I need a place to have a nice, quiet nervous breakdown: UPDATED

[nolabear]

38. BWAH! A funny aside...

Hey, if it works...

A funny aside, I have a friend who went to Jazz Fest this past weekend, knowing I was insanely jealous. He asked if he could bring me anything from back home. I jokingly said (son hadn't gotten sick at this point) that I wanted a voodoo candle because I'm working on a short story about a woman whose spells skip around and I figured it would inspire. You might not know but Jazz Fest was damn near rained out, wild thunderstorms. He sort of randomly picked out a candle for me in a shop he went into to escape from the storms, based on the fact that he thought it was pretty. It was "Santa Barbara Africana," a virgin saint whose story sounded a lot like Rapunzel. But I know my voodoun, and that the picture didn't match the story, so I looked up who it really was. (Voodoo hid a lot of their practices behind Catholicism) It's really Mama Erzulie Danto, who is a fierce lwa, known as a wild woman who's deeply protective of her children. You know she's there by the presence of thunderstorms, and she casts her curses by...yep...throwing up blood.

I'm not a believer but I appreciate a good story, and maybe I feel a leeeeetle better thinking Mama Erzulie Danto is around.