Parade Loop

“I came here without thinking. Tickets purchased in a fever, like I do every time”

I scrawl the line in my black notebook, and like the way it lays on the page, but I don’t want to get cocky.

The opening of a story is important, a kind of map- where are we going, and at what pace? 
As it turns out, New Orleans around 550 mph.

I guess I should confess, that most of this is true- like gospel brunch truth, not of Mark, or even Luke, then again, maybe.

“Pretzels, cookies, peanuts?” The flight attendant saunters by, 40-something. Her voice hollow. “ Can I get another?” She repeats herself, turning towards the next row, mask of a smile on her face.

I give up gesturing, and tuck my notebook into the seat-back pocket. My eyes absently trace the the ouroboros I’ve sketched on the front in gold pen. It hadn’t dried properly before I’d shoved it in my bag, but the slight smudging didn't detract.

The bourbon I’ve been sipping settles over me like a velvet cloak, but I’m not drunk. At least not enough to forget, which is what I’m chasing.

My memory has always been too damn good. I can’t count cards in Vegas, but have a distinct knack for indexing. I never forget a face, can retrace my path step for step sans breadcrumbs, and easily quote conversations from years ago.

My husb.. ex husband hated it, he said it was like arguing with an encyclopedia.

I’ve heard they rarely diagnose Autism in girls, especially not the outgoing, vibrant types that excel at theater. I never fit into any one set of boxes. When I was a child, my grandmother used to put on her best fake brogue, tousle my dark curls, and say I was “touched by the faeries." “They may come back for you one day”

Whatever, it sounded better than Brooklyn in the 90’s. But I’d never been anywhere else.

A year went by, and another, eventually I sold the ring. It was the only thing of value I’d taken in the divorce. We didn’t own much together. When you have to haul it up a 5th floor walk up, you question investing in solid wood furnishings.

I haddn't wanted gemstones soaked in blood money cursing our love, so I’d insisted on vintage. Ego made him stick to “Diamonds are forever” Or maybe he was hoping it was true.

I’m not sure if the size was about status, or an attempt at consoling me for his lack of virility with platinum, art-deco filigree. I'd have preffered an emerald, I’ve always been keen on green. But that wouldnt have funded this trip.

The auction house was shocked, no one expected three rival collectors to get into a pissing contest. It closed at over double the estimate. $20,0212.16

It wasn’t life changing money; but it was enough to tell New York winter, and its endless grey sleet to go to hell money.

And so I headed where I always do when I needed to slip into a warm dream. 
That sticky southern lullaby - New Orleans.

It sometimes feels like half my heart is buried on one of the ever eroding banks of the Mississippi. Maybe I have to keep coming back to stop the current from carrying it off into the gulf.

My ears begin to pop, the tin can with wings I’m traveling in descends, trading lift for friction. Wheels skid as we bounce on the tarmac.

Collecting luggage isn’t interesting, but it has to be done. The airport manages to maintain a level of authenticity, perfectly content in dingy mediocrity.  In line for a taxi, I realize I’ve left my journal on the plane. I’m itching to get to town, going through security again feels like a headache, so I resign to buy another, and leave it behind.

Walking alone, just after 1 am. The evening is humid, air as thick and sweet as cold honey. 
Datura, Jasmine, Lilly, Tea olive, Magnolia. Night blooming flowers exhale, inviting their pollinators, each block is its own bouquet.

I pass so many churches, their glass windows fractals of color. Steeples reaching above the tree-line. For my part, I can’t reconcile all the effort humans exert to worship covered, and adorned. That’s never been the way I came to god.

I navigate the precarious streets, the roots of over arching oaks have made a churning sea out of the sidewalks. Buckled Tectonic plates at the scale of an ant.  They ensure everyone moves at the proper pace, which is to say, slowly.

True north here is a gut feeling, but cardinal directions are negotiable. I think I’m headed east, towards the 9th ward.  Streets shift, and dead end..literally into countless above ground cemeteries. The curves of the river are king.

Everyone you pass will nod, or say hello. Anyone you pass could be dangerous. You pretend not to think about it. After dark, you never quite stop thinking about it.

I’m still a little buzzed from the drinks on the plane.  I’m in good company. Society wives and French Quarter vagrants have more in common than they’ll admit. In a lot of ways, this town is the fairy godmother of vice.  

I don’t see another living soul until I cross the train tracks, but I can hear the crowd from blocks away. They’re gathered in front of a stately Greek revival, buzzing like a hive.

Beneath my feathered fox mask, a smile stretches across my face until my cheeks ache. I take the front steps in twos, shouldering my way through creatures as familiar as they are foreign. Some I don’t recognize had names once, but anyone who might remember is dust.

The antique furniture glows amber in candle light, all available surfaces are covered with rose petals, dotted with fruit displayed like jewels.

Across the hall, in the parlor, a very small man stands singing atop a piano bench. The player strips, while continuing to accompany him never missing a beat.

A woman walks by, carrying a silver tray overflowing with canapés.Behind her another follows. She inclines her head and platter towards me. “Drugs?” “Oh, I.. no..thank you.” I reply, blushing, while I lean against the wall, wishing I could to melt into it.

I pluck a clementine from a nearby shelf. Its skin separates easily in one long snake. Pith collects under my fingernails.

“There you are” says a cheerful voice at my left elbow. My skin prickles. I was sure there had been no one standing there

“You must have me confused with someone else, I mean, that’s not surprising” And as I reach to remove my mask, his hand gestures, and I pause.

“I’d know that hair anywhere.” The honesty behind his words doesn’t even attempt to veil that what he meant, was that he knew what it felt like coiled around his fingers.

I study him with no recollection. A black stripe of makeup crosses the bridge of his nose, dripping down prominent cheekbones. The vibe is warpaint, not tears.

His eyes are my favorite color. And what I mean is, my favorite color is now whatever shade you want to call those eyes.

Moss clinging to the walls of a desert ravine, or maybe mid-day storm that churns up the grey-green gulf.

A wolf skin hides most of his dark hair. Distinct colorful tattoos twine up his forearms, disappear under his costume, and reemerge at his collarbone. Everything in me dilates. I’m Dizzy. There’s no way I would’t remember this man.

“Let me help you finish that” he says, reaching for the citrus I’m cupping. “Get your own!” I pull my hand away in mock offense, giggling.

“We’re leaving any minute, and I want yours” He takes a step closer.

I free a section, and feel like a disassociated marionette, watching myself in the third person as some invisible string pulls my fingers towards his mouth.

His teeth flash, white, sharp and agile. I taste the acidic burst of Clementine as surely as if I’d placed it on my own tongue. We’re leaning closer, trading heat through the sheer of my costume.

The band outside cheerfully gallops into “J'ai vu le loup et le renard danser.” “Here we go” He says taking my hand, pulling me outside where the air is humming.

Walls of humidity reverberate, carrying the music in ways you can’t predict. My heart’s racing. No one can stand still, we pace, and crane our necks trying to catch glimpses ahead.

This parade is not for tourists. There are no beads, throws, or motorized floats.

No trace of it to be found on the internet.  The only way to know where, and when to show up, is to ask the right person. Or, you can eavesdrop in the right coffeeshop. However I came to be here doesn’t matter, I’m just one of the riff riff come to roost.

We join the press as enormous paper mache structures moving on scavenged bicycle parts weave through the crowd around us. A co-operative serpent costume, held high on poles like a banner is manned by 12 people moving together, constricting as surely as any living snake. Ahead, a ghostly ship of bent birch, with white lace sails. All of this and other marvels I won’t attempt to describe swirl around us.

We dance for miles, moving as a horde. I don’t know how many of us there are, but the sound of the cheer that erupts when the band breaks out into the exuberant theme of the Krewe is enormous. We are a moving riot, with rollicking intent. Figures behind their windows stare. Bystanders with sand in their eyes fling open their front doors, and watch their lucid dreams on parade.

“We are the thieves of sleep!” I yell, to no one in particular. He howls next to me, echoing a horn call. We’re dancing towards the bridge, a silhouette barely visible on the horizon, In in our wake, the pungent scent of kerosene torches mingles with burning sage. The sky is beginning to lighten towards the east.

I’m holding the clementine skin in one hand, and his in the other.
 Time is so distilled the evening at the house feels days away. I’m drifting like a sailboat anchored to a cloud. His foot touches the metal of the drawbridge platform. Simultaneously, I release his hand as I make for an overflowing trashcan, he calls after me.

“Anna!” It doesn’t strike me a strange that he knows my name without being told.

“Come on, we have to cross together, I need you.” And I’m not sure what he’s talking about, because I’m not going anywhere far.

I look back, and he’s watching me, crouched and wincing like an animal about to be struck; but he doesn’t move. Every cell in my body has been magnetically re-aligned, and pulls for him.

I toss the peel into an overflowing pile of trash, and the smudged ouroboros I drew on the subway ride to JFK stares back at me from amongst the refuse. Even as I’m reaching, it feels like when you miss a step off of a curb, that tense inhalation of breath as you trip.

It’s like a shock, or spindle prick when my finger brushes the binding. My vision goes white. And white in the true sense. Every imaginable wavelength of color shoved back through a prism, spat out as un-refracted brightness.

“Come back, try again! Try again! We can get it right”

The rods and cones that tile my retina cry out for desaturation that will not come.

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“I came here without thinking. Tickets purchased in a fever, like I do every time”

I scrawl the line in my notebook, and like the way it lays on the page.