Luisah Teish, she a New Orleans woman and writer, spoke to a group of us one day in Santa Fe. She told us about feeling -tipsy- in that mysterious city of New Orleans, two-headed, that the spirits of the city and land and water made anyone sensitive able to tune into other worlds, other ways.

When I saw Dr. John it was at an outdoor concert in Oregon. On his piano was a beautiful vodoun veve, a tapestry. Got his autograph afterwards, he drew me a crescent moon.

A man named Sagada up in Seattle taught me some about using candles and oils, he a longshoreman from New Orleans, in Seattle now doing tarot readings and candles for people. He told me that I reminded him of civil rights workers he met long ago, what a compliment eh?

My friend, Anila, returned to the NW from time spent in New Orleans during Mardi Gras. She'd done bad drugs and bad men and had seen too much of the painful streets during the frenzied celebration. She saw the naked insane ones, the beyond drunk and unsafe ones, she saw the police. Yet, she also told me about how wonderful it was to see the gracious orderly clean up afterwards, that is was near a spiritual experience, watching all the chaos be cleansed.

I never had beignets and hot coffee with a whisper of chicory at the Cafe du Monde. I never poked around to see if I could find an authentic rootworker or two. Never checked out the Catholic cathedral and all the syncretic mix of Catholicism and Afro-diasporic faiths. Never lit a candle in a cemetery.

Yet, it is clear, the City has touched me. I'm tipsy for Her, two-headed, from the muck and floods perhaps Her Phoenix shall rise. Surely playing a trumpet for all to hear.