I am back in New Orleans and back in the heat. Today’s bike ride to Mid City was scorching. Well, less scorching and more melting, I suppose. I had to stop for a huge bottle of Gatorade before crossing under the freeway, fearful I might throw up with the combination of close call (nobody seems to expect to see a bike on this particular stretch of Carrollton) and dehydration. Properly hydrated, though, the ride was delightful. Just as I was approaching today’s coffee shop I noticed this cemetery. I seem to notice them a lot these days. I’m not sure if it’s all the time spent with A., or just that New Orleans in particular keeps its dead present. Whatever the case, I find these places terribly beautiful and interesting. St. Louis 3 is very different from St. Louis 1, which I have visited before. The crypts are in better condition, and there are many more contemporary deaths memorialized here, at least that was my impression. I’m not sure if this is a matter of its Mid City rather than Treme location or if it is simply a newer cemetery (it was founded in 1854).

Today my eye caught this sign selling space in the St. Leo the Great mausoleum. The historic nature of the cemeteries here had I think helped me forget that people are still dying–well, that remains clear here in NOLA–but also that there still need to be places for the dead to rest. And then I noticed the newer family crypts, all shiny with readable inscriptions, and thought about this part of family. Family, according to this place, is who you die with, who, no matter the years in between, your body will rest with. Purchasing a space crossed my mind, but with it the idea that I don’t have family just in the sense of shared last name, and I’m not sure this particular cemetery has room for my family, room for what it might mean for me, this dying. On that note I walked out, respectfully past a funeral taking place, hopped on my bike, and headed to the coffee shop where I reengaged my work on what it means to live.

I set out this afternoon to ride the bike to Coney Island.  My old friend S. promised it was a lovely and safe ride on the bike path along Ocean Parkway.  She was right.  It just took me about three hours to find that path.  In the meantime, I rode back and forth through Brownsville and East New York searching for the elusive bike path marked on my useless-to-me map.  Coney Island, as it turns out, is the other direction entirely.  I found it eventually, but not before stumbling upon this cemetery.  I was reminded of the cemeteries in New Orleans, those vast Cities of the Dead that display so vividly death and decay as well as new growth, stuck in the middle of neighborhoods struggling to grow anew as well.  The reminder, though, was of how unique New Orleans’s cemeteries are.  Salem Field cemetery is a military burial ground, with identical tombstones lined up perfectly and stretching up hills and over flats.  The precision and anonymity mirrors the same values in military life.  There’s something creepy to me about this steady and ever-growing march and the massive Grave Locator guidebooks that lend little humanity to these plain white slabs. 

Of course this is just one way to bury the dead in Brooklyn.  Cypress Hills cemetery, as seen through locked gates, shows off a much more individualized and artistic set of graves and reminded me much more of New Orleans cemeteries–they are still unique, but NOLA hardly corners the market on mourning in style.  Cypress Hills has large family tombs, individual grave markers, obelisks, and more, all marking death and memory in different ways.  There’s no clear and steady march, but instead an almost haphazard collection of gravesites.  This seems much more human to me than the military sites.  But maybe that’s just me.  Maybe that’s just my attachment to a sense of individuality, a sense of the importance of art in memory and mourning.  One thing I am sure of is that I’m glad I got so desperately lost today.  There is so much of this place that I won’t see except by accident.  Such is the way of NYC.

Today I rode my bike down to the Quarter and then walked over to the Treme neighborhood to visit St. Louis #1.  My guidebook advises me to never go to this cemetery alone due to crime concerns and the hazardous surroundings.  This is because the cemetery abuts Treme Street, and this neighborhood–only two or three blocks back from the Quarter–is considered unsafe, most likely because of its housing projects, general poverty, and largely Black population.  Assumptions about safety are, as per usual, coded for and by racism.  Fill in the usual narrative about who belongs in and can claim which spaces from whom.  But this isn’t what I want to write about today.  What struck me today was this scene, this broken down and abandoned tomb rent by decay but now supporting new growth.  Green grows everywhere in this city, putting an odd sheen on loss.  At St. Louis #1 this seemed an obvious metaphor for the life that always follows death.  It doesn’t always feel this way, though, to see plants literally eat up and over abandoned buildings and neighborhoods destroyed by poverty, racism, neglect and only finally breached levees.  Consider this scene from my ride downtown: This warehouse is in the beginning stages of being reclaimed by plants (I want to write, but don’t want to write, “Nature,” here).  The power pole in front is covered with growth, capped up high by an efflorescence of greenery.  The door on the side is open, revealing a graffiti-filled space and plants starting to grow inside.  I imagine (because it is all I can do at this point) that this stretch of Annunciation Street used to be alive with commerce and life, but it is now decaying and being reclaimed, not unlike the tombs at St. Louis #1.  Except here it doesn’t feel like a flowery metaphor for the circle of life.  Here it just feels like loss.

I ride my bike home from Tulane a lot. Today I rode back from the student gym, taking Willow through central city. It’s amazing how the city changes so fast, from the fancy mansions of the university area to the devastation of lower uptown. Then I took my right to head toward the river and came upon this cemetery, all overgrown and decaying, on Arabella near Langenstein’s. I’ve ridden by this place many times, and walked by as well, but have actually never been able to find it on purpose. Now I can.