“Oou, Child!” a black proverb I lean on as everything I know takes on cryptic form; a constant opening of the hands and a letting go of the familiar. Having religiously succeeded at nurturing my own citizen-subject fetish, something else has maybe already been happening. I now make the story I am in a time where I have an active desperation for something else.
If you read my past personal essays, you will stumble upon a constructed hope and grace, a hegemonic neoliberal freedom-making—Blackness as an excellent thing rather than a broken and breaking thing of bone marrow—a deceptive node to worshipping instead of eating empire. But what if to eat is to worship? Inhale—chomp—chew—rip to stew. I am feeling into resisting making a thing, finding a way, or being a somebody.
I am growing into unmaking things, getting lost, and being with all animisms. I am curious what happens when I center around the field instead of the individual. In these early days it feels like self-betrayal, a muddying and discoloration and even a losing of myself. I am choosing to leave the house of “for and/or against” and yet, I will continue to fumble through this binary prison. Fascism makes the wild beyond that we are feel like hell—a smoldering unliveable Palestine.
“I am happy with how I showed up today,” I bragged to a friend checking in on me after an episode of being triggered—as if my showing up was some noble heroic gesture. The ability to show up as a measure of value does the undercover job of pedatilizing the self—digesting elevated self-importance as life’s satisfaction. There is a larger, more capable net holding it all already. All I have to do is be black and die.
I have spent a good chunk of the last 30 years enlisting order, success, and an aesthetic package serving a superiority complex as taste. 1,100 of you clicked subscribe at some fixed point. As I continue to humbly tumble through my writing practice and galavant about our planet, I realize I am not here to offer anything though through my non-offering offer so much even if just the idea that there are more windows to open, close, tear down, rebuild, do without and refuse.
I really appreciate your writing and your vulnerability Kamra, thank you for sharing. 🧡