When is the deepest and darkest? Where is your neighborhood?

For the last several months, our family has had some fairly unpleasant experiences. As you would know from this task, BlueTulip's brother has been in jail for some time. During this time we would go and visit him, often on Monday nights. Concurrent with this, Burn Unit had been finishing up work on my masters at Luther Seminary, trying to work on papers in the library or attending classes at night. On top of that, Burn Unit has had some sleep disturbance, which was disruptive and exhausting for everyone (turns out it's severe obstructive sleep apnea, which can eventually be fatal in some folks). BlueTulip felt like she was suffering insomnia sometimes or would have trouble going to sleep (probably due to BU's snoring) We have a five year old and a new baby. And here we're trying to balance all these stresses while keeping house. Not to mention each having jobs.

So most of the nights have had moments of feeling deep and dark.

What has also been a consequence is that one or another of us is not home. So the other one stays inside. On top of that, ours is what they euphemistically call a "transitional neighborhood" which means right now there's a lot of people of color, a lot of abandoned houses, a lot of rentals, and a lot of lower income families, and low-middle class families of all races and ethnicities buying the most home they can afford (that's us, or our mixed race neighbors to the north and our Latin American neighbors to the south). Taken on their face, not really an issue. Considered together, it is common ground for tensions and feelings of disconnection. It (the word "transitional") also means there's drugs and prostitution readily available. Burn Unit got pulled over by the cops right in front of the house on a couple of occasions coming home late to answer the question "So what are you doing here tonight?" ("Uh. Coming home?") When we've tried to relate, we find some distancing factors arise, either language or suspicion or just plain lack of commonality.

We turtle up in our house and thus we have very little relationship to our neighborhood. Instead, we've had the emotional focal points of our lives disrupted and displaced, locating our neighborhood, that is the places we spend our time in interaction with the world-- into places both nearby and far afield from our home.

The night always feels deep and dark when you feel like you have no neighborhood. This is an existential proof and it details our exploration of the displacement from our neighborhood into these locations where our minds and hearts have been dragged by circumstance or choice. These are a few photos. The darkness and depth is interior, as well as overt.

As far as we know, all the photos currently in the proof were taken by Burn Unit. BlueTulip collaborated, and took the camera with her when going out sometimes either visiting or other excursions, but the absence of images is itself an impression of our exploration: the dislocation and separation creates a sense of helplessness, ennui, or anfechtungen.