Keagan LeJeune Explores the Cajun Beauty of “Finding Myself Lost in Louisiana” https://ift.tt/lGia1e2
In Europe, all roads lead to Rome. But in North America, all water leads to Louisiana. Water has memory, they say. In Finding Myself Lost in Louisianaby Keagan LeJeune, we are led along every road, waterway, and memory as he searches for the meaning of this place – and himself. LeJeune and I share the Cajun lineage. We also share confusion: does this corner of world exist beyond its legends, its mystique, and its colorful characters? Could this place be like the terrain itself: unable to decide whether it’s water or land, so, it chooses to be both?
The memoir is broken into essays, or maybe even brief epochs, as LeJeune battles the disasters of life in southwest Louisiana. It’s clear that LeJeune wants to write a comeback story of how Lake Charles recovered from COVID-19. But freezes, floods, and Hurricane Laura play as much of a role in this story as does the question of what being from Louisiana means. At times, this book reads like The Katrina Papers by Jerry W. Ward as LeJeune contemplates the existentialism of remaining in this place. LeJeune’s “solastalgia” (George Albrecht’s term for homesickness when one hasn’t left home) pulls him to find the belonging which neither his battered house, nor his amorphous position as an English professor at McNeese State University can provide. Sometimes the expedition feels superfluous, or even absurd. But according to LeJeune, “When the soul is sick, I’ve found I’ll go even further.”
Like any good journey, there are places of beauty along the way to stop and admire. I could point to LeJeune’s impressive interweaving of the personal, cultural, historical, and legendary, but more specifically, I pored over several descriptive passages, savoring words as rich as a good crawfish étouffée. The book is full of the charisma that draws people to this place. When describing a friend, LeJuene says, “His legs are like cypress knees, his arms a willow trunk that tells you how high a flood can rise.” When depicting dawn, he doesn’t limit himself to colors: “I can arrive in time to watch the false dawn scrape its gauzy hand across campus.” The text can vacillate between the poetic and the didactic quickly.
What sets this memoir apart is how it shapeshifts. It can take you to Teddy Roosevelt’s era and then leave you back in the present, but inside the largest cypress tree in Louisiana. A chapter may start with a ghost story and finish with geology. You may feel you are reading a folktale at times (LeJeune’s specialty) but before the next page is done, you are in an anthropological treatise. I even learned the meaning of Choctaw words I’d heard my whole life of which I never knew the meaning. LeJeune intertwines his personal reflections with his world building. They are vulnerable, insightful, and additive. There are times when his exploration of Louisiana feels meandering or disjointed. But he always manages to tie his stories back to his personal journey. That makes the wandering feel honest. He eventually locates the heart of the matter. He “…found the geographic center of Louisiana. It was at the very end of a dead-end road.” That last line captures the gist of this foray. When you think he’s revealing the “thing,” the meaning of it all, it’s often just a red herring.
LeJeune has a difficult time finding the essence of this place. As he sifts through the human and the other-worldly, letting place constantly define his understanding, it reminded me of the classic Songlines by Bruce Chatwin. LeJeune references the aboriginal concept of “songlines” and how “The Dreaming” that creates our world doesn’t “…occur in the past. It’s timeless. It’s enduring … is always happening.” There may be something to this idea that Louisiana is always becoming, despite keeping its gaze in the rearview. This feeling of existing outside time, but deep within place, could be why several legends here end with the characters going mad. Maybe it could explain why many people and places experience liminal notoriety, never quite becoming famous. But this book doesn’t offer explanations like that. His vast knowledge of history, folktales, geography, and even biology, provide him none of the import, and therefore none of the resolution. I nervously flipped pages, waiting for the wisdom I continue to search for as a child of Louisiana. I wanted the answer from on high telling me who I am, what it is about Louisiana that makes it so confusing, and why, why, why! But that’s not here. And that is exactly what makes this book worth reading. Just like this place, LeJeune offers no easy answers. Louisiana doesn’t define you. And you definitely don’t define it. There is only ever the scenic byway, where the bayou connects, or the high ground of the next chenier. And when you don’t reach an answer, but instead the next question, LeJeune will be with you saying, “‘Okay, a fork in the road. Let’s go.’ “
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