Crab Boil and Crawfish
I took Fain for a short walk this morning. The stinging catepillars were all washed away with yesterday's rain. I won't miss them.
We passed K-Jean's on Carrolton and the smell of crab boil and bagged crawfish was overwhelming. At one time, the odor would have made me ill, but today it made me nostalgic.
Funny how leaving a place alters your perception of it. "San Diego Serenade" comes to mind. "Never saw the east coast 'til I moved to the west." I feel like I'm seeing, smelling, hearing this city for the first time, maybe because it's the last.
I do remember those first days here. That sense of displacement, confusion, limbo. Whenever I stand somewhere for the first time, I feel disembodied suddenly. Maybe I'm the only one. I've felt it in the woods when it's dark. I've felt it walking up stairs to a new bedroom.
As if the newness pushes me outside of my body. Does that make sense? As if all of the stimulation - the faint odor of cat dander or mold or pine needles, the sight of cracks in the plaster or snails creeping over dog food or a chipped cup, the texture of humidity or a breeze or static electricity, the sound of strangers talking in another room or a crow on a telephone line or a creaking floorboard - as if all of it pressing into my sense organs is too much and the rest of me has to make room by waiting outside in the hall. It's a strange sensation.
But then, after mere minutes have passed, I become acclimated, the foreign becomes familiar. Too familiar. On occasion, I might be startled into that old stranger-ness by a tree strung with washed out gray teddy bears or egrets perched on bare cypress, but for the most part I am at home. Which means that I am unaware.
Now, leaving, I feel like a stranger again. I see things, smell things, that didn't move me weeks ago. I wish that everything was always new.
We passed K-Jean's on Carrolton and the smell of crab boil and bagged crawfish was overwhelming. At one time, the odor would have made me ill, but today it made me nostalgic.
Funny how leaving a place alters your perception of it. "San Diego Serenade" comes to mind. "Never saw the east coast 'til I moved to the west." I feel like I'm seeing, smelling, hearing this city for the first time, maybe because it's the last.
I do remember those first days here. That sense of displacement, confusion, limbo. Whenever I stand somewhere for the first time, I feel disembodied suddenly. Maybe I'm the only one. I've felt it in the woods when it's dark. I've felt it walking up stairs to a new bedroom.
As if the newness pushes me outside of my body. Does that make sense? As if all of the stimulation - the faint odor of cat dander or mold or pine needles, the sight of cracks in the plaster or snails creeping over dog food or a chipped cup, the texture of humidity or a breeze or static electricity, the sound of strangers talking in another room or a crow on a telephone line or a creaking floorboard - as if all of it pressing into my sense organs is too much and the rest of me has to make room by waiting outside in the hall. It's a strange sensation.
But then, after mere minutes have passed, I become acclimated, the foreign becomes familiar. Too familiar. On occasion, I might be startled into that old stranger-ness by a tree strung with washed out gray teddy bears or egrets perched on bare cypress, but for the most part I am at home. Which means that I am unaware.
Now, leaving, I feel like a stranger again. I see things, smell things, that didn't move me weeks ago. I wish that everything was always new.
posted by Autumn at 12:52 PM
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