What arises in the minds of all living beings?

Day 21:

1. a never ending cosmos of triggering sound
2. gates to the threshold
3. cloisters of stars
4. stay long enough to part
5. stay long? loose this grasping

************************************************

Process Notes: 

Are we still at war?

What do you believe is going on?

Why poetry?

At the base of it is perfection.

Outside of trauma, one will try to affix to something that can be consistent.

The line: a perfect pitch. A metered feet of sound. A collapse of error.

The box corners, the frame of the photograph, the cutting edge of syllabic. What we adore is symmetry, what we adore is light, what we adore is the way a feeling can be contained in this form, I have the ability to capture anything and make it beautiful.

Don't believe me then try me. I know what I am and cannot be moved.

The problem with surfaced lifetimes and nothing here is enough.

I want everything like I would retrograde back before each of us exploded, i tried to use magic to slip into a life i wanted/ realized too late doubt showing, never thinking here i could offer enough to not make you love me/ but to tear down the walls of keep it all out/ what suffers the heart is potential and the inability to reach/ like i would play against the childing beast of all/ [redacted] calls all survival a type of play/ we wanted the dawn to be our guarding/ the stars themselves to narrate our destiny


inside the poem i build an island of refuge
for i want you to see me
far more than i want you to reach me

Photograph: 

Cemetery behind a chain link fence


How can one find one's mind when one looks elsewhere.

Here is what we found written in the stream:

no matter what you see here
no matter what you feel here
do not doubt
that there is nothing but love
one sound, unending
you have to want to listen


"in the Kabbalah there are names for angels that live in the intervals created by each harmonic"

"safety in the broadest sense is any sound the listener can listen to without amygdala activation"

-Sound Healing 


I spend more time with the dead than with the living. They are ever present. They are the sound in between sound, interstices where the poem lives as well. We carry the current across veils. Or to say, if you hold to this reality, I was distracted from living.

But still, I was trying to meet reality. But the truth was I was often unmoored after the storm. Habits of disappearing. Who ever knows where you are in a city. I spent too much time in unsafe places but having come from unsafe places didn't notice danger. I didn't need to flee what never scared me. I was part of a design already coded and can tell you too much of endings.

I built a space for this community before we exploded so we would recall our intimacy.

I made a space for sound so we could sing our resilience.

I broke consistent because I knew already the world was spinning.

Let me tell you, between the choice of wonder and knowns, you want to lead a life of never seeing too far forward in time.

I imagine anyway. It must be a kind of peace to not know always what is coming next.

Plague Journal: 

6.23.20

if i would have known on the that last night before the city shut down that i would never kiss you again. i would have really kissed you. i would have stayed long enough to say good bye.

but like most of my life, i thought i had all the time in the world.

and i thought you loved me too.

and what has been most consistent in my life is how wrong i am about other people.


Resource:
Survivor Stories: Family reflects on how Hurricane Katrina brought them closer together
https://www.today.com/news/survivor-stories-family-reflects-how-hurricane-katrina-brought-them-closer-t137527

What is the edge of sound?

Day 18: 

front doors standing open for blocks
the city at night divided between light and darkness
a neutral ground of garbage for miles
appliances wrapped in tape on corners
coffin flies and coffins on the tracks
cats in the square
the sound of screaming at night
quiet, a quiet deep in the bones
child bones found in the house
smell of the death
i kept dreaming till my brother died

**********************************************

Process Notes:

how the poem rhythms you like a lullaby
metaphor like a cave we dwell within
the volume of breaking
as you huddle and hide: silence
a type of shame, silence also a lesson
in naming, silence always a webbing
round which we keep

inside lies a great stack of i can, i can
i can

i can get it right

"I read the writing when he seized my throat."
-H. D.

Photograph:

Kenilworth Cinema in New Orleans East:

The Kenilworth Cinema was opened as a single screen by Ogden-Perry Theatres, Inc. on August 13, 1969. It was twinned in the mid-1970’s. Ogden-Perry divested itself of the theatre in 1982. It closed in 1991 due to problems with the roof.
Source: http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/43362


We went to see Dick Tracy with Madonna in it, smoked cigarettes hiding behind the seats.  We were 12 or 13. In 1990, if you were a girl, you wanted to be an object. That was what was held out for you. The boys were pretty, pretty hair, pretty made up faces or the boys were hard, baggy clothes and fast cars and drugs. The boys were active voice. The boys were the center of every story. A girl at the center of a story still was eclipsed, still patterned against sexual passivity, still was a thing for the eye and tongue before the ear and mind. And mind you, we wanted to be seen that way. To be made visible is far superior to being invisible. To be possessed equals a claim to a type of safe.

Sometimes what helps you survive is not what keeps you safe. No boys were harmed in this telling. Water waits and this husky dream waits, and we wait to for truth to surface.

And language matters when you are trying to convince yourself of anything, but does it really matter how you survive.

In all these books of trauma, they don't ever tell you how much you can swallow unharmed. But I believe we must be coded early on to have a bandwidth widened by disaster.



"...even under the most perfect circumstances, there would always be something imperfect that would leave you feeling not exactly good. The trick was to get used to that feeling, or risk missing what little happiness there really was."
-R. Ford


"be stark in the world in which
all that heart breaking brightness will

crack"

RBD, draft 96 

Plague Journal:
6.7.20

Love is always worth doing.



Resource:

Katrina: An Unnatural Disaster
https://www.movingwalls.org/moving-walls/14/katrina-unnatural-disaster.html

What happens once you are free?

Day 17:

disasters takes years to recover from/ that is the nature of their imprint/ you can’t cling to life/ it’s already lost/ all of this, already lost/ look there in the pooling/ once this time moves/ we move forever/ all of this passes/ there is no guarantee of life/ our practices reflect us more than god

**************************************************

Process Notes: 

there is a chaos if i so choose
-A. Notley

"Incidents of abuse are never stand alone events."
-The Body Keeps the Score

What deaths are we ready to allow into our lives now?

Post-Katrina New Orleans in 2006 was a dangerous landscape. There were very few mental health resources, people were using to cope, domestic abuse went up, suicides went up. We sat stranded from each other. A city made of blocks of debris, abandoned homes, darkness for miles, and the emptiness where once we danced.

In Mardi Gras of 2019, we followed St. Anne over the tracks to the river where traditionally New Orleanians deposit their dead. Have you walked these paths? Have you danced to music in the morning as the sun rises over the costumed medley and as you passed the tracks made a wish:

May we be well.
May we be safe.
May we be at peace.

Oh New Orleans.

I have walked at night on the eve of the New Year in a snake like pattern over bridges to clear this waking.

I have walked at dawn from the levee to the place where we pushed through the energy that bounds us to the past.

We have made such a metamorphosis of this living.

And now we ask again, can you sing us through this time of capsizing. Can you listen to this drowning and still tell me we will make it right. Right there, the shore in sight.

I will tell you to reach a place: You must never take your eyes from where you're destined.


"if you have walked outside the machine
  Who are you?"

-Notley

Photograph: 

Reflection in City Park Lagoons

City Park, a 1,300-acre (5.3 km2) public park in New Orleans, Louisiana, is the 87th largest and 20th-most-visited urban public park in the United States. City Park is approximately 50% larger than Central Park in New York City, the municipal park recognized by Americans nationwide as the archetypal urban greenspace. Although it is an urban park whose land is owned by the City of New Orleans, it is administered by the City Park Improvement Association, an arm of state government, not by the New Orleans Parks and Parkways Department. City Park is unusual in that it is a largely self-supporting public park, with most of its annual budget derived from self-generated revenue through user fees and donations. In the wake of the enormous damage inflicted upon the park due to Hurricane Katrina, the Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism began to partially subsidize the park's operations.

City Park holds the world's largest collection of mature live oak trees, some older than 600 years in age. The park was founded in 1854, making it the 48th oldest park in the country,[ and established as the "City Park" in 1891.
Source: Wikipedia


Photo by: Coleen Perilloux Landry, Sept, 2005: City Park


Plague Journal:
5.27.20

i thought it was "less life" or "missing life" but it was just a choice & there was stuff to learn here too- it's a matter of how you want to receive lessons

i feel like if i could just be still or quiet enough, i could hear something. is there something beyond expectation. that nails us to suffering. endeavoring to get it "right" when everything is already right- right before us.

he says, i make things harder than they need to be. and it's true. i needed you to speak to me in a language exact. a code i could read that i only wanted to read as safe. inside the complexity of chaos, the simple pattern of return to where we begin and to begin again. over and over. we pass through the chambers and all of the chambers are the same. it seems some days. we aren't getting anywhere. and then we arrive. and you'll know because if you are lost in your life.

it means you never made it this far before.



Resource:
Shipwrecked America:
by Alexandra Kandy Longuet | Eklektik Productions & Crescendo Media Films | France - Belgium | 52' | 2016

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina, the most violent storm in the history of the United States, ravages New Orleans. The city’s entire population is displaced.
In the land of opportunity, the disaster seems to provide an opportunity for a city’s rebirth on a fairer basis. But against all expectations and despite the Obama presidency, the Crescent City turns into a ground zero for imposing economic shock therapy, intensifying drastically the economic, social and racial inequalities that existed before.
Portrait of the city that became the US laboratory and reveals the divisions of a whole country.
https://vimeo.com/188628485

What is the weight of a vow?

Day 16:

I am telling you a story backwards.  I have already scored it, but to you it uploads linear. Time is a problem. This illusion I created just for you. If you ever doubt how loved you are, know I stopped time. I pulled it through language and image. I corded it over a decade/ and all of the time it took me/ all the hours of my life/ they are for you/ to show you/ this is the length of my love/ be not afraid/ is all art is ever saying/ i’ll be here until we are all free.




*************************************************


Process Notes: 

"Let's not fracture our music in this existence of urgency."

-A. Waldman, 2020

Every vibration awakens all others of its particular pitch.


the symbol of a code
(metaphor) replaces energy disruption
& personal attachments that halt progress
to seeing clearly

how do you know the passage of time
is exact.


tell me how long is a night
now.

our greatest dangers are our habits.


from here, the story turns on invocation, for what we make
what we create first in thought
is what assembles the world.


we made the imitation of life
more valuable than life itself.

"acute sensitiveness is always associated with genius"
-A. Crowley



Photograph:

New Orleans skyline at dusk taken from the River


You can go towards what scares you, they are your feelings after all. New Orleans. I have layered in image, symbol, metaphor and a draping. What I sacrifice is the up to this moment how I carved from self the art I thought would save me.

I let it float.

I will never go back to being who I was before this.

And this, the story of your breaking inside your breaking. I would hold it for all of us.


But I must ask for a return. Take this whole life from me, take every minute left and let the vessel be place holder for what is invulnerable.

I retire breaking this land. I retire breaking this song. I retire breaking this path to surrender. I retire the sound of fear and doubt. I retire any gods that don't dance on the charnel ground. I retire attachment to outcome. I retire any story that makes small what we carried to our shores. Between the basin and the river, canaled of outlets and water ways, I retire fear of what takes, of what erases, of what submerges, of what swallows. I retire the anger of lost hours. I retire the regret of potential.

I forgive it all, for this lifetime and seven generations. I mark into the edge between land and empty, the outskirts where energy thins under bridges, along the train tracks, the walls bounding our city: I mark the overgrowth and neglect, the art of temporary, the forgotten codes of abandon. I have run from end to end of miles between where no one listens. I have seen how what is real wavers in invisibility. I have catalogued what you would put away. I have seen the inequity of time and place. I retire belief in systems, in programs, in thought patterns of uneven priority. I retire any notion that all life is not sacred.

I forgive the cycles of birth and death. I forgive the cycles of dream and awareness. I forgive the cycles of rebirth and endless suffering.


Plague Diary: 

6.23.20

Vow:

With one eye on this world and one on the next
And a third focused on the timeless dimension
Throughout this life and all possible lifetimes
Until Enlightenment be achieved
May I inexhaustibly endeavor in the Bodhisattva way
And follow the path of unconditional compassion
And selfish altruism
So that all beings everywhere be delivered
And freed from the ravages of suffering and confusion
And reach the other shore, great peace, deathless nirvana.



Resource:
Ten Years Since Katrina: A Meditation on New Orleans by Kristina Kay Robinson
https://ibw21.org/editors-choice/ten-years-since-katrina-a-meditation-on-new-orleans/

What is the word for something emerging from nothing?

Day 15:

Practice dying till it comes as natural as inhaling. Practice that or be lost in this cycle of endless suffering for all lifetimes. Amusement is the degree to which you have tricked yourself into believing anything here holds meaning. You can no more be in New Orleans than America than in some fixed notion of your own name. You can destroy a city or kill yourself, and all of consciousness will continue to self replicate. It’s not that you don’t matter, but it is exactly that there is no “you” that exists to matter. Doubt of that truth is the dream; it’s the fabric of this bardo to deceive us. 



******************************************

Process Notes: 

1) the art of visibility
2) the art of attention
3) the art of reciprocity
4) the art of response
5) the art of truth
6) the art of protection
7) the art of travel
8) the art of disclosure
9) the art of grief
10) the art of safety
11) the art of touch
12) the art of entry
13) the art of response
14) the art of intensity
15) the art of confusion
16) the art of moments
17) the art of impulse
18) the art of time
19) the art of shared space
20) the art of devotion
21) the art of admiration
22) the art of communication
23) the art of laughter
24) the art of creating
25) the art of critique
26) the art of design
27) the art of denial
28) the art of sacrifice
29) the art of acceptance
30) the art of gratitude
31) the art of joy
32) the art of relaxation
33) the art of nature
34) the art of beauty
35) the art of the unexpected
36) the art of release
37) the art of gratification
38) the art of memory
39) the art of trust
40) the art of recall
41) the art of codes
42) the art of magnification
43) the art of energy
44) the art of doubling
45) the art of closure
46) the art of beginnings
47) the art of numbness
48) the art of awakening
49) the art of sound
50) the art of vibration
51) the art of collective
52) the art of repetition
53) the art of bodies
54) the the art of no words
55) the art of restraint
56) the art of surrender
57) the art of excess
58) the art of unconditional love
59) the art of fear
60) the art of ecstasy
61) the art of union
62) the art of across time
63) the art of underneath
64) the art of nonduality

Photograph:

Tomb in Odd Fellow's Rest cemetery in Mid-City

Lat:   29.9817°   (29° 58' 54")

Lon:   -90.1106°   (-90° 6' 38")


The Odd Fellows Rest Cemetery in New Orleans, Louisiana was founded in 1849. It includes Renaissance architecture and Exotic Revival architecture. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, and the listing included one contributing building and one contributing site.
Source: Wikipedia



the first part of every ceremony is the banishing

the second part is the invoking

rest here, i hear joy is coming....

i know how to see far enough forward into time
to build a path to resistance
when i arrived at the crossroads
it was not what i carried but who i brought with me

that i had not counted on, but all of life will torque
on unexpected, so i need you to hold grief in an open palm facing the sky
not with your hand closed turned towards the ground
clutching the fear, if you relax, you will lose it
there is nothing to lose

i promise.



Resource:
Carville Morgue:
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/15/world/americas/15iht-orleans.html

What is a container for fire?

Day 14:

You can’t abandon emptiness and emptiness cannot be abandoned.
tell me how the past is “real.”  tell me when we made the performance of our lives more important than our lives.
how has the word safe shaped your days. how has the feel of it hidden in your hide feraled the notion of happiness here.


**************************************

Process Notes: 

when i tell you i am new orleans

i mean i am the deepest secrets she keeps

darkness and shadow, shame & neglect

we do, don't we- want to know the terrible

stories we keep. all that it means to be human

we want to have some say in the bargaining 

for safe passage & i said the city sings of gratitude

for this life & that's the portal 

what do you sacrifice to walk there

they are watching to see

if you pick up the code

"survival always leaves its mark"

-M. Embree

and the angels have every right to refuse us

at some point you have to reconcile

that someone should have taken care of you

that you deserved love and attention and protection

that you needed and didn't get it

but you survived anyway--you made it anyway

and you are never going to get what you need 

in this life, that's the part that will trap you 

if you don't accept it: the poem takes all 

Photograph: 

alley between two buildings on Downman Rd. in New Orleans east

New Orleans East:
About two miles (3.2 km) later, LA 47 crosses a level bridge over Bayou Bienvenue into Orleans Parish and the city of New Orleans, which are co-extensive. The highway then crosses a high-level bridge over the much wider Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, an industrial shipping channel. Returning to grade, LA 47 becomes a controlled-access highway that also serves as the entire route of I-510. This concurrency lasts for 3.5 miles (5.6 km) and contains four closely spaced interchanges. The first is exit 2C, a stingray-shaped diamond interchange that connects with Old Gentilly Road via Almonaster Boulevard and serves the nearby NASA Michoud Assembly Facility. This is followed by exit 2A–B to US 90 (Chef Menteur Highway), a major route through New Orleans East. Continuing north, a more traditional diamond interchange at exit 1B serves Lake Forest Boulevard, and soon afterward, the abandoned Six Flags New Orleans theme park appears on the east side of the highway.

The fourth and final interchange is exit 1A, a partial cloverleaf with flyover ramps that connects to I-10. New Orleans' major east–west route, I-10 connects with the Central Business District to the southwest and the city of Slidell to the northeast. Having intersected its parent route, I-510 ends, and LA 47 continues ahead as a divided four-lane highway without control of access. The highway reaches the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain in an area known as Little Woods, located at the easternmost extent of urban development along the lake shore. Here, LA 47 turns southwest onto Hayne Boulevard, an undivided four-lane thoroughfare. For the next 4.5 miles (7.2 km), LA 47 travels through residential New Orleans East while closely following the lake levee, which is topped by a concrete floodwall. Several divided neighborhood thoroughfares, such as Bullard Avenue, Read Boulevard, and Crowder Boulevard, lead back to interchanges with I-10. Just west of Crowder Boulevard, a ramp provides access to the New Orleans Lakefront Airport and the Senator Ted Hickey Bridge across the Industrial Canal. LA 47 continues along Hayne Boulevard for another 1.3 miles (2.1 km) to an intersection with Downman Road, which parallels the industrial corridor located along the east side of the canal.

Source: Wikipedia 

Plague Journal: 

5.27.20

All of the pictures from my childhood growing up in New Orleans east were destroyed in the flood. 

"Code your language and escape."

-A. Waldman 

"Every poem should be written in all languages simultaneously."

-P. Joris 

Notes from the Channel: 

Resource:
New Orleans east recovery after Katrina:
https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/article_9906ab1b-a1e7-5eb7-8e52-824adb52d6a3.html

How many times can you tell a story before you get it right?

Day 13:

time sets an illusion running/ a ticking of hours
you suspend/ life, a thing unwinding/ we pretend
solid/ as in you could reach me/ i could return
but we ripple/ we disappear/ we go out like dust
there is nothing easier and nothing harder
than staying alive

delight has little to do with light
at all/ we try to contain in a word
what it will mean to suddenly find
you missing from the story/ we arrive
at the crossroad from a distance
only we know

**********************************

Process Notes: 

We are a plurality.

Definitions: 

Plurality, or the subjective experience of many conscious selves residing in one brain, can be difficult for some folks to understand, especially if they’re unused to the concept, or are only familiar with the medical model, in which an original person (the “host” or “core”) develops other “personalities” to cope with a traumatic event.
Source: https://www.exunoplures.org/main/articles/skeptics/

Plurality, also called “multiplicity”, is the experience of having multiple people (consciousnesses) living in the same body together.

Each person has or can have a different personality, gender/sex, sexuality, age, race, species, and often different skills, opinions, preferences, goals, and wishes. Each is their own full person, they are not “personalities” or different “moods”. They usually each have their own name, and often a name for their system or collective together (sometimes the body’s legal name).
Source: https://projectinklings.com/resources/plurality


Plurality results in response to trauma. They are the container and protective system for the vessel. Unlike different facets or aspects of a personality, a plurality is distinct in its nature and in their function and interaction in the world.

The plurality is:
Vessel (collective: Megan )
ADDICT
CHANNEL/ SERAPH
HUNTR
[redacted]
HACKER

Each communicates and uses language in its own distinct way. Their personal universe is colored by their memory and interactions in the world. They are not seeking integration, and they in no way create a lack of wholeness in the vessel. They are already integrated as a multiplicity of being within one consciousness and within subconscious aspects of the vessel. They also look different and react different to the world. All of the plurality survives under the masking of the vessel.

This masking is required to be part of "society." It's so ingrained; it's almost impossible to drop as to do so would be a drop in survival access. Triggering or activating the vessel is the only time some aspects of the plurality will emerge beyond the control of the mask.

[redacted] is a "child" though ageless. [redacted] is the most dangerous plurality as there is no concept of accountability, containment, or understanding of long term consequences of their actions. [redacted] only understands that play is survival.  [redacted] erases and this erasure of creation aligns [redacted] most closely to chaos. [redacted] has no felt sense memory. [redacted] does not have access to emotions or feelings. These things are merely language, play, words, and operate as chess pieces to be moved across a board.

[redacted] built memorial.

The process notes herein are an attempt to make sense of why.

"The ego grieves but the soul knows that death is only a ripple in the ocean of time."
-Dancing in the Flames

I need you to believe in everything.

If we are going to survive this, I need you to believe and know anything is possible. But what is most possible is that the way we perceive the universe shapes it. The way we are in the deepest parts of ourselves is the universe. The quantum reality of the microcosm is the mapping of the macrocosm, and paradox is the path to truth.

Photograph: 

World Trade Center by Spanish plaza

Canceled: Online tour of the World Trade Center renovation in New Orleans

The historic World Trade Center building at 2 Canal St. is undergoing an extensive renovation as it is converted into the Four Seasons Hotel and Private Residences by developers Carpenter & Co. and Woodward Interests. The Preservation Resource Center will host an exclusive preview of the renovation in a virtual tour open only to PRC members. Overlooking the Mississippi River at the foot of Canal Street, the striking modernist building was designed by architect Edward Durell Stone and constructed in 1968. The property sat vacant for many years after Hurricane Katrina and was nearly demolished. The tour will be conducted by Raymond Armant and Ashley King of Trapolin Peer Architects and will include remarks by Brad Converse of Cambridge 7, the project’s lead architecture firm which has partnered with Trapolin Peer, Bear Cheezem, project manager with Woodward Interests, and Gabrielle Begue of MacRostie Historic Advisors, the tax credit consultants on the project.
Source: https://prcno.org/event/online-tour-world-trade-center/


JUN 25, 2019
Man jumps off 31st floor of WTC tower

An unidentified man apparently broke into the 31st floor of the former New Orleans World Trade Center building, which is under redevelopment at the foot of Canal Street, and jumped to his death Tuesday morning, officials said.

Plague Journal:
5.25.20

alone/ we can let the filling of what we are arise to the surface/ our degradation & shame. what if i had to be with another. an always type of masking to pretend i am sane. how to explain lost days, the way we fluid at borders, a type of ferry for (for?) crossing channels. we do go out, don't we. we take the body with us as the mind makes rapid connections, move through the land mines of emotional nesting. what i want to show is that the body was productive despite all the trials. we were attuned to the making.

"as you can see no world is realer than the other"
-Notley

you have a job to do/ and suffering is anything that leads you off the path

we are here to handle time/ until we are not


Notes from the [redacted]: 




Resource:
Parallels worlds of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina: 
https://sundial.csun.edu/6001/archive/isthereacomparisonbetweenhurricanekatrina/

Is death a mirror in which the entire meaning of life is reflected?

Day 12:

m_ther is the word for g_d
c_ty be my h_art
_ngel as ad_ict


we never _scape


*******************************************

Process Notes:

I pray to God to be free of God.
-M. Eckhart


Photograph:

girl walking in floodwaters in Lakeview, Aug 5, 2017

17th Street Canal
30° 0′ 41″ N, 90° 7′ 19″ W
Stop 4 of 4 in the Levee Breaches During Katrina tour

On August 29, 2005 at about 9:45 a.m, a monolith (30-foot long section of the concrete floodwall) failed sending torrents of water into New Orleans’s Lakeview neighborhood. The water level in the Canal at the time of failure was about 5 feet lower than the top of the wall. The breach quickly expanded into a 450 foot wide gap through which storm surge water poured, killing hundreds (directly and indirectly), destroying hundreds of residences, and causing millions of dollars in property damage. Thirty-one (31) bodies were recovered from areas directly flooded.

Post-disaster studies conclude that the breach was due to steel sheet pilings driven to depths that were too shallow. Sadly, in recommending the I-walls with such short sheet pilings, the Corps had relied upon a poorly executed and misinterpreted study it had conducted near Morgan City in 1988. At a savings of $100,000,000, the Corps wrongly concluded it could short-sheet the steel pilings of the 17th Street Canal driving them to depths of not more than 17 feet instead of between 31 and 46.

In January of 2008, Federal Judge Stanwood Duval, of the US District Court for Eastern Louisiana, held the US Army Corps of Engineers responsible for defects in the design of the concrete floodwalls constructed in the levees of the 17th Street Canal; however, the agency could not be held financially liable due to sovereign immunity provided in the Flood Control Act of 1928.

Source: https://neworleanshistorical.org/items/show/275


I cannot locate the GPS coordinates inside me
where it happened.

time is a disruptive metaphor.

can you hear me. can you hear me. [it's not inside me] i am inside of it.

sing me how we make the maze. and sing me how we escape ourselves.

the incredible irony of anyone thinking they don't already live
a life masked.

we go so far out we become ghosts of/  dear heart, what we made
time with one another.

a type of afraid called living: you can tour the remnants
of how we came.

landed, what could make us come alive again. on the map .

mark with an X the prize. the breach. the damage. what is buried.
treasure this take. we orbit until we cannot. until we can break
free.


(New Orleans, City Park, 2005)

"we see the world as it truly is... infinite"
-W. Blake







"There must be someone who crouches at the corner of every constellation."
-K. Hyesoon




Plague Journal: 

5.23.20

the problem with the artist is the natural seduction with the self, an inward turn towards create and away from external amusement, which is to say it is hard to be held to others when the mind is a century of tasks to complete. or i am trying to connect to others but have to lay down the threads to return to the cave of wonder. was the outside world supposed to be as generative as the internal depths of the self. or the mazing of wander to escape these cycles. how to not be centered on the portal of endings. to move from the wound of the past to turn your attention to the actuality of the death that leaves us vulnerable to understanding, to not want to miss the awareness of stepping free of the body. to be of such calm as to breath directly into that light of drift away without fear to cloud the hallucinations of the mind as they arise in conflict to survive. i tried to capture shadow but it depends on light and your closeness to source. the direction of glass. the lens of how to turn to allow in or out. and also how you are limited to self and self's aperture. like Woodman's angel series. you are bound by what you have on hand. you have on hand enough to make the dreaming a caught net.









Francesca Woodman





Resource:
A Decade Later, New Orleans Reflects on Hurricane Katrina in New Shows
https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/hurricane-katrina-in-new-art-shows-326259

Where do you stay at?

Day 11:

How (how) fierce (fierce) do (do) you (you) have (have) to (to) be (be)
no (no) one (one) can (can) give (give) you (you) freedom (freedom)
your (your) life (life) is (is) a (a) flash (flash) of (of) lightning (lightning) in (in) the (the) sky (sky) hold (hold) on (on) to (to) that (that) and (and) be (be) free (free)

***************************


Process Notes: 

"What cannot be exchanged. The most translucent. The most clairvoyant."

-M. Buzzeo 

The dream is that sound experiences time. 

if i was a better poet
i could tell you how we ended up like this
how we survived
came to sublime grace
the luck of your life
will be to be loved well
by people who see you clearly

i had no idea how much happiness
existed here. but it is bound
to suffer. we have to let go all of it.

you let go. ready or not.
time is fast.

Photograph:

Train tracks in the Bywater near the End of the World 

29°57'29"N   90°1'44"W

The Bywater & Gentrification:

The Bywater was one of the first areas to witness gentrification. Now, it is hard to visit the neighborhood and imagine anything other than a hub of young, hip transplants, but this colorful area once was pallid.
A manager at a local store, Henry recalls that nearly two decades ago the Bywater was entirely different, "It was mostly older, black, and retired folks. A lot of families. A lot of people that had never left. A lot of people that had lived for generations in the same house or on the same block. All of the houses were white-painted white with green shutters. A lot of rundown places-and not many businesses left."
Despite how it may appear, the Bywater has not been completely glossed over yet. The local sports bar Markey's has existed in some form or another for at nearly 120 years. In 1947, it adopted the name Markey's, which has stuck until today. Many frequent the bar for food, drinks, and sports games, honoring its history and traditions, perhaps without
realizing it.
Source: https://www.whereyat.com/a-requiem-for-the-most-changed-neighborhoods-gentrification-in-nola

The Advocate reports the Housing Authority of New Orleans released a plan to combat segregation and gentrification in New Orleans, which have both become exacerbated in the 11 years since Hurricane Katrina. The plan, which HANO is submitting to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as part of a federal mandate, also includes findings on segregation and gentrification in New Orleans post-Katrina.

According to the report, neighborhoods like New Orleans East and Gentilly on lower ground that had high numbers of black residents before the storm had even higher numbers of black residents after (however, Gentilly is now increasingly a destination for young white families).

However, previously black neighborhoods on higher ground—including Bywater, parts of Treme, St. Roch, and St. Claude—"are now majority-white or moving in that direction," according to the report.
Source: https://nola.curbed.com/2016/9/6/12821038/new-orleans-gentrification-report

Over 50% of renters in New Orleans will face eviction in August, 2020: 

“A significant proportion of rental housing in New Orleans that is vulnerable to eviction is covered by the CARES Act,” Breonne DeDecker of the Jane Place Sustainable Neighborhood Initiative told The Lens. “So it’s possible that some of the reason we’re not seeing the wave of evictions yet is because landlords are waiting for the CARES Act coverage to expire.”
Source: https://thelensnola.org/2020/06/29/evictions-resume-in-new-orleans/

They did not want to rebuild us.

We rebuilt anyway. 

We built our homes. We returned and worked. We held up the tourist economy. We raised our children. We created community.

And 15 years later, they tried to take it all back again. 

"Talking about painful events doesn't necessarily establish community..."
-The Body Keeps the Score


"People who have something to hold onto can relax. People with nothing have to hold on very tight."
-Dancing in the Flames


New Orleans, 2005




Plague Journal:

5.24.20

you get to the edge and maybe you aren't alone. maybe clearer. maybe succinct. how can you believe in the facts of who you are if it's based on memory. it's not a hard line you take to pulling. such a hollow threat, to say that i'll leave this life behind. but here, a clutch of less of everything for everyone. what beauty are you attempting to overthrow. music in place of your heart. for the heart cries for what it longs for. the  missed moments of before, and we never return. what's the word for dangerous now in this world. is it the "certitude you are insane" (Notley) and how many times to turn over that surfacing. a caught net. a strapping. what you can take from the channel is that she is certainly insane. it's only beautiful in a passing way.

our lives are moonlight 

Resource:  End of the World 

https://youtu.be/WxeGC0ZzjtI

Have you ever seen what water can erase?

Day 10:

Activate Survival Instinct:

make believe and beliefs are the same, a desire for things to remain the same

do you believe you have to carry this forever?

once upon a time i was spooling out a story i’ve held threaded inside my cells for fifteen years. come closer…

*****************************************

Process Notes: 

Photograph: 

Seabrook Bridge that connects New Orleans East to New Orleans, taken through the damaged window of my brother's car

The Seabrook Bridge (officially the Senator Ted Hickey Bridge) is a medium-rise twin bascule, four-lane roadway bridge in New Orleans, Louisiana, carrying Lakeshore Drive, connecting Leon C. Simon Drive on the upper side of the bridge with Hayne Boulevard on the lower side. The bridge is operated by the Orleans Levee District. It normally stays in the down position for vehicular traffic, but provides sufficient clearance for most marine traffic.
Source: Wikipedia 

My brother was eight years younger than me. He suicided right before his 29th birthday. I doubt he had many memories of New Orleans east. I remember driving over the Seabrook bridge almost every day of my childhood. I used to dream the drawbridge would open up beneath us, and we would tumble in or sometimes the bridge was an extraordinary height and the car would have to nose dive down the other side. I can't remember in the dreams if I was leaving or returning home, or which side of New Orleans is even home anymore. Bridges connect and divide, like language, and that is why I cannot escape them. 

I've been driving my brother's car since he died. Six years now.

It has a problem with volume. It has glass that won't stay in place. The smear on the passenger side window is from when my brother got his tint too dark and then he couldn't get a brake tag. My mom helped him peel it off with a razor blade. How do you get rid of memory. How do you remove these reminders from your every day view and then walk around being what. 

I would have to confess to you that inside the disaster of Katrina was the opportunity I had to live with my mom and my brother again when we evacuated. I would have to confess, who ever gets a second chance at childhood. It must be all miracles because there is no way I can tell you what is and isn't. There is no way I can ever say what should or should not be. I know it takes a long time to see truth. It took 9 years for this to be true, and took another 3 years for it to surface. Gratitude is where grief intersects with time. Live long enough and it will all come down to what we took for granted in the moment. Take nothing for granted and it will all come down to time.

12 years from now, what will you hold from the pandemic and say, thank you   how will you break down on the bathroom floor sobbing, oh my god, oh my god what i wouldn't give to go back....

Mark me here: You do not get to return to disasters. 

"...brain wave patterns could explain why so many traumatized people have trouble learning from experience and fully engaging in their daily lives. Their brains are not organized to pay careful attention to what is going on in the present moment." 

-The Body Keeps the Score

Notes from the Fold: 

(Written in 2006 in New Orleans)

Suggested Ways of Living In New Orleans:

1. Medicate (i.e. Prozac, Zoloft, Xyprexa, Trazadone, Wellbutrin, Valium, Xanax).
2. Medicate (i.e. alcohol, weed, coke, ecstasy, mushrooms, acid, or various pill combinations crushed with a quarter and snorted with a dollar bill).
3. Sleep, or at least lie in bed with a pillow over your head. It’s okay, new polls show 1 in 3 New Orleanians cannot fall asleep. At least you’re not alone.
4. Distract, by any means necessary (see numbers 1 and 2).
5. Exercise: heavy lifting, carpentry and painting count.
6. Go about as though debris and half gutted homes were the norm.
7. Cut pictures of politicians out and throw darts or do other disgraceful things to them.
8. Take a vacation, preferably to another country.
9. Read letters from loved ones, if all your personal belongings and loved ones were lost in the storm, read your FEMA disaster recovery fact sheet, then apply for a SBA loan and the Road Home Program. This will be long and tedious, certainly keeping you distracted for some time. When finished immediately go back to steps 1 and 2.
10. Go to the hospital (see number 8) in another state where they actually have operating hospitals, just to see how the rest of the world lives.
11. Write your congressmen, your representative, your insurance company, the Corps, etc…..see step 9.
12. Rest, sit and think. Nothing’s happening fast, so there’s nothing you’re gonna miss.
13. Listen to sad music, When the levees break, Zeppelin cover.
14. Listen to happy music, Greenday and U2’s The Saints are Coming.
15. Get angry.
16. Do something nice for someone else like coming to a full stop at the intersection with no working lights or letting your neighbor borrow your utility pole for some juice for their microwave oven.
17. Eat ice cream, candy, cookies, cake, or brown sugar out of the box
18. Go to the shopping mall where you can see a miniature display of New Orleans in ruins. Never mind, scratch that one. Stay home and knit.
19. Watch TV or play video games (see number 4).
20. Cry, if this is difficult for you, just watch the evening news or pick up a copy of the latest USA today.
21. Talk on the phone if you can, about things not New Orleans related, To achieve this, stop talking to anyone from outside New Orleans.
22. Go to therapy if you can get an appointment at one of the two working hospitals or three private practice doctors left.
23. Meditate.
24. Talk to your partner.
25. Don’t talk to your partner, at all. Just be glad your partner hasn’t cut you up and left you on the stove.
26. Have sex, but under no circumstances are you to conceive and bring more people into the misery.
27. Drink tea, preferably in London.
28. Take a bath, that is if your gas has been turned on.
29. Watch a sad movie (see number 20) When the Levees Broke by Spike Lee.
30. Watch a happy movie (see number 15) The Death of a President by Newsmarket Films.
31. Lie on the floor (try the bathroom, that always seems to work) unless the bathroom still doesn’t have a floor, then try balancing across the cross beams while enjoying the underbelly view of your former home.
32. Take a drive with no destination, preferably off a long bridge.


Resource:
The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (CHNM) at George Mason University and the University of New Orleans organized the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank (HDMB) in 2005 in partnership with many national and Gulf Coast area organizations and individuals.
http://hurricanearchive.org/