|
About This Author
My name is Joy, and I love to write.
Why poetry, here? Because poetry uplifts its writer, and if she is lucky enough, her readers, too. Around us, so many objects abound to write about. Once a poet starts with a smallest, most trivial object, he shall discover that his pen will spill out what is most delicate or most majestic hidden inside him. Since the classics sometimes dealt with lofty subjects with a lofty language, a person with poetry in his soul may incline to emulate that. That is understandable. Poetry does that to a person: it enlarges the soul and gives it wings. Yet, to really soar, a poet needs to take off from the ground.
 
|
Off the Cuff / My Other Journal #808897 added March 4, 2014 at 12:11am
Restrictions: None
Yay! Mardi Gras!
Purple, green, and gold--meaning justice, faith, and power-, decorations, perfumes, marching bands, beads and trinkets, masks and costumes, pirates and witches on parade, Fortune Telling, Voodoo, Palm Readers…Yes, I watched Mardi Gras…from a home movie our friends made a long time ago. 
It was pure pizzazz, King Cake, Jambalaya and Jazz. And nothing racy, as they must have edited the spicy stuff out, for the sake of their and our children, very young at the time. I remember they told us jokingly, “Just know this much. Mardi Gras rhymes with bra or rather the lack of it.”
Despite their wild reputation, the parades, for what little I’ve seen and heard, are colorful and funny. I guess that’s the idea behind them. When a parade passes through a street people throw beads, small toys, pirate money, and candy. The floats in Mardi Gras parades have mythological themes, with Bacchus and Orpheus leading the way.
Talking about Orpheus, once upon a time, I really wanted to visit Rio where the world’s biggest dance party with the Samba dancers takes place. My wish for Rio sprung from my fascination of a movie that I watched when I was in my late teens: Black Orpheus. The music of the movie was haunting to me then, as well as its sad story. I think it was early sixties or late fifties when more than half the population of WdC wasn’t born yet.
As luck would have it, my husband and I were in New Orleans for a convention two years before Katrina hit. The month was May, with no trace of the Mardi-Gras madness, and we generally stuck to the French Quarter. I recall most vividly the Jackson Square and the few interesting, quirky, far-out people, street musicians, and acrobats I met around there; also the sixteen-feet high levee- the wall we walked on, where the city was seven feet below sea level, and the French Restaurant-Antoine’s I think, and Café du Monde.
Still, if I were to attend any Mardi Gras celebration, I would stick to food since Mardi Gras means “fat Tuesday” for those who like to stuff their faces before observing Lent. I love food and I won’t hesitate to go overboard with it once in a while. I recall having Gumbo and Shrimp Creole in New Orleans, but there were other foods, too, deliciously spicy, whose names I can’t remember, but their tastes still linger on in my palate’s memory.
|
© Copyright 2014 Joy (UN: joycag at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
Joy has granted InkSpot.Com, its affiliates and its syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work. |
