Well, happy Friday the 13th, world!  I’ve always had good days, on Friday the 13thses, and today has begun no differently.  Since I managed to not get loose from work until nearly 10:00 p.m. last night, I slept in a little.  Once awake, I received the very grand and glorious news that my dad’s PT scan, that he went in for yesterday as a mid-treatment checkup, came back completely and absolutely and wonderfully negative.  No traces of ye olde lymphoma at’all.  HURRAH!

So that has already completely made my Friday the 13th.  Now, J and I are both waiting around for more employment calls today.  With luck, my Friday the 13th Good Streak will continue.  Aw yeah.

That being said then, happy Friday indeed!  As I said in a prior post recently, I have officially dubbed this most valued final-day-of-most-folks’-workweek as French Quarter Friday.  I have quite a handful of random photographs taken during my FQ roamings that didn’t quite fit into one solid category or another.  I figured it would be fun to share them on a weekly basis, and in no particular order.   So, FQ Fridays it is.  Starting today.

Wandering Royal St.

Our last Friday in New Orleans, J and Irish Pirate and I did some ambling around together.  For the sake of Soaking it All In, I continued to fall behind the guys as I slowed down and just Looked at things, snapped shots, absorbed.

Dusk, I think, is my most favorite time of day to be caught in the Quarter.  (Bonus points if it is raining!) Dusk is an in-between time.  It’s not day, it’s not night.  It is a transition.  In most places, and in this locale in particular, it casts a mystical light on things, changes the faces of buildings and people.  This photograph was taken when we rounded the corner from Dumaine onto Royal St., at dusk, and I simply had to stop for a moment.  On this block, at dusk, the daytime crowds were gone (or perhaps had not wandered this far), the nighttime crowds had not yet emerged from their hidey-holes, and the street was completely silent.  Well, save for the always-magical clip clop clip clop of a carriage somewhere, and an amalgam of music coming from windows and courtyards and bars, on other blocks.

It was the drapery of the beads that caught my eye.  I had been pondering bead drapery for weeks.  They hang from lampposts in the French Quarter.  From iron fences in the Garden District and Uptown.  From traffic lights on St. Charles and Canal.  From trees, everywhere.  Much like – no, just like – the Spanish moss that lazily arranges itself on the oak trees, creating a dramatic fold and drape as a backdrop to New Orleans life, the bead drapery is the manmade version of just that.  A human-induced reflection of the nature that surrounds all, down there.  Life, forming in layers.  Things growing on top of other things.  I had the opportunity to witness this and ponder it, one more time, as we were heading west on I-10 a couple of days later, rolling on out into and past the Atchafalaya Basin.  I peered really hard into the trees that were whizzing by, and saw it.  Vines on top of bushes, on top of trees.  Draping moss.

Beads on lampposts.