crib in a crack hood

First off, I’m not a computer geek. So it’s taking me a bit to figure out how to personalize this blog to look like I want it. There will be changes from time to time. Any advice is welcome.

Now let’s get to the good stuff. First – the title of the blog. It flew into my head one day while I was driving. My friend Red told me that a guy in her neighborhood (and his girlfriend) threw cinder blocks through the windows of each others cars. They were having a spat. Not very adult, but what I see on TV and from so-called christians, politicians, employers, and elite corporate money-men, nobody’s setting a great example.  Red lives in a neighborhood that – yes – is pretty cracked-out. So the people that live in it have limited ways to make their anger apparent. Street slang for “the place where you sleep” is “crib.” Red’s always calling her apartment her crib. So – “crib in a crack hood.”

Earlier that day I met with a few of my clients. I work as a horticultural consultant to bring in some stable income apart from my other projects. My clients are generally very well off. And one woman in particular got herself all fussed up about the look of the entrance to their very expensive housing development. She didn’t agree with the design. So during our annual meeting to discuss the entry design,  she JerrySpringered her way through, managing to offend everyone present.

Her entire sense of self appears to revolve around minor outside appearances, like the choice of flowers at the entrance, or tire marks on the roads of their safe community. An hour later, I visited Red in the crack ‘hood. The juxtaposition of the two extremes made my head do this boingy thing inside. Plus it made my heart hurt. Because lots of us don’t know how to be happy, and we act in ways that just make our lives worse. And in the case of people that are rich or powerful in some way, their actions can hurt lots of people.

At the end of my day I thought about the two different communities. What seemed evident to me was that the people in the crack ‘hood were, in general, happier than the people that live in the expensive ‘hood. So I got this AH-HA moment and thought – we should track the goings on in the crack ‘hood. Because there’s always something fascinating going on there – whether it’s the whores or the addicts, the drunks, the gangs, or just two lovers tossing cinder blocks through car windows. But really, I want to do more than that with this blog. I want to talk about happiness and about heart pain. I want to touch the center of something I cannot define.

I plan to post vids, pics, and text about the happenings in the crack ‘hood. I hope to be posting short pieces of my writing and discuss my dysfunctional approach to writing, which is really just a fumbly attempt to find a path that is true. And I’m hoping Red will write some posts too, because her view is from the bottom of society. It’s a view most of us never get a chance to know or hear.

My friend Red is an artist and ex-addict. We’ll be posting her drawings and paintings, and whatever else she chooses to share. The background image of the blog is a detail from one of her drawings.

That’s the ramshackle organization of the blog at this point. I’m sure it will grow into something weird and whacky, and will ruin my political future. woo-hoo!

If you want to find out more about me or my documentary and my writing, you can visit the rest of my website at barbarabell.com. Or follow me on Facebook. There’s also the “Graphic Sexual Horror – the documentary” Facebook page, and a “Stacking in Rivertown” page.

So – see you in the ‘hood!

Pond (written 9/2002)

at this pond
you would not drink
or wash your hai
but sleep there
because of the dreams
the night before you die
how they are the same dreams
that you do not remember
but you wake up wet
you wake and fall back to sleep
it is the same, you tell yourself
just before waking
no different than before

the long rain
the collecting station
the guard outside the door
and you are sleeping again
warbling
like a lover in the roar