Floods

Soft rains came early in the evening.

But no amount of rainwater has ever been able to stop New Orleans. We toured the bars along Frenchmen Street, and at one point paused to listen to a brass band on a corner with a crowd of roughly a hundred. We ordered beers at a cash-only joint where the bartender gave us our drinks on the house.

We talked to strangers and sang along to songs we knew. We danced to the blues and stood under lamps just to pretend we were ducking out of the weather, while agreeing that a little rainfall was nothing to hide from. It was lucky dragonflies and perfectly preserved moths. Jimi Hendrix and cigarette smoke. Bassline heartbeats. Eye-contact.

It was a night in New Orleans made all the better by the knowledge we were flying out in the morning, destination Boston.

I’ve considered myself a terribly lucky man as of late. I’ve rid myself of some bad relationships and managed to hold onto a few of the good ones. I’ve worked hard and made somewhat of a name for myself in a few creative communities. I can finally afford to travel to parts of the world I’ve never visited and see things I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. The best part is I get to come right back home to write about my thoughts and experiences and those I’ve shared them with.

So I feel like that makes me twice as lucky to have made it out of New Orleans before the harder rains of Tropical Storm Barry came.

For more than one reason I couldn’t get to sleep that night. One was the conversation. We sat on the balcony of the 18th floor overlooking the city that was beginning to sleep, mocking us in a way, yet giving us a moment of peace to ourselves. We sat across from each other with lightning streaking through the black clouds overhead, with similar electricities surging between us in the form of weighty words, leaving me exhausted yet nonetheless wide awake. We paused only for the authority of thunder, allowing it to interrupt whenever it so chose.

We spoke mostly of the past, of regrets, of harrowing memories and narrow escapes. Mistakes made. Lessons learned. Maybe it was the energy of the storm brewing in the sky so close I swore we could touch it. Maybe it was the late hour, or the anticipation of the journey ahead of us the following morning.

Whatever it was, it was real.

The rains came then, dripping steadily in streams from the roof, spraying the balcony like a mist in its gusts.

I lied awake until my alarm went off. The rains had still only begun as the sun rose— before we could even sit down to our complementary breakfast, waters fell from the sky that might’ve floated Noah’s arc.

I drove with blurred vision through layers of reflective gray, blasting Sum 41’s All Killer No Filler to keep awake long enough to park safely in a lot that had no shuttle. We unpacked the raincoats and trudged our way to the correct terminal.

Our flight was delayed by a couple hours due to weather, which was fine by me because then the skies were dry before liftoff. I dozed a little on the plane, but not for long enough. Moments after checking into our AirBnB we saw the news on social media: parts of New Orleans were under water. Some people couldn’t even leave the city, and we’d just barely made it out ourselves.

But lucky for us, our trip wasn’t ruined. We’d made it to Boston, where the humidity was low and it felt a lot like autumn. We were within walking distance of a few local places including the Samuel Adam’s brewery, and after dinner there were a few beers on tap calling our names.

We were some of the lucky few—and escaping a flood is just one of the many reasons.

Best,

CBM

Cobblestones

I leave for Boston in two days.

I’ve wanted to visit this particular city for a long time now—right about eight years or so. It’s always held a certain light in the distance to me, as if it’s the epitome of discovery, the lighthouse of our nation. I’m sure that idea has a lot to do with it being such an old, historic place (and maybe a little unfortunate bit of Augustana lyrics).

For one reason or another, I’ve been drawn to the place. The early colonial settlements. The nearby Salem Witch Trials. The cobblestone—if there actually is cobblestone there. It’s the center of a region that smells of gunpowder smoke. It’s fog rolling in from the docks. It’s lantern light, ale, and people on horseback.

One of the novels I wrote in college features a modern character who has such a strange blood illness that he has to travel to Massachusetts to visit a once-celebrated hematologist. The now-insane blood specialist used to work in Boston, but after the failures of a few of his more unorthodox experiments, he was estranged from the community and forced to move back to his hometown in Salem.

Another story I once developed has to do with a ghost boy who roams the streets of old Boston and spends a lot of time around a historic cemetery now called Copp’s Hill.

They’re both still in the works. The problem with these stories is that I never got a chance to actually visit these places. But now I do.

I went through a really bad breakup when I was twenty-two. It had been a long-standing sort of relationship, the kind you think will be forever because it lasted five or six years, so you do everything you can to keep the body on life support long after the soul is gone, whatever it takes to keep the corpse reanimated; severe co-dependency at it’s finest.

But when that was over, the only thing I wanted to do was go to Boston. I wanted to pack up my things, make the drive, and make it work. No job, no bed, no plan, just go and survive as if it were my own version of a rite of passage into manhood. It wouldn’t exactly be surviving the wilderness, no, but still, cities are nothing but concrete jungles full of animals of the most dangerous nature. I would’ve lived in my truck if I had to—anything to escape where I was and prove myself to myself, to keep alive the idea that I was still good and self-sufficient enough to keep living.

What did I expect to find? At worst, nothing. At best, what, myself?

I’ll never know, because I never went. I almost did a couple times, but life found ways to keep that from happening. I guess I just wasn’t ready, but now I am. Because the stars have finally aligned and everything is working out. I don’t know what I expect from this trip now—certainly none of the things I was hoping for six years ago. I’ve already escaped where I was, even if it was only mentally and emotionally. I am good enough. I am self-sufficient enough. I know now that I do deserve to be alive.

I have nothing to find there but a good time, and nothing to take away from the experience but memories, photos, and maybe a couple souvenirs. Maybe this is a lot of what growing up is all about: confidence in self, contentment in circumstances, etc., etc…

Cobblestones. Each of these, cobblestones.

There’s no need to run because there’s nothing to run to, and nothing to run from. You can’t find yourself out there, because you aren’t out there. You’re right here, and so am I.

No, I reckon I don’t expect much else but to enjoy myself, and honestly I wouldn’t want to travel in any other way.

Best,

CBM