I Congratulate Myself On Not

But During All These Years I Had A Vague But Persistent Desire To Return To New Orleans. I Never Forgot New Orleans. And When We Were In Tropical Places And Places Of Those Flowers And Trees That Grow In Louisiana, I Would Think Of It Acutely And I Would Feel For My Home The Only Glimmer Of Desire I Felt For Anything Outside My Endless Pursuit Of Art.

In The Spring Of 1988, I Returned To New Orleans, And As Soon As I Smelled The Air, I Knew I Was Home. It Was Rich, Almost Sweet, Like The Scent Of Jasmine And Roses Around Our Old Courtyard. I Walked The Streets, Savoring That Long Lost Perfume.

We’re Going To Die And Not Even Know. We’ll Never Know, And All This Meaninglessness Will Just Go On And On And On. And We Won’t Any Longer Be Witnesses To It. We Won’t Have Even That Little Bit Of Power To Give Meaning To It In Our Minds. We’ll Just Be Gone, Dead, Dead, Dead, Without Ever Knowing!

I Am An Unwilling Devil. I Cry Like Some Vagrant Child. I Want To Go Home.

I Knelt And Prayed, And The Strongest Truth Came Over Me. Didn't Matter If God In His Heaven Was A Catholic Or A Protestant God, Or The God Of The Hindus. What Mattered Was Something Deeper And Older And More Powerful Than Any Such Image - It Was A Concept Of Goodness Based Upon The Affirmation Of Life, The Turning Away From Destruction, From The Perverse, From Man Using And Abusing Man. It Was The Affirmation Of The Human And The Natural.