Having received an invitation from my daughter, I'm up in New Orleans for ten days. A very colorful city in any circumstance, last weekend was French Quarter Fest, an annual music festival where, this year more than 1700 musicians, in more that 300 bands, performed on 22 stages for four days. This city loves music, and festivities in general.
My daughter, her mother and I went to the Quarter Friday afternoon and again on Sunday. They had particular performances in mind. I was just following along. Friday walking along Royal Street, below and shaded by iconic wrought iron balconies, I snapped a few photos of the characters who add their uniqueness to the uniqueness of the Quarter.
For the occasion I had on a pink tee-shirt and some frenetic pink, red and gold shorts I got in Guatemala. One of the very few times I've worn these startling shorts out of the house in San Miguel I was asked, "¿Donde está la playa?" ("Where is the beach?"). But in the bacchanalia that is Quarter Fest, my long hair and long thin beard streaming, I looked like a native.
So attired, on our way to Jackson Square when I stopped to photograph two street people, the one still standing, with a beer and a small bottle of whiskey skillfully balanced in one hand, said in the general direction of his companion, already stuporously reclined on the sidewalk, referring to me, "Hey, get a load of this guy."
Now, New Orleans has an "open-container" law that permits drinking on the streets. And, for all I knew, those two individuals, quite bum-like in their appearance, were tax-paying property owners. But they certainly seemed like winos to me.
I define addiction as when you can't stop. If you need a drink before going to see your daughter's grade school dance performance, then you've got a problem; you are a slave to your habits.
My daughter and her mom invited me up to New Orleans to celebrate Passover, the Jewish holiday of freedom. These days in the West we take personal liberty for granted. It's hard to imagine how revolutionary freedom, along with the concept of individual dignity (another gift of the Jews), are.
"Emancipate yourself from mental slavery." - Bob Marley, Redemption Song
Passover, commemorates the Israelites' Exodus from Egypt, their emancipation from slavery. You can straw-man religion, reducing its importance to Sunday school stories as Richard Dawkins and the New Atheists do. But, with our external freedoms guaranteed, mental slavery is the greatest liberation struggle. The biggest, most vigilant enemy is within.
Only one-fifth of the Jews left Egypt. The other 80% chose to remain there where things, if not comfortable, were at least familiar. As a physician, I've widely observed this attitude: "It might be painful, but it's my pain."
In this regard, Buddha's dictum, "Everything changes," is at first quite puzzling. Even a three-year-old knows that things change: "I used to wear diapers, but now I learned to use the potty." I think Buddha is inviting us to change our point of view, to remain flexible in our opinions, to consider other possibilities, to reconnect with reality, to rejoin the "everything" that changes.
Speaking of Buddhists and Jews, my ex-wife couldn't stop laughing when I told this joke at the Passover table: "Jewish Buddhists also believe that you should give away all your possessions... but they believe that you should keep the receipts." Well, she had had a few cups of wine.
Two trips out of San Miguel in six months, both of them to New Orleans, is "world travel" for me. Even within San Miguel I don't get around much anymore, preferring my hermit-like existence, in my apartment on the top of the hill in San Luis Rey.
No matter how much I resemble the strange folk below the balconies on Royal Street, the over-the-top spectacle of French Quarter Fest was a great exodus from my customary limitations. On the other hand, being with my daughter, not only feels like coming home, it actually is.
Café Du Monde *
The Passover table *
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Dr. David Fialkoff presents Lokkal, our local social network, the community online and off, Atención robustly reborn for the digital age. If you can, please do contribute content, or your hard-earned cash, to support Lokkal, SMA's Voice. Use the orange, Paypal donate button below. Thank you.
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