Sitting here silently stripping my mind of the setbacks in my life, is just what I do to set the record straight for myself -it's so simple, I smile. I travel in my seasoned mind to the streets lined with live oaks along the streetcar line on Saint Charles Avenue and stand in the shimmering sunlight between the dancing shadows on the broken sidewalk for a while.

In the classic void of reminiscences,  I see the staggered walkways set askew by the carelessness of Time, meandering past the stately antebellum homes, guarded by hushed sentries, these whitewashed lions tinged with the chartreuse hues of age and forgetfulness.

Sentries sitting for centuries on static haunches, frozen in place by inertia, while azaleas bloom 'neath the Magnolia blossoms that fill the humid air with a perfume that beggars the reek of Forget-Me Not flowers.

If I must travel in my dreams, let them be daydreams of the fruitful past, when the uptown scene seemed complete, with moving pictures in technicolor themes; and they moved the wooden seats back, facing home.

The end of the line was a block from the muddy Mississippi, and my lover's house was too, (although further up the Old Spanish Trail.) Once I followed it all the way to the Pacific, and a different time zone alone.