Mardi Gras day is almost anticlimactic--everything shuts down and everybody crowds the street beginning in the wee hours of the morning for the Rex and Zulu parades, which are during the day. Most watchers are either bleary-eyed revelers from the night before or chipper family members hoisting their costumed kids into boxes on the tops of ladders for better bead-catching.

I rested. I ate. I sunned. I caught beads and doubloons.

Except for a 40-year-old man dressed as Tonya Harding, there were no reminders of Boston, of the Northeast, of any-thing outside of Mardi Gras. It was hedonistic and loose.

It was sheer bliss.

But all good things must come to an end. At midnight, long after the last beads had been thrown, the bars were closed and the cops kicked everyone out of the French Quarter--an annual ritual. I packed my suitcase and headed for the airport early the next morning. Fat Tuesday was over and Ash Wednesday was upon us.

strangely enough, though, I didn't actually mind (too much) having to return to Massachusetts. For New Orleans is not a very Lenten location to be. It can manage sobriety and exhaustion, but not austerity. New Orleans is the place for celebration Boston is the place for penitence.

I waded through the snow that night to get my forehead ashes and go to section, feeling appropriately somber. My timing was good. But from the desk in my office now dangle three long sets of flat beads in purple, gold and green--the colors of Mardi Gras. Lent will pass, another year will go by and the time for revelry will come again. when it does, you'll be able to find me on St. Charles Ave.., precariously perched on someone's shoulders, smiling a big smile and holding out my hands for some beads. Mardi Gras is balm for the soul.