New Orleans always finds me in deep thought. I’ve written about this place before. There’s just something about this city that puts me in a deep space of introspection and rawness. Perhaps it’s the old south feel of the city, or the voodoo that’s still practiced as a religion here and there and around the corners of Louisiana. It could be the fact that New Orleans feels full of history and dancing, boozy ghosts (or at least I always like to think of them as dancing and boozy because scary ghosts scare me and are not invited into my space or my blog.)

I was in the shower tonight after a day of work in New Orleans and the water turned freezing cold. Then I turned the nozzle completely the other direction and the water got hot for a second and then cold again. Then I turned the nozzle up north and everything got colder but then burning. I looked closer through my contact lens-less vision at the nozzle and realized that the hot and cold signs were broken and spinning- or actually, they were on a spinning circle that wasn’t stuck to the wall. So knowing which direction was hot and which way was cold was a matter of feeling things out. And to make matters harder, the nozzle would spin infinitely in both directions, turning the water off and then on again without hitting any kind of foreseeable end point.

Eventually I let the nozzle go at the burning hot temperature I liked, and kept things that way, but I started wondering about all of us finding the temperatures we like in life. Perhaps we’ll  be told what direction to go, and try to follow that, but it won’t feel right. Eventually, looking closer through blurry vision, we can realize that something is off. Then we might follow an opposite directional indicator and just as soon realize that way is broken too. We may give up at this point, but if we just feel things out a little more, we might be close to finding what works for us…without shutting the whole thing down.Or, even more amazingly, we’ll continue beyond shutting it all down.

Because if you try long enough, you’ll shut things all down and turn them back on again numerous times before you get to where you want to be.

Just some deep Louisiana thought for the night. Hope it helps you keep on feeling things out.