to the body, mind and soul. Being away from the busy pace of the city, the environment gives Edna Pontellier time to relax and reflect on herself and those around her. Edna in her free time notices how many mother-women there are on the island. These mother-women are helicopter parents, who “idolized their children, worshipped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels.” She later realizes that this life of doting on friends and family and attending to trivial falsehoods is not what she wants. The struggle for Edna is what does this mean for her and what can she do about it.

Edna is not content with how life just is. We all struggle in having lives filled with pleasure versus meaning. All that is needed to have a “good” life is to “maintain the easy and comfortable existence”. Edna “could not see the use of anticipating and making winter night garments the subject of her summer meditations”. There is no need to look ahead as one is present. Long story short, Edna “was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her.”

With the sun and extreme humidity, I felt driven inside the home. As Mr. Pontellier “glanced restlessly over the editorials and bits of news which he had not had time read”, I found myself often picking up my phone to swipe to get updated on Facebook, Instagram, group chats, family messages, and listen to music. Coming from Los Angeles and two years of working 50+ hours a week and school, I left myself little time to be alone with my thoughts. As the holiday homes and cottages did for the characters, I felt my tension melting. While the place itself is beautiful and one would hope to naturally disconnect, there is still electricity, fast food, and service. Reading a book takes time and brings you away from the distractions. The book also in its comment on the pace of life between New Orleans and Grand Isle brings an awareness to how much stress and activities we place in our day to day. That is the beauty of bookpacking. The act of reading while traveling requires leisure time to read the novel and during expeditions into the very settings you are reading about, there is a greater appreciation for the culture of where you are.

A trawler under the golden sunrise. These fisherman are out all night!

I have been trying to find meaning in my own life after my grandfather’s death this year. As a holocaust survivor, entrepreneur, philanthropist, advocate for democracy, and an overall humorous and enjoyable person to be around, his passing inspired a need to change my life and pursue meaning. That meaning was success and wealth, but with this recent change I know I want a lifestyle that includes a family, travel, and helping others while pursuing my passions. Reading the novel added to the angst to discover what meaning and calling I want in my life. I have been exploring the USA recently through photography, and on this trip my interest in cinematography has blossomed. I cannot prescribe this trip as a reason for that interest or as the solution to find meaning in my life, but this trip has surely stoked that fire as I am learning to edit and will hopefully finish and post soon. Life is all about learning and staying open to the process.

Having been to Louisiana for less than a week, I cannot accurately speak to the character of people living here and must make some assumptions that I hope are close enough to the truth. As I explore this state for the next three weeks, I will keep my eyes, ears and mind open.

Read On!

Pier view of the bridge crossing to Grand Isle

Somewhat drained marshland

Pools of water infiltrating the land we stand on

Security and privacy is juxtaposed with a laid back atmosphere and southern hospitality in Grand Isle

Kate Chopin's Ocean in the Real World

“The gulf looked far away, melting hazily into the blue of the horizon.”

— Kate Chopin, The Awakening

A dock is abandoned for unknown reasons

Beginning our trip in Grand Isle to relax, I was in awe of how much the community and state is influenced by the rivers and ocean.  Growing up in Southern California, I appreciated the ocean and enjoyed surfing the west coast.  Yet, our coast is vastly different than down here in Grand Isle, Louisiana.  We read The Awakening by Kate Chopin, witnessing Edna’s transformation to being more aware of her own reality.  The environment transformed her into becoming more introspective and she eventually committed suicide by swimming until she could not muster a return.  Water defines life down here in more ways than I could have known in California.

A boat heads out for a night hall

We all know water is life sustaining.  All life on Earth originated in the oceans and water continues to provide for all species. It drives the markets of the world with shipping containers and moderates the global biosystem.  Water seems more essential to any other place I have been to yet threatens the state more than anything else.  

The ocean and rivers drive the economy here.  Picturesque, rusty trawlers slowly glide along pulling up whatever they are hunting for with massive nets.  Restaurants and properties drive up in price with a water front view.  Our little joy of a town spikes every summer by tens of thousands because people want to be on the coast.  At night, the ocean twinkles with the lights of boats.

The ocean is open air. The ocean is freedom from our thoughts and hustle of the city.  I felt the first few days here spent reading was the perfect escape from the bustling city of Los Angeles.  

The sea also gives energy, for Edna “a feeling of exultation overtook her, as if some power of significant import had been given her to control the working of her body and soul. She grew daring and reckless, overestimating her strength” and finding out she can survive in the water.  The first part of this line is repeated twice in the novel and it rather speaks to the power of the sea.

“The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace. ”

Boat juxtaposed with the coming storm

Yet, beyond this rejuvenating and economy driving water system is danger.  Hurricanes are happening at a greater rate at a higher level of extremity.  I met someone on the beach yesterday, from New York, who explained how since Hurricane Katrina’s devastation, the majority of people living in southern Louisiana left and that most of the people I will see in New Orleans are immigrants from other nations and northern states.  A hurricane obliterated a nearby island where characters and Chopin attended church, losing our opportunity to bookpack in that very church.  A danger settlers had to deal with is the bodies of water acting as breeding grounds for mosquitoes.  I have had over a dozen bits in my few days here and I cannot envision being here when Malaria and yellow fever were running rampant. 

There is a running battle against the environment as the water creeps its way in.  It comes over land, infiltrates the air, and rises underneath our foundations to bring the state downwards.   The very air is constantly corroding cars and buildings, giving the city the rustic look people come for while bringing down the walls.  As we drove down to Grand Isle, along raised highways, I could see homes several hundred feet away from the road halfway submerged, showing how far the water has encroached on the coast.  

According to a local, rising temperatures have left more and more fish dead on the beach

Another danger is us as humans.  The Deepwater horizon oil spill led to Grand Isle suffering for nearly a decade. Despite the water system supporting Louisiana so much, I saw more trash than most beaches in California coming onto the beach.  The Awakening made me consider the life this place gives and the life it takes. We need to take more care of our water as it is the very force driving our weather, economy, and healing.

Read On!

Seashells are often incorporated into the cement, reflecting the merge of ocean with civilization here in Louisiana

“There were strange, rare odors abroad – a tangle of the sea smell and of weeds and damp, new-plowed earth, mingled with the heavy perfume of a field of white blossoms somewhere near. But the night sat lightly upon the sea and the land. There was no weight of darkness; there were no shadows. The white light of the moon had fallen upon the world like the mystery and softness of sleep.”

Puddles exist everywhere and carry the danger of rot and mosquitoes

Streets and homes struggle to adapt to the constant water

Only a couple of blocks wide, this destination town is easy to flood and be destroyed

Every sunset was stunning

A structure high above the flood line