Remembering Polly Ann Reynolds Warner

I met Polly at St. Andrews. I can’t tell you how or why it happened, but Polly became a Rocky Mount mentor. She shared stories and introduced me to her friends as we came upon them. We would linger after lunch, talking! Beyond Rocky Mount history, we talked books and about our pasts, how we grew up, our educations, our ups and downs.

I didn’t know Polly was ill. She avoided Facebook and e-mails like the plague, her computer in constant rebellion. I was told it was her decision to refuse treatment and she crossed the River Jordan on her terms. There was a lovely service at St. Andrews, but I continued to feel unsettled that I failed to be a friend indeed.

At one time, Polly and her husband lived in New Orleans and she found a ready audience when she talked about the politics there. New Orleans was a place of friends and good memories for her. She knew I’d done research concerning Katrina for a novel and visited several times over the years. I could picture the places she talked about. I have been at ‘six and sevens’ about her death. I haven’t found a way to say goodbye until now. I only wish I had written the following for her as it captures everything I need to say as a way of a tribute to her and in thanksgiving for our brief adventures.

For Polly, Rest in Peace

The first thing you notice about New Orleans are the burying grounds – the cemeteries – and they’re a cold proposition, one of the best things there are here. Going by, you try to be as quiet as possible, better to let them sleep. Greek, Roman, sepulchres- palatial mausoleums made to order, phantomesque, signs and symbols of hidden decay – ghosts of women and men who have sinned and who’ve died and are now living in tombs. The past doesn’t pass away so quickly here. You could be dead for a long time.

The ghosts race towards the light, you can almost hear the heavy breathing spirits, all determined to get somewhere. New Orleans, unlike a lot of those places you go back to and that don’t have the magic anymore, still has got it. Night can swallow you up, yet none of it touches you. Around any corner, there’s a promise of something daring and ideal and things are just getting going. There’s something obscenely joyful behind every door, either that or somebody crying with their head in their hands. A lazy rhythm looms in the dreamy air and the atmosphere pulsates with bygone duels, past-life romance, comrades requesting comrades to aid them in some way. You can’t see it, but you know it’s here. Somebody is always sinking.

Everyone seems to be from some very old Southern families. Either that or a foreigner. I like the way it is. There are a lot of places I like, but I like New Orleans better. There’s a thousand different angles at any moment. At any time you could run into a ritual honoring some vaguely known queen. Bluebloods, titled persons like crazy drunks, lean weakly against the walls and drag themselves through the gutter. Even they seem to have insights you might want to listen to. No action seems inappropriate here. The city is one very long poem. Gardens full of pansies, pink petunias, opiates. Flower-bedecked shrines, white myrtles, bougainvillea and purple oleander stimulate your senses, make you feel cool and clear inside. Everything in New Orleans is a good idea.

Bijou temple-type cottages and lyric cathedrals side by side. Houses and mansions, structures of wild grace. Italianate, Gothic, Romanesque, Greek Revival standing in a long line in the rain. Roman Catholic art. Sweeping front porches, turrets, cast-iron balconies, colonnades- 30-foot columns, gloriously beautiful- double pitched roofs, all the architecture of the whole wide world and it doesn’t move. All that and a town square where public executions took place.

In New Orleans you could almost see other dimensions. There’s only one day at a time here, then it’s tonight and then tomorrow will be today again. Chronic melancholia hanging from the trees. You never get tired of it. After a while you start to feel like a ghost from one of the tombs, like you’re in a wax museum below crimson cloud. Spirit empire. Wealthy empire. One of Napoleon’s generals, Lallemaud, was said to have come here to check it out, looking for a place for his commander to seek refuge after Waterloo. He scouted around and left, said that here the devil is damned, just like everybody else, only worse. The devil comes here and sighs.

New Orleans. Exquisite, old-fashioned. A great place to live vicariously. Nothing makes any difference, and you never feel hurt, a great place to really hit on things. Somebody puts something in front of you here and you might as well drink it. Great place to be intimate or do nothing. A place to come and hope you’ll get smart – to feed pigeons looking for handouts
Bob Dylan (Chronicles, Volume One)