UPDATED CORRECTION AND MORE
by Catherine King
It's been five and a half months since I assembled, photographed and posted FALL FASHION BOARDS 2005. The boards have so much to do with Hurricane Katrina. I watch a lot of news, as regular readers may have noted. During the last week of last August, as I watched the Destruction Diety locking and loading for a massacre along the Gulf Coast, my nervous system declared Code Red.
I remember that I made the Fall Fashion Boards in two days, then photographed and posted them immediately. All this while Katrina made landfall, the levees broke and a major American city was lost. In my personal estimation, this series of events (Hurricane Katrina) is right up there with Major Catastrophes of my time-- the assassinations-- JFK, RFK, MLK and 9/11.
After 9/11, I've spent some time dreading and imagining the destruction of a major American city, and so have some of you. A lot of people went to Code Red with me, and Heidi Hesse --you can just go screw yourself. With your lederhosen on. Anyway, as I was assembling the first Fashion Board collages, I remember saying to Jerome, over and over, I'm afraid: "These fashion boards remind me of how New Orleans must be right now, with all sorts of precious things all jumbled up with trash and covered with mud."
So that explains the look of Fall Fashion Boards 2005. But what explains the way the spirits attached themselves to Fall Fashion Boards 2005, like I've never seen them attach themselves to anything? I only have questions, not answers. I'm no kind of expert on Spirits. Who could be, in all honesty? If someone tells you they are, they're lying.
All I can tell you, people, is that you're looking at the Fall Fashion Boards Before and After Spirits. I know they're spirits because I can feel that they are, but why do they show themselves like that, why only some of the time, and why do they hang around Jerome and me?
It was either on the night of August 27th or 28th when I stood not five feet in front of the boards and photographed them with and without spirits. I have tucked away the "With" photos until just now. After all my thousands of paranormal photographs (narratives beginning with Crowd of Witnesses), I've never captured anything like these Fashion Board "After" photographs. Never ever. I made a special folder to hold this phenomenon, THEN AVOIDED IT FOR MONTHS. The Fall Fashion Boards After Spirits give me the creeps, bigtime.
I've got the feeling that Emotion has a lot to do with Spiritual Visitation, so that's why I'm recounting for you the emotional tone in our little house on the night of last August 27th or 28th. Jerome and I were fussing around with levels, lights and cameras trying to get the best possible photographs of the Fall Fashion Boards.
You already know what was happening at the very same time in New Orleans and to all the people and animals there. And I just told you how it was weighing so heavily on my mind. Well, some of the photos captured a powerfull spiritual intervention and some didn't. Fall Fashion Boards Before and After Spirits.
I remember feeling afraid when I saw what I had captured that night. So much spiritual activity right here in our little living room! I felt a lot like I did when I captured my very first orbs in the Haunted Apartment. The emotional tone was weird. Really spooky with all those other entities around. I was really, really scared. We used the Before photos and I put the Afters in the Spirit folder where they have remained throughout a hellish Fall and Winter.
Seems like lots of people all over the world have been interested in my Fall Fashion Boards 2005. Glad you enjoyed them. They don't exist anymore. I dismanteled them and am recycling just a few select pieces for The Tears of Things Spring 2006 Fashion Boards Banner.
My Spring 2006 Fashion Boards Banner is to the Fall 2005 Fashion Boards as Crazy Quilt of the Parrot Goddess II is to the Green Bird Banner. Far more complex but also far more ordered. The Life Principle seeks to organize itself. I think you will find, if you come back to The Tears to see our Spring Fashion Banner, evidence of Bootstrapping and Extreme Effort.
I guess spirits love Fashion too, probably because it's about Beauty, Longing, Bodies, Weaving and Stitching. People get hooked, and then they stay there, even after they're dead.
CORRECTION:
Well, I knew there was something wrong about my Katrina timeline. Because I said that I was making the Fall Fashion Boards as Katrina made landfall and New Orleans flooded. But no, because that happened the day after I posted the boards, which was on August 28th.
I was highly alarmed, though. Hyper-aroused, so I don't remember things straight. Seeing the Red Green and Yellow CATEGORY 5!!! vortex moving toward the Gulf Coast with no hope of redemption just freaked me out. It was unprecedented, remember? In my activated state, I conflated Category Five with Code Red. And a lot of other terrifying emergencies-- all real, though over and done with. Except for the reverberations. . .
That's the kind of stuff that was preying on my mind as I made the Fall Fashion Boards. Katrina was approaching but New Orleans (and Biloxi, and Passe Christian, and all the other communities) were still intact, though doomed. Oppression was inescapable.
I'm sure I distinctly remember saying to Jerome, over and over, "These fashion boards remind me of how New Orleans must be right now, with all sorts of precious things all jumbled up with trash and covered with mud", though. But I must have said that while we were looking at the Before Spirits images that we posted because they have a sort of muddy patina, an accidental (?) effect captured before the flooding, that seemed stylistically appropriate afterwards.
Maybe the After Spirits photos of the boards reveal the massive release of spirits that was about to occur along the Gulf Coast. They were all doomed as I took those photographs, remember? If so, then my After Spirits photos are to Hurricane Katrina as Jerome's Banner 23 (which you see at the top of the blog right now) is to the Southest Asian Tsunami.
Were you aware that Jerome took that photo as the earthquake struck, on the other side of the globe, but before the tsunami wiped out the quartermillion people who were already doomed? Pretty scary stuff, huh? It wouldn't be foolish to light candles and pray. . .
Posted by Jerome at February 8, 2006 08:00 PM | TrackBack