Greetings Good People!
i have started & stopped this newsletter so many times because each time something new would emerge, i would need to sit with it… listen to it’s wisdom… then when it was ready to be shared…another blessing would arise! what a blessing. This is my version of ANALOG MODE.
Letter writing, like this newsletter, arriving just after the things (as opposed to concurrently like social media has offered), allows you time to DIGEST– maybe even RE-ASSESS– your experience. This feels invaluable during an age when things are going much too quickly for most to keep up with.
& we aren’t made to keep up. We’re made to FEEL it. INTEGRATE it. Create anew.
In the wake of Mother Nature’s most recent grief rage, hurricane Helene, i feel particularly honed to this being another season of CLEARING AND RECKONING. We are being given many examples of the consequences & costs when we lose right relationship with our surroundings.
&, with another election year coming, i know people are nervous. it feels, regardless of the outcome, there will be some dis-ease. it has felt challenging even for me to stay centering, but these 3 notes have been GROUNDING tenants for this Time:
1. At the end of the day, no matter what happens, i will continue BEING WHO I AM, doing what i am doing to SUPPORT & WITNESS people back to the brilliance of their HUMANITY & in their ability to see humanity in others.
2. James Baldwin once said, Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. In these times, that gives my action a continual EAST– to be daring & courageous to face another, to face my delusions, & to do the work to seek UNDERSTANDING so that the possibility of ETHICAL & HUMANE decisions can be made for myself & my fellow kin.
3. On Trevors Noah’s podcast What Now? (thanks M!) he featured historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari who spoke of the ways in which a people continually seek more and more information, thinking it is bringing them closer to TRUTH but it actually does the opposite. The episode helped remind me of my commitment to seek truth within & from within assess truth.
These grounding truths for this NOW would not have been possible if not INTERCONNECTED & informed from moments of the last 10 months of healing & integration. Here are some of those moments:
Devatas (guardian spirits) during my time in Angkor Wat in Cambodia. It was giving protector womxn' sharing wisdom.
A month immersion reading M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong! Sometimes the best way to free our voice is to challenge it in (what seems like) another tongue.
Sometimes i find rooting in the explanations given to our youth - from the Edith J Carrier Arboretum at James Madison University.
The next four photos are from Furious Flower IV, whose attendance would not have been possible without the support of my family & Anastacia-Renee (pictured).
‘The Creativity of the Black Woman: From Phillis Wheatley to Margaret Walker to Today’ workshop w. Maryemma Graham, Ebony Lumumba & Airea D. Matthews
'A Pursuit of Fugitive Choreographies' Furious Flower IV workshop w. Aurielle Marie, Joy Priest, & Danez Smith
‘Theorizing Otherwise: AfroFuturism, AfroPessimism, AfroSurrealism, AfroProphecy’ w. Ajanae Dawkins & others
i had the most compelling conversation w. Betsy Newton, a student from JMU, which made me reconsider the simultaneous conditions of creation
Alexis Pauline Gumbs in Seattle for a Dream Activation
BoomScat at Langston Hughes in Seattle where i did my first improv choreopoem!
What truths have you arrived at in the last year? please share using this button:
In sum/continuation, it has been a FULL SENSORIAL IMMERSION into who my Work is in conversation with NOW...perhaps always. it (still) involved a significant amount of time ALONE TOGETHER. After 10 months of deep integration this mantra arises: I AM POSSIBILITY.
& so are you.
Please remember this. Each of you has an invaluable gift for this time. Exercise that gift. There is always more we can do, yes, but we also have to know & be satiated with what can be done in a given moment; knowing that we work as a team. There isn’t a moment without work being done, just an acceptance of our limitations that we can’t be the one to do it all the time; else in our weariness, we inadvertently bring harm.
i believe in you all.
more.soon.