"AS I LIVE AND BREATHE, YOU HAVE KILLED POTENTIALLY CURSED ME"

Folks, I have had a very long and slightly (okay very) weird day. And, I still have a ways to go. Let me see if I can get this whole schpiel out.

I got a lot of stuff done, for starters. And, managed to have a whole lot of fun in the process. I started out at Cafe Maspero for the veggie mufaletta, as soon as they opened. Then, I walked and walked and covered the entire French Quarter, just clipping along and taking it all in. I took a few pics for you, too:







Okay, then the tiny dead frog marks where things start getting a little iffy. I walked about a block and saw another chicken bone and laughed, thinking about how months ago, we all joked here on this blog that I had been cursed after finding a chicken bone and now here I am finding a chicken bone in the French Quarter en route to the Vodou museum.



I am walked past a group of men sitting on a stoop eating lunch. As I pass, one of them does a hey-mama-you-re-the-prettiest-lady-in-the-quarter catcall, which I ignore. so, as I pass, he mutters something about regretting ignoring him and he throws a handful of something at my feet! I stop and look at my feet, covered in bits of something that looks like flower petals, granola, breadcrumbs, beans, shells and gravel. What did you throw? What was that? I demand. All the men grinned and laughed and the man responsible for the toss laughs and says You'll find out soon enough.

What! The! Fuck!?

I'm not too superstitious, but you know, why take chances with these sort of things. And besides, I don't know what he did. Did he curse me? Hex me? Bless me? Charm me? I don't know. (Moral of the story kids: Sleep with everyone who whistles at you or you'll be cursed. Wait, no! That's terrible advice. Nevermind.) So, I pressed on to my Vodou place, which only runs on appointment since Katrina. So, I went to the nearby Vodou shops.

The first one I entered, the woman behind the counter, I kid you not, averts her eyes! I greet her pleasantly and she still averts her eyes and asks, a bit agressively, what I need from the store. I felt like I was being pushed out before I was even started. So weird. But, it was interesting enough to stick around. I mean, short of calling the cops or pulling a shiv, she can't make me leave, right? Right. So, I mill around the shop, looking at the odds and ends and dolls and altars and noticed that the majority seems more Santarist than Vodun and wondered about the reported increase of the hispanic population lately and wondered if there was a connection there.

Anyway, she still won't look at me. And, it's kind of freaking me out because she is behaving normally to other customers. So, I sort of hover near the couter and try to ask her some questions about different items, but she still won't look at me. She goes to the back, I hear a muffled conversation, comes out and still nothing! I really don't know what to think at this point, so I start working my way towards to door when she asks me, again pretty demandingly, what I need. Then she tells me-- holy shit, you guys are going to flip out-- she tells me that my "energy" overpowers her energy. What? I started to say something like, Sorry, I didn't realize, I mean, I didn't mean to but she went back to the agro customer service.

I'm not saying she was sane, I'm not saying she was nuts. I'm also not saying this is related to the dead frog or the chicken bone, or the guy throwing stuff at me, but the fact remains that these things all happened together and they are all rather abnormal events. Yes?

Anyway, I split. I went to two other Vodou shops, and a slew of other shops in the area then strolled along the Riverwalk for a litle fresh air, spotting the Aquarium. Water. Yes, water and fishes and plants and shit. That's exactly what will undo the weird-weird.











(This is a section from a whole-wall, two-story fountain in the lobby of the Aquarium. Uh, would anyone be interested in re-creating this for me in my home? No? Eh, well. Worth a shot.)



(This is from the inside of the Aquarium, too. I am loving the bolts in the wall.)





And, before heading back to my hotel for a bit, I stopped at the Holocaust memorial beside the Mississippi. There was a nice breeze and sunshine... and suddenly a teenager shouted to his friends, Damn, it stinks like butt crack here!



Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez, as they say.