closing nola. meat.

A few things I learned in New Orleans.  

The giant daqueris sold out of the slushy like machines are dangerous.

Termites are the strangest swarm of insects I've ever experienced.  

People are open and weird and all there for the freedom to be so.  

Or stuck.

Or loyal.

And brave.  The city refracts in a way, like when light hits through glass just-so and makes you pause.  Flawed and dirty and amazingly beautiful.  It resonates like the feeling of breath and aware nerves, prickling between your shoulder blades.  It's as if some silly rusted nail has grabbed a chunk of my skin and there remains a piece of my flesh stuck to a fence.  I dream this.

More Gulf, more sweat, more meat.
Onto Ocean Springs, MS home of The Shed BBQ.  It is a bunch of shacks made of junk and they have a nutso blues festival and tasty, delicious meat snacks.  Bones fall out of everything.  Ryan plays for people who don't clap, but tip and donate and give words of encouragement. I find it hard to pass the tip bucket for some reason.  It clashes with a piece of me (haven't puzzled that one out yet).  Henry Gray plays.  We drink and write our names on the wall.  Across the driveway is a campground, but we stay too late investigating people and talk about the spill and laughing and seeing jars of oil from a journalist recently on the beaches.  Matt, the sound guy, offers us a futon and good company as we while away the night in a basement bar.  We make hashbrowns like Waffle House in the morning and depart.