Exploring New Landscapes: New Orleans Is Heaven

#calltocreate2019

process notes

I was reading Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman and he was talking about how the life of an oppressed child can limit their own self-definition.  Their youthful hopes and experiences of exploring new landscapes are limited by their surroundings and the lessons they must learn in order to survive.  I took this opportunity within Mother Mercy to explore new landscapes within me.  I find the culture of thought and reflection within the group as being a useful method for exploring inner landscapes with a youthful exuberance.  Having a creative outlet helps me deal with the traumatic experiences associated with active participation in ongoing genocide against yourself and your own people. The creative outlet helps me think about abandonment, grief, lost time, and wasted potential.  I have written here some of my journal entries that guided my vision of the characters and settings in my story.

April 

I wish I had a time machine to see you in the future but I don’t.  All I have is this. This to help shape your future. I want you to reject what is now.  Reject lying. Reject sexism. Reject racism. Accept differences. Explore what is life affirming difference.  Reject what is not life affirming or creative. Take life with you. Your civil liberties are connected to your human rights.  

In 2005 we saw the destructive power of the winds and the ocean when Hurricane Katrina traveled across Florida, Alabama and Mississippi, eventually hitting Louisiana.  New Orleans was a city already affected by man made alterations. Hurricanes had hit the city previously. Levees that had been built to protect it were destroyed so that white areas could be protected.  This time levees were opened and the lower 9th ward was flooded. Hundreds of thousands of people were displaced.  Thousands died. Mostly poor people that could not afford to leave. I and millions of others watched on CNN as the poor Black people suffered.  People were being removed from their roofs of their houses by the Coast Guard. The President was briefed but acted indifferent. He asked no questions during his briefing.  The National Security Director went shoe shopping. The mayor of New Orleans fought with the Governor of Louisiana. There was no coordination during the catastrophe to save lives.  The only coordination happened after the destruction. And that was all about money.  

How to get money to supply people in need became: “How do I make this into an income stream for my own lifestyle?” 

How do we help flood victims became, “How do I implement my agenda?”

June 19

Listened to Mars is Heaven a few days ago and sent thoughts to Johnette.  I just told her I need to find the original but I also need to watch the entire Ray Bradbury Presents.  I was reading about ethical communication today and I was thinking about how I may want to approach it from the Martians thinking about the ethics of invading the subconsciousness of humans and then forcing them to kill themselves, albeit under this weird anesthetic.  It is a kind thing to do. To attach their most war memories to their eventual death. It wasn’t painful memories. This also goes to Johnette’s question of “time.” What it means to hold memories beyond time; to exist beyond time.  One of the cases in the ethical communication book is about pornography. I liked how they wrote it as a discussion of administrators in a room, debating whether to allow porn to be accessed on the public website. I think I may structure my discussion on the Martians that way.  They have identified how to control human subconsciousness and recreate reality, should they? The ethical considerations of consent, informing, etc. are all implicated. MEMORIES. WHAT OF MEMORY? WHAT OF MEMORY? WHAT IS OUR MEMORY? What is Forgetting? Identity is memory. Memory is identity.  

Water and Resilience

When I think of New Orleans I think of jazz, Louis Armstrong, water, gentrification, culture, genocidal indifference.  I want to see the harnessing of floodwaters was used to drown an entire city in the flood waters of indifference and discrimination.  I think now how a conversation I had with Courage revealed that the physical manifestation of being underwater in New Orleans was a harbinger of the financial and communal devastation we found in the recession.  Right now we are dealing with a rock of classism and racism. We have to develop methods of resistance that acknowledge the rock in front of us and move despite its existence. I appreciate the metaphors the activists used to describe their connection to water.  It helps to reaffirm our humanity and our connection to the earth, when we are actually being objectified under capitalism and commodified and pushed underwater.

I have to recognize my own role in determining value.

I can’t afford it.

I have to find an ethical way to reflect that I value my people but I don’t want them underwater.

#reflectionsinthewater