… solipsubmissive …

i haven’t been there in years, but home for me is New Orleans.  i’m rather afraid to go back since Katrina.  i studiously avoided watching the coverage, me..always the news slut..with my back turned resolutely on the media.  i’m afraid of the way it is now, afraid to have those images pressed upon me, taking up space in my head and in my heart that was previously occupied by unsullied memory.

The air is different there, thick and heavy and full of body.  Some complain about the heaviness, especially in the hot, sticky summers, but i embrace even that.  The thickness wraps around everything, muffles and mellows and embraces.  Sounds are different there, richer and more melodious, as though held suspended in that heaviness.  Notes are less pure, smokier and sexier…in what better place could Jazz exist, take root and become?  In the dusk and in the night, sounds carry oddly, and it is difficult to know from which direction they come.  Run from the sounds and they find you, chasing you through streets lined with Spanish moss adorned trees, they find you and reach out to grasp you just as you realize the sounds you fear are your own footsteps, tossed out into the night, then pushed back by the saturated air. 

People are colorful, food is colorful, words are colorful.  And i, with my darkness, my gray/silver/black life, can wander through the riot of color and still belong.  i belong there, with the legions of oddities, the artistic and the inspired.  A city of dichotomy, of contrast.  Beauty nestles with horror, the garish with the sublime…and it works.  It explodes lazily with a richness that seeps into the senses, takes root and never leaves.

My city is magic.  Steeped in history, a city of the night.  Reverence washes over me there, for faith permeates the very soil.  Faith and decadence are irrevocably intertwined for me because of this city.  They walk hand in hand through the sordid streets, past cathedrals and strip clubs, where doors stand open to allow glimpses of rows of burning candles and bowed heads, bared breasts to seeking hands, serene statues of the Blessed Virgin.  Sinner and saint alike cross the thresholds of either door, entering one to commit and the other to confess.  Faith and decadence beckon me near, tug me between them.  i surrender myself to both.  Decadence rapes me while faith holds me and whispers in my ear.

i don’t have to go home.  i’ve brought home with me.