October Update.

I just spent the past few minutes gazing out the window, watching the changed leaves fall and blow about, while listening to Händel. The furnace is rumbling and creaking and the house is warm. The sun is shining and the sky, blue. I am thankful for Fall, and the regeneration and refreshment it provides.

Well, the fact that I’m enjoying Fall may lead one to presume… I’m back in Washington State! It’s a shocker, believe me, I know. I came back at the beginning of September after spending a total of about 6 months in Louisiana [the 3 months previous to that I was on the Big Island of Hawai’i doing a Photography school]. Some background just to catch you up: The first four months I was cooking for a relief organization on the North Shore of New Orleans, living in an RV in the back of a church parking lot. At the end of July, I left the organization and moved into the city itself, to the Ninth Ward; a somewhat notorious part of the city, known for it’s destruction from Hurricane Katrina as well as for it’s poverty. Some friends from Washington have a house there and offered me their basement, and I snatched it up! It was a great time being with them in their awesome home, but lack of transportation and lack of means for attaining transportation caused a bit of a dent in my chrome wheels of immaculate ability in planning-the-future. I initially intended on remaining in New Orleans until Spring 2009 but, in a rather rapid way, God placed the option of leaving sooner before me – not that I was intending on pursuing that option. But due to finances, some dreams, and lots of praying and some good bouts of affirmation, I realized I needed to move back to be with my family, to get myself out of my own financial poverty, and to work through some things. As a friend of mine put it, it was ‘time to unpack the past two years.’

GUSTAV
Before I came back however, I found myself in the direct path of The Storm of The Century [as they were calling it], also known as Hurricane Gustav. The family I lived with, along with myself and about 70 others from their church, were invited to a church in Birmingham Alabama, to take refuge from the storm. So, the day before Gustav made landfall, under mandatory evacuation of the city and with contra flow, we packed up both cars, two dogs, three adults and the baby, and caravanned the 11 hours to Birmingham – normally a 5 hour drive – within the mass exodus of thousands of evacuees. There we were greeted by the famed Southern Hospitality. Birmingham was great – clean, hospitable, a high standard of living, and an immaculate fully-stocked Wal-Mart..?! We’d landed on Mars. We also promptly decided Louisiana was the armpit of America.

After about 5 days of sleeping on the floor of a gymnasium and after being served so well by Mountain Brook Church, ‘my family’ and I left at about 4am, to get back to New Orleans the day the city reopened. Yet again, the five hour drive turned into 13 – but that would be without mentioning The-Adventures-of-a-short-stop-in-Mobile-that-turned-into: a bolt in the tire, a shattered back window, a fussy baby, melted food, a free steak meal, an offer to use a man’s shower, nearly being hit by an old man on his way to a buffet, an incredible amount of ChaCha questions, and a generous $60 from a lady in an Escalade.
It was a long day.

The city had hardly suffered from Gustav [south of New Orleans however, is another story] and our home sustained little damage. The power was on and we hadn’t been looted! Hooray! But we had no food. And with Hurricane Ike on the way, the grocery stores weren’t particularly thrusting themselves into ‘restock’ mode – nor into ‘open’ mode either as a matter of fact... So obtaining food was an adventure for anyone whom had already returned home from evacuating Gustav. We were fed however, like the birds of the sky, so no worries.

While in Birmingham however, I did make the call to the Daddy-o to purchase
the one-way ticket to Washington. Talk about a spoonful o’ motivation.

WHAT’S THE UP NOW?
Currently I’m not going to school, am living at home with the parents, and working part-time at a coffee shop [that line gets me a lot of dates]. I have a few photography deals planned and am enjoying some stability. I’m totally digging my family and am love-love-loving fall! I’m also back near a computer that can be called ‘my own’, with Adobe programs too, so photography/art is much more accessible, which I’ve found the means in which to create is key for my internal organs to function properly. But that also means there’s some new clutter up on the flickr site, so check it out.

So, that’s me. How’re you?

[PHOTOS] .:. [PHOTOS] .:. [PHOTOS]

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‘My God, I give thanks to you, my source of sweet delight, and my glory and my confidence. I thank you for your gifts. Keep them for me, for in this way you will keep me. The talents you have given will increase and be perfected, and I will be with you since it was your gift to me that I exist.’
-St. Augustine, Confessions