Chapter 9 - Creole Heart The contrast so many New Orleans homes flaunt strikes me the instant I clear the gate in that the exterior and interior of this house are diametrically opposed, the outside teetering on the brink of neglect, the inside reflecting a sense of self-expression edging toward excess. The present articulation comprises a masterful mélange of green, gold, and purple in tones that alchemize the abject tackiness that combination almost invariably exudes into a vibrantly insouciant backdrop for life. As I wait for Catfish to relock the gate I peer back into what appears to be an enormous compound, down a brick carriageway overhung with gas lamps, its distant end broadening into a glowing rectangle of courtyard shaded by a procession of red-blossomed crape myrtles brushing the side of another house behind the one whose threshold I thought we’d just crossed. Rather than entering that front house, however, we’re still outside, or at least semi-outside, in one of those uniquely in-between spaces peculiar to New Orleans, where the closing of a shutter or the unfurling of a blind can take one in a heartbeat from outside to in, such that the two spaces remain at all times inextricably mingled, the people occupying them lolling quite happily somewhere in the middle. Listen to excerpt read by author. Back