Solid Quarter

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Monday, August 03, 2020

Did we create a model for America?





Day 3:

Time is a problem. If we run it fast enough, it seems solid. We seem solid. This city too should hold; we hold our breath.  Come now, don’t be afraid. This is the end of the story, and we are running backwards.  We have survived this already. We have lost everything and returned. We have abandoned hope and still suddenly, we have found the other shore beneath our feet. Did we ask the right questions. Has your life been a truth or an elaborate fiction? Can we return again. We can return again.


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Process Notes: 


time is a problem. 

when i was a little girl we would climb to the top of the rocket ship playground equipment in Kenilworth park. i remember this was where my best friend told me about the word: cunt. we lived behind each other and would cut through the neighbor’s yard to hop the fence to knock on each other’s doors to play. the house on the corner across from the park sold cold cups for a solid quarter: strawberry or grape. when i recall my dreams sometimes, i dream about this block. these inner maps are stable across time. 

“Traumatized people simultaneously remember too little and too much.” 

“the organism itself also has a problem knowing how to feel safe” 

-The Body Keeps the Score


Photograph: 

Kenilworth park in New Orleans east 
30.0344° N, 90.0137° W


The eastern section of New Orleans, colloquially known as "New Orleans East" or simply "The East," is the newest section of the city. Eastern New Orleans is bounded by the Industrial Canal, the Intracoastal Waterway and Lake Pontchartrain. Developed extensively from the 1960s onward, its numerous residential subdivisions and shopping centers offered suburban-style living within the city limits of New Orleans. Its overall character is today decidedly suburban, resembling the archetypal postwar American suburb much more than the compactly-built environment found in the city's historic core. Before Hurricane Katrina Eastern New Orleans had begun to suffer from disinvestment and urban decay. The flooding subsequent to Katrina, which affected almost the entire area, accelerated this trend, particularly in the retail sector. Numerous national chains present and operating in August 2005 opted not to reopen their stores and restaurants. Approximately 85,000 residents inhabit Eastern New Orleans today, representing a small decline from the area's peak population of 95,000 inhabitants recorded by the 2000 Census.
Source: from Wikipedia


Plague journal: 

5.10.20

the thing about empty space is that we know instinctively, it’s not empty at all. and yet the emptiness of all of it is also a truth from inside us. 

the balance of objects corners us. we tread both in spaces where we are and where we are not as we imagine there’s nothing i cannot occupy. uncounted hours. primary feathers in winged tellings. & toward framework, a pondering, still dark work. teach me not a new language. teach me a new tempo for danger, what seems still within reach. anything we see inhabits a choice of not seeing something else. observe like an underworld, we travel shadowed. how can a book be like a wheel? 


Maps from the Channel:



Resource: https://youtu.be/uD90KhVV_Jw
BEVERLY KIMBLE DAVIS is a New Orleans Katrina artist who is on a mission to tell the many untold stories of what really happened during and after the flood. Beverly uses her canvas to graphically tell the stories of people and events you've never read about nor ever seen on television.

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