The Year of Leaving Dangerously

By the rivers of Babylon
There we sat down and wept
When we remembered Zion.
Upon the Willows
In the midst of it
We hung up our harps.

-Psalm 137:1-2

One year ago this morning, I lay in bed with Marsha in the Hotel Monteleone in New Orleans. It was the day before Mardi Gras (Lundy Gras) and I had come in from Petaluma, she from Hattiesburg, to have a reunion, and party, and (at least for me) to even do a little work. Our pleasant time together didn't last very long as we got into a row pretty early in the day over whether or not to go to the Court of Two Sisters for their magnificently decadent $25 brunch (I was of a mind to go, Marsha was not). Later that day we watched the Proteus Parade on Canal Street and on Mardi Gras Day we joined a second line with the Indians through the Treme. For me, the experience made it clear that I was home in this city of music and food and culture in a way that I had not been at home anywhere in a very long time. We ate hamburgers at Port of Call (at the window table on the corner of Dauphine and Esplanade) and I sat at the table and wept with a deep sense of relief that I had found my place on the planet again.

It was on this trip that I made the final decision to take the plunge and move to New Orleans. I returned to Petaluma, and by the end of February last year had resolved to finally end my 16 year exile in Sonoma County by heading out for the Crescent City. I determined that it would take six months to make the move, but due to various other issues and exigencies I wound up in New Orleans a month earlier than planned, a month (as pretty much everybody knows by now) before Katrina.

At the time, this was a great inconvenience and the plans I had laid for an orderly move washed up on the shore of my good intentions like so much Katrina flotsam and jetsam. What actually grew out of this chaos is the life I have now. It is pretty likely that had my plans gone the way I had expected I would never have made it to New Orleans at all. The fact that I was a resident of the Crescent City before Katrina is the only thing that has given me the foothold to remain a resident of the Crescent City after the storm.

This Mardi Gras (three weeks from today) will mark the one year anniversary of my resolution to make the move. I am grateful for the forces that came together to make that move happen inside the obscure and frustrating processes of nature and the godhead. I am also grateful that the strange circumstances have served to give me back San Francisco as well.

Yesterday, I filled up my little car one more time and moved all of my remaining possessions out of Petaluma. For the first time since May 1, 1989 I am no longer a resident of Sonoma County, California. For nearly 17 years the major part of my existence has been in exile in this wine country where I tried and tried to "remember Zion" with work, and love, and intention, and song. It was never a good fit and at some point in the process (fairly early on actually) I hung up my harp and learned to exist as an alien. For a long period of time I was sure that I would never find a way out of the exile I had come to exist within. Like many exiles, I made friends with and in the new land, but my loyalties were never there, my heart never gave itself fully to this strange land... I never felt at home.

As I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge last night, I breathed easily for the first time in nearly 20 years. I was going home... first to my City by the Bay and soon (on Thursday to be precise) to my City by the River. Once - a very long time ago - Marsha told me, as we drove the same stretch of road, that if I ever left the City I would die. She was more right than I think she knew at the time. She was certainly more right than I knew.

I may indeed be a resident of two lands now, but for the first time in 17 years, I am HOME.