Just what I needed
Last night we went to our friends’ Absinthe party, the one which was supposed to help us forget, but instead it helped me remember, remember why I love New Orleans, its people, and my friends’ parties. Their parties are always the embodiment of diversity – gay/straight and black/Asian/latin/white and fat/thin and tall/short and everything in between and outside those divisions, from artists to professors, from musicians to writers.
Sometimes we’re treated to a show like one time when they had a burlesque show and this time when Chuck Perkins recited three of his very up to the minute spoken word poems about corporate greed and selling our souls. It’s at these parties where I’ve made friendships with people I might normally not run into and also at these parties where I’m reminded of why people need to get together, to mingle, to be part of something collective.
We’re all here trying to figure it out for ourselves like my friend told me as I sat on her back porch yesterday. I’d gone for career advice but ended instead with both of us crying because I’m grieving my mother as the one year anniversary mark approaches and she is still grieving her daughter. I looked around at her house – a beautiful pool in the backyard that is lush with tropical foliage and told her I feel overwhelmed by my responsibilities, by the maintenance on the LaLa, by life and I said I don’t know how people do this. She said, “They’re sitting in their friend’s backyard asking the same questions you are.”
Perhaps how this is done is by riding the waves, sometimes alone and at times with a little help from my friends.