Not too long to wait, now...

Three, maybe three and a half weeks until I'm in New Orleans.
Otter says "Save your energy! Save your excitement! You'll need every last bit of it to make it through four days of Jazz Fest!"
...and with thirteen stages full of musicians, with a great racetrack full of food and art and food and artisans and food, with a barrage, a melange, an esoteric montage of all the great muddy wonder an underbelly could possibly offer, I am sure Otter is correct.

Nonetheless,

The Hotel St. Marie, the place Otter's always stayed, is full for a few nights of our trip, so we are spending the remainder at the Lafitte Guest House, both within the French Quarter, both ridiculously, authentically antiquey and boutiquey, both absolutely beautiful. Lafitte is purported to be "the most haunted hotel in New Orleans," a hell of a boast. I look forward to stumbling through foyers of both hotels, high and greasy, swimming at St. Marie, passing out on the balcony at Lafitte, hopefully still cognizant enough to treat people decently, still high enough to let the city eke into my porous bones, infect my marrow-bound dreams, without reservation, without a trace of my sizeable, malleable ego.

In Otter I've found another human being who shares the same rusted mercurial tracks with me; I wonder if New Orleans will be the candyfloss citystop whose edges melt into my own...

Not too long to wait, now.

Not too long.