The Mardi Gras Jitters

The other night I had a dream that combined the spirit of Mardi Gras with the fitful mood of hurricane time. I was holed up in what seemed like turn-of-the-century immigrant tenement housing, and a family-owned business, a pork store or something--with the cast of the Sopranos. I was myself but also fulfilled Meadow's role in the family--the daughter. The building had two stories, with some kind of balcony overlooking neutral ground that resembles the one on Orleans Avenue in Mid-City, though in the dream we were supposedly located on Esplanade Avenue. There was a storm coming, but everyone's behavior was a weird hybrid of excited carnival-goers and citizens wary of a hurricane. For example, everybody was riding out the storm. They had set up couches and beds and dining room tables on the neutral ground, sort of in the same fashion folks do to wait for Endymion. Some of the family would sleep out on the neutral ground. But throughout the dream, we were very afraid, and made sure we were always together. I always would turn to "Christopher Moltisanti," my cousin, to make sure the door was properly bolted. We had a couple dogs that would escape every now and then and I'd have to chase them down. But we were also afraid of people coming for us--looters, in a way. There was a lot of waiting around ;we'd sit on the balcony and look out over the avenue, waiting for something. There was also a junkie alligator hanging around the corner, shooting up. At one point Christopher stole his stash, but said he wouldn't use it, because what with its former user being an animal, he might catch worms. And there were ghosts of characters who'd died on the show, acting like living people, because they were still alive to certain members, something told me.

I don't see the dream as foreboding, so much as just an anxiety dream. But it's interesting the way my mind fused all these elements of New Orleans together--the nervous anticipation of the chaos of carnival with the fear of the unpredictability of a hurricane; wild creatures loose, personified to be no different from crazy, unhinged humans; and the trapped feeling of a family living in the slums, with no option but to stick together. New Orleans, beneath all its levity, will always have the underlying potential for nightmare scenarios.