You didn't think I'd quit this Mardi Gras masterpiece with such a big blue finale, did you?
Well, the last photograph is one of a gift that a couple gave to me on Lundi Gras in appreciation for sending them one of the first Antubis medallions, celebrating our version of the Mardi Gras. They didn't have to do it. I guess I didn't either.
When you go beyond the tawdry aspects of Mardi Gras, you see the great ocean of smiling faces, all on the same page, all wishing each other a little joy in their lives. The riders give, for the pure happiness of it, the krewes continue to fund beautiful floats each year, for the sole purpose of visually amazing us. Mardi Gras is more than my annual romp through inebriated delerium, though there's admittedly a good bit of that involved. It is a rite of passage that I make each year, with high hopes for the future, with the friends that I have made because of it, all interconnected through this same tradition of celebration. Mardi Gras is the gift we give each other without expectations of return.
I suppose it is the sheer exuberant quality of life that I experience during the Mardi Gras, where everything revels in its own excess, that draws me back every year for those few days. I might come home and suffer withdrawals of such intensely great memories, but there is one thing that I do know. I got the chance to have them again.
Thank all of you for making this past one the best ever.
