Mardi
Gras
“Mardi
Gras is the love of life. It is the harmonic convergence of our food,
our music, our creativity, our eccentricity, our neighborhoods, and
our joy of living. All at once.”
Chris
Rose (1 Dead in Attic: Post Katrina Stories)
I
have a confession to make—I have never been to New Orleans for
Mardi Gras. There, I've said it. Practically blasphemy for a
true-blooded Southerner to admit. Mardi Gras, New Orleans style, has
always been a spectacle of giant proportions that I could not wrap my
head around. Why on earth would perfectly healthy men and women dress
up in outrageous garbs and parade around drunk as skunks, flashing
their parts, and flinging beads and candy into the air? What is that
all about?
My
decision as an outsider is that Mardi Gras is the
Dionysus-moment in a country otherwise caught in the vice grip of
social appropriateness. For that one night, the Big Easy demonstrates
the out of control Id that hides in all of us. In Jungian terms, the
Shadow comes out to play. On Fat Tues you can be every skanky, nasty
thing you've ever secretly dreamed of being; you can eat as much as
you can stuff in, and drink until you drop. You can paint your body
red, and dance naked in the street. And you can do all that without
judgment, because the very next day, you will go back to your
ordinary life, fit yourself back into the socially appropriate box,
and go have ashes swiped on your forehead to atone.
Of
course, there are less debauched ways of letting the Id out to play,
but New Orleans does not mess around with NICE ideas. They just blow
it all out at once. Our Shadow does need to be brought into life,
however, or it wreaks havoc at inconvenient and inappropriate times.
It gets us into affairs, addictions, and other behaviors difficult to
extract ourselves from, and can be excessively destructive to an
orderly life. Think about the god Pan here—that hairy, randy,
half-man, half goat, from Greek mythology, who went about the
countryside grunting and rutting with nymphs and humans alike. He
disgusts us, and yet we all recognize that somewhere inside us
there's a Pan. He represents the robust, lusty side of our Shadow,
the part we do everything in our power to keep contained. Pan has his
day on Fat Tuesday.
Here's
the moral of this story: It's a good idea now and then to allow our Dionysian side to hold forth with party and celebration. After all, he is the god of the
joy of life. Somehow, a pancake supper at church just doesn't get to that deep and juicy place, but for some of us it has
to suffice. I hope your Fat Tuesday celebration is a joyous one with no
long-term consequences.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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