Even now I remember those pictures, like pictures in a storybook one loved as a child. Radiant meadows, mountains vaporous in the trembling distance; leaves ankle-deep on a gusty autumn road; bonfires and fog in the valleys; cellos, dark window-panes, snow.

They were playing old Bob Dylan, more than perfect for narrow Village streets close to Christmas and the snow whirling down in big feathery flakes, the kind of winter where you want to be walking down a city street with your arm around a girl like on the old record cover

The last dead leaves of fall crackled underfoot, winter-crisp.

Are ye the ghosts of fallen leaves, O flakes of snow, For which, through naked trees, the winds A-mourning go?

If the snow level drops, then it's staying up there in the mountains and not coming down in the rivers and melting the snow that's already there.

I can see the snow-capped mountains, see true native Eskimos, native Indians. And everybody is just warm and open-hearted. It's like everyone is trying so hard to help you, ... But the minute I can move back, I will. I lived my life there. New Orleans is home, and I'm going back home. But by the grace of God, I made it out.