Dodging beads: An outsider's perspective on Mardi Gras

Bourbon Street on a Saturday night is ridiculous. But when you add the upcomiong Fat Tuesday into the mix, and a fine medley of crazy results. For someone foreign to Louisiana, the exchange of bright beads with partial nudity is lewd, crude, and downright intriguing. Before I left for LSU, my mom had given me a hug and told me to have fun. "When in Rome, do what the Romans do, babe," she said.

So I decided I had some exploring to do.

Born in Massachusetts and raised a Texas girl, I took in the festivities through unbiased and sober eyes. The masked men on the floats terrified me. I watched my friends willingly get pelted with beads, and finally my turn came around. A grotesquely fat man in a Joker outfit planted a five pound bag of beads on my face.

On my face, for crying out loud.

I could have sworn he was aiming. After being helped up and wiping the beer-thickened mud off my jeans, the beads kept coming. Not only that, but my feet hurt from standing and my ears were throbbing from all the drunken screams when Kid Rock rolled by. Please.

Or maybe I'm just a bad sport. Maybe.

When the Endymion parade was over, my friends had the brilliant idea to trek over to Bourbon Street. Two words: body paint. On overweight women, on men in thongs. It was gloriously disgusting, but all "part of the experience." I was promised me a beignet trip on the way out of the French quarter, so I decided to tag along. But the line was too long at Cafe du Monde. Instead of beignets, I was condemned to hell 15 times over by the radical Christians screaming around Jackson Square, and took refuge in what turned out to be "The most visited gay bar in New Orleans!" We walked back down Bourbon to get pelted with more beads, tops flying up in a rhythmic stream of grivoiserie. Well, at least the gay-bar had clean restrooms.

Next year I'm going to Canada instead.

Where I'd Rather Be

I want to feel the the sun raging on my skin as dust whirls and swells across arid African plains, coarse grass shimmering by my Jeep in a blur of silk. I crave to be behind the lense of my Canon Rebel, capturing the culture, living for the outdoors, sleeping under the stars, and following forbidden trails that map the desires of my heart. I desire to seek the rare glimmers of the primal and the primitive. I yearn to escape from the monotony of the civilized. 

And I want to get paid to do what I love-- to engulf myself in a world beautiful and austere. This office job just doesn't cut it. As much as daydreams tear down my patience, the vision of traveling the world as a photojournalist for National Geographic is both my motivation and my yoke. It grips me, it calls me. It's a reverie as comfortable and worn as the soles of my shoes.

As a college student, It's accepted that if we hit the books now, our dreams will naturally follow suit. But as people change, so do their destinies--our futures throb to the cadence of our own lives, held to the rhythmic strum of our actions and decisions. 

Ask your professor, your parent, the lonely man in the supermarket: Are you the person you always hoped to be? Are you pursuing the life you dreamed of? Listen. How many of them chased dreams of ballerinas or baseball players? It's a desolate life when one locks their dreams away. It's a void, an abyss, an absence of hope. An existence forsaken.

I hope someday my passion and my career intersect, and what I love is in perfect equilibrium with what I do.

So for now, I guess I'll get back to daydreaming. For now, I'll study hard and believe that making the grades will be redemption for my soul-searching. On those tortured evenings when this is not enough, I'll strap on my hiking boots and content myself with a starless Louisiana night, miles away from my heart.

Summer in a Snapshot

I've never particularly liked Tuesdays, but this one reminds me of home when I was just a kid. Home on the outskirts of the country, where white-picket fences dotted the horizon. Sitting on porch swings, spitting watermelon seeds, listening to my Grampy talk about growing up as cigar smoke billowed around in a comforting shroud. About the times I used to see the future as something that stretched as endlessly as the Texas sky.

I’m cutting class for the afternoon, sitting Indian-style on the parade grounds. The weather wonderful—warm enough to shrug off my sweater, but chilly enough for visions of sunburns and lemonade. I can almost taste the salt water, the coconut suntan lotion; I can almost feel the sand shifting underfoot.

Just a beautiful day, thawing away three weeks of stress. Perfect.

The light stings my eyelids, so I close my eyes and listen. Frisbees drone overhead, soccer balls swish and thump as they pass underfoot. Campus buzzes with good-spirits, appearing from beneath scarves and boots and winter hats. Dancing in the sunlight, sashaying in the oaks. Awakened.

At moments like this, living comes so naturally.

I shudder as a thick shadow steals over the grounds. The breeze whips my hair across my face. Icy tendrils of wind pelt my neck and arms. Squinting, I look up. A bruise is lurching overhead. Storm clouds stain a blue, crystal sky.

The parade grounds clear, leaving me alone with my thoughts. With a broken umbrella as my only backup plan, I hug my sweater tight and head home—back to the mundane, back to mediocrity.

It’s enough to remind me that moments like this are fleeting. Even beauty chooses to linger in rarity. Perfection is a snapshot.

It’s wintertime in Baton Rouge, but summer’s blooming.