…you can see the lights flicker in circles. And wash over their faces as their eyes turn upwards.
There, is expectation. There is the night supplanted by lights and lost in the sea of washed and turned colors ebbing in the crowd of breathing and screaming and yelling and speaking beneath old, grasping branches and hanging moss, watched by houses speaking of history. They are decorated and colored, dressed and lined and waiting. As the crowd rolls by, they wait patiently and we are in the middle of it, in the dark , which is not so dark, but heavy and breathing. Colorful and lush, splayed with colors and forgetting, washed around the edges of by a set-sun and time that is not time, but lingering.
And in the middle of it, you remember what it was like when you were young. When you were not quite a kid, but a Youth lost somewhere in the latter part of the teens and wandering through city streets you took for-granted with friends you never thought would leave. Except you’re still not quite a kid, but older. Still a Youth, but older. And you remember what it was like, but know it will never be like that again. Even if you came every year, and didn’t pass for three-more. Because you’re older, but not that old where everything is new again. And time is something we all take for granted.
Mardi Gras comes once a year. It was good to remember.