After a sudden illness consumed my waking hours, forcing sleep and sweat and little else, I found an alarming sense of purposelessness upon my waking and wellness. A sudden sense of urgency to jolt me from my scheduled and mindless routine of home to work, work to home, sleep and then start again.
I live in a city, goddamn her, that never does really slumber, not while the Mississippi is incessantly rolling ships upon her deathgrip currents, to port and back to oceanways away. The people come and they come, never seeming to depart, these Midwestern faces melding with the Yankee visage, the countenance of that of the Pacific Northwest.
And the drinks flow like that river, with its rigor mortis grip, hard and unrelenting. And the piss and puke sticking to your shoes is just her way of saying, the party's never gonna end. Because ends here are merely the means for celebration, a party for every death, le grand fete to every down and out.
And I sleep soundly. I sleep while everyone gets their kicks, finds their niche, their whispering muse who talks in second lines and creole whispers. They all fall in love, and I too lay dreaming in love with her, this city. But then their real lives call, to the fishing boats in Portland, Maine and the Non-profits in Portland, Oregon, and they are gone, left with slight scarring on the heart, perhaps to one day return to their fair Nola.
And then death again, always there, not bothering to mask at all, just hanging out in Central City, in New Orleans East, in the French Quarter, and along St. Charles Avenue on Mardi Gras day. Death and all his cronies, young men mostly, disassembling joy with their bare hands fisted in Steel. The staccato crack of bullets breaking the humid air, like a bullhorn in a church on Sunday.
Oh but we who abide here, heaven and prayers and affirmations and Hail Mary's and voodoo chants and hope: help us.
And then my itchy wandering geography lusting soles start aching for that newness that comes from treading on foreign ground. Suddenly this:
To know that life is not to change, geographically speaking, that you yourself abides in the only house you know, the body and the mind, communicating dissatisfaction and joy.
But perhaps that house by the river, oh me, with its Live Oaks swathing the rooftop in a mossy cocoon, and the ocean playing sand rhythms just around the bend, backporch breeze and the carelessness of knowing I can walk the streets at midnight, full moon and pockets, fearless and full of life.
Away to the peach state? I wonder.
