Behind the gates and the granite...

...of the Planet of New Orleans...New Orleans...with other life upon it...and everything that's shaking in between...if you should ever land upon it...you better know what's on it...on the Planet of New Orleans...

God knows, I am intimately acquainted with the Planet of New Orleans, its ragged sidewalks and shiny gutters, the gnarled trees and priceless courtyards. I am a child of the sacred city, pure and simple - it don't really matter that I was born and raised in Jackson, it really don't. Within a year of my birth, my parents were already taking me down there. This year I attended my 27th Mardi Gras (for those of you keepin' score, I'll be 29 this month). I tell people I was raised between Jackson and New Orleans, that's how much I love New Orleans.

Those who know me best know that New Orleans is Home; no matter where I live, where I go, New Orleans is Home. I spent a month in Russia in 1996 - the farthest I'd ever been from home and Home; the distance meant nothing. I still craved NO with a ferocity that denies explanation. Her destruction at the hands of Katrina and the levee breaks was my own destruction; I cried for days and days after it happened, as much for the city herself as for her people.

Lawks, I'll be 29 this month, and over the years, things about me have changed, no doubt. The lovable parts haven't changed (otherwise, I wouldn't still be friends with peeps I've known for years), but other things have. One of the things that hasn't changed and never will change is the love I have for the Crescent City. That is my goal, my Grail, and the prize on which I keep my eyes: moving there, making my life there.

I just spent 5 glorious days in the Big Easy, for Mardi Gras. We attended many parades: Endymion (still sacred to me); Thoth (new to me) and Bacchus (best damn parade I've EVER attended); and Proteus (saddest parade I've ever attended, and I went down to Mardi Gras following Katrina). I didn't make it to Morpheus (to which I've never been) or Orpheus (still sacred to me), but I had a blast every which way, so I ain't complaining. If there's a complaint to be made, it's that I had to come back here and start living this life again, rather than that life down there. That life down there: that's the life I ought to be living, and I know it. The Captain knows it. Those who know me best know it. We all know it - but it can only happen like this, for now, in small bursts, when no one can make a demand on my time.

I am surprisingly buoyant this morning, and I didn't expect that: I expected to wake up feeling depressed and deprived, but no dice. I feel all the generosity and freedom, all the contentment and honesty that NO engenders in me. I still feel it. Maybe it's because I left the city under my own speed, by my own will, with an understanding that I never really leave her. I saw that skyline once more before I left. I did not look back to see it, and so perhaps it wasn't like leaving, and that made it seem easier.

Whatever else might be said of me, you can say I have never hidden my love of the Captain, and I have never hidden my love of the City Beneath the Sea. My loyalties are few, to be sure, but they are fierce, and this morning, that ferocity, those loves, they keep me up and going. And I am grateful for all the love and strength they give me. If you have never known the love of a city, I am sorry for you, for you have missed something sacred and singular in life.