I've got mangos

 

I'm so sad about Mr Okra dying. It seems every year more & more of what I truly love about my city is disappearing, and being replaced by very very pale imitations. I know everything changes, and still, since Katrina, New Orleans has been hit so hard by colonizers and gentrifiers, the true culture was so deeply wounded and though it IS strong, it will never ever be what it once was. It's different here now, no singing vendors, no Pie Lady, no can man, no street corner preachers, no rangy old guys to cut the grass, nobody knockin on my door to see if I have 50cents or can just fill this old pickle jar with cooking oil, no hot plates sold from the porch, no porch sitting for crying out loud, less wild space, less mystery, too much boorish drinking, zzz. And every year, fewer genuinely eccentric people and fewer black people. Everyone arm wrestling to costume without having one clue as to the spiritual, cultural context of it. Eating king cake before 12th Night and after Mardi Gras. Eating red beans on any old day. Not saying hello/how you doin/alright my baby my darlin sugar. I'm so glad his daughter Serg is continuing his tradition, yet she can barely make a living at it. The neighborhoods he used to serve are thick with AirBnB & newbies who get their food from wherever. 

We did right by him - his send off was incredible, a beautiful expression of everything I love about New Orleans - community, tradition, ritual, grief, joy. And for a shining moment, black people took back Bywater and it looked like a real neighborhood again. Fleeting, bleeding, known, memory, smoke, fog, singing, not gone - 

Mr Okra is dead! Long Live Mr Okra! & if you see me in person, ask me about my private joke with him, it's hilarious

 

Comments

[John A. Joslin]

Thanks for hurling this concise yet brilliant dispatch way out here for those of us that've long since been living that conveniently automatic & broken contemporary 'lifestyle' ... the one currently sucking the air out of New Orleans , & we thinking the whole time it's all perfectly normal, that gasping is just another word for breathing.
- a little less stupid now!

[Eli Underwood]

thanks for reading and empathizing, it's much appreciated