i taste the air now

it comes in waves

i was told the ships could be seen from our street.

the latino flaggers who stop traffic when the dump trucks come barreling through.

rodney who cried when he saw his backyard after the storm.

building the deck on top of the distribution tent, seven feet high in the air. i sit on it now and write.

VIOLET, LA. we’re moving into a little house on guerra street. ripped out the wiring, pulled down the concrete board, opened up windows. it smells like wood in there now, the attic space open and breathing. i can see the bricks from the inside now, only the studs and mortar holding it all together. in a couple weeks we’ll be moved out of the corrine baptist church and into Home, our new place of residency. julieanne and christi and james and rodney, and all the others whose names i can’t remember, have made us feel welcome here. they want us to stay, and i want to stay, want to keep working side by side with these people. i feel more home than anywhere else right now.

there’s thirteen of us here now: isabelle, mike, jared, spark, dosmi, ash, petie, carrie, marisha, dusty, hopper, erica, frida.

VIOLET, LA.

i am alive.

and think i am still sane. there was a moment where i questioned my sanity, realizing what it might feel like to lose my mind. i can tell you lots of stories, but as you may have infered from my absence, i have little time to get to the computer to write. i can tell you that my around-the-clock efforts are now going towards something more sustainable and healthy. i am back with family. i am back home.

on sunday i moved back to H.O.P.E. and i am here for good. it happened unintentionally–i overheard someone say to jen, a coordinator at common ground, “do you want to replace isabelle at HOPE?” i was flabergasted. even scared. i immediatly spoke up: “what did you say?” isabelle is someone who has been at HOPE since it began. hearing this i knew something was wrong. i moved out to HOPE the next day with jen, but we were not replacements for isabelle. isabelle is here and nothing has changed, except perhaps that we are stonger now. HOPE is alive and well. our crew is shrinking, though, and we need people to stay here through the summer to keep the project alive. but the scare about isabelle was just a false alarm. i could go on about the story…i can tell you a lot about the drama and hear-say that happens at common ground collective, this being just another case of the dramatic miscommunication. but i also think there is something deeper, but i won’t go into that. who knows who reads this journal. (write me if you want more stories.)

so i moved out to st. benards parish, the county just east of new orleans. about 30 minutes east to violet, louisiana. the project is called H.O.P.E. and is a lot smaller and more family-oriented than the Common Ground Collective in the 9th ward. at HOPE, we’re rebuilding a house that has been donated to us by a community member to use for a period as our home and center for community relief operations. we’ll be moving out of a church which has been HOPE’s home since january. i’ll be putting up a website soon for HOPE with photographs by greg, an amazing photographer that has been living and working at HOPE for a couple months. please send me your love and i’ll send you some love back. i miss you all.