heart and pen. (mirrors and windows)
(revised July 2026)
Prelude.
Art, creating…creation is a continuum: a connected sequence or range of things where the extremes are distinct, but the parts in between blend into one another gradually without any clear dividing lines. There is nothing new under the sun except the history we do not know. This is a rendition of a quote attributed to Harry S. Truman, but it is committed to memory because I grew up hearing my Mother say it. “Mirrors and Windows” is language I also know. Mirrors to see to, and windows to see through. Because it is not just about what we see but what we think, understand, or believe about what we see.
Born in Los Angeles, and raised in Lake Elsinore, California (aka the Inland Empire) I had many windows but very few mirrors. Windows allowed me to see, and I also experienced, what it was like to live in an environment that lacked love and did not welcome difference. When I use the word love I am referring to a kind of love that embodies love’s ingredients: affection, care, consideration, commitment, communication, honesty (and transparency), openness, recognition, respect and trust.(1) When I use difference, I am referring to anything outside of a considered “norm”. As I am writing, I am thinking: normalcy constricts the mind, and makes it small.
For a long time I refused to own, write or talk about growing up in Lake Elsinore. Growing up there had a profound impact on who I have been within myself, and so also who and how I been in the world. I’ve worn a lot of masks, for safety and self-preservation. In my lifetime I have seen a cross burn. It is something I cannot forget, though I have tried. It is a memory that refuses to be displaced, a memory that on occasion haunts me. And, maybe it is not so much the memory but the fear, the visceral sensing of the reality that I was not safe there.
At 15, when I began journaling, it was in part an effort to appease my Mother. She’d been persistently encouraging me to use the empty pages to let myself loose, or in her words, “to share me with myself”. In hindsight I recognize that journaling offered me the space to create my own mirrors. I continue to journal for this reason, and many more. I write and share these recollections as a mirror for reflection and window for what may be a different perspective.
Mirrors and Windows.
This piece is a collection of thoughts. A peak within a mind that contemplates and considers a hell-of-a-lot. I use “piece” and “peace” interchangeably.(2) In writing through pieces, and parts, of this human and earthly experience I often find my own peace. Many pieces, released and out in the world, I consider unfinished, and yet still whole. My sharing here has become a kind of record of my own process of bringing forth the past, through memory evoked through art and literature. Remembering in this way helps make the present more clear, more tangible. The past can be an illuminating factor, allowing for present envisioning and future (re)imagining.
As I move these words from a place where the heart and mind meet, and thought forms and flows from pen to page, I am listening to the voices of Lucille Clifton and Sonia Sanchez vibrate out from the television. On the screen Sanchez and Clifton sit next to each other on stage, alongside Moderator Elsa Davis, at The New School in New York City. The month is October. The year is 2001. The conversation is titled, ‘Mirrors and Windows’. (3)
“I borrowed something from Rudine Sims who said that all children, and I think all adults as well, need mirrors and widows. Mirrors in which they can see themselves, windows through which they can see the world. And everybody’s children are disadvantaged by not having that. There are some children in our culture who have only seen mirrors, they are disadvantaged. There are some children in our culture who have only seen windows, they are disadvantaged. And so it’s one of the things I like to think to do is to provide balance, to provide windows and mirrors if possible.” - Lucille Clifton
Fallacy Of The “Apocalypse”
The windows through which I see show me that I have, in my perception, confused the televised apocalypse. The apocalypse seen in movies are not in fact depictions of the world ending, they are depictions of what it might look like if america, and other colonialist powers. are to continue to exist as they always have. These depictions, where the land is scorched, dry, dusty, and barren, small clusters of humans, and animals that have survived, is not a depiction of the world but of what happens when a system like america falls and collapses in on itself. These depictions where there is no power, no telephones, though there is miraculously always some ancient device that one of the few humans stumbles upon, and it works and they can reach another human, are flat and from film to film look the same. These depictions where there is no food, or whatever food there is, is boxed or canned, and somehow still edible or unspoiled, offers up a future ending that is filled with too much grace for the level of damage this country has done. These depictions where the weather is either searing and sweltering hot or numbingly cold, are too easily and neatly coordinated. In essence, film makers want us to believe that the apocalypse, the end of the world as we know it, is a future in which civilization is all but dead, and gone. Eviscerated. But if america as we know it is to end, I believe it would look nothing like this. However, If america, as we know it, is to persist, under regimes rooted in white supremacy, capitalism and patriarchy, there will be life, but there will be no living. Not rightly, not wholly, not joyfully. It will be a hollowed out existence with the most horrific elements of the past returning in fashions more brutal, more gruesome, and more deadly.
On the outside, things will appear as “normal”. The normalcy of a country built atop the blood and bodies of not just Indigenous people, but of its own “country men”. Normal will mean basic and bland. “Entertainment” will be sanitized and censored. Television, books, movies, music and art will be one continuous body of propaganda and lies. Neighborhoods will resemble prison complexes. In the areas that have individual houses, each house will be painted some shade of white, off white, light grey, and beige. Bodies will be perpetually unwell, a result of immune systems having been subjected to decades and centuries of untested vaccines, genetically modified and lab grown foods created by a system that needs its citizens ill and dependent on healthcare which will still not be affordable or accessible to anyone who is not a million, billion or trillionaire. Democracy will be a thing of the past, as well as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom to petition. Those “living” in this future won’t actually know what freedom is and there will be no books to tell of a time when americans had rights because they will have all been burned, or banned.
Because the majority of the population is so unwell, and because people are not free to assemble, there will be little to no close interaction, no true intimacy. The language of love and community may still exist in words but they will have lost all meaning. Those surviving won’t know what it is to be cared for, or held, beyond social media and a phone screen. What those in this future will know is how to be “productive”, “high performing”, “assets” needed and necessary to keep the country…I mean system, profitable. The population will be controlled. To bear children will not be a choice but an obligation, an obligation chosen for some and forbidden for others. It’s giving The Handmaids Tale. Minds will be rotten because, who needs to think when you have AI? Force and coercion will not be exceptions, but be the rule. Warrants, rights, and due process will also be a thing of the past. The idea of justice will be as murky and dirty as the water and the air that by this time Mother Nature will be struggling to keep clean because the system does not care for Her. It will be normal see bodies lying dead in the street, or hanging from trees, and not just Black, Brown bodies but any body. It will be clear that a country is not a home when the country is merely a system whose only loyalty is to power and profitability.
Does any of this seem familiar?
The depictions of the apocalypse seen in the movies are misleading. I felt it necessary to paint this picture because the idea of it is staggering. The reluctance to see the harm of our normalcy is not going to be the thing that saves us. In fact, there is no savior. There is only us.
Be Good To Us.
From month to month I see on socials (insert month) “Be good to us”. The Black Woman writer in me wants to pose a different asking because, how are we asking time to give and do for us what we seem reluctant to give and do for ourselves?
be good to us? what if we be good to and for ourselves? be acknowledging of the gift of time, agency and ability; ancestral wisdom, inherent genius and natural intelligence. what if we be aware of the reasons for being here? reasons beyond self interest. what is we be reminded and remember that freedom is a responsibility. what if we choose our responsibilities, responsibly, and we can be well. what is we be reminded, and remember the necessity of consideration?remember that community is not inconvenient because we need each other. always have. always will. what is we consider more our Earthly Mother? recognize Earth as home. our care for her ensures not just Her life but our own. what if we remember we cannot breathe without Her? what is we remember life moves in mysterious ways, and we are a part of its mystery and movement.
are we moving back or moving forward?is forward better? is better only for some?
(insert month here) be good to us…?
what if we be good to ourselves?
Heart and Pen.
This may be an unpopular opinion but it is not a new one. If you are reading this from a mobile phone or computer from the comfort of your own dwelling…you are already free. If there is a question we are to consider I offer this:
What are we doing with the agency our freedom affords?
Writing has been a form of resistance I have used since before I knew what resistance was, before I understood that I had been born into resistance because Idowu is my Nigerian Father and Judy is my Indigenous American Mother, a musician and poet, an artist and a feeler, deeply concerned with justice, rooted in the awareness of the worlds around them, free thinkers, and two people who loved each other, a love which birthed me. Me, a woman breaking into herself, a woman doing language, learning how to perfect her loving – self-love, familial love, platonic love, romantic, communal, environmental, spiritual, revolutionary love. Me, a woman discovering the “razors between her teeth”and learning how to use them, not to cut any person but to cut through delusion so that the truth cannot be buried in it. Me, a woman learning how to balance the windows and mirrors, what I see and what I choose to believe about what I see. Me, a woman learning that I am not the heroine, the savior, the martyr or the medicine. I am peace and part of the weapon, heart in one hand and pen in the other. (4)
In 1975 Maya Angelou sat down with James Baldwin, for a “Conversation With A Native Son”.(5) Towards the end of the interview, Angelou asks, “Is there any time in life where you start a project that you’re not afraid?” Baldwin begins reflecting on the completion of “No Name In The Street” and a conversation with his brother, David who Baldwin says pointed out to him that to be a writer, which essentially is to keep trying, meant that he, “had to keep the faith.”
You, I…Us.
We are a part of the biggest group project there is. Everyday we are trust falling and we need the arms of another not just to catch us, but to keep us.
I have faith, and believe in the future I imagine. This is to say, I believe in us. I imagine a future that is beyond comprehension because it looks nothing like anything I have ever seen, experienced or known, at least not in this present body or lifetime, but I believe, and have faith in its possibility. In this future we exist differently. In this future we exist wholly. In this future we flourish, frolic and thrive. Not just some of us, but all of us. In the future there is an eternal and infinite, acknowledged and bound tethering between “you” and “I”, in the same way there is an eternal and infinite tethering between Mother and Nature, this Earth and its inhabitants. In this future people truly know, experience and practice love, with all of its ingredients.
In this future, history is not hidden and to know and speak of it honestly is not forbidden. In this future the truth rests in plain sight, is taught proudly because in this future, this country, whether it is still known as america or goes by another name, knows itself and owns its knowing. History, in this future includes all the happenings that led to its evolution. In this future, “we the people” choose not to make another america, because we the people know, america is not great and never was.
– ei“When one day our children’s children ask, “What did you do?” When they rise like the Guatemalan poet Rene Castillo rose and asked us what we did “when our nations dried out slowly like a sweet fire small and alone.” When they ask us, “What did you do when the poor suffered, when tenderness and life burnt out of them?” We, the lovers of selves, the lovers of people, the lovers of justice will turn and say, “We resisted. We resisted the ego. We resisted the gossip, the rumor in ourselves. We resisted the great, the people red orialist in a selves. We resisted the quick killings and quick retaliations of others. We resisted war, we resisted war, we resisted war. Can you do it? Can you resist? Can you say it? Can you resist? Can you remember? Can you resist? Resist, resist, resist.
Black voters in Florida, can you resist? Can you remember 41 bullets? Can you say 41 bullets? Can you remember, cccccccccccccccan you resssssist, even in this death, can you resist?????????????” - Sonia Sanchez from a letter to writer Chinua Achebe
footnotes(1) bell hooks, all about love, Chapter One, Clarity: Give Love Words. “genuine love (a combination of care, commitment, trust, knowledge, responsibility, and respect)
(2) In Yoruba tradition, peace is defined by the term Àlàáfíà, which translates to complete well-being, wholeness, and cosmic equilibrium. Far beyond the mere absence of conflict, peace is an active, holistic state encompassing physical health, mental serenity, and communal harmony.
(3) Lucille Clifton & Sonia Sanchez: Mirrors & Windows: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8aCnU9oArI
(4) Reference Quote: “Someone asked me, ‘Why do you write?’ and I said because I wanted to tell people how I became this woman with razor blades between her teeth.” - Sonia Sanchez
(5) Black History Speaks: 1975 Conversation with a Native Son, James Baldwin and Maya Angelou https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsX3pr_Ia-Q