Waves & indigo
declaring myself into practice - 🌑 New Moon
“[T]he earth element represents solidity— hardness or softness, roughness or smoothness. The Earth always supports us, regardless of what we have done or how hard our day may have been. -Anushka Fernandoupulle
🕸️ marginalia*
A few weeks ago, I had an idea to write about choice. Inside the thought sphere, it listed many decisions I made in this iteration of my lived experiences. My most reactive thought was, wow, get over yourself. And I got over myself and moved right into avoiding the impulse. I dismissed the idea and bumbled along. Then, the desire to write came again and soft from friends, inviting me to write and make with them. Then, the impulse felt warmer, more of a suggestion than an obligation. I felt it burrowed in my chest until it became a need. A need asking to be embraced and met.
I kicked the prayer into the university, an emanation of a heart clear of its desires and longings, inside colliding waves and being shaped by what was, is, and could be enmeshed with family, political position, and cultures.
I had a choice. Listen to the voice of my endless teachers listing ALL the ways I failed to grasp the mechanics of English and, therefore, yet to be worthy of expressing my thoughts through words. Or just fucking express. So I chose. I chose me. Or perhaps the choice chose me in those moments I am calling impulses.
The choice arrived before I could see it, and I started typing this marginalia. I declared myself in the practice of writing at 13. I kicked the prayer into the university, an emanation of a heart clear of its desires and longings, inside colliding waves and being shaped by what was, is, and could be enmeshed with family, political position, and cultures.
I wonder how to know which waves guide my choices. In the gesture of writing to share with you, my heart is aglow. Is this the wave of freedom? The honoring of the waves asking for Freedom that offers the choice to be who we are as we are? This feels like opting to be Black, to be of blackness, and swimming in the unfolding of the darkness that can be BLACK: I sometimes know that iteration of BLACKness as the falling between the stars is called moments. The gentle letting go of the pretext of control and still CHOOSING to respond. To respond with the whole chest. To respond with all the aligned ancestors. To respond grounded and assured in integrity with the waves. Waves as a movement. Waves as the space/the quality between the air and the sites of communion.
Choosing to sense a disappearing self, going and arriving.
🌾 florilegia - indigo
More on this plant and the forced labor of African American Women in building the wealth of the construct of the USA (link to the article).
What happens to our collective relationship with a plant when members of our species operate from principles that bring imbalance? What, then is the response?
🌱 gratitude & grounding
Thank you for the labor of love that offers us what we need to have this human experience. I gleefully extend gratitude to you, kind reader, for walking with me on this journey.
Can you feel the solidity of your bones? Do you know your bones are made of earth stuff?
Shoutout to my new paid subscriber! Your gift is a sweet reminder to stay in the practice of writing. To community accountability! it fuels the work.
*the text is, as always, our entanglement