Vignette #5 from New Orleans: Three Muses

Tue Jan 10 2012

Vignette #5 from New Orleans: Three Muses

 

Sitting, staring out my window as I watch people pass by, I am aware that there are greater things at work in my life than I am willing to acknowledge at times.

 

Mysteries.

 

Fate.

 

Flow.

 

I came to New Orleans when I was a teenager. I stayed one night, I can’t remember where. I was there for a seminar. I did not go outside of my hotel. At that time, I was much more sensitive than I am now. No thicker skin to protect... I picked up everything around me like a body made up of antennas. I felt the energy that makes New Orleans what it is...and truthfully, it scared me. 

 

Fast forward to two decades later, I meet a woman who lived in Nashville but was from New Orleans. We become friends. She is everything I wish I could be. Open. Full of life. No fear. Compassionate. Not a judgmental bone in her body. The very epitome of what I consider Mother energy to feel like. All loving, kind, gentle, protective. She was a beautiful soul. I say was, because she is no longer with us.

 

Over and over this friend would ask me to go to New Orleans with her and friends. Over and over was a new excuse from as to why I couldn’t. Finances. Timing. I was sick. My parents were sick. The weather. Every time, I came up with a reason to say no.

 

Then my friend passed away. This year.

 

Sometime over the summer I met a guy who I felt I hit it off with. He was also from New Orleans. I actually remember telling my friend about him over a pitcher of margaritas...just in passing conversation that I had met a man from Nola...and thought he was really cool. I remember her joking with me asking me for his name because she teasingly said she would find out anything I wanted to know about him. I didn’t have a last name. That made her laugh even more.

 

Enter into the picture, my writing partner. A man I am contracted to write a screenplay with. He is in love with New Orleans like she is his soulmate. He is not from this country, but is captivated by her.

 

In October, I started planning a trip to California for my writing partner and I to finish up the screenplay and to have meetings concerning it. My writing partner suggest we go to New Orleans instead. At first, I didn’t want to do that. I wanted California. I fought for California. But with his persuasion and the thought of going, finally, to the city my dear friend tried over and over to get me to...and the thought of maybe, the man with whom I only had a first name, maybe getting to grab a coffee with him and catch up...well, those persuasions had me relinquishing my protest for California over Nola.

 

Trip planned, my writing partner and I arrive. The first night we are there we walk down Frenchmen. Music and food and laughter coming from doorways as we pass...all the sudden I hear the sounds of a banjo...maybe washboard? Magically, something makes me leave my writing partner standing there as I walk into the doorway the music is wafting from.

 

I stand in trance in the doorway. My writing partner walks in and stands next to me. In a daze I listen for a few minutes...finally come to ...and walk out. My writing partner makes the comment that if I had not walked in there...he was going to...and how odd that we were both drawn in almost at the same time...considering we had not gone into any other place on Frenchmen.

 

The next day, I have a dinner planned with Mr. First Name Only. He meets me down at the Bombay Club for a drink first and tells of how there is this new place he wants to try...his friends have told him about it...he asks if that would be ok. Of course...I say, yes.

 

We hop in a cab and he tells the driver to go to Frenchmen.

 

Driver drops us past where he wanted to go...we get out and begin to walk to where he thinks this place is. He stops at the door of the place I had been so drawn to the night before. He motions for me to walk in...I am a bit stunned. Out of all the places in New Orleans...

 

We go to the only table that is available and sit. There are no waitresses, so he goes to the bar to order our food and drinks. As he does, I text my writing partner something along the lines of “ You won’t believe it...he took me to Three Muses...the place we were both so drawn to last night.”

 

My writing partner immediately texts back and says, “YOU”RE not going to believe it. I just walked down there and had dinner about an hour ago. What table are you sitting at?”

 

I reply, “ One in the center of the room, up against a pole.”

 

He replies, “ Amy, I am stunned. I just sat at that very table and had dinner.” 

 

Well...I was the one stunned. Even more so to find out I was sitting in the very chair my writing partner had just been sitting at an hour before. I was stunned at the fact that the night before, I am in a trance-like state drawn into this space...and so is my writing partner...only to have the guy I am meeting again choose this very place to take me for dinner.

 

The next day my writing partner and I sat trying to wrap our heads around what that possibly could have meant. It just was too much to be dismissed as coincidence. It was magic...it was being led by something that connected all three of us. 

 

That night I received a brilliant idea for a new book to write. An idea I never would have gotten had it not been for New Orleans, for the man I met again, for my dear friend I had lost who was a huge reason why I even found myself in the city again.

This trip, I found my sublet I had rented and dropped off my things. I immediately started walking around to find a place to eat. Lo and behold I find my self standing below that sign again...Three Muses. This time I sat outside, not inside. As the musicians played and I enjoyed a glass of wine, I thought about how much had transpired, how much I had learned since just a couple months before...being at this very spot for the first time. Amazing how much can happen in such a short period...

 

"Three Muses" helped me to get to a place where I feel I divinely received direction for my life. 

 

Three Muses. My dear friend, my writing partner, and the man whom I had only known by his first name. 

 

Life is so much more beautiful when you believe and allow magic. Sometimes when you just go with the flow, you get new direction. When you don't dissect or think to deeply into it...just go with it. You get a new idea, you find something you never even knew you had lost, you receive inspiration to make changes or allow something a little different from what you are used to. 

You can call it whatever you call it...fate...source...God...inspiration...even coincidence. Nothing you call it will ever change the fact that it happens in life...and the more you acknowledge it to be so, the more you experience it.

Three Muses. Literally. 

Oh...and the actual Three Muses in Nola...you don't want to miss it. Great food...great music. Magic.

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