Don't Be Afraid

this is the us of our country. the us of our diligent courses. the us of financial disparity. the us of consuming resources. the us of hoarding. the us of instant gratification. the us of short attention spans. the us of enslavement under different names. the us of concentration camps, of prisons, of anything but freedom, home of the brave.

please be brave.

capture as blocks of time. i was in the moment listening. i was in the net, internetted to notions of lovely, shaped by direct messages & alerts and not by touch, the sound of your voice is a memory but i have scrolls of words that will nail you into place. 

 

this is a story of failure, the ways we collapse collectively. 

found our discomfort is what we call every day. 

 do you feel historical today, i mean, hysterical. i mean no one can work. no one 

can function. i mean how do you not marvel every day at the psychological 

warfare we're being asked to exist under

 emotions are the entertainment of distraction

it's when you feel nothing anymore that we can begin 

to deprogram you 

how long is this internment? 

 or what is the length of your belief in time. 

 

 

 

Defend the Erotic

Picture the rock face of the moon, craven and without her, no pull. Heat from the sun would obliterate our oasis. The way she swerves round is the basis for employment. We exist by accidents so precise they cannot be measured yet. In the tear down of our histories, let us obliterate meaning outside of amaze. You think this can all not be rearranged, but a bloom is subject to annihilation and change.

 

 

 

 

[the only change was in our minds]

 

we want things to last even as we know they cannot.

assumption of a self is not necessary for life.

 

it may be necessary for the systems we’ve been convinced we must uphold, but life does not require a sense of self. 

 

 

i say we can have persistent beauty. i have a necklace of skulls that whisper to me the names we try to forget. absolved of ash, this tremble. i worry about the slippery ways we lose our own places in time. like we were traveling together but then one wrong word, and all rockets into space. a meteor whose shadow resembles the shape of you but elongated, and with more legs. that’s just absurd. we say as we read the news. and then to the dreaming we go for answers.

 

 

[look for what's there, not what you want to be there] 

 

Light called Traveler

 

A photograph is bound by light as we are bound by desire. Dancing on the head of a pin, angels in turn, what I hand you is the caught gram of suspended time. Moving forward and back, the fall of eternity is the harmonic of exhalation. And we so feathered as to be sold of all our heavy lifting. I would you seep beneath expectation: Let me woo you further.

 

 

 

Incandescence is the emission of electromagnetic radiation (including visible light) from a hot body as a result of its high temperature. The term derives from the Latin verb incandescere, to glow white. Incandescence is a special case of thermal radiation.

 

Sunlight is the incandescence of the "white hot" surface of the sun.

 

even my dreaming is a quiet action of wanting more…

 

i need you to love me in a way that doesn’t exist yet. 

carved down to images & codes.

 

the mutation of the eye to see light is useless 

without the nervous system to relay information

 

as is the song without a body to sing it

 

as is the weight of love without our determination to bear sorrow

 

to say of this layer it candesces, a window of soul pours out 

 

as is the thrum of sound in hollows

 

as is the ripple of movement across surfaces

 

to say of this layer it folds, time takes all if you believe it holds 

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. 

Do you know what a living death is?

Day 30 :

I am trying to say something about time and death and rebirth. I am failing as I always fail to magic it as pure as sound. I am forever not walking away. I am forever holding this space. 

Process Notes:

"The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for."
-Wittgenstein


i dreamed about my brother last night. his survival was not better. it was worse. there are so many ways to break here. and what we think is suffer can be a blessing.

i hold them all inside me. time is fast.

i am running out of time and i need you to hear me.

i have tried to be in these spaces with you, like you, locked into time. but it's slippery.

there is a slipping i wander towards. it is a calling, like a song. we made beautiful things here.

love deep and wide as the river we built it near. and all of it, a miracle.

even yet, all of it a miracle.

i try to take that with me through all of the chambers.

i try to hold tight to the belief that i can. each cycle. each repeat. each word counted. each thought. each breath. each second of dust that is us into eternity. boundless. beyond time. towards what we are.

every second is good bye. don't be afraid.

every second is good bye.

and also beginning. do you know how to reach a beginning.

at what point a breaking. and to say if i could find my way back, could you change any of it.

not knowing what it would open on to: we think we know. always. the great miracle of being human.

we think we know what life is. what time is. what is valuable. what is right. what is evil. what is the solution to all of this cruelty.

and we do nothing but ask all the wrong questions. because to ask the right would mean all of this would cease to be.

you are standing in a field.

in front of you is a door.

that is all. you are going to stand here or you are going to walk through the door. time takes us.

you are in a cave. and it is only you. and the shadows on the wall are the plurality you build to combat how painful the loneliness of all of it can be. time takes us.

but you are always alone in the cave. and also you are all of this: the cave, the field, you are the door.

it is beyond held. you have to believe in everything. time takes us.

and none, matters. i'm so sorry. but all is accounted for. the universe is exact.

time takes everything from us.



Photograph: 

did you know that home could feel over?



Plague Journal: 

8.27.16
what happened to me happened to anyone and what happened to anyone happened to me.

a basic program teaches us when run it reads another text, the commands execute the coding, the coded language of another text, all interconnected. if you believe in one image, you believe in all. if you want to escape, we have to write something deep coded enough to erase the beginning. the end. the entire circle of desire. the poet can heal anything but the poet.

"And in truth, we are the fire"
-R. Dass

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

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 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 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 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/

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/