Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

New Orleans Noir

I saw a new book in the bookstore, but since I didn’t have the guts for it, I just glanced at its cover. The title was, “New Orleans Noir”

To me, New Orleans meant humid days, French Quarter, Mardi Gras, Jackson Square, Café du Monde, jazzy streets, palm readers, a black musician playing the sax in an alleyway, fancy French restaurants, Cajun food, and lots and lots of fun.

I’ve never been to a Mardi Gras, although I wanted to. Everyone warned me against it and hubby right down prohibited the discussion.

From our last trip in 2001, I still have my New Orleans plates, trivets, coasters, and refrigerator magnets shaped like Mardi Gras clowns. Nowadays, they bring a stab of pain, Katrina’s pain, of a city cheated by political wheelings and dealings; things I can't get rid of from my mind. To me, that has been the real noir.

The noir in this book, also, must have used Katrina to build stories around it. I just don’t know if I have the heart and the nerve to read it.

Storms do change the way we look at things. As Katrina is now linked with New Orleans and sorrow, psychological hurricanes also fill us with mangy thoughts and gutter feelings. Storms conspire against us with images in our heads like lightning inside dark rolling clouds.

There are no quiet storms; although sometimes we refuse to hear their rumble. Only when we dig down deep inside, we find that such a storm has ripped away something we have always cherished. But then, maybe we do need storms to excavate what resides within the hidden parts of our being.

Katrina, too, showed us a side of people and politicians most of us had already known of but could do nothing about. Still, Katrina should not be a required storm for us to fix ourselves, because it was far too costly. We really did not need Katrina even for literature.

Maybe someday, I’ll read “New Orleans Noir” when I can pull up enough courage. Just not yet.