River Road Rant

So this morning I brought my friend to the airport, allowing her to leave me for a month. Afterwards, I drove down River Road-- the road that hugs the curves along the Mississippi and the valiant levees that protect us from her-- towards Baton Rouge, for an hour, for no reason whatsoever, thinking and listening to Rufus Wainwright.

I hate airports. They take important people out of my life, sometimes neglecting to return them to me for long periods of time.

I love airports. Of course because they bring me friends and loved ones from time to time, but also for another important reason.

For me, the airport is the embodiment of freedom, possibility, independence, and growth. My first flights to Chicago, Costa Rica, and New Hampshire all had very deep, significant, personal meaning attached to them. For each of these, I remember well the music I was listening to, the desires and concerns eating my thoughts, and the dizzy thrill I felt upon descent into the new area.

The exhilarating potential and power of that first sight of the big city skyline, the welcomingly lush and enveloping green of my first international arrival, the frightening uncertainty with which I regarded those stately, sharply pointed New England roofs that I had seen only in movies: these moments-- all spent completely by myself-- are crystallized and suspended in time forever in my mind.

I also associate my craziest impulses with the good old Louis Armstrong International. The New Orleans airport is less than a ten minute drive from my house, and from time to time I get the urge to just zip on over, catch a plane to anywhere (or somewhere specific, if there's a boy involved), and have myself an adventure.

But now I am reminded of a quote by my beloved Chris Rose:

She is a New Orleans girl and New Orleans girls never live anywhere else and even if they do, they always come back. That's just the way it is. To hell with no house, no car, no job, no prospects. This is where she belonged. End of discussion.-Chris Rose, The Times-Picayune

Am I this girl? Most of the time I feel like I am... it's one reason why I'm going to LSU.

But I don't know, and I don't want to apologize for that. I won't. I love it here, but the road ahead is uncertain for the area, and sometimes the airport calls me. And it's my life.

I know in these next few years I will learn a lot more about myself, my attitude towards the Louis Armstrong International Airport, and my feelings toward the area in general. And these feelings will decide the future relationship between myself and my dear Louis and Louisiana.

That is all.