what do you do when your home is about to get barreled down by hurricane? you wait. and wait and wait and wait. however, i DO NOT recommend watching the news as the media only makes a spectacle of the worst case scenario, bringing you further down into an anxiety-riddled hell. i recommend tubing down the chattahoochee river in helen, georgia, smoking a blunt and watching kinniku banzuke (japanese sports entertainment variety show), and having taco night at a friend’s house in hot springs, north carolina. yes, this is my perfect evacuation getaway when getting chased out of town by a storm.

(photograph by Eric Gay/AP Photo)

to my relief, the levees in the industrial canal withstood hurricane gusts, high waters, and giant ships bouncing about the canal. my house is five blocks from that levee and i started picturing the upper ninth ward getting wiped out like the lower nine was exactly three years ago. but we were spared. and even though terrebonne parish has been a black hole for information after the storm–it seems impossible to find photos or stories from there because the roads have been blocked by downed trees and power lines–the reports have told us that the damage is minimal. we all expected the worst and got something fairly bad, but nothing compared to katrina and the devastation she caused in plaquemines and st. bernard parishes. we continue with our rebuilding with minor setbacks.

i will be making news updates on the HOPE/rebirth website regarding the status of southern louisiana as i return home to st. bernard parish and orleans parish, and also as i visit lafourche and terrebonne parishes to survey the damage and speak to residents about their needs.

visit http://keep-hope.org/news/ for these updates.

we live our lives with a strong faith in home, that place where we rest our heads and keep our memories. when my roommate, marlo, was clearing the food out of our kitchen cabinets, we took a moment to pause and breathe in the midst of packing up to evacuate new orleans. she looked around the kitchen and said, ” i finally had given up and started calling this home.” four of us have been living together in this shotgun house since october: marlo, william, me, and the baby, cylis. the house has fostered us, the neighborhood has inspired us. we have become a family.

now, six hundred miles from home, i am struck with the unfathomable dread of losing home. i didn’t think i’d get attached; i’ve always been transient. just the moment you let up your guard, nature threatens to take away your man-made security, striking blows against human civilization. we cannot get attached to the material things in life. and we cannot create systems to wall out nature; it will only be our downfall. the saddest thing about our existence is the suffering that we have created for ourselves.

i am not scared. i am not hopeless. i am just worried about losing our human “stuff”–tools, buildings, jobs. some of the minor things that connect us as humans. i am in awe of nature right now. i have no control. i want others to surrender to this fact so as not to suffer from the losses that may come…

there is a lot of hype on the news as we are just a day away from gustav making landfall. i am trying not to succumb to the whirlwind of worry. but this storm has made a serious threat; i fear, through our own destruction of nature & its safeguards, we may lose the roots of the culture of southern louisiana.

i boarded up the windows today.
moved some things to higher ground (which means little in the path of a hurricane).
met with friends a third or fourth time to go over plans. prepared vehicles for their trips. packed up valuables.

the most striking thing for me was looking at the house all boarded up, wondering what i will return to. of course i hope for nothing…everything will be in it’s place when we get back next week, fingers crossed. all of our stuff packed high on shelves, books moved up to the top shelf, computers backed on top of closets, refrigerator emptied and turned off. but will our house still have a roof when we return? will the boards over the glass have done any good? will our more stubborn neighbors be under piles of rubble or swept out in the current? the hardest part is knowing we all will be coming home soon, next week probably, but what will we come home to? this is all so uncertain.

so it is.

i am more annoyed than nervous. on the contrary, my friend had a nervous breakdown upon hearing the news of hurricane gustav heading towards the gulf of mexico. she is from new orleans and evacuated for katrina; august 2005 i was from chicago and was hitchhiking south to georgia, care-free. now i’m annoyed that i have to pack up valuables, move tools, vehicles, and trailers to high ground.

today, i told my significant other that if she wasn’t here and planning to evacuate, i would stay in new orleans if gustav hit. i’d help others evacuate or find shelter. i’d camp out on the third floor of my friends’ warehouse. but her, like my other friend who had the nervous breakdown, is from new orleans and also suffered the disaster and displacement caused by katrina. they have good reason not to mess with storms. but me, i don’t know what’s coming–i just know the stories and the aftermath. the help that is needed. the importance of immediate relief.

let’s hope this is all just a false alarm.

i have not enjoyed myself much or felt very happy since i left home, for happiness depends on contentment, and that has not fell to my lot, and it seems to me never will…merry little birds make one wish he were as happy as all around him; but that cannot be; as this earth is not a heaven for man; for we at the happiest day feel a burden of sorrow which we cannot throw off here.

words by william clarke quantrill.

I continue to be amazed that I exist. Or that I seem to; the question is not settled to my satisfaction. It seems highly unlikely that what asks the question is made of matter, grey or not. The very fact our matter thinks makes its credentials as matter suspect. Maybe, like Samuel Johnson, I need to kick something to prove it exists. The problem is that what I am trying to kick is my own kicking foot. The hard and durable thing (Johnson’s rock) seems to set and satisfy its own criteria for existence. You could almost say my criterion for existence is otherness: if it does not think or feel, but is the object of thought and feeling, it exists. Fortunately, existence rubs off. I feel more real when I bump up against things and in this way become a thing for those things–the world’s world, another’s other. But this requires a bizarre imaginative excursion: myself as mud might see me, or water, or ink.

words by shelley jackson.
from http://www.uiowa.edu/~iareview/mainpages/new/july06/jackson.html

A herder holds freshly baked bread outside his wagon. The sheepwagon is a camp on wheels with beds, a table, and a wood stove. It was pulled in the early days by a team of horses and later by a pickup.
Courtesy Basque Library at the University of Nevada, Reno
photo by Richard Lane, 1969

listen: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90893167

 
i want to live thoughtfully and carelessly.
i don’t want to question my purpose.
i don’t want to trust in christ when i can trust in the world around me. (i am trying not to escape but escape may keep me from going insane.)
i want to change.
i want to be the same.
i don’t want guilt trips.
i want others to be satisfied with who i am.
i want to own nothing and share everything.
i want to tell you the meaning of life because i figured out it has so much to do with you.
and you.
and you.
and you, too.
 
i want to sleep next to a woman who makes me cry at the very thought of her.
i want food clean and fresh.
i want animals free like humans are supposed to be.
i want cars recycled and turned into art.
i want to trade and barter.
i want tea and not coffee.
i want books and not tv.
i want to rid myself of distractions.
i don’t want to yell at my cat for not using the litter box.
i don’t want to get angry when i can’t find the clear tape.
i wish my room were organized.
i wish i possessed 1/16 of what i have now.
i want calm.
i want peace.
i am riddled with confusion.
i am overcome with anxiety.
i wish this were easy.
i look forward to another day, but i have to find comfort in today.
 
*     *     *
i look back at what i wrote and think
ultimately, this shouldn’t be about me.
{02 may 2004} ~9am.
 
[last page of a sketchbook journal]