20,000 Leagues into my Navel

My friend Mike emailed a couple of days ago asking me why I have yet to make additional postings.

A propos my blogging pattern: if you have been like Mike and checked back in with "Once in a Lifetime", you will have noticed that I had been inactive until today. As a "blogger" I have the potential to make myself exceptionally vulnerable. So I'm feeling a tension between the desire to keep you, dear friends, up to date on my life and the desire to cover my ass. I came this close [ ] to deleting the blog and to enjoying a sense of wonder at its fortuitously appropriate title. (NB: In this paragraph I'm expressing only a desire to err on the side of caution and don't admit to having done anything compromising.)

But ok, Mike, for you and anyone else frustrated by my circumspection, I'll test the bounds of my discretion. And, yeah, I'll fess up to doing this for myself too.

Well, how did I get here?

I'm sitting on a barstool, which along with a futon, is the only furniture in my new room in my new home in New Orleans. I now live on the corner of St. Peter and Burgundy Streets in the heart of the French Quarter. I live above "The Front Page", a gay bar owned by a couple named Tarzan and Frederick. INXS' "Devil Inside" is pulsing its way through the floor, into my foot, and up my spine. Across the street is a hotel whose history of paranormal activity has earned a stop on the "Haunted New Orleans" tours.

Well, how did I get here, indeed?