I wanted to do all of Mardi Gras. As far as I know this was the only Mardi Gras I was ever going to have and from the pieces of information I was gathering from the people I’d been staying with there were approximately a thousand different experiences of the day.
There was waking up early and wandering the Treme looking for Mardi Gras Indians or the Skull and Bones gangs. There was sitting on St. Charles for the thirty-second time this carnival season and watching Krewe of Rex pass by. And then maybe sticking around for the truck parades afterwards. There was marching with the St. Anne’s parade down to the Mississippi to perform rituals with the water. There was staying home and watching the whole thing from your television. There was grilling under the Claiborne overpass. There was wandering the streets, drink in hand, and reveling in a whole city throwing a party. But even that broke up into different smaller experiences, because depending on which corner you decided to make your home base the energy could be completely different. There were probably even more possibilities to experience that I didn’t ever hear about. And I wanted to do them all.
Needless to say, I didn’t quite manage it.
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