Saturday Night Sinners, Sunday Morning Saints…

I haven’t written a story in months now. I have many excuses but I am not buying any of them myself.
Most of the reasons for not writing has to do with seasons. The Bible tells me that there is a season for everything under the sun. Have you come across that verse before? Do you realize that it also means that there are no seasons, no times for anything above the sun? This means that in the heavens above, time stands still and it is always time for everything.
In New Orleans, it is always time for everything. Time for beignets, time for love, time to dance, time to sing, time to cry, time to laugh…all the time.
“America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland.” ― Tennessee Williams
I never thought there would be a season of my life where the brook of stories would dry up. But here we are… I start stories I can’t seem to end. But I am not unhappy or sad. I know now that this too is a season, it too shall pass and I will find endings again.
Like the stories I write beginnings for, my life is getting so many new beginnings. Only this time I am not the author. If I were I would have hurried to the end by now. Or at least the place I want to be most in the story. But just like my characters cannot jump out of the pages I write and wield my pen, I too am learning that trusting has a lot to do with being patient.
New Orleans reminds me of old tales being told anew. I spent the few days I visited in the French Quarter. If you close your eyes as you walk the French Quarter, you will walk back into the 1800s. There is so much history in this city that it has become one of my favorite cities in the world. I will always want to go back to New Orleans now.
“What happens in Vegas may stay in Vegas, but what happens in New Orleans, goes home with you.” Laurrell K Hamilton
It would be impossible to tell you about this beautiful city without telling you about its resilient people. They that have built an ark out of nothing more than hope and kindness and continue to rise above the floods, whether of water or of poverty or of hate. They say it is city of Saturday Night Sinners, Sunday Morning Saints. I am a tried and true believer. I ventured out to Bourbon street on a Saturday night and beheld things that would make my parents blush…
“Times are not good here. The city is crumbling into ashes. It has been buried under taxes and frauds and maladministrations so that it has become a study for archaeologists…but it is better to live here in sackcloth and ashes than to own the whole state of Ohio.” ― Lafcadio Hearn, Inventing New Orleans: Writings of Lafcadio Hearn
In Nawlins everyone calls me ‘baby’, ‘love’, ‘honey’. White, black, purple, blue; they all add a term of endearment when addressing a stranger they have met once and probably never again. I feel loved in New Orleans in ways NYC doesn’t make me feel.
“If there was no New Orleans, America would just be a bunch of free people dying of boredom.” -Judy Deck in an e-mail sent to Chris Rose” ― Chris Rose, 1 Dead in Attic: Post-Katrina Stories
It rains for hours one afternoon in New Orleans. When i tried venturing out of the hotel, the water covered my shoes so I went back to my room and watched the city drown from the safety of the 12th floor. Katrina was only yesterday. The reminders are everywhere.
I don’t know what it is but I left New Orleans full. Full of food but also of hope. Storms will come, and they will go. As will seasons. It is what they leave behind that matters. It is what you let them take from you that matters. Hold on to love and to hope, it is what NOLA has done.
“New Orleans food is as delicious as the less criminal forms of sin.”
― Mark Twain


