Tripreport: 2003-10-23 - 2003-10-24: We are walking, we are walking...
--[ I originally wrote the entire N'awlins report in one entry, but when pre-posting it discovered a nasty bug causing things to overflow (prolly in IIS, which would mean that the live version of my site wouldn't suffer from it, but I can't take that chance), so now this will take multiple entries; This is part 1, read part 2 here ]--
A well-run waffle house is quite something to behold.I did not, as it was the first day on the job for the girl who helped us - but still, I can envision something of what it would be like. And with breakfast there just before finishing our run to N'awlins, I could finally - finally, I say, as there was a Waffle House next to the motel in Dallas where I stayed last year, and I never got around to entering it, though I pondered doing so for quite a while - check off that icon from the list.
*sits around for a few days pondering how to continue writing this*
*sighs and throws up his hands, his fingers spread wide*
It's all your fault! *glares around*
All you people who were there in N'awlins with us, and all you smarchers who know about N'awlins having happened and wanting to see our pictures from it (and possibly read our tales about it). And most of all it's the fault of that perfectly horrid person to which we, the Aanimal's fingers, are attached, for caring too much. We remember when he didn't. We remember when we were let loose to frollick as we wanted, when we could ramble and run over the keys any which way we pleased. But now... Now we are so constrained. So linear. We haven't been able to write "blwaerp!" in ages, nor have we howled at the moon, danced in the rain, reminisced about the beings that began to be the kind of beings that talked about being beings, looped around in infinite trees or did any of the other crazy things that we used to do in ages past. While it is this, we know, this freedom of expression, this "the devil might care, but we can always offer up a few fresh hamster souls to make him look the other way, so what the hell"-attitude, this, exactly this, that, we repeat once more, we *know* to have been the strength of our arT (with the capital T!) from which the founT of pure inspiraTion flowed.
But now... (and once more we shake out collective fingertips) ...now we no longer can. Time is constraining us. One thing happening after the thing that happened before it, exactly in its proper time and place, which is a perfectly boring time and place for it to have happened, as it already did so once before, and wouldn't it be much more fun to have it happen next year instead, somewhere in Antarctica?
Grey sky,
Grey waves.
And all because the aforementioned aanimalistic humanoid cares too much. He wants to... (and it costs us a lot to get such horrid words to flow from the essence of our very beings, but communicate them we shall, as a lesson and warning to future generations of organs used for the expression of time-delayed forms of communication of the non-aural form) ...to do things "justice." But that is WRONG. There is no justice in life. Only beauty. And revelry. And cackling bitches who answer questions about their wizards, who undoubtedly live in really famous wizard-towers somewhere near the Kinko's. (And that is another problem facing us - how could we ever find it within ourselves to express things in such ways that would still be worthwhile to read after having beheld at the now toasted place the original freeform floating thoughts that sprung pure and whole from the manifold of minds of some of those we got to know, again or for the first time, at the place where we have been, which is the place that we want to properly capture - nay properly frame, for it is a whole and complete thing in itself that can ne'er be captured or partitioned - but somehow in a non-linear and thus (consequently? do cause and effect really work in the thoughtspace we now occupy? is there still order to be found in the chaos? How, as the kiwipeople would say, wickedly wicked!) also non-boring way. But find it within ourselves we must, and of course it is not competition, but rather cooperation - two sides of the same coin, the other clock to make the ticking of time uncertain, questioning the very foundation of the universe and thereby making our puny little minds soar as we also seem to once more be doing in the non-metaphysical realm of the keys on the laptop-ish keyboard - that is the true relation here to the now sadly lost (or was this still caught in the fiend's last crawl through the realm of perfectly unspeakably burning places?) vision of what it was like that came before us.
We would like to apologize to all those who recognized less than one of out twenty of the we-do-not-care-how-many of the above references; though we share these pixelated wordsies (as our long lost almost-friends, the fingers of the entity known as Maia, might have expressed) with all of you here, the style of them is directed and more suited to those who have followed our twisting and turning ways before - over the course of many shared sleepless nights of the purportedly first day of the time-designation-partition generally known as the week.
And so, having shared amongst the ten of us this rush of struggling free of constraints into the bliss of pure insanity, we might now have entered into a proper frame of mind to give you a true and accurate account of the unspeakable horrors that we have been subjected to in that cesspool of a city known affectionately as N'awlins; a city that has sung to us ever since we had the pleasure to play the original "Gabriel Knight" game (which had pixels; pixels good!), and called out to us even more after the pages of some of Kathleen Ann Goonan's books passed between us.
It purportedly all started, as many things do, in the mud...dy past. We were not witness to the discussions that kicked things off, nor did we at first think these things to apply to us when they moved online. Dim memories belonging to the entity whose will we have for the moment overruled seem to suggest that plans started shortly after ConJose. For one reason or another, however, it was decided that this would happen, and that happening as it would, it would happen in New Orleans, and that that which would happen would be a smarchmeet such as the world had not yet seen.
We, the ten of us, first became interested back in the time when we thought that we would already have been in the place where we are now half a year earlier than we eventually arrived here, which here we clarify (merely for clarity's sake, we assure you) to sometimes be called New Zealand. At this time our brother and sister organs used for the expression of time-delayed forms of communication of the non-aural form which were (as, we assume, they still are at present) attached to the entity known by various names, one of the most commonly used being "Shadows and Ice", which in itself is reportedly an entity made up of at least three separate life-forms, which would nicely explain both her name and the voluminous output of the aforementioned organs for which in former days she was renowned... Err, yes, in any case, these brother and sister beings informed the world, or at least the part of the world that was wise enough to know to pay attention, that she was definitely going to attend the aforementioned event. What made this announcement special was that the entity to which the aforementioned beings of expression were attached was physically located on the biggest island on the planet, the long-lost western island of New Zealand, Australia. And, so we informed our entity (and don't let this entity's brain tell you otherwise; for it really was us that told him; we are the real power here), if she could fly all the way to N'awlins from the western island of kiwiland, then surely we should be capable of a similar feat, no matter if at the designated time we would be located on the southern or the northern island of the same country of kiwis! To lure our entity, as well as the fates we know to exist somewhere up there (which we also know to take a special form of delight in upsetting the best laid plans), into a false sense of security, we immediately added that this entire idea was sheer lunacy, and that it would never happen, but still, but still... Mightn't we? And wasn't it also so, we added, that the location of N'awlins was just a good day's driving away from Dallas, where some of our best friends' entities (of which we have already told in a previous missive, and to which we shall at some point in the not-too-distant future still return) were living, and wouldn't it just be awesome to see those again as well, and couldn't all that just work out perfectly, especially as in that very same city of Dallas we knew other entities to exist which would also venture to N'awlins for this very same smarchmeet?
As things turned out, life proved to be obnoxious, and so we didn't get to set out for Kiwiland until far later than we'd originally hoped or planned, but this did make things a lot easier (and certainly cheaper!) with regards to attending the N'awlins meet, and so through the travels and tribulations we have had the pleasure to communicate about in previous days we now in the present of our communication find ourselves a mere hour away from N'awlins, in the company of the fingers attached to the entities known as Dart, RoseKnight and Sahi.
Driving into New Orleans was an adventure in itself, as the highway went straight through swamp-land, bringing back all sorts of memories of readings about where N'awlins was built and why this was possibly one of the worst places to locate a city (with only places such as LA being located in even unlikelier locales). First views of N'awlins proper included graveyards, horse-drawn carriages, our hotel, lack of parking spaces and a wrong turn that brought us back to the highway upon which we had driven but minutes before, and then once more we beheld graveyards and horse-drawn carriages.
Eventually, mentioning Renfield's name at the hotel, Sahi and our entity managed to check in, and then we accompanied Dart and RoseKnight to their hotel (they hadn't been able to reserve rooms in the same Days Inn hotel, and so instead had to settle for something about twenty times nicer, way closer to the French Quarter (where all the action happened), and costing roughly the same), from where we called the smarchers already in N'awlins to find out where they were and where we all should meet up. At this point everyone was back in the first hotel, so we made them come to walk to us (for we were lazy, and held the better position closer to the French Quarter of which we have had the honor to make mention before). After another call (which, we should add, was quite problematic, as the one cellphone we held amongst us was nearly out of juice), we managed to explain where exactly this better position was located, after which the two groups of smarchers were finally united. The people who we were meeting, those brave pioneers who had arrived in N'awlins first to scout ahead and lead us to much goodness to come were Jaime, Miiru, Renfield, Shadows and Ice and the entity colloquially known as manu-manu, which after the meet took upon himself the nick Seirayu, by which we shall further on refer to him, as the rest of smarch will be more familiar with him by that name, and large as the meet was, the rest of smarch is still larger than the part of smarch that was there.
As during all of this the Earth had not deigned to stop revolving, that time of day was now upon us where the entities to which we are attached are accustomed to take onto themselves sustenance of various forms, which happening they call lunch. For this event the brave scouts led the way (once they had been made to start moving; it is quite difficult to get a group like ours to start moving once it's stopped, and stopping is far too easy due to all the shiny distractions (*poing*), but luckily our entity discovered a skill at playing museum-tour-guide, which gave him an "overcome entropy +5" check for distances up to 200 feet) deep into the corrupting place to a haven of sugar and quiet solitude amidst the bustle of the small streets, Café Beignet.
A beignet was explained to be a square donut without a hole. Our entity simply calls it a beignet, but then, he comes from a different culture, so should not be expected to be too aware about the deeper food-related sensibilities. The reason that this establishment had taken upon itself the name of this, what we might with some creativity call "food", soon became apparent, as a load of these items was ordered for everyone (next to other food more regularly associated with lunch), and much huffing and puffing and spreading around of the powder-sugar that was located on top of the beignets commenced. (The beignets were good, though we were not properly capable of assessing how good until we at a later date ordered some at the much-more famous but far-less deservedly so Café du Monde.)
Good as the beignets were however, the main charm for us in Café Beignet was the relative quiet and secludedness of the establishment. The place looked extremely small (and to be fair, wasn't really all that big), but there was a door in one of the walls (which makes sense, as doors generally speaking are not usually located in either ceilings or floors) leading to a fenced off garden with more tables and chairs, and it was here that all of us retreated to with our food to spend some pleasant time in the company of each other, our food and our sugar. It was also here that we finally managed to remind our entity of the goodness that there is in taking pictures of other entities, to be used at later dates as either blackmail material or as illustrations and mementos of the fun that we had, following which we promptly proceeded to engage in this activity. We managed to snap several pictures before the other entities were clued in by their fingers and began directing looks promising revenge and other unsavory activities our way, which perturbed us not at all, as we had been strengthened in the fire of many a previous camera duel.
Having taken upon us the sustenance and the great goodness of sitting around doing very little at all in the company of friends, we walked back to the hotel ("the" hotel always being the hotel in which all of us except for Dart and RoseKnight were staying, the one that was some 15 minutes of walking away from the French Quarter, the Days Inn place that could use some cleaning up, but wasn't really that bad when compared with for example the place we stayed in in Berkeley, but in which the other entities had quite some problems with roofs falling down and wake-up calls not being made and which because of all that can be placed on the list of places to avoid), from where Renfield took off to go and pick up dragondawn from the airport (the act of driving to the airport being one that he performed quite a few more times on this day, an act we thought was mightily nice of him, except that after the fact we learned that it was one of the things that made his experience less good than that of most others, which makes us wonder why he performed it at all (but then we might have more experience with making our way into unfamiliar cities utilizing various forms of public transport than most people might have, so not see this final bit of traveling before reaching a destination as quite as much of a barrier as other people might)).
The rest of us hung around in our rooms, where we played silly telephone games (actually we seem to recall it being Renfield before he left who engaged in most of that) and read books. That is right; here we were, in New Orleans, jewel (or at least "shiny object") of the Mississippi, and we played telephone games and read books. People were also doing a lot of laundry. Yup, we definitely had our priorities straight. ^_^ (Which priorities were of course to have fun, which we were capable of having pretty much anywhere, and the city itself was just a likely setting for the real fun of getting to know all these wonderful people a bit better.)
Around this time we also made a reservation for dinner, for which we chose some fishy place for which there was a card in the brochure place in the hotel's lobby - except that we didn't, as we called the number on the flip side of the card, which was for some kind of italian place called Bacco's, which was good as fish was bad for Jaime. Having previously called around to everyone that we were supposed to meet up at the fishy place, we now called around to explain that we were going to Bacco's. Around this time Angelus called that he had arrived at the airport, and so Renfield set off to pick him up. Then much dressing up by the usual suspects ensued, following which we made our way to Bacco's - only to find a très fancy place with prices way out of our budget and a clientèle that would most likely be scared away by even a single smarcher, let alone such a flock of us as was gathered there. So some entities set off to go and find some other place to eat, which turned out to be Pierre Maspero's (a place that is heartily recommended to any- and everyone who ever makes it to N'awlins; you can find it a few blocks down from Canal on the corner of Chartres and some other unnamed street [if anyone is particularly interested, I can look it up on my n'awlins map when I get back to Auckland]), and the fingers of the entity known as dragondawn went in to Bacco's (dragging their entity with them) to be brave and save them from having to face us, while the rest of the entities gathered there waited for Dart and RoseKnight to show up (as they hadn't yet, and being cellphone-less for the moment due to recharging being necessary they didn't yet know that our plans had once again changed). When the choice for Pierr's had been made, everyone save our entity and Sahi walked over there, while we went on waiting for Dart and RoseKnight to appear. Once they did it was immediately apparent why they were late, for Dart was dressed in a way that would have let her blend in at Bacco's - which is not a way that promotes fast walking.
At Pierre's we proceeded to have a wonderful dinner consisting mostly of local dishes (our entity had a small muffulletta, as it was recommended that a large one would be too much for it; hah! once more they underestimate the hunger of the Aanimal!), during which many skullable comments were penned down (we wonder, have those appeared anywhere online yet?). Somewhere during dinner Renfield and Angelus arrived, though Renfield had barely finished eating or his cellphone rang again (y'know, those things really are evil) this time to let him know that Susan and ettelewen had arrived (Renfield knew their arrival time, which was not till nine; except that it was nine their time, not ours), and so he trundled off again. The rest of us then commenced wandering through the French Quarter, where we noticed such shiny places as the pointy object store before we found ourselves on Bourbon Street. Now, Bourbon Street... How shall we describe it? We have witnessed much rowdier places, much more decadent places, and cities which had much more revelry or peep-shows going on than Bourbon Street had. But Bourbon Street had them all together within itself, one endless stretch of the kind of "fun" that we ourselves can do very well without but which still is quite something to behold. And behold it we did, as we wandered from one end to the other and looked into the many shiny shop places that were still open (amongst which was Madame Laveau's, which was far less magical than its name).
By this time Angelus was looking as if he would fall asleep right there in the street (he'd just flown over from the UK after all), and so Sahi and our entity accompanied him back to the hotel (New Orleans at night when you're not familiar with it is not a city you want to walk through by yourself, especially not the stretch towards the hotel where we stayed) while the rest of the group went on to party. As Angelus did not have a room to stay in (original plans for a room for him had unraveled a few weeks before and nothing else had been worked out yet), Sahi moved in with Susan (who together with ettelewen and Renfield we met up with at the hotel) while Angelus moved in with our entity, and so we moved all of Sahi's stuff out of our room, and Angelus' stuff in. Our entity was somewhat sad about this, as Sahi would have been a great roomie just by being the same kind of "boring" :) no-nonsense dutchie possessing the same patented sobriety as he was, but this grew to him being quite very miffled as it then turned out that Angelus snored. Snored really, really, really loudly. Snoring is of course rarely something that can be controlled by the people who engage in it, and Angelus was not even aware that he did so, so this isn't something we can really blame him for, but...
To illustrate that we are not merely whining, we like to state that we are experienced with dealing with people snoring. Just the night before we had spent the night in the same room as RoseKnight, who also snored. In the days when we were younger and less fluid with bouncing over the keys of keyboards, our entity used to go on camps where invariably there were people who snored. Right now, in the nownow of the realreal, both the person in the bed above that of our entity, and the person in the bed next to him snore. These are the hazards of cheap sleeping places, and though annoying are usually not that bad. But usually these snores are also of a, in-as-much as this can be said of snoring, more decent volume. Angelus' snoring wasn't. It was quite literally a hell - made only worse by the muggy weather of N'awlins - and when the following morning our entity woke up with less than three hours of sleep behind him, he was not a happy camper. (Again we would like to reiterate that seemingly negative remarks are not at all meant to say things about other people; this is an account of our entity's thoughts and impressions, and that is the sole focus and purpose of these words.)
Luckily however happiness soon returned to our entity, as after meeting up at Dart and RoseKnight's hotel we walked into the French Quarter for breakfast at ...Café Beignet. :) As we had but recently re-discovered, sugar for breakfast is a great goodness. :D
--[ I originally wrote the entire N'awlins report in one entry, but when pre-posting it discovered a nasty bug causing things to overflow (prolly in IIS, which would mean that the live version of my site wouldn't suffer from it, but I can't take that chance), so now this will take multiple entries; This was part 1, read part 2 here ]--