Jasmine and Jazz

Or “you can’t always get what you want… but… you get what you need.”

We leave New Orleans tomorrow morning to fly back to Atlanta and get back to “work.”  “Get back to work” is the operative phrase in Atlanta (and there are bills, mail and projects to attend to).  But productivity is secondary down here.  In fact, the other day when I had to have a scan done at Ochsner, I asked how long it would take and mentioned that I had a luncheon engagement at 11:45.  The technician immediately volunteered to reschedule my Xray, since a lunch plan was more important. (Never mind that the scan was to rule out a new little cancer scare.)  Priorities, priorities!  

Getting together with loved ones certainly supersedes other obligations in New Orleans. Not so much elsewhere.  We’ve spent a great deal of time while here overlooking the sheltering oaks in Audubon Park while breaking bread with various loved ones at the Audubon Golf Club.  

The trip didn’t go exactly as planned though, since my preplanning included getting to Jazz Fest to hear Jon Batiste.  That scheme, as you’ve read, was vetoed by my doctors as a sure-fire way to get sepsis courtesy of its race track setting and my autoimmune wounds.  The trip has ended with my freshly diagnosed case of shingles, despite having had the vaccine, since, you know, I can’t catch a break.  (Don’t feel sorry for me.  I’ve gotten used to these recurring tasers from the universe and just roll by Walgreens for the next prescription.) I didn’t quite arrive in NOLA geared  to boogie on, and I’m not leaving any better off.

But I did get what I needed from New Orleans. Those relished good food and good time occasions with my high school classmates, friends and relatives.  Cutler relaxing by The River. And we got our fix of jasmine and jazz.  

Jasmine. Although a lot of New Orleanians mark the seasons by occasions: (football, Mardi Gras, crawfish, and hurricane seasons), for me it’s camellias, azaleas, jasmine, and then golden rain trees.  Right now the jasmine is blooming its heart out on wrought iron balconies, picket fences, and utility poles.  Their funny little pinwheel blossoms are sticking out from their abundant foliage.  It’s charming. And I can never get too much of it.

And Jazz.  After church on Sunday, we drove to the Quarter, parked Miss Daisy (Toyota Avalon, DOB 2000)  in a spot about 9” longer than she was - - with a man across the street shouting “you got this, Momma”- -, and set up chairs next to the crowd on the curb listening to Doreen Ketchens.  We stayed so long that I dropped bills in her bucket both coming in and going back out.  It seemed only right.  She’s phenomenal. 

I’m torn between my two cities, Atlanta where I live, and New Orleans that lives in me. I’m divided: Hot ‘Lanta where I love and am loved by so many wise and wonderful women and men, and The Big Easy where I resonate with the oaks and architecture,  the culture, the creativity, and, certainly, the comical.  I like to be artistic and uninhibited here, but I also like my more intellectual engagement when I’m in Georgia.  Maybe being so torn is not ideal, not “what I want,” to quote The Rolling Stones.  I wish I had all the attributes and all those loved ones consolidated in a single place. Preferably flat and swampy. But despite being stretched in a dynamic tension between my two cities and the two extremes of my personality, “if I try sometimes, I just might find, I get what I need.”

Cue Mick Jagger.