Which I write about far too often. <\/a><\/p>\nNew Orleans is the last American city. It might just be the last American outpost, period. A final, dying ark in space where the freedom and joy of this country has been preserved. Where humanity \u2013 for all its good and bad \u2013 thrives.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s nothing hidden in New Orleans. It\u2019s all right there squirming on the surface, and there\u2019s no coyness. You\u2019re not led into a dull, plodding, commuting existence. Everything about us \u2013 and about this country \u2013 that is beautiful, terrible, hopeful, and repulsive walks hand in hand in the light of day.<\/p>\n
This stark human honesty warms the heart, even in dodgy situations. Though I\u2019ve never felt real fear in New Orleans. I come from a city with a higher murder rate, walk streets with screaming lunatics who are more than happy to spray you with semen, and watch commuters snap for no reason and shove children onto the subway tracks. DC is a strange and twisted town. In ten years at my day job, I know of four co-workers or their family members who have been shot and killed, and all seemingly random. A spray of shots while they pump gas, a stray bullet through a window, a post-theater mugging gone wrong, a Beltway road-rage incident\u2026<\/p>\n
In recent years, I\u2019ve started working on a project designed to get me out of the rut I\u2019m in. The all too familiar modern American failings of debt, expectation, and misplaced loyalty in corporations has shaped me into something hard, evil, and distrustful. For years I\u2019ve been a cog in the wheel, no matter how much I try to break out. I\u2019ve been paid pennies by wicked, inhumane employers who expect me to be grateful when they cheat me, lie to me, or outright hurt me.<\/p>\n
My goal is to bail out of the debt, get some sort of financial solvency, and leave this dirty little town of DC. For a while, I just wanted to run. As soon as the debt was paid off, I wanted to go hide in some hideous $400 a month apartment in Elkins, WV or somewhere like that. Flee to another sort of space station, with simpler people and simpler lives. After my childhood, and years spent with chronic pain, and working six jobs, I feel like I\u2019ve aged 40 years. I feel like I should be sitting in a bar with a bunch of pensioners, complaining about foolish young people. At 36, I feel like that old man who\u2019s always at the end of the bar, quietly watching the TV, and, one day, simply doesn\u2019t show up. I saw my life ending as a corpse found rotting in an easy chair only because the bartender decided to call the cops after a few days.<\/p>\n
With the pain cured, and the path of my life changing to provide a more hopeful outlook on my future, my goals also changed. Instead of simple escape, I started to look for change. A coordinated, thought out, positive change.<\/p>\n
First up would be relocation. A new town, a new group of people. But, when you hate people, looking for places to move to where there\u2019s actually hope of employment (unlike escapist Elkins) is difficult.<\/p>\n
New Orleans had always been right under my nose. Through pain and surgery and renewal, I winged down there whenever I had the chance, communed with myself over a pint of beer, in a hotel room, on my friend\u2019s couch, or in a tiny used bookstore. But I never thought about moving there.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m still not sure if that\u2019s what I want, but there\u2019s something I\u2019ve realized over my 15 years of traveling the world: We are always coming home. We just don\u2019t pay attention to that part of the journey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As you read this, my plane will be bumping from BWI to New Orleans, a town I\u2019ve tried to visit at least once a year since 2001.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,268],"tags":[64,269,161],"class_list":["post-1568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nola","category-project-mondays","tag-new-orleans","tag-project-mondays-2","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1568"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1600,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1568\/revisions\/1600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}