[I]What does it mean to lose a world? Not just streets or neighborhoods, but an entire world, home to thousands of people, many of whom seldom ventured outside their biosphere of interconnected life contained by levees instead of glass, fragile and unique as an ocean reef built over hundreds of years. This place was home to creatures great and small, some drawn to the dark hidden spaces, some to the light, the beautiful and hideous, rich and poor, playing different roles, each necessary to the other?s survival in the subtle and mysterious way that is the hallmark of wonderfully un-intelligent design. Every link is important to the chain. What does it mean to lose a world? Where do they spend their holidays, hold their reunions, who will they visit? Where are the friends that stopped by on Sundays or the nosy neighbors who always wore thin cotton pajamas and watched their houses a little too closely? How do they deal with the loss of the familiar, the trumpet flowers they nursed back from last winter?s frost, the small porcelain teacups that measured the right amount sugar for the perfect pitcher of tea, the houses where their fathers were born that bore the wood scarred notches of their journeys to manhood. Where are the familiar, nameless faces they recognized but never knew ? the bright laughing men on the corners who sang to everyone, the women behind the counters who never laughed, the ugly brown dogs with the stubby tails who must have once had homes, they wore collars. Last Saturday before All Saints Day, a small jazz funeral procession mourning the city?s loss wound its way through the Quarter. A black, horse-drawn hearse carrying a white casket led by black musicians who keep their hope in their horns ? an entire world laid to rest in a box; such a small space for such a big memory. [/I]
