Pfister Sisters & Shayla, Laissez Faire

One of the greatest things about loving is that you can totally give your heart out to places. For a few days now, I've thought about what would have happened if I had stayed in New Orleans. For one, I would be going through the last years of an O-Visa, maybe worrying about the world I had made (or not) over there, claiming as other immigrants, US was my country too.

My roots in the US went deep, but not so much as other people have: kids, jobs, insurances, boats in the wonderful case of New Orleans. I wonder if I would be worried about people remarks in bars yet somehow, in New Orleans I always felt protected under an amazing tapestry of diversity.

Only once, I was told by someone, I didn't even speak English correctly. The few friends around kept quiet and I swear I heard a soft voice somewhere whispering to him: "You did not just go there..." There being that racist place where "this is not your nation" is also born. I left the party deeply insulted, not because he hurt my feelings, but because behind every immigrant there is a deep sorrow of not being recognized as an equal, even thought you cut your grass, pay your taxes or aid the [art] community in ways no US citizen ever did as far as you knew then.

It hurts to see what's happening. Friends in Mexico no longer wanting to go to the US, Mexicans in the US voting for Trump thinking other Mexicans don't have the right to be there, events like these seem justified to all US citizens that want to be protected against chicano, hindi, jihadist hooligans and would be totally unjustified in regards to ethical police force in other places like, let's say, Canada. Truth is there will always be two sides of the story, and both will always be justified. Yet I must stress: two sides of the story, not one, but two. And as such, negotiations must be made, otherwise, chaos will start spiraling, until one anger bursts irrevocably so, ending lives, hurting future generations, showing them, we haven't changed one bit. That our parents did the same that their grandparents did, and that we, in the end, carelessly, left it to them, unscathed.

Anyhoo. Happy Mardi Gras, y'all crazy, diverse, laissez-faire, cajun crowd I will always consider home.