Day 4
committed/ i fold down my fiery wings & listen:
“Parts of the levee system were either topped or failed, leaving up to 80% of the city under water.” What do you do at 6:10 AM. Where were you when you heard the news. Where did you grow up. Where did you go to school. Do you think there will be a Mardi Gras. Can you locate New Orleans on a map a hundred years from now. Once there was a city now underwater. We call it home.
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Process Notes:
“the habit of photographers seeing – of looking at the world as an array of potential photographs – creates estrangement from, rather than union with, nature”
-Susan Sontag
the devotional target goal is to post each piece by 6:10AM, then meditate for 30 minutes, then do a ritual energy clearing directed towards the GPS coordinates of the area of that day coalescing in a 31 day city wide healing reciprocity to the city from my body. if i imagine this makes any difference to the world, am i a form of crazy. is it hysterical in this world to only believe in love. or how have you ever known anyone has ever loved you. or how has no one ever loved me as much as i love this city. or has this city's love created within me a strange capacity to love all things broken and abandoned. and who among us is not.
Photograph:
Picture of New Orleans east sidewalk in the rear view mirror of my brother’s car
30° 1' 56.053" N 90° 1' 0.797" W
My brother was born in New Orleans east at the same hospital where my first daughter was born; it was destroyed by Katrina. After the storm, my brother and I went to the house where we grew up and walked through the abandoned decay. The tiles were visible through the mud, and I remembered them from childhood. Now the house is occupied, and the above ground pool is gone. The tree house my dad built in the oak, gone. The fence we put up for the dogs is still there and the shed where I used to climb on the roof. When I was 13 years old, I used to watch my brother while my mom worked after my dad moved out. After he would fall asleep, I would go in the backyard and smoke one cigarette behind the shed thinking, one day, I’m going to get out of this place. one day…
“Securely attached kids learn the difference between situations they can control and situations where they need help. They learn that they can play an active role when faced with difficult situations. In contrast, children with histories of abuse and neglect learn that their terror, pleading and crying do not register with their caregiver…they’re being conditioned to give up when they face challenges later in life”
-The Body Keeps the Score
“relationships extending curiously throughout space and time… spooky action at a distance”
– Einstein
“entanglement between particles exists everywhere, all the time…”
– Michael Brooks
“Even with high intelligence there is the always the risk of becoming overwhelmed by the persistent state of expanded perception. “
- Dean Radin
listening to the radio in the days following the levee breaks, i remember the story of a mother on a roof who waited for anyone to rescue them and during the night, the baby slipped from her arms into the muddy water that surrounded them. she couldn't swim. the child lost. an island of what takes us is this city. how do you not go into the water. how do you not go into the underworld looking for your dead. how long it has taken me to understand how thin these veils are that appear to separate us and how often we are crossing. and why is there afraid. we can never be lost to one another. there is nowhere to go. these are the ways we survive the nightmares we have constructed here, the types of suffering we dreamed up to make life "matter." we imagined all of this terror and inside of this terrific image, we forgot it was only us in the cave watching our own shadow dance on the wall.
can you hear me//who can hear me// can i hear what i am saying yet// [echo]
Plague Journal:
5.21.20
inside Notley’s poem Eurynome’s Sandals- it feels like she is inside my head, writing to me, inside my thoughts & then she writes about telepathy, being in another’s thoughts and can we get so crystal clear, can we tap into the vessel of language so clearly we share one poetry making mind, or sometimes how it feels when you are in love, and you feel like the other person can hear you, can know what you need, as if you are tethered, is that a type of being open to receive do we make the future with our mutual desire. can you be in a space with someone eclipsed of your need. if you drink poison by mistake, the “mistake” won’t save your life.
“When people begin to argue about doing things instead of doing them, they become absolutely impossible”
– A. Crowley
reality exists only in accordance with what you choose to observe
i have to get to the future to finish the poem that saves me from the past
Notes from the Channel:
Resources: https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-is-a-medical-and-financial-disaster-for-blacks-in-new-orleans-11590226200
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