The Ash Wednesday Blues

Yesterday was Fat Tuesday, the last day of the Carnival season. Each year, after almost two weeks of parades, New Orleans basically shuts down for the day and we throw a big, city-wide block party for ourselves. The attraction of our celebration for frat boys who go to Bourbon Street is only incidental to what the locals do and its this part of Mardi Gras that doesn’t usually trickle up to the thirty-second stories on CNN and the rest of the national media.

Whole families, from newborn babies to grandparents, costume up and go out to the parades to see and be seen, neighbors set up grills and tents along the routes, and many of us congregate in parts of the city where we know the costumed revelry will be the most fun and the tourists will be the most scarce. If you get enough friends together, you can march downtown in semi-organized groups, like in the “Julu Parade” in this video clip (click the control once to activate it, and again to play the clip):



[Direct Link: http://www.vimeo.com/clip:143647]

As New Orleans continues to recover from Hurricane Katrina, it may seem that the huge, city-wide party that is Mardi Gras is a luxury we can’t afford. But an important part of the culture here teaches us that suffering and loss are part of life, and just as the jazz funeral parades conclude with jubilant music and dancing, in the face of adversity, you still need to take time to celebrate life.

Each year when its over, I can’t help but be a little sad. Anders Osbourne has a song that captures perfectly what it feels like today:

Hold on, move on
Set it straight, aww, its too late
This is one hell of a place
We all seem so nervous
Let's do ourselves a service
Stop trying to keep up this pace

And I keep swimming in this big pond
A little boy who lost his shoes
I feel this dead calm
Inside the big storm
Living with the Ash Wednesday Blues

Yesterday we felt like we were getting away with something, and part of what is so amazing about living here is that each year it is still hard to believe that as adults you can get dressed up in a costume and there’s no work or school and you can just go out and dance in the street. And all day we laughed as we reminded ourselves that everywhere else it was just Tuesday.