Today, for the first time in so many months I can't even remember, I sang in the shower and couldn't stop.

I cannot explain to you how I spend my days. There will never be a satisfactory description. I treat myself, primarily. That is what New Orleans has become for me. That is why I'm so afraid to leave. That is why I am so unsatisfactory to my friends and family. That is why, in some respects, I have become more selfish and uncaring. It sounds small and petty and childish, to admit how terrified I am to leave this place where I can always be self-indulgent, but this is where I have been young. I wonder how many of you have felt that young. Is young the wrong word? Perhaps youthful is a better choice. In my head I have been trying to make the connection between youth and cruelty, but it fails me. Not cruelty through malice, but through careless selfishness. Any thoughts?

Having said all this, I think that I was wrong to stay until April. As per usual, my mother was right and it would have been better to have made plans to leave for Montreal in December to start studying in January. Who said that a lady always knows when to leave a party? But who would want to leave the party?

Things that needs-be mentioned: the sky all around Tyler and me while Pete Yorn sang "there is a light that never goes out and to die by your side, what a heavenly way to die, the pleasure, the privilege is mine," painting on a moustache with eyeliner and being sent on my way approved of by Chantal and Melody, watching Dani, delicately, cat-like, licking gold off her fingertips, Justin Timberlake videos in dirty bathrooms, Table 7 at Alberta, knowing the sommelier at Stella and the magician at the burlesque show, green jello, the space between velvet curtains at Cafe Brasil, perfecting my delivery of the word 'dirty', holdng up the sports section that it may better be read and that I might be better appreciated, knowing from the vibrations in the air the difference between Trombone Shorty and Kermit Ruffins, the brooch sparkling on my shoulder, being serenaded by robots, turkeys, pilgrims, Indians, alien cats, saints and football players singing 'where the streets have no name', howling at dogs to make them stop, to be Ever Effervescent, the way you smile when I...

Oh God, help me to be pure, but not yet.