"Arriving at Destination" - Says the GPS

We've made it! My parents and I just arrived in New Orleans! Words can't express my feelings as I crossed Lake Ponchartrain and crossed into my new home. I'm sitting here in the hotel room, Mom is dozing--snoring really-- on the adjacent bed, and Dad has gone out to get something to eat--for himself-- ...figures. I found this to be a better time to post, considering that Mom remains in the dark on this blog. She wasn't one of the BIGGEST supporters of me starting this before I got settled in at Tulane. But hey, it's my life, so what the hell. 

As we crossed into the city, the bridge included, many sights tickled my eyes. Unfortunately, Dad was driving "a grande vitesse", so I couldn't get any pictures. However, my memory will serve as my perpetual photo album:

1.  While crossing Ponchartrain, I caught a glimpse of one of the many New Orleanian scars left by Hurricane Katrina. I saw not a bridge, but the segments and remainders of an older one. I could tell where repairs and renovations were being applied to it. It then hit me that the bridge on which we were driving was a more recent facsimile.

2. As we passed into the outskirts of the city, nice houses and apartments drifted by the window. These pristine sights were often interrupted, jarringly at times, by a dilapidated home. Now, these homes obviously weren't shacks; one could tell that said building was once a beauty. This juxtaposition of homes--both inhabited and abandoned-- piqued my interest. These places stirred within me these ideas of evolution, devolution, and life cycles. Welcome to the mind of an ArchiNerd:

     -- Upon seeing the dilapidated house, I quickly took a few mental photos, since the image was fleeting. I noticed vines and other plants creeping their way up the structure; I noticed how it splintered and sagged in the middle, as if ready to collapse at any given moment. I also noted the discoloration of the wood framing and cladding. The original color was some shade of beige. However, various areas of the wood were black or brownish, I inferred, because of exposure to the elements.

     -- I then began imagining the dilapidated house as a plant, either young or old. As a young "plant", the house would grow and evolve, cast off its natural constraints--the foliage--and transform into a beautiful, sublime structure, comparable to divine structures to either side. As the house "grew", it would then go through various stages of habitation, abandonment, and exposure; this would ultimately lead the the house's weathering, like the discoloration, sagging, and splintering.

     -- The house would go in to the final stages of its life cycle. The house would eventually become dilapidated again, much like its beginnings as a young "plant". Nature would then run its course and the house would, in essence, "return to the earth", covered in plants. The life cycle would then be complete.

All of this flowed through my mind, occasionally brushing against the elephant in the brain: TOMORROW IS MOVE-IN DAY!!!! I still have not come to fully comprehend that statement. I've to be up bright and early tomorrow morning to get a head start on the day's work. I'm truly "living on a prayer" right now.. o_O