Leaving New Orleans

Having lost all in Hurricane Katrina, man sets out for the west.

Leaving New Orleans

      My gig as a street musician finds me clowning around Magazine Street while wearing pantaloons. I tip my stove pipe hat for jelly roll dollars in the New Orleans blues night. I serenade a couple of tourists with a rendition of Cole Porter’s “Night and Day.” My voice gets gravelly from years of smokes but a snowbird lays a ten dollar bill in my cardboard box. I tip my hat like a true southern gentleman. 

     Then I stroll to St. Charles Avenue for a street car ride to Carollton where pork bellies and red beans and rice wait like Mama’s kitchen now a ninth ward casualty along with Mama and Daddy 

from that crazy b***h Katrina. But I’m just goofing along tonight and feeling like a gambler at Harrah’s casino but not so young and foolish as to try that scene; just digging the night while on the verge of a lucky streak but too many zombies haunt my head in the post-apocalyptic sodium light.

     My Noah’s rainbow takes me west. There are miles to go to Tucumcari and Texas seems like a flat earth dream. Oil rigs make love to the substratum. The bus driver’s foot presses the gas pedal like an organist pumping pipes in a Baroque road fugue. Love elopes into a desert mirage. I gaze out the window into desolation at red rock ghosts. My life is embraced by the quiet dusk which is a reprieve from mourning while deep in the stony silence.

     The road melts into a tar dream as asphalt pours in buckets of black. I angle my sight into the blurry shoulder with an ancient rock outcropping as a focal point. Willie Nelson plays on my walkman. His sonorous baritone is like the Red River rolling on a dusky evening by the bluesy banks with old men smoking their last cigarettes dreaming of prairie sunrise.

     We are deep in the Texas Panhandle land sea where the highway drips in a river of ink. Our bus passes through nameless West Texas towns. We stop at a bus station. There the neon sign of a motel flashes vacancy. My body needs a good night sleep. Therefore I disembark for the evening to catch the next bus tomorrow.

     A neon café beckons this weary traveler with roller skate waitresses who weave like figure skaters in dips and curves bearing malted sodas with hips swaying to the beat of Buddy Holly. Sitting at the outdoor seating, I dig into thick hamburgers while listening to Hank Williams croon your cheating heart. While I walk across the parking lot, a teenage couple lean against an old Buick making out.

     Inside the motel room there is a reprieve from the cold road; the endless asphalt stretching forward like a jet trail through the dark sea of land. There I warm myself by the heater listening to TV evangelists who sermonize apocalypse across the electrified airwaves.

    My thoughts wander to childhood when there were limitless territories to explore and abundant life spreading across the world in a green revolution. The bright sun of justice reigned over our troubled land. Smiling faces looked out of store windows. People were simply living as though it were enough.

     I hear a man curse and a woman scream obscenities through the motel room wall. As I lay silent in my bed, myriad thoughts unwind in my head; hungers, dreams, regrets; the flotsam and jetsam of a life. Slowly the screaming dies down leaving only the beating of my heart to keep me company.

     The next afternoon I board a bus for Albuquerque. Salvation lies ahead like the resurrected Jesus. We sail over the horizon into a cloud of carmine while the Grateful Dead on my cassette player sing me into New Mexico.

     The big sky country beckons my free flying soul, seeking the Sangre de Cristo, where I can find snowy altars on high. There is a road which leads to Valhalla, amongst the piney halls of heaven, deep in light ethereal, where towns are steeped in ancient rhythms. There I will find a refuge for this fallen angel.

     I don’t know where I’ll lay my head tonight. But I know I’ll find my way to those Blood of Christ mountains where peace waits like a virgin cloaked in white. Just keep moving is the key; never get too comfortable; no arrival in my roam. As a ghost of the American dream I follow the wind.

     The highway leads west across the staked plains where my dreams unfurl like flags in the night, flapping freely in the wandering wind. I am no longer fenced in. The passengers sleep in the dark bus while my invocation is for freedom to ring from Spanish Harlem to East L.A.

     I am grateful to the bus migrants whose company makes the blue highway less lonely while deep in the night. Onward we ascend the Sandia mountains and I am a pilgrim on the road to a Lourdes of the heart.

     On my first night in Albuquerque I find shelter in the YMCA. Morning arrives and I emerge into the American street with its teaming beautiful faces. Old women walk by carrying grocery bags. Young pachucos in short sleeve T-shirts and tight jeans walk by. Homeless people stagger in a daze. I am in love with them all. The city embraces me like a lover. I wander the streets seeking my part in the human play. I have known the lonely city with its anonymous multitudes who stare out of the crystal windows of their eyes into my soul.

     I find love in the eyes of strangers with whom I roam the streets. The ragged folks I meet there understand me. I look at their weathered faces and hear them say, “Hey, I’ve hit some hard traveling too. I know you and where you’ve been.”