À bientôt

I went to dinner the other night with a friend who's conversations are usually light and fun, but we started talking about relationships and our mutual difficulties that we'd had because of the work we do. It made me wish I was staying longer or I'd taken more time to try and get to know her better, sooner. I think we could have could have

I'd told her that I was moving when I visited her in the little french quarter shop she worked in. She was taken aback and honestly; i thought she might be. I'd mentioned before that I might be moving, but I'd never broken it to her that I would be for certain, because I was always afraid it would spoil the mood. I like to see her smile, after all. When I told her I was leaving, her smile dipped a little but it wasn't ever really gone. It was replaced with one that said "That's too bad" and it really was. It's too bad that we'd acted all along like we had time to see where things might go, because we didn't.

I've been sick the last few days, staying in to get over the cold/flu/monkey pox that I've been suffering from. I watch movies and order takeout, surf the web and get a little work done. I mustered what little energy I have to go out to eat with a friend this afternoon, because I don't want to spend my last month here in quarantine.

I'll miss New Orleans, but I'm leaving for the right reasons and I know it's time to go.

This is where I live, but not for much longer. I'll be moving west in about a month. I'm trying to think of it as being the right thing to do, but that doesn't mean that it's what I really want. What I want is to stop the clocks and just lay here for a while.

L'aventure commence

"Would you ever want it to work out? Would you give it another shot and try again if she ever wanted to?", she asked me. She was sitting on my left side, facing me and I was staring straight ahead. Her knees were just barely touching the side of my leg. I know that my moving west immediately made some people think it was to be closer to my ex wife, so her questions aren't unexpected, her concerns valid enough that they should be laid to rest gently.

"No", I said, after considering it for a moment.

"No? How can you be so sure? Maybe if you saw each other it would be different?".

"I know because she's happy with who she is now. I'm happy for her, that she's happy, but neither of us wants what the other wants. If I met her today, if I came across her at work or even just out someplace and got to know her, I don't think I'd fall in love with her now, with the person she's happy being now. It worked out the way that it was always going to work out. We met at probably the only moment in each others lives when we would have given each other a chance, but it didn't work out and this is where we are now. "

"Do you think she wants it to work out?", she asked me.

"No. I think she wants to know that I'd try, but I really don't think she wants it to actually work out, unless working it out means that I fold everything I want up, pack it away and go live her life with her, instead of mine. That's not ever going to happen though, because I don't want her life any more than she would want mine."

"Maybe later in life, things will be different.".

"My life is now. By the time I reach 'later', it'll either be alone or with someone that I've met along the way, not someone that went off and lived their life and then wants me back after they've had their adventure. The adventure is the good part; if I'm going to have anyone in my life I want it to be someone that wants to share that with me.".

The waitress brought the check and I paid. We changed the subject to lighter things, distracted ourselves with little pieces of portable technology and tried to let the heaviness of the moment go before we slipped outside into the clear, crisp afternoon.

Mardi Gras day

It's been the Mardi Gras season here in New Orleans, which means a lot of different things. It means parades and costumes, the parody of current trends and observance of historic traditions. It means drinking and noise, it means excess that would seem shocking and all of it leads up to the Ash Wednesday, which is the first day of Lent. It's the feast before the famine and people revel as though it may very well be their last chance to do so. They make promises the week before about what they'll give up on Ash Wednesday and then pursue those things until it comes, with a ravenous hunger. "I swear I'm giving up drinking right after Mardi Gras..."



I've had a friend who leaves in what becomes an unreachable neighborhood (hi crime and too far/dangerous to walk from, no available cabs during Mardi Gras), so I offered to let her stay with me until Carnival was over. She works on Bourbon street, so she'd been meeting me in the quarter and then I'd walk her to work, but sometimes the cab situation would mean it would take hours for her to get here (with me waiting to go with her to eat or have a drink), so we just agreed she'd stay with me instead. After the first night I gave her a key, because she'd often not come home until nine in the morning and it was easier just to have her let herself in. She worked every day until Lundi Gras and then stayed with me so she could enjoy Mardi Gras without fighting to get back and forth. It was an fast friendship that we shared, she and I, despite how unlikely it might have seemed that we would. We went to the parades together, she came with me on a Noisician Coalition march and we stayed out late, drank, ate gluttonously and had fun together.



Mardi Gras day we stood on Canal street and I did something I haven't done in well over five years and probably closer to ten: I ate a Lucky Dog. I'm normally opposed to the very idea of them, but there was something about seeing a parade early in the afternoon, putting together costumes, having drinks, chasing down doubloons from Rex that made the indulgence of a Lucky Dog seem not only acceptable, but almost necessary to really have had the full experience. Oh, and we touched the Saints superbowl trophy and hi fived Sean Payton

We stood against the metal barricades, waiting for the floats to pass and I smiled, my belly full of gluttony, that I was back in New Orleans, that this time I was experiencing Mardi Gras as a reveler and not just as a bar owner waiting for it to pass. I looked down and saw a little girl with the most piercingly blue eyes that I'd ever seen, smiling at the beads she'd just caught and it gave my smile further reason. The sun was in my eyes, but I didn't mind. The crowds were thick, but that was ok too.



I looked up and saw a float passing, one with a Venetian Carnivale theme. I thought of people in Venice, sharing that day with us on the other side of the world and it made me feel connected to them because of all the places in between that don't celebrate the way that they do, the way that we do. It made me sad for a moment, to think that I'd planned on living in Europe this year, celebrating in Venice on this day, but it passed because i was in New Orleans celebrating it and really, that's pretty wonderful.




The end of The night brought another tradition; the clearing of the streets by police when Mardi Gras Gives way to Ash Wednesday and Lent begins. The come through on horseback, clearing Bourbon street. It's the only day, the only time people are told to leave and they do so in typical New Orleans an impressive cavalcade of mounted police.

Parades

This photo was taken at the Saints victory parade with no flash. It is, of course, completely impossible to get a still photograph with all the commotion, the surging of the crowd, constant movement, but that’s sort of what I like: all the motion.



Elly, petting the horses of New Orleans mounted police on Bourbon Street near Iberville after we'd managed to get through the crushing crowd and back to relatively safe distance from the people that had come by the thousands to see the parade. She's wearing her grandfathers WWII army coat to keep warm and she swims inside of it, it hanging loosely on her lithe frame.

Carnival

One of the biggest differences I've noticed about this city since I've returned post-Katrina is that people are more apt to celebrate rather than feel they are above it. I recall distinctly the moaning and groaning of a lot of locals who didn't seem the slightest bit interested in Mardi Gras celebrations, but now; it's a different story. People plot their costumes in advance, chart their hours to make it to their favorite events and put forth an almost Herculean effort to make sure that they are a part of it. It's one of the better changes I've seen, this coming together.