The river flows on, as it always has and will.

Beneath bright blue sky a cloud like an immense dome mushrooms above the
Girod Street Potter's Field, formerly known as Cimetiere des Heretiques due
to its Protestant history. The fishing pole of Marcus Nobody Special lies
temporarily unattended, waiting. There is much to be done. The storm has
made it so. So much is changed, so much the same. The search for a certain
fish is interrupted but not ended.

In New Orleans, bodies buried in the ground come up in times of hard rain
and flooding. After the storm there is much work needs doing, but it is
cleansing work. Long-term wounds have festered, neglected for decades,
their washing now begun as there is no other way but to move forward when
so much is lost. Finally to heal, to begin again. As the waters subside, bodies
of the living and the half-living are mingled with those of the dead. Communities
near and far have banded together to search for and retrieve souls nearly lost,
those clinging to life, waiting for their turn to be recalled or sent on to reward.
The dead, new and old, will be tended to later -- buried, burned or sunk -- and
will be tended then only by family and friends, by survivors, by the ones who
knew them, who loved them, who hated them, who had forgotten them, but are
reminded. Never to forget again, not until their own dying time.

This is neither the first nor the worst of the dying times in New Orleans. Nor will
it be the last.

In this city there is a long and curious relationship with death, a closeness, a
delicate truce. They say in New Orleans death is so close that the dead are
mostly buried above ground, that the dead share altitude with the living. Death
is so close here that parades are thrown in place of funerals, parades that begin
with the solemnity of a dirge only to explode into joyous send-offs to God
knows where. Reminders of life's brevity are constant here, they are in the
waters that surround, waters filled with glowing lights of joy and dread, invisible
but there just the same. These lights are not visible for they are music; the music
not audible in the usual way for it is a touch of the soul, both human and
immortal. It's a song that begins like all melodies, with a single note. It's a song
that resolves like all melodies, with a single note. Then starting again, a circle.
And so they sing. Sing while there's time. Life is short the world over, but the
truth is more acute here and so life is lived as if endless. Here is where bad
hands are played for all they're worth. Here is where miracles come up from
mud.

Marcus Nobody Special is very old and has acquired hard-earned knowledge
of miracles and mud. He has long-known about the circle of the river, has
witnessed its truth firsthand. There is a secret he has kept. He knows that in this
place where death remains close there is no death at all, only rebirth.

The river flows on. Always, always.