CONNECTION

It’s Mardi Gras and the world feels quiet. I mean I know it’s not, but it feels like it could be and that, is good.

Gone are the days of sleeping in a car off a side street in Uptown New Orleans. Of being in it and living off my parent’s Texaco credit card for the weekend, deciding in real time that the consequences of their next billing cycle were worth it.

I “did Mardi Gras” from Friday to Tuesday in 1993 and 1994; two years that scarred a liver that was a Tom Brady level star back then. Those nights under a friend’s mom’s carport, barely sleeping it off to start again the next day, limping home Tuesday never to return to New Orleans during that weekend in the 30 years since.

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Don’t get me wrong. I love Mardi Gras for New Orleans people. The ones that truly love it. Who schedule their February PTO around it. To gather and walk the plastic littered streets. Time stands still during these weeks. People truly escape, and that, is good.

There was a time I longed to be a New Orleans Person. Kind of. At least to have that connection to place that others envied. A connection that draws you back. My New Orleans is that of an interloper, no more attached than one of a million convention goers. Everyone wants to attach to the magic of that place, despite it’s complete disfunction as an actual working city. Hell, sometimes just because of it.

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Today though, this city 70 miles north west of the other one, is quiet, and that is good. I fought off the mornings push to optimize, to get out and run, to go to an empty office and “work” and am instead soaking in this quiet. Those things will be there this afternoon if I need to go to them. If I push my chair back and kick my feet up and take a breath or two, it almost feels like those syrupy post Christmas days before New Years. The low hum of vehicle din, lower than usual. You may not think you can tell, but when the days are slow like this, there’s a palpable reduction in both noise and frenetic energy in the air. If you can tune into it, it feels nice. It feels like you should cling to it for a bit before the day tears it away, as it’s apt to do.

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This city has it’s own people with connection to place. A place I also never latched onto. Of tailgating and unreasonable expectations of teenagers and young men and women who run, throw, kick, shoot, and tumble. Of colors that dominate closets. Of traditions that are clung to and cherished. Of family and friendships. They’re made of the same stuff as parades and parties. Of staking claim to a chunk of a median or neutral ground if you prefer.

All of it is Louisiana, and though I could never understand other versions, I bet there’s something like this in Kansas, in Boston, and in Wisconsin. A thing you only understand if your from there, but maybe the pieces that comprise, aren’t that different.

All of it made from the most simple and common of human wants.

Connection.