I have adjusted to winter twice after returning from New Orleans. What I was accustomed to is a shock to the system. When I looked at my calendar and saw that we are halfway through January, I was a bit suprised. So it goes in the drumbeat of life. Beginnings turn into middles and middles turn into endings. You need to hold on to your hat to ensure it stays on your head.

The percussive beat of joy we found in New Orleans, we wear like a fine porkpie hat. ‘Nice hat,’ the coat check gentleman told me at the Hotel Monteleone. You see a lot of porkpie hats in the French Quarter. To be in the Monteleone is to want to write. A nationally recognized Literary Hotel. Creativity seeps from every corner. At breakfast Sunday morning, we enjoyed a lovely duet of a Bass Violin and a clarinet alternating with a Tenor Saxaphone next to our table. I played the Tenor Saxaphone in sixth grade and admired the Saxaphonist Boots Randolph.

We visited an Art Gallery with a beautiful floor. They had their Grand Opening Saturday night. Music is everywhere and often free except for a donation as the spirit moves you. If you are enjoying an adult drink or need one for the road, you can carry it along the cobbled sidewalks of the Quarter.

Light and darkness walk arm in arm in the French Quarter. Exuberant people seeking unity with the Angels and homeless sleeping on sidewalks. There is a Spirit that is not easily categorized or described in the French Quarter. A Spirit of acceptance and love, family and home. A unique mixture of human beings, diverse and spiritually attuned, on their way back to Jerusalem. Music brings a leaping of the soul!

A lovely black woman sang on the corner. Flawless with the voice of an angel. People stopped what they were doing in their daily pursuits to listen. She knew her mission, she knew her gift. She sang to no one, she sang to everyone. There is nothing like music from the singer’s soul. Our Souls know the real thing when they hear it, they know it when they feel it. Often, we see things on the surface, but through the grit and sweat of the day. There is a higher purpose and calling. Life is made of the spiritual, and we live in earthly bodies, struggling to understand the meaning.