Empty Page
February 1, 2026How I am moving through this world, in these times, changes every moment of everyday. But also every moment of everyday I am moving as slowly as I can.
There is a kind of vacancy1 that replaces occupancy in the emotional body when there is so much loss. Even more so when loss - whether it is death, whether it is unwanted change,transition or transformation - is not expressed, not shared, not acknowledged; whenwe do not handle life with sacred care.
Now you may ask, want to know, how one fills this vacancy. And I cannot tell you. And I do not even know that you fill it, but I do know, you do feel it.
As I have been feeling and moving through and within my own vacancies, I have been meeting and re-meeting words. When I am struggling I seek out language because if I can name a thing I can see it with more clarity. I can process it, digest it, and express it so that the weight of it doesn’t just sit, it alchemizes.
So I have been meeting words. Meeting them like I meet people. Bumping up against them. Words and people. But words are different than people.
Words are like an empty page. Evenas they bare themselves, openly, ready, willing for you to savor them, words ask for nothing from you but welcome all of you, all that you are willing and able to give, all that you are willing to allow and all that you are willing to take in.
This week I kept bumping into language of revelation of revolution and I had this thought about the letter “r” and how each of these words can stand alone with out it but take on different meaning with it.
Revelation | Elevation (a rearrangement of letters, evelation = elevation)
Revolution | Evolution
What if the “r” stands for Rebirth?
What if we are birthed once by our mothers and then rebirthed again through life’s vacancies?
In an instagram post earlier this week, artistic intellectual and longtime friend, Amanda Seales wrote, “Each of us is a revolution.”
and then from Joél Leon I read, “Revolution is a love language.”
The thought I will end with is this:
I believe many of us have revolutionary hearts. It’s our minds that lag behind, still needing to learn how to speak the language. The televised revolution is what happens after our minds meet our hearts and the fluency in its language evolves, not just into actions but into new ways of being. New ways of occupying vacancies.
Interviewer: The revolution wasn’t televised in the 60’s. Is it going to be televised in the 90’s?
Gil Scott-Heron: Well you know, the catch phrase, what that was all about, that was all about the first change that takes place is in your mind. You have to change your mind before you change the way you’re living and the way you move. So when we said, ‘The revolution will not be televised’, we were saying the thing that’s going to change people is something that no-one will ever be able to capture on film, it will just be something that you see and all of a sudden you realize, I’m on the wrong page, or, I’m on the right page but I’m on the wrong note and I’ve got to get in sync with everyone else to understand what’s happening in this country.
1989 was 37 years ago and a revolution…evolution is still needed, is still necessary.
Thank you for investing your time here. It isn’t taken for granted, and it doesn’t go unnoticed.