Jay got a new G5. It’s without a doubt the sexiest piece of machinery I have seen in quite some time, and certainly the coolest thing in this flat at the present moment. (Topping my G4, I suppose). So today marks the new era for Jay’s computing and designing, a new enlightenment of ease and artistic freedom. So to Windows, adieu. This also marks my second Mac conversion of a best friend, within several months in fact. Perhaps a future in sales is in the cards for me, or maybe it’s just the fact that Macs sell themselves.
Pictures taken this weekend at the Mardi Gras Party. I don’t know most of these people and will likely never see them again. Don’t ask me who they are, I don’t know or really care, its just photography.
And so on to my comments of Mardi Gras. I am ever amazed at college life in general, and the alluring power of a grungy frat house basement, but my confusion into human behavior is renewed by this, a holiday dedicated to sin. I don’t understand how plastic beads can be used as currency, by civilized and borderline-educated individuals, to purchase acts of depravity that would otherwise be illegal and deemed unacceptable, even for the exchange of Dollars, Pounds, Euro or Yen. I don’t understand how a seemingly nice girl, with good diction, will throw herself at a scumbag fellow just because she likes his apparel. I don’t understand why people piece their tongues, or how others are attracted to it, so much so that they will engage in kissing for no reason. No reason at all. Beads are not a reason. I don’t understand why the only girls I am attracted to wear no make-up and are fully clothed, and I truly don’t understand why I find myself powerless to talk with them. Perhaps I just have nothing to say.
This Mardi Gras at AKL House, New Brunswick was relatively low-key (and low-brow). Anibal and others went to New Orleans, the birthplace of Mardi Gras and the death place of all this normal. This is a place where “fair is foul and fair is fair, hang in the fog and filthy air” LITERALLY. Its a place where you step in liquid no matter where you walk, where you see signs painted in blood and naked people confront you on the street. And this is based on my experience walking casually on a Wednesday afternoon. (Doesn’t anyone work in this town). I cannot begin to conceive a visual of the madness that is Mardi Gras. Perhaps the remnant revelry of the English, French, Spanish and Africans blend in such a way that the air itself, and water and buildings and trees and every other part of a city collide in such a strange harmony that people are drawn to it the way men were lured by the sirens’ song. Call me Odysseus.
Anibal doesn’t understand why I didn’t kiss a single girl this weekend or why I don’t do one-night stands (on a regular basis) or why I don’t drink, but I wouldn’t expect him to. He can have Mardi Gras, I still get Halloween.
And then its all back to normal. People from Arizona to Zimbabwe flock to N’Orleans to escape their day-to-day and enjoy a week or so of pure Dionysian madness and then all back to their lives as quickly and abruptly as were interupted. No evidence, no regrets. And when I wake up the next morning, and peer at my ever-aging visage in the glass, I may not see a handsome man, or a rich man, or any other spectacular man, but at least I see my true reflection, purely spoke and chaste as Diana. I hide nothing from that fellow who stares at me many times in a day and countless times in a life, just as I hide nothing from anyone else. He sees me for what I am, and I see him for what I will become if I am not careful. Does that make sense?.
So to all the revelers, Mardi Gras or otherwise, I hope it was worth it.
