...i might have known what you would find...

....under the milky way tonight....

i went Home this weekend. i didn't know i'd be going Home, and i was only there briefly, but it was sweeter than i can say. it had been some time since i'd been there, and it is always the way i remember it, but somehow better. i never seem to idealize the Holy City, never seem to remember her better than she is; she is always better than i remember.

before the Holy City, all things fall away. within the Holy City, all is right, all is clear, everything in its place. all the bullshit, the anger, the longing, the guilt, the confusion, the emptiness: they pass away in the face in the Holy City. they disappear: perhaps in absolution, perhaps in euphoria. it doesn't really matter where or why - it means peace. and i have little known peace, so that i know it when i find it, where i find it. i remember the places that offer this, and remember them vividly and always with deep, undiminishing love and longing.

we did the touristy things, but somehow those are the things i find most purifying: parking near the River, catching a bite at Cafe du Monde, then wandering the Market, just wandering the City. we drove around after that, and we saw places none of us could recall ever seeing - suburban parts of the City, unknown neighborhoods in the shadow of the City, between the interstate and Lake Pontchartrain (which is holy, but not my holy lake: Maurepas).

we followed the old highway, through the swamps, before rejoining I-55, and that, too, was purifying, consecrated. i love the swamps outside the City as much as the City and recognize that it is from the swamps that the City rose, and that one day the swamps will take the City back. this does not make me sad; it is a matter of course. it rose; it blooms; it will whither; it will die. and the swamps and the lakes and the rivers have made this all possible; they deserve their due.

words leave me, when i try to describe what my City means to me, when i try to convey the holiness of the City, the spirit that infuses my own when i am Home. it bypasses mania, it bypasses melancholia, it bypasses everything, goes to the heart of me...all that is good and right and focused and efficient and compassionate and beneficent is accessed and brought to the fore; all those things which are not good and wrong and unfocused and destructive and angry and selfish dissipate.

it calls me even now, to come back, to stay. would that i could, would that i could...