Where the parades start

I never thought to go to Mardi Gras World before because it sounded like a giant tourist trap, but it turned out to be a trap of a very different kind...

It was a trap for fans of elfin elephant storytellers...

slightly ominous demon slugs...

dusty ducklings...

...and really big (and cuddly) voodoo dolls. Yes, this place was made for me.

No idea. Really, no clue whatsoever, but I like it.

I want to believe that this was a Discworld float, but, even if it's just based on Hindu mythology, it's very cool. And very large (see tiny humans for comparison).

Without a doubt, Coraline's Other Mother. I passed it on to Neil.

This warehouse, one of many in New Orleans, was loaded with massive works of art and creativity and full of people who were working every day to make even more for next year. It was really hard not to stay behind after the tour and start helping with the paper mache...

Thanks, Jesse, for the suggestion and the chance to wander among disembodied heads, flying turtles and the Kongs. It's definitely a place I'll remember for a long, long time.

Happy returns

Remember that late night art market lit by fairy lights I mentioned earlier? I found myself there again last week.

I've recently learned that life is a funny thing. You might reach a point in yours when you think you can pretty much see how the rest of it will play out, and then, after one evening, or a Saturday morning, or maybe a few weeks, it's turned into something completely unexpected and it's led you to places you never expected to be.

I didn't think I'd find myself back in New Orleans less than a year after my first, brief visit. The architecture is still haunting, as are some of the residents.

The signs of the previous weeks' festivities are everywhere.

But I don't feel like I missed out on the party. My weekend was full of music, sunshine, beignets and whistling ducks. Best of all, I got to share them this time.

Best weekend yet and any photos containing me courtesy of Jesse. This is my life and I am so grateful for every minute of it.

Exactly

Some pictures don't need words

Photos and permanent, silly grin courtesy of Jesse.

No. 6: New Orleans

If you look up in New Orleans, you might see the kumquat trees that hang over the sidewalks (their fruits are the squishy, orange ovoids under your shoes). If you look down, you might notice that the sidewalk is growing.

Weather and time have made themselves at home here.

It's a flat land, but you can still climb.

Some of the neighbors can be mischievous. Can anoles play Ding Dong Ditch?

Maybe.

I followed the sound of a haunted harmonium for many blocks, turning left, then right, trying to find the source. I never located it, but my meandering led me to the street where I saw this:

And he led me to this:

Which was where I had been heading all along.

NOLA, your art is showing...

Even when the skies are grey and rain coats the streets, New Orleans' vibrance shines through.

The young man who worked at the gallery/antique store where the bear was discovered took my money for my two postcards and then told me about the night art market.

Imagine an open-air market under strings of fairy lights where you can stroll with your wine, rest for a minute on a sofa made from a bathtub and talk with a photographer who's spent a year traveling across the country gathering images that he turns into state-by-state collages. As if the music and the food and the architecture and the people aren't enough. Go see the art. Maybe bring home a bear.

New haunts

Last year I stopped in New Orleans on the way home from New York. I guess that's a thing that happens once in a while. It was a welcome respite from the chilly spring air in New England. It was also a foreign land. For forty-eight hours, I wandered past homes that looked both more haunted and more full of life than ones I'd seen anywhere else.

I so much wanted to see past the narrow shutters. In the evenings, I sometimes caught glimpses of art framed on walls in sitting rooms. I still want to go inside, but the exteriors still tell their own stories and they'll have to be enough.