Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

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.