Le Bon Temps.

As I write this, I am sitting on a balcony with a wrought iron fence, overlooking St. Anne’s St. in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Bourbon Street is a block and a half away and mule-drawn carriage tours are passing below me. Life is good again after having a strange 36 hour episode of one of the blackest depressions I have ever experienced.

Driving through Mississippi last week, I was caught on the highway in the heaviest downpour I’ve ever seen. You mid-westerners may be familiar with this, but as a west-coaster, the onslaught was frightening. The heavens opened up, and the apocalypse of rain obscured even the hood of my car. I couldn’t drive faster than a crawl, despite the supposed 70 mph speed limit. Just as I was about to pull off before I died of either a horrendous car wreck or by drowning, I could see blue sky ahead of me, and in a few minutes, it was sunny and dry again. Weather is weird.

I had a parallel experience after I left St. Louis.  Staying with Roland and Tricia, old friends from back in the Eugene days (circa 2003-4?)  was great fun. We saw the arch, heard some great blues, talked and drank and I made friends and got to experience some St. Louis kickball. 

On my last night there however, as I lay on the floor in my sleeping bag, the whole dark world seemed to stretch before me and I felt so lost, so untethered, so afraid of everything, and so so so tired.  In retrospect, I can say that probably the stress of moving and starting school, the fact that I have been travelling almost non-stop for nine months, and the worry that I had no where to go or stay after Missouri had finally caught up with me in that moment. But as I experienced it, there was no possible way to go on. I had exhausted every last reserve of joviality and endurance, and I could not possibly face the prospect of continued life. Dramatic and ridiculous, yes, I know. But still.

I left St. Louis and drove without a goal for several hundred miles, until I finally had to stop. I took a motel room off the interstate, lay in bed. Watched TV. I was too tired to sleep. Too tired to even move my eyeballs. I didn’t think I would ever make it out of Springfield Missouri. I wondered if it were possible to die of world-weariness. I wished I would.

I didn’t, of course.  The next day I drove to a hostel in Memphis and fell asleep again, still exhausted. When I woke up, I found I was sharing a room with a German guy, a French guy, and a Swiss girl. It was the first time in the States for all of them, and they were happy and excited.  So I pulled myself together enough to go out with them.

 We drank big ass beers, and listened to music, and danced. The German and I got up on stage and sang “Sweet Home Alabama”.  The night was goofy and fun. And just like that, the storm had passed. 

I still feel that profound tiredness sloshing around in my head in my downtime, when there is nothing on the surface to distract me. But after Memphis, we spent five or six days in New Orleans, so there was precious little of that time. 

 As I finish writing this, I am sitting in a café in Pensacola Florida. There is supposed to be a punk house I can stay in around here somewhere that some kids I met busking in N.O. told me about. I also have a possible couch to crash on in Panama City. And so the Epic Cross Country Road Trip rolls on.

Laissez le bons temps rouler.