Who dares sing for me?

Day 31:

This is where I was born, under waters, blind and lost of any mapping. Dropped into consciousness from pure chaos and trying to return, we should have forgotten more but we retained too much to be here safely. Like I told you on Mardi Gras day as we walked these streets so deeply in love: I am New Orleans. I have always been here and will always be here. And that is to say: I am Nothing. I am No Thing and always will be.

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

Process Notes: 

my bandwidth for survival is not accident. i practice it every day. if you ever really want to know what love is, i will tell you: it's a consistent interaction in time.

love isn't an emotion.

what can we do with neglect/ it took them 5 days to even begin to come for us

weeks of nothing but helicopters pointing guns on people trapped by water.

"what we believe is law and order is an illusion, a mirage/ law and order is what happens when people live right"   -D. Shortes

if we know our paths before hand, we will always try to change them. but we cannot. the paradox is we are always here and we always experiencing here as new.

what is more beautiful than death?

fear transforms into compassion. pulled up over time's fold, we fifteen years out, held our breath against return. and what arises is sea changed.

having swerved from and now to walk these same streets holding out to those who have lost as we lost, we say, here take everything i have to give.

because your survival is my survival.

have you seen this too? have you felt it in your lifetime: fear will be transformed into compassion.

the heart will shatter and then it will be able to hold this too.

i sat for 31 days in the clearing of this city. i have held you all of this time.

and what of it.

tell me the song you would dare to sing now.


Plague Journal:

8.29.2020

no one can survive multiple lifetimes. you would have to build a container to hold them to remain sane. to be able to function.

they want the rat in the maze not solving the maze. not rats escaping, mind you. 

a plurality is a net. [within a net.]  

                                     a network. 

do you know what a web is, a webbing. a browser. 

it's a place where the more you interact with it, the more you are caught in the net. 

and life is imitation. this illusion is a network. the more we interact with life from our emotions thinking they are a kind of truth, the more we are caught.

What is more beautiful than death? 

What does [redacted] want...

clear channel to a hacker.

it's not a computer code. it's a mantra. hacking into reality.

you can call it a poem.

we are tracking reality

from no beginning to no end.

we are a purging.

we are plurality.

we have always been here.

we will always be here.

there is no time without us. there is only chaos.

Poetry is the virus in the programming. 

[RUN PROGRAM]


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

[clearing]
from 31 points on the city's map: 
may we be safe, may we be well, may we be at peace. 

for all lifetimes. until we are free. 

What left is there to say?

Day 28: 

What we call “our lives” is a glamour thrown up to keep us from reaching them. We put so much stock in feelings that hold no meaning at all. Sadness, loneliness, anger, despair, happiness, hope: These are the great fictions you torque upon, which is as useful as building a city on a swamp. None it can hold because you can only distort the truth for so long. It is in your nature to fight for them as it was in our nature to build in a place that cannot survive. Do you see how we replicate loss, how all of it is a temporary disbelief in the reality that none of this will hold. 

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

TIME

Sunday, August 28, 2005

Just after midnight, at 12:40 AM CDT (0540 UTC), Hurricane Katrina reached Category 4 intensity with 145 mph (233 km/h) winds. By 7:00 AM CDT (1200 UTC), it was a Category 5 storm, with maximum sustained winds of 175 mph (282 km/h), gusts up to 190 mph (310 km/h) and a central pressure of 902 mbar.

In a press conference at roughly 10:00 AM CDT (1500 UTC), Nagin declared that "a mandatory evacuation order is hereby called for all of the parish of Orleans." "We're facing the storm most of us have feared," he told the early-morning news conference, with the governor at his side. Following Nagin's speech, Governor Blanco stated that President Bush called her "just before" the press conference and said that he was "concerned about the [storm’s] impact" and asked her "to please ensure that there would be a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans."[8] Katrina was expected to make landfall overnight.[9] Shortly after the meeting, at 10:00 AM CDT (1500 UTC), the National Weather Service issued a bulletin predicting "devastating" damage.

At 12:00 PM CDT (1700 UTC), the Louisiana Superdome was opened as a, "refuge of last resort," for those residents that were unable to obtain safe transport out of the city. 20,000 people entered the Dome. The Louisiana National Guard had delivered three truckloads of water and seven truckloads of MRE's to the Superdome, enough to supply 15,000 people for three days. 4444 Army National Guard and 932 Air National Guard are deployed (5,376 total).

President Bush declared a state of emergency in Alabama and Mississippi, and a major disaster in Florida, under the authority of the Stafford Act.

Photograph: 

Katrina Memorial

There is a blank space where a name should be, an erasure of what is does not make it not true. You know this. A lack of memory, an unknowing, a forgetting, a not believing... none of these change reality. 

You think there is something to fight for, and that is the problem. Time is a problem. 

This is always happening. This is the story of your life. There is no other story. Each detail is exact. 

It is always Saturday, August 28th, 2005. And the storm is coming. And there is no deviating from this path. 

It is exactly the moment you are in now, and there is no deviating from this path. 

Tell me when you began to believe that this illusion was "live." 

Time appears linear because you are on a small arc on an endless circle. It's so small it appears flat with a beginning, a middle and an end, like a story. A past, a present, and a future. 

But none of these things exist. 

I need you to believe in everything. 

If not, we will be here until you do. 

In order to change the past, we need to change the future by unhooking from all we thought we knew before. 

It only takes one line of code to change the whole program. 

You only have to locate one line of code. 

Plague Journal: 

8.26.2020

We are a species conscious enough to know our planet is dying. 

What that has done to us on an emotional level is create a massive amount of fear and aggression, an animalistic response to threat. 

We are not going to survive and we understand this at a fundamental level. We were given all we needed here, and we failed. 

And no amount of blood in the street is going to change that fact. 

We can kill each other first or we can wait till the planet dies. But either way, this cycle ends. 

The universe cares not one bit how we are recycled into further energies. It is only us who thinks being human is so precious that somehow we were invincible. 

In all future timelines, the story of humanity is a cautionary tale. When we hear it... 

Resource: 

What did we learn from Katrina: 

https://politicsofpoverty.oxfamamerica.org/what-did-we-learn-from-katrina/

What believes in the dream of the body?

Day 27:

There were a number of hours between landfall and news of the levees breaking where most of New Orleans sighed into the belief of having weathered the storm: What do you call false time.  What is the language of suspension we travelled among in conversation as we moved from relief to terror into the dark nights of surreal undone, to say erased of all that we knew is the minute. To say you can never go home again is so much more than a series of words strung together.


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


Process Notes: 

TIME

Saturday, August 27, 2005

By 5:00 AM EDT, Hurricane Katrina reached Category 3 intensity.

At 10:00 AM EDT, officials in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana, St. Tammany Parish, and Plaquemines Parish ordered a mandatory evacuation of all of their residents. Jefferson Parish and St. Bernard Parish ordered voluntary evacuations, recommending that all residents evacuate, particularly those living in lower areas. Jefferson Parish officials did declare a mandatory evacuation for the coastal areas of Grand Isle, Crown Point, Lafitte, and Barataria. Tolls were suspended on the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway as well as the Crescent City Connection, to speed up the evacuation process.

At 5:00 PM EDT, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin announced a state of emergency and a called for a voluntary evacuation. He added that he would stick with the state's evacuation plan and not order a mandatory evacuation until 30 hours before the expected landfall. This would allow those residents in low-lying surrounding parishes to leave first and avoid gridlocked escape routes. However, he did recommend that residents of low-lying areas of the city, such as Algiers and the 9th Ward, get a head start. Nagin said the city would open the Superdome as a shelter of last resort for evacuees with special needs. He advised anyone planning to stay there to bring their own food, drinks and other comforts such as folding chairs. "No weapons, no large items, and bring small quantities of food for three or four days, to be safe," he said. The Louisiana National Guard had delivered three truckloads of water and seven truckloads of MRE's to the Superdome, enough to supply 15,000 people for three days.


Map of Louisiana parishes eligible for assistance.
Governor Blanco sends a letter to President George W. Bush asking him to declare a major disaster for the State of Louisiana, in order to release federal financial assistance.

In response to Governor Blanco's request, President Bush declared a federal state of emergency in Louisiana under the authority of the Stafford Act, which provided a, "means of assistance by the Federal Government to State and local governments in carrying out their responsibilities to alleviate the suffering and damage which result from such disasters,..."

The emergency declaration provided for federal assistance and funding, as well as assigned, by law, the responsibility for coordinating relief efforts with those government bodies and relief agencies which agree to operate under his advice or direction, to the FEMA federal coordinating officer (FCO). It also provided for military assets and personnel to be deployed in relief and support operations, although the Posse Comitatus Act imposes strict limitations on the use of Active Duty soldiers in law enforcement. 1701 Army National Guard and 932 Air National Guard are deployed (2633 total).


That night, National Hurricane Center director Max Mayfield briefed President Bush, Governor Blanco, Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi, and Mayor Nagin on the status of Hurricane Katrina.




create just enough space to be final

make  a poem or make a picture
a oncing/ a volatile/ a continuum
vacuum/ blackhole/ suspended   variance    a tribe

what's the dream design to a bridging

can you echo in a no chamber vat
of collusion

i wish there was a better way to be lovely
i wish there was such a thing as a star anymore
and not just layered arts of extinction


Photograph:

Canal Outlets in New Orleans East

When we were kids, we played in the canal outlets, under the bridge overpasses along Morrison Rd. We rode our bikes unsupervised around neighborhoods, no cell phones. No social media. You could lay under the bridges to cool off and find odd stuff, discarded. You could peek over the railing and sometimes, we would pretend to be dead laying on the side of the bridge to see if anyone stopped.

They didn't.

Maybe we weren't good at playing dead because we didn't really know much of death.

"A human being is part of a whole, called by us 'universe,' a part limited in time and space."
-Einstein

Plague Journal:
8.9.20

The only commitment you can really honor in this life is to yourself. Love happens in the freedom to let others be all they are, without judgment, expectation or attachment.

Making a commitment to another is really an illusion.

The dissociative aspects of our culture are revealing an inability to deal with reality. And its deepest root lies in an inability to face death, suffering and mortality: Our aversion as toxic as our attachments.



Resource:
http://www.louisianaweekly.com/hurricane-katrina-then-and-now/

Would I tell you to stay?

Day 26:

A city is barricaded mansions with armed guards where caviar is flown in and champagne pours and still, bodies pool by the dark, hot doorways of the convention center waiting for water to be dropped that does not arrive while arranging the cloth over the corpse. Yes. A city can hold everything.

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

Process Notes: 

TIME

Friday, August 26, 2005

At 1:00 AM EDT, maximum sustained winds had decreased to 70 mph (110 km/h) and Katrina was downgraded to a tropical storm. At 5:00 AM EDT, the eye of Hurricane Katrina was located just offshore of southwestern Florida over the Gulf of Mexico about 50 miles (80 km) north-northeast of Key West, Florida. Maximum sustained winds had again increased to 75 mph (121 km/h) and Katrina was upgraded again to a Category 1 hurricane.

At 5:00 PM EDT, the National Hurricane Center officially shifts the possible track of Katrina from the Florida Panhandle to the Mississippi/Alabama coast.[8] Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco declared a state of emergency for the state of Louisiana.[2] The declaration included activation of the state of Louisiana's emergency response and recovery program under the command of the director of the state office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness to supply emergency support services. Following the declaration of a state of emergency, federal troops were deployed to Louisiana to coordinate the planning of operations with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).[3] 922 Army National Guard and 8 Air National Guard are deployed. By 4:00 PM EDT, Katrina was upgraded to a Category 2 storm. Buras-Triumph, Louisiana, 66 miles (106 km) southeast of New Orleans. 

Photograph: 

What does it feel like to be in your body in the failure of a city?

What if fear is a type of memory.

What if what we fear is not what we think may happen, but memory of the repetition of our lives, the way we never escape time, but rotate around one lifetime, an infinity.

Tell me how you got here. Tell me if you remember clearly memory or is it like a story planted in your head. A telling. A series of photographs. What makes it real? evidence. Other faulty story tellers. Experience. What is ephemeral and cannot be held.

What if fear is simply the felt sense of what we have already tread.

To say I have already survived all of this, and so I refuse to entertain fear any more than I entertain memory.


Plague Journal
8.17.2020

as if you could ever know what a river is and separate from any part of you, it did not matter where we walked or walked away from, this catalogue of collected thoughts, the way weather has a way of turning

you can't really predict what you can't imagine anyway.

tangle destiny or entangle narrative. we tribed from source, all of us collecting, in the making of song.

"Truth and meaning are context bound"
-Derrida

"If I do not exchange my happiness
For the suffering of others
I shall not attain the state of Buddhahood
And even in samsara, I shall have no real joy.

-Shantideva


Resource:
Buddha, Ananda, & Katrina
https://www.mindfulnessbell.org/archive/2015/04/buddha-ananda-katrina

What are the limits of a city?

Day 25


shush. hushabye. sigh. shhhhhhhh. ssssssss(blinks)leepy. fais do do. (do) you dream. do. do. hi(ssssss) s(lither)s. you do(dream) don’t you. so long/ so (long) / the poem is a ritual of public and private performance / to see these words & images is to take part in the reciprocity of what i offer/ i am offering to hold it with you/ i am offering never abandon/ my love

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

Process Notes: 

TIME

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Katrina strengthened to a Category 1 hurricane. Two hours later, Katrina made landfall on Keating Beach, just two miles south of the Fort Lauderdale international airport. Winds were 85 mph (137 km/h) and pressure was 989 mbar. During its passage, the eye of the hurricane moved directly over the office of the National Hurricane Center, which reported a wind gust of 87 mph (140 km/h). The strongest sustained winds in Florida was a report of 72 mph (116 km/h) on the roof of the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science in Virginia Key. The same station recorded a gust of 94 mph (151 km/h). Unofficially, wind gusts reached 97 mph (156 km/h) at Homestead General Aviation Airport.

Katrina lasted six hours on land over the water-laden Everglades, weakening to a tropical storm before reaching the Gulf of Mexico just north of Cape Sable. 

"the level of consciousness of one person holding the concentration for the group can change the entire room" 

-Dancing in the Flames

"if you are sad or depressed, you cannot influence reality"

-Dalai Lama

Photograph: 

Mississippi River from Arabi Levee, New Orleans Skyline in Background


-for we are the angel who treads on despair

"There is only a little grid. There is no exit."
-Plath

the strange reasons of ordinary objects

and the spring board of words

skin sprung to simple still life 

I bought a camera four months into the pandemic and taught myself how to shoot pictures. Mostly, I took pictures of graffiti because there was an abundance and it took me all over the city. And mostly, I could be alone and left alone. And maybe I thought too, I feel safer now in places where I could die and no one would even know for days.

I spent a lot of time by tracks watching the trains go by.

After Katrina, I thought I never want to have to leave my city again. I would have a panic attack any time I had to fly out of the city. The last place I flew to before lockdown, I had to ask a friend to drive me to the airport because I couldn't leave the house.

Now there are so many days I can't leave the house.

and New Orleans: I think, I can't leave even if I wanted to. If I wanted anything. I forget what it feels like now to want anything.

I am watching it all go by like those cars on the tracks.

I think less about traveling and more about the way the world crushes you under its wheels.

"there is nothing social about traumatic memory"
-The Body Keeps the Score 


Plague Journal:
8.17.20

i wanted to swerve the project. halfway thru to let it speak of joy and hope and resilience. i wanted to steer the poem even knowing i cannot.

i thought if i changed the inside of me, language would change. the shape of words, the thoughts, the ideas. the whole channel wiped clean enough. and to pass, a fluid calling.

i've spent so much time in neglected places. forgotten parts of this city. the parts no one sees. an invisible.

do you know what happens to a place not seen? to a thing made invisible by neglect.

it ceases to be solid. it accrues what is damaged. it is not well. these pockets of the city are not barren, but collect like a corner with its dust and debris. collected of loss and sadness and despair.

i would tread there. in the space of familiar. we can forget anything. if we try hard enough. the solidity of the self and the solidity of a city comes down to perception and belief. and if no one is looking. if no one sees it anymore.

a city becomes thin at the edges. and what enters in the thinness. if not protected at the borders.

what enters in our thinness. what passes where the crossroad has been abandoned.

TRIGGER WARNING
THIS VIDEO SHOWS  FLOODING AND PEOPLE TRAPPED IN THEIR HOMES
IT SHOWS LIVE FOOTAGE OF THE NEGLECT 

Resource: 

HOPELESS
https://youtu.be/GzVvGut-qrc

What do you see?

Day 24
Prayer: our city who art/ our city who art/ our city who art/ tell me everything you know about forgiveness

i (carry) your (name) in (my) mouth/ do (you) trouble/ a (city) is (its) people/ you’d do (well) to (remember) that/ a (city) rises and falls (on) the desire/ we (bring) to (survive) it

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

Process Notes: 

TIME

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

 - strengthened into Tropical Storm Katrina



in the deepest cracks of your heart
what you seek is older than love


some beings map dreams, map a city
a card catalogue of spray painted sanity
we talked about how you we make it
where no one else makes beauty
find us there

mapper of dark places, locked by sound
i was made not afraid
designed close enough to call back
time is short&idon'twantorepeathesecycles
once upon a time, you get lost, megan
i downloaded too fast and burnt edge
made space and plummeted
falling so fast, you burn up before you land

anyone who tells you they want to be loved unconditionally
is a liar, we crave the border of love, the special costs
the choosing, if all you offer is without condition
to anyone, i promise, you will travel alone



"complex entanglement simply becomes no entanglement"



Photograph: 

OPEN YOUR EYES graffiti by READ on the Naval Base behind the End of the World Labyrinth


It's hard not to compare disasters, to mine for lack and less and where we stand now.

Like we had poetry readings, we had dinners, we had dancing and second lines; we had touch and comfort and community. We fought to rebuild. Others came to support us. We were both hated and cherished. And there was hope, an arc of ending and moving toward recovery.

And now, it's just endless days of slowly losing more of ourselves, more of all we worked for and built, more of less and less. No touch. No memories. No sounds shared. No support. No one is coming.

No reflection catches this: The silent ways we break apart alone.

What time does to us here. And where was love in all of this.

Self-transcendence means the universe is capable of going beyond what it has been before.

I felt us changed. Time folded and we rode out on fear. But would you give it to me.

The future maps the past. Time is never moving forward. It's turning.

Back to the beginning. What if there was no suffer but only opportunities to slip this net of desire constructed to hold us down to this story's old ways of unfolding.

What have you got to lose at this point by believing in everything?

That's where we are headed. Grief so deep; you let go the hold on thinking there is a limit to what you can think. A limit to what you can feel. A limit to what we can imagine. As if the only war hasn't always been that war...


Plague Journal:

6.17.20

i don't think you can be good at anything in a cruel world. i wish i still believed that poetry or art or anything really made a difference.



Resource:

Destroy This Memory
https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2010/08/17/129251257/misrach

What is empty space in a photograph?

Day 23

We’ve been here for 5 months. No, 15 years. (time is a problem) Love is the absence of any of us in the frame. Every day I wanted to reach for you, I had to ask if your rejection would touch me. And it is not until I understand that there is nothing to reject that I can ever reach for anything again. Fear will not serve you. 

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

Process Notes: 

from here on out, none of this is easy. from here on out, we are wading in the water...

TIME 

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

What would eventually become Katrina started as Tropical Depression Twelve which formed over the Bahamas at 5:00 p.m. EDT (2100 UTC) on August 23, 2005, partially from the remains of Tropical Depression Ten, which had dissipated due to the effects of a nearby upper trough. While the normal standards for numbering tropical depressions in the Atlantic indicate that the old name/number is retained when a depression dissipates and regenerates, satellite data indicated that the surface circulation from tropical depression ten had separated from the mid level low and dissipated as it moved ashore in Cuba. A second tropical wave combined with mid-level remnants of Tropical Depression Ten north of Puerto Rico to form a new, more dynamic system, which was then designated as Tropical Depression Twelve. Simultaneously, the trough in the upper troposphere weakened, causing wind shear in the area to relax, thereby allowing the new tropical depression to develop.

In a later re-analysis, it was determined that the low-level circulation Ten had completely detached and dissipated, with only the remnant mid-level circulation moving on and merging with the aforementioned second tropical wave. As a result, the criteria for keeping the same name and identity were not met.

Photograph: 

Train tunnel near the End of the World


before katrina, we would write exquisite corpses at 17 poets! and put them in an empty wine bottle. after the reading, we would head over to the river and toss them in.

we were so young, and new orleans seemed like it would last forever then.

we had no idea how numbered our days were. no idea a city could disappear. no idea we could lose almost 1900 beings in a matter of days. no idea some of us would never return. no idea some of us would and still not survive.

all deaths were not by drowning. some deaths were slow to surface; it would take months or years for the dying to complete.

we are circling back to that time again. there is disaster and there is the fall out from disaster.

and we must cross all the chambers in order. and we must cross all channels to reach the shore.
and we must move through time in the fashion with which we perceive it.


Plague Journal: 
8.7.20

when memory is danger/ kali keep us safe

Resource: 

Long Night Moon 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9s5Ms3dWCB8

Do you feel love or do you think love?

Day 22

All photographers are liars. They want to convince you the young beauty is not a corpse, the sunset not a dying star, the bloom not already wilted, and yet the poem could be called a lie except sound undoes us, its vibration cannot be held to untruth the way a framing can be said to manipulate time, to capture, to hold still. A photograph is what we wish memory could be. No shutter fast enough to catch the nothing of light: A city can disappear, a country, a whole universe in a whisper. All we catch here is for release. Do you understand what we fish for with the hook of compassion.


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


Process Notes:

minute variations in any system when amplified lead to chaos-


I'm sorry but I can't let you go now.

If you've come this far, I am coding a new program. It's already happening.

I'm sorry but there is a way that seeing is belief, a way that the word transforms grief, the way I have put my body between you and the world, the way I have used this as reflection, as reciprocity.

There was never a poem.

There was only the spell of design to code a ritual to survive.

Just stick with me anyhow...

I don't know why it is true, but it is true.

I can shift the lines. Proximity is not in space and time, proximity to me is chaos and chaos is a choosing, so if you have chosen to arrive here. Well, there is not the choosing of you as much as the choosing I have done to get us here. And here we arrive, a wonder and a tasking.

I don't know the ending yet, but I know we have shaped time and distance across a city.

I have already seen it die and I have seen it come alive again. This is happening as we speak. This death is inside us, happening even now.

The question was never what will you do with your one wild and precious life, the question is always:

What will you do with your one wild and precious dying.


Photograph:

The Mississippi River and the other shore

"technostrategic language"

is language that attempts to reduce horror to digestible bits, often used in war

instead of "millions of dead" the words "collateral damage"

instead of humans, "targets"

instead of the lives now suffering, we have been reduced to "economic incentive"
to" stimulus relief," to "suffering economy"

even as we know: there is no economy that is suffering

[We're alone in the cave. 

Hold on to that. It's just us and the shadows on the wall.]

i see you invincible
i see you invulnerable
i am the poet and you can never turn my gaze
i will spell disaster
and worded, watch me unclock inside
the dark energy that holds us all
threaded and over lifetimes, if you come
i am calling      i abandon any connection to one
as we travel in plurality
unhook me                        un - hook - me

unhook your tongue


Plague Journal: 
8.3.20

if we cannot tolerate another's suffering, we suffer

do you recall how you ever begin loving anything?

the way water hugs the land, a touching

"For Kali is said to be mad..."
-D. Kingsly

no one is coming. sanity is what i am containing. no one is coming. 15 years of containment and no more.


Resource: 
Hurricane Katrina poem - Walidah Imarisha
https://youtu.be/DJgpkalWSKE

What is the sacrifice?

Day 20

the magical act of the poem/ is you thinking we are getting somewhere/ with language/ when there is nowhere to go/ there is nothing but emptiness

strange always was our time among each other/ the strange lights we are /or how we hide from one another

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


Process Notes: 

inside [redacted]
there is a story, all the way down
we know best stories we build here
in one lifetime, mine the story
it has everything you need, and the stories
interlock, so you have to know the story of where
you came from in order to read the code
you have to access generationally a coding
complete inside you and where it lacks, you
are searching for a matching in code
to translate back to you what is forgot
for there is no separation of family to other
we are all traveling the same paths
on different time lines

time is a problem


maybe we fear love

because it makes us invincible.


Photograph: 

Live Oak near Canal Outlet on Robert E. Lee Blvd.

"The first existence of the universe was brought into being by hearing and its last will be brought to an end by God through hearing." -Adonis

In Buddhism according to the The Tibetan Book of the Dead, which in the original Tibetan was named: The Great Liberation by Hearing in the Intermediate States, at death the dying person will be presented with hallucinations of sights and sounds as the body's senses deplete and withdraw. These images of the Buddhas, both wrathful and beneficent, are said to be "projections" of the original Buddha nature of our being. Not truly projections as they are us. They are the reality of what we are that we forget in the samsara of illusion which is our reality. The book is called Liberation by Hearing as the text is to be read to the dying being to remind them not to panic during death but to recall their teachings and to understand what is happening to them.

It's a shame we don't value life in this culture so much that we would prepare not only our own deaths but be prepared to know what to do when those we love die.

What will you do when those you love die? Will you know how to ease their fear. Will you have eased your own to such an extent that you can hold it. And your own death, how much of each day do you devote to sitting with that reality. Do you know how you will hold yourself in death.

What is it you wish to achieve in dying as there is truly nothing in this world to achieve.


Plague Journal:

6.8.20

the macrocosm of standing together will seep into the microcosm of all of your relationships

when you realize there are an abundance of people who will feed you, you don't have to rely on poison anymore

we recreated templates of power and control in our relationships because we were modeled abuse and control as normal, as ideal, and told it was care taking and love. What we need to normalize is standing besides one another, the next/ to model. We need to learn to stand next to anyone and care take. We need to learn to care for who is besides us, not who we pick and choose. These practices are the antidote to the poison.

We sow the seeds now with every choice- for what grows next.

We are asking for more and will ask for more as we value ourselves.

Learn here in this disaster to stay the course, be consistent, to navigate terror, to survive -- keep going all the way to the other side.

Fixed continuums and fixed models are fantasy. All is birth and death, growth and decay. Do not despair your time here, no matter where you fall in the fluid motions of its sweep. What is low, rises and what is on top must always descend below.

The universe is exact even in spite of all our failure.

Try to hold on to the balance of all that spools out before us.

I am keeping you in sight.


Resource: 
New Orleans' Urban Forest Survived Katrina
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/9773202/ns/us_news-environment/t/new-orleans-urban-forest-survived-katrina/