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Ah, New Orleans....

I spent a day and a half in my favorite city on earth this weekend. Hands-down highlight was catching the Rebirth Brass Band (yes, follow the link to get some spirit of this band and some spirit of night life in New Orleans and possibly fall in love with NOLA) in a free show at Fulton Street. Lordy, lordy I did shake my boo-tay.

And it looks like that's as close as I'm going to get to The Dream for now. M_____ says New Orleans is a lover spurned who will not open her arms to me, the ingrate who walked out on her. Mona at the Adeeta employment agency says that even though stores are open for business, people still aren't themselves and the environment remains unstable; everybody is kinda hangin' on. The crime rate, political corruption and apathy, the "disrupted" vibe that still understandably permeates the place--too many natives still gone and too many newcomers stirring things up and talking funny. It's hard to get your bearings in NO these days.

I can't say I understand why I'm not in New Orleans. And my unknowing doesn't bother me. New Orleans is full of mystery and ghosts. So much that cannot and will never be explained in and about New Orleans. I don't live there but I've been bitten and so, like so many before me, for the rest of my life I will describe wherever I am as either "in New Orleans" or "away from New Orleans."

It's rained all day on and off. The streets are flooded. Creeks and rivers are cresting. Tornado warnings 12 miles north of me. My apartment feels cozy if not necessarily safe. I made my first cornbread of the season (still working on a new recipe...this batch produced the kind of loaf that's not so good right out of the oven but reheats well and is especially good with any "red" spread--raspberry, cherry, plum, strawberry....jam, syrup, preserve, etc.) and even played guitar for the first time in over a year.

I'm learning a song I'll sing at Pallas' ordination in November: "All Will Be Well" based on the Julian of Norwich quote.

In part, it sings

Julian
Do you not know...about sorrow
Do you not know about pain
about hunger, about shame

She said
All will be well
All will be well
All manner of things
Will be well

I have Joni on one side singing a checklist of preparedness that proves sufficient Fight and Insight to gain the Earth and Everything in it. She's been living in isolation for 10 years. On the other side I have the words of a woman who lived her life behind a brick wall hallucinating visions of Christ's bleeding head. And She says "All will be well."

I have cornbread that I made with my own hands cooling in the kitchen and a windy, rainy night to sleep in. I should write my own song.