New Orleans was in full bloom when I was there last. We’d eaten at Acme Oyster, the briny mollusks cracked open by a dark man with a white scar running down his face. I didn’t ask how he got it. He didn’t tell. Afterwards, we wound through the twilight-blue streets, the weight of the moisture in the air rich with the smell of ocean, mud, trees in bloom, perfume and laughter.

In the hotel, a frantic message for my husband. He had to attend to business 1,00 miles away. Right away. Plane ticket waiting downstairs. I decided to stay. He raced to catch a plane. I wasn’t sleepy. I went back into the evening, walking aimlessly.

The French Quarter is laid out in a grid, so I didn’t need to pay attention. I could always use the Fibonacci escape. (Using the numbers in the Fibonacci sequence: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, etc., make a right turn at every number in the sequence. You walk a large spiral—gets you out of any grid-pattern neighborhood.)

Music spilled from a bar, laughter tumbling down from a second-story railing, high heels tapped to an assignation. A light breeze brought the smell of cooking grease, beignets, a sidewalk being washed with a waterspray from a hose.

I turned by a big urn of Black-Eyed-Susans and walked along a high barn-wood fence. There was an open gate. The street was dark, but at the end of a narrow walk a fountain, blood-red cannas in bloom, and a porch were bright and warm. Sassafras and spice wafted up the walk. Without another thought, I strolled toward the porch. The front door opened; an old man stepped out.
“Been waiting for you,” he said.
“I’m here now,” I replied, not frightened, interested in the game.
“You come to have your cards read,” he said reaching into the corner of a porch swing, picking up a deck of Tarot-size cards.
“Yes,” I said, figuring that he must do a lot of card readings by leaving the gate open.
“Money first, so we don’t get no distraction.” He named a reasonable price. I paid him.Over the next hour, he flipped through the homemade cards, intricate collages of words and images. They were worn but clean. He was amazingly accurate about details I carefully kept hidden; often from myself. He rambled about the ability I had to know people, of things from the recent and deep past, of a few things from the future.
Finally, he put the cards down.
“You know what you gotta do. You don’t, your heart die. Won’t be easy, but there will be a light to guide you. You won’t always want to follow it, but it’s true.”
“What light?” I asked. “You’ll find it within a year of doing the right thing,” he said, patted me on the shoulder and went inside the house, leaving me alone on the porch.
I got up and spiraled back through the French Quarter, knowing what I had to do, not wanting to do it.
My husband was back the next day, leaving a lazy day for us.
“Want your cards read?” I asked, knowing he was up for things I believed in, even if he didn’t.
“Sure,” he said.
I knew the way. We walked with determination for over an hour, but there was no urn, no flowers, no fence, no gate. I’ve been there five times since, and have never found the card reader again.
We returned home, and three months later, I went to coaching school, and within a year, quit my soul-searing day job, followed my vision to be an artist and creativity coach. The tag line for my coaching business? “Stand in your own light.”

–Quinn McDonald