30 March 2008
Rants | 23 March 2008

Preachings from the pulpit of the profane prophet

05/04/08 02:22
Bourbon blog 1
Bourbon Street is the unholy river of sex, drink, and jazz that runs through the famous French Quarter of New Orleans. People from all over the US come to bathe in it like saddhus on a non-stop pilgrimage to the Ganges. The river will wash away the tediousness of everyday life, it will cleanse the body of its desires, and carry them into the vast sea of forgetfulness. The course of the river can change, but its flow can never be halted. Whatever you do to stop it, the river runs through it.

Bourbon Street is an all-out attack on the senses. Bright neon blinds your eyes, clarinet solos compete for your attention, naked skin brush up against your own. The night air is warm and gentle, carrying the reek of sweat and alcohol on its wings. Perfumes mingle with strange odours from stalls and alleyways, creating small pockets of pure smell like nexuses of sound in a gallery of whispers. It is not a sight for sore eyes, and nobody walks the street unchanged or untouched. The reason you go there is the reason you stay away.

Bourbon blog 2
Bourbon Street is the necessary outlet for sin in a society obsessed by virtue. It is the kind of place where college kids go to lose their virginity, where middle-aged business men go to humiliate themselves in front of twenty year old girls whose disgust is proportionate only to their nuditity, and where big mamas too fat to fuck go to flaunt their right to obesity and potentially cripple desperate drunks craving for a lap dance. Redemption is reserved for elsewhere.

Bourbon Street is an ongoing everyday carnival fenced in by state police. No masks are allowed on the circus grounds, no bystanders get to see the processions. Participation is the only rule, and observation is not an option. The balconies are crowded with beer-bellied men, throwing necklaces at mini-skirted girls passing by underneath, screaming for them to show their titties. Everybody is blowing off steam for the greater good, and when they return to their homes, debunked and deflated, the light of a better tomorrow comes shining in.

Bourbon Street is a public display of forbidden fruits. Bourbon Street is a taste of Paradise sanctioned by the Devil. Bourbon Street is the loving embrace of a vengeful God.

Bourbon Street will fulfill your every need, and leave you wanting twice as bad.

Bourbon blog 3

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Pensacola resettled

30/03/08 22:59
Blog Pic II 30-03-08
Pensacola, Florida. Originally settled in 1559 by the Spanish conquistador Tristán de Luna y Arellano, it was the first European settlement in today's continental US. Then as now it was located in a turbulent area prone to hurricanes. In fact, the first settlement only lasted for about a month before being swept away by one. The Spanish was so disturbed by the event that they did not attempt a resettlement until 1696.

Now, 312 years after the permanent settlement of Pensacola, we have arrived in a Ramada hotel on Route 29 going all the way to Baltimore, Maryland. The old colonial feel seems to have diminished somewhat over the years, and we are left with a view of a heavily trafficked highway and a microcosm of archetypal American fast food and hotel chains.

I guess Kristian could sense my disappointment with the place. At least, he quickly suggested that we take a ride downtown to look for alternatives. When the scenery still had not changed for a few miles, we hung a left, trying to go by the salty smell of the sea. Soon we were lost in seemingly endless residential sprawl, our only hope of escape the raised highways arching their way across the horizon.

Suddenly the sea came into view. But not even the vast expanses of blue, nor the perfect whiteness of the beaches, could calm our sense of being cornered. Whatever trouble the Spanish had had in settling Pensacola back in the day, it seemed to have been somehow passed down to us. We hit the brakes, and made a U-turn in the middle of the road. It was our only option.

Blog Pic I 30-03-08
Half an hour later we finally made it downtown. Apart from the marina and a few historic buildings under reconstruction (probably to get them to look even more historic!), there was not a whole lot to see - and certainly not a whole lot of places to stay! So back we went, to Route 29 and the two-starred conveniencies of the Ramada. And here we are, all settled in and ready to write our next portrait before another hurricane comes to drive us away.
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