The "Cheer Up" Series

Junction of Toulouse and Bourbon, New Orleans


Pirates Alley, New Orleans


Frenchmen Street, New Orleans


It is currently 19 degrees in the outside world.
The walk home from the subway with flowing vertically into my face somewhere around 50 mph was dreadful...especially since that is the exact same way I started the day.

Winter depresses me to the core.
I get so depressed, so jittery with cabin fever, and so generally stifled that it feels as though there is no hope, as though no light exists and there is no tunnel.
There is only winter, and cold, and grayness that never seems to go away.

And so, on this mortifying, all-encompassing tangent, that mythical "light" at the end of the tunnel just happens to be the almost incomprehensible city of New Orleans, Louisiana.
For those who have never gone, it seems that there is a sense of desperate desire to travel there. People who don't personally know anyone to have made the leap still have this strange, dormant urge to make the journey there, like an unquenchable thirst.
Boyfriend and I went there over this past summer. I had received a large sum of money for graduation, and instead of doing anything reasonable with it like...savings...I decided to blow it all on a dream vacation deep into the heart of darkness...The One and Only Big Easy.

New Orleans is not a picture, and it is not a long, rambling love letter, and it is in no way a postcard. It is an experience into a completely different universe, where the people are so friendly it is almost frightening, the food is so good you want to punch yourself in the face, and you can drink outside without any harassment...because drinking outside is legal.

In this first segment of my "Cheer Up" series, I posted 3 beautiful pictures of New Orleans that are the most appealing to my eyes. I judge this on how my eyes seem to melt into something that I find truly beautiful. These pictures seem to capture a lot of the sentiments I felt when I was there. As I stare out into Queens in my less-than-legally-heated apartment, I yearn for those rambling walks through the humidity soaked air, hearing the tinkling of music coming from somewhere and knowing that oysters and Abita were in my immediate future. Walking through Jackson Square at night, where you pass at least 5 different tables where people sit and claim they can tell you the complete version of your fortune for only $15, where the Mississipi River is just up the road, and there is just this sense that you've entered a zone of beautiful madness.
Something opens up in your heart...maybe it's the colors, maybe it's the heat, or the general sense that hedonism is bubbling very close to the surface in these parts, but it's something that stays with you for a very long time.
Someday I'll travel back there, and stay for much longer than a week, and then see if I ever wind up leaving.
At this point I would bet not.