It is most certainly not progress that I sit at my keyboard today, looking out the window at an overcast sky, while the Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans works its way ever closer to the Hurricane fueled culmination of months of exuberant self expression.

I miss New Orleans. I miss the New Orleans I used to know, used to live in, used to love. I sometimes sort of miss the 23 year old kid who lived there in that time. The New Orleans I loved has been washed away by greed, corruption, and incompetence as the flood waters inundated the city in an almost biblical fashion.

But I can cast my mind back just the same and remember how I used to spend Mardi Gras. For many, Mardi Gras is spent in an alcoholic haze, oggling naked women in the French Quarter. That has its charms, to be sure. But I preferred a more Uptown approach to Mardi Gras.

I would float, with friends, from house party to house party. There was always something yummy to eat, happy to drink, and use of a bathroom (always appreciated). The houses were some of the most beautiful in the Garden District and occupied, in some cases, by some of the oldest families in the city. They were also close by to St. Charles Avenue and thus convenient to get to the parade and catch stuff.

So, as I sit here in very un-Mardi Gras New York, with zydeco music playing softly in the background, working on a contract, I taste bourbon and cheese grits and dream of humid air and masked people on floats throwing cheap beads.

That was a heck of a time.

Happy Mardi Gras, y'all!

Posted by: Random Penseur at 12:45 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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