the weapon that is us.
May 19, 2024
CAUTION:
You are bearing witness to a woman breaking into herself. A woman learning the shale and sharpness of her teeth and tongue. A woman stretching in ways critical and also uncomfortable. A woman decoding her gifts, and exploring the texture, weight, composition and tone of her choice. A woman choosing her perception, and perspective; words, thoughts, and expressions. A woman revisiting her reflection, seeing who she has been, who she is, who she wants to be and how she is showing up in this being. A woman opening. A woman standing on the ground laid by women who have made a way. A woman resting, softly, holding firmly, and swayed steadily in the arms of women who stand beside her.
You are bearing witness to a woman recognizing. She is not the beauty, the beast, the heroine, or the savior, or the martyr.
She is the weapon.
…I have been feeling, the feeling of being between the veils for a few years now. The veils being that of life, and death, dark and light, truth and unwise.
This isn’t the first time I’ve experienced this feeling but each time it comes its presence disrupts, and I adjust differently. The last time I felt attuned in this way was in 2017 after my Father passed. A few mornings I was speaking with the Mother of a friend who lost his Father in November of last year. I shared with her that my Father has felt close and present, maybe because his presence is unharnessed, and unbound and so now so is our connection.
The first time I can recall experiencing this energy space between the veils was sometime in 2011 or 2012. My Grandpapa, my Mother’s Father, who passed in 2004, came to visit me in a dream. He came one early morning knocking on my apartment door at St. Johns Place in Crownheights, Brooklyn. Upon seeing him through the peep-hole. I opened the door, but just barely and stared at him feeling a combination of confused emotion – disbelief, grief and awe, barely registering the words he was speaking. He was asking me to let him in so that we could talk about his leaving, and I yelled at him. How dare he stand there calming after having left so suddenly, without warning or apology. I woke from that dream crying hysterically. Angry with myself for not letting him in, for not flinging the door open and flying into his arm. For not allowing myself the feeling of his embrace and instead yelling at him, begging of him to tell me how, and why he could play such a trick. That was the last and only time Grandpapa came to me in my dreams but this thought has never left me:
How could he be gone, and yet still be here?
If you aren’t someone who believes in alternate planes of existence, esotericism, this might read strange, fanatical, insane even. But time/life/“reality” is strange and what is happening, what is baring itself to be witnessed day in, and out, in the world presently, and also historically, is anything but normal or sane.
This sensation of being between the veils wakes me up at odd hours, usually between three and five AM. Frequently, the waking in accompanied by a voice or a stirring presence. While it is sometimes startling, I have never been fearful and always the presence calls every sense in me to attention.
Wednesday morning, April 17, 2024, this feeling woke me sometime around 5:00AM, and I started writing. The following day I couldn’t be completely sure if me waking up, and writing, was a dream or reality. While I could remember writing, I couldn’t place where I’d written. After some searching and sifting through my phone, notebooks and journal pages, I found the words. Those words, are weaved within what you are about to read now.
Deep contemplations, and tender considerations, are vital and necessary for the processing of these times.
Conversations with my Mother are rarely, if ever, surface level. She is not the type to spend too much time in the shallow end…of anything. One of our recent conversations pushed me to deeply contemplate and consider my voice and role during these present times, these times of history repeating itself as we witness, in real time, and watch in “4K”, the unfolding of multiple genocides. These times of listening, and reading, as people justify the annihilation of entire populations, nations, families, and bloodlines. These times of listening, and reading, as both men, and women alike, reach to rationalize, defend and excuse the emotional, mental, and physical harm and abuse inflicted upon women behind closed doors and doors wide open, for all to see.
These times where even as the truth stands in full view, we choose to declare it a lie.
These times of supreme denial, wherein we have taken up the belief that covering our ears and shutting our eyes will keep a world, already on fire, from continuing to be engulfed in flames.
Image: Woman covers her mouth with one hand, and uses the other to simulate a gun pointed at her head, a symbolic gesture to raise awareness of the ongoing violence, and genocide, affecting millions of Congolese. [Image Source @freecongodrc].
Deep contemplations and tender considerations are vital, and necessary for the processing of these times. Contemplation–deep and prolonged reflection, Consideration–focused thought, and the desire to share beyond my own journal pages, in the event there is some value to be gleaned for others, is one of the reasons ‘Words As Fruit’ exists. These contemplations and considerations, along with the deliberate, and consistent reading of mental pourings from other writers, past and present — Hala Alyan, Fariha Róisín, Zeba Blay, Nadia Meli, Neema Githre Siphone, Priya Florence, Safia Elhillo — challenge, compel and push me to get, and remain clear on what role, place and responsibilities I am willing and able to hold.; to remain clear that taking responsibility is both vital and necessary.
To shirk this responsibility, to remain unclear of my role and position, is likely to result in burn out, confusion, exhaustion and a state of hopelessness I may not be able to come back from. I am not willing to chance, hopefulness, nor am I able to consent to ignorance. Hopefulness, mindfulness, and an empathic nature and gift I cannot divorce myself from (though I have made attempts) are the resilient and insistent parts of me.
There is something in me that refuses silence, that moves and grows towards revelation and, in the last few months I have come into understanding the meaning and necessity of liberation. I want my already resilient heart, and relentless hopefulness, to flourish. This is partly achieved through heart-full and tender consideration, and, sometimes brazen, and daring clarification.
Illuminate. Communicate. Imagine. Invite.
I exist, always, within the intersections of multiplicity. I recognize that I have been gifted the ability to cover across multiple Callings and Roles for Collective Liberation,. This ability is made possible through the work of feeling, the craft of writing, and the practice of emotional alchemy.
Through feeling, writing, and the sharing and archiving of other writers, my hope is to:
Illuminate and challenge us to consider and think beyond taught limited views, beliefs, thoughts and perceptions;
Communicate and share varying perspectives that may compel and aid us in pushing toward more progressive and collectively fruitful thought and action;
Imagine and re-envision a world that coming generations can truly live freely within, with agency and protection of bodily choice, and basic and human rights;
Invite us to contemplate, and consider, the harmonies, and disharmonies, alignment, and incongruence, between what we say we value and what our choices, actions and decisions reveal.
“Intention never outweighs impact”.
If I’m being honest, I can say that I didn’t think I fully knew, or expected, that this would be the kind fruit bared here. This fruit that is a cross between bitter and sweet, and sour and supple, ripe and tender. And, it has taken me an entire month to decide to share this here because I questioned whether or not this was ‘too deep’ and/or ‘too much’ but, per Judy, “Can anything heavy ever be light?”
Judy says, “Intention never outweighs impact”.
My question for myself and others is: What is the impact of our intentions — our thoughts, mindset, beliefs, choices, actions and decisions?
My intention is to allow “Words, As Fruit” to continue to be a fruitful resting place for our eyes, ears, and heart’s mind. But within this rest there will also be stirrings, reckonings and wrestlings. I will continue to tell journey stories, write out my thoughts, reflections, and healings. And I will continue to challenge us to think beyond ourselves, feel into our depths, and see, and consider, beyond the limits of our own privleged experience and lines of sight.
The hope is that I become an embodiment of all that I have intentioned. That I walk it, like I talk it.
Words from Nina Simone that I have been coming back to:
“What kept me sane was knowing that things would change, and it was a question of keeping myself together until they did.”
Knowing that transformation, both of myself and all that is around me, is necessary and possible, whether by natural occurrence, force, the force that is love, and necessary sacrifice, is what keeps me sane, keeps me hopeful, demanding, believing, and trying.
I am willing to love, and to sacrifice in order to let the lesser go so the greater can thrive.1 And, I am willing to expand my heart, and open my eyes so that I may be able to discern between the two — what is lesser, and what is greater, within me, and beyond me.
– ei