Wandering the streets of New Orleans, I guess they are called rues here, I am as depressed as the hurricane beaten neighborhood through which I stroll. The ornate sarcophaguses are further reminiscent of my meaningless life. Born in an up and coming neighborhood, I abandoned the cultural expectations to strive for power and greed by embarking on a spiritual journey at the age of 14. Of course my parents would never agree to such a thing, thus, I ran away to Cuba.
Che was as long dead as was the summer of love and his hopes for Caribbean communist utopia. The Cuba I found was as void of idealism as it was of the pirates of years gone by. The beautiful dark bronze bodies fought to stave off starvation rather than for Libre. I was similarly crushed in finding no Zen in the washing of dishes for 3,000 Tibetan monks. I found no Celestine road map while wondering cold and dirty over the Andean mountains of Peru.
I had however, apparently found a mosquito, one carrying malaria no less, when my excursion dipped down into banana trees before climbing up the steep path to Machu Picchu. Having collapsed within the ancient stone structures, I awoke from a coma back in Duluth, Minnesota; the home from which I had ran almost 10 years prior. Confusion reigned as darkness was eclipsed by a waking mixture of images to include my childhood room, the erotic feel of a sponge bathing my testicles, and my mother's caring face.
Mom commenced to nursing me back to health as Father began teaching me the mundane details of our family business, shipping cargo over the great lakes. With the acceptance that nirvana had eluded me, business success did not. Each of the projects dad entrusted to me succeeded astoundingly. I soon was surpassing his knowledge in the business and was pushing beyond previous barriers which had held us back. One such boundary for us was expansion beyond the great lakes. Thus, my presence in New Orleans auditing our recently purchased Mississippi River Shipping Company corporate offices.
