there are definitely times in my life where I question everything...A lot of people tell me it is wrong, but it has kept me very safe for 44 years..Its also a bad habit when you do not trust anyone except yourself, and even then you don't entirely do that...however I digress.

Maybe I am a narcissistic sociopath. Maybe I refuse to take any blame for myself. Maybe my life is built on control and dominance. Maybe I live a double life - ones that are polar opposites. Maybe I cry tears that are only superficial. And those tears only symbolise that I have been caught out, and that I cry to try and reinforce the "nice" side.

Sometime I do not know anymore. Which is recurring theme in my life, which makes me wonder if I am actually totally crazy and delusional. Is it why I feel comfortable with the insane and vulnerable, with the "normal". Riding home tonight I saw the lady who stands at the end of the street, drinks coffee and talks to herself constantly, and to the cars going by. I wanted to ride up to her, put my bike down and just talk, listen and hear what she is saying. In the distance that woman felt like the teddy bear a 3 year old sees and grabs for comfort.

I wanted to sit, listen, talk, scream, cry and not feel judged or have to explain. I wanted to wrap my arms around myself, rock back and forth and instead of whispering, actually talk above a whisper, and tell myself "its ok, its ok, its ok". Sometimes living and breathing is so excruciatingly encompassing when you live inside your own head.

Refelctions

Can the things you are doing to try and keep you together, be the actual things that drive you apart...

Shotgun Houses - Freedmans Town or now Fourth Ward

One of my big interests in Houston is it's history and its architecture. I must admit I haven't been a big one for either, however the lack of zoning laws in Houston make for my interest to have been ignited.

In my drives and bike rides around town I noticed a lot of abandoned buildings and homes. I also noticed tiny little homes that were also abandoned or still accommodating families. What where they, how come they where so tiny, how come they where situated in particular areas of Houston, and why did they look so old.

So I read. And read a little more. Jas had already told me they where called Shotgun houses. Which meant that if you opened the front door and the back door, you could fire a shotgun and it wouldn't hit anything on the way through. It was also used to cool the house down with both doors opened and the breeze blowing through the whole house.For a state and a country obsessed with guns I found this rather funny. But looking at the plans for one of these homes I understood a little better what it might look like inside.

Shotgun houses have been around in Haiti, Dominican Republic and West Africa as early as the 1800's. In the USA and particularly Houston - Fourth Ward it was more so around the late 1800's. 

In 1866 the Fourth Ward was known as Freedman Town, a suburb where recently freed slaves who had departed the Brazos River cotton plantations settled. Here on Buffalo Bayous shores, small shanty houses where built.

The 1,000 freed slaves who settled the area chose this land, as it was inexpensive and because White Americans did not want to settle on the land, which was swampy and prone to flooding. The settlers of Freedmen's Town paved the streets with bricks that they hand-made themselves. They are still present today..little tiny red bricks that look very similar to mud bricks.


Shotgun houses where unique in that they were built very close to each other, they had only 3 bedrooms, where very close to the road and had a front porch. The front porch gave the space to welcome neighbors and family, and install a sense of community. It also gave adults the chance to watch their children and ensure safety when the streets where the only viable area that they could play. America did not have "southern" porches on their homes prior to this, and so the tradition began..


I tried to imagine what it would be like 150 years ago when families and individuals left plantations and slavery, entered this area, built their homes, paved the roads, and begun to build a community. An area that is known as one of Houston's oldest most important black neighborhoods, housed the first black churches, schools and political organisations as well as the first black hospital. This was an area so steeped in history and poignant to the free men, women and children that looking at these homes I could only cry... Oh the stories these walls could tell..

“YOU MAY FIND YOURSELF living in a shotgun shack,” begins The Talking Heads song “Once in a Lifetime,” David’s Byrne’s haunting vocals leaving little doubt as to what such a life portends. This is a place where you never want to find yourself.

For most of its history, shotgun shacks—or, less pejoratively, shotgun houses—have been totems of extreme poverty, especially in the south, where they are most common. The typical shotgun is a narrow, one-room-wide cottage with rooms lined up one behind the other and doors at the front and back. (One theory holds that the name came from the possibility of firing a gun through the front door and sending a bullet out the back.) Up to four were typically crammed onto a single lot, giving them a distinctive “row house” look, although the homes shared no common walls.

“Generally, they’re thought of in very disparaging ways,” 

“The prevailing attitude about shotgun houses is that they were slum housing".

Some days their is an overwhelming heaviness that doesn't shift no matter how much sun permeates your skin, how many margaritas you drink, and how much the wind blows through your hair.

Sometimes the reflection you catch in the window makes you want to shrink under the layers that are your life and recoil from the disgusting imagery that you see.

Some days everything is so vivid and dark at the same time.

Some days are harder than others

The Abandoned Mansions of Riverside Terrace - Third Ward

River Oaks in Houston is a suburb where the insanely wealthy live. Homes resemble what we see on movies and t.v as mansions in Georgia on slave plantations or something. Big, grand, columns, insane amount of front lawn, driveway long enough to reach the house that from the street it looks small, and an abundance of "foreign" workers either mowing lawns, cleaning pools, blowing leaves away.

It really is something else driving around looking at how the rich live. Now back in the 1930's the Jewish population where not welcome in River Oaks and got shunned to live on the other side of the bayou in an area now known as Third Ward. 

One of the streets Riverside Terrace was, and is, famous for its mansions. Similar to River Oaks they are big, glorious and over the top. Riverside Terrace matched the swanky suburb of River Oaks, without a doubt, housing prominent Jewish families that are synonymous with wealthy business in Texas.

In 1952 African American families started moving in despite bombs being thrown on their front porches. They stayed and the racist, dumb white folk started moving out. Main roads also started to build a major highway through here, which didn't take people long to leave.

Real Estate agents started buying the houses up and selling them off to African American families, so the remaining white families started putting signs up "Not for Sale". 

This was a small movement in the 60's designed not to alienate "minority groups" but to stop real estate agents block busting. (Google that shit, its basically just a way of racially scare mongering people and spreading hate - nasty) 

African American and Civil rights leaders supported this, and guess what - wealthy families of all colours and race moved in and lived happily and comfortably.

An area that still has a higher percentage of non-white home owners and recently more and more gay families, those houses that where left in the 70's and 80's due to economic drops, bankruptcy and housing slumps, still remain abandon. Slowly getting bought up and restored to their former glory, there are still MANY beautiful properties, boarded up and left to rot.

Riverside Terrace is now famous for its abandoned mansions. I decided to take a look and see for myself.

Someone had the right idea to squat in this one with their dog