This year I was introduced to the concept of a death doula, and now I’m thinking of all the ways we can serve as guides to one another as we move into new and unfamiliar realms. We have been in a phase of transition for some time, and reminding ourselves of who we wish to be as we move through this threshold is important for cultivating hope. What are the values and dreams you’re carrying onto the other side? What are you leaving behind and saying goodbye to?
Here is a care package / digital itinerary while we wait on each other...
📍Road Map:
1. One-Stop Hot Take
With Halloween behind us, I now want a nature-centered horror film where the land is anything but the central threat to people of color. I made a chart to list my own grievances with both the horror canon, the general trope of “wilderness” and what I personally feel is in dire need of deconstruction (“Cabin in the Woods” didn’t cut it for me).
2. Which leads me to looking at the photography of Nydia Blas:
Link to full series : When Time Stands Still
Link to full series : The Souls of Black Folk
3. And this embrace / stronghold I found in Pennsylvania.
4. Where is the door, the window, and the sun in relationship to each other? How do you move across all three, and with whom is that movement shared?
I’ve spent a great deal of time questioning the need to be inside, assuming that all interiors, like wombs, bubble baths ( and the awkward crevices of homes that only little kids manage to fit inside of) are spaces of comfort through confinement. A country founded on the imaginary institution of whiteness, relying solely, and pathetically, on a binary, now grapples with metamorphosis. I’m questioning these boundaries of space today:
Who is in the White House, the courts, a grand jury?
Who is in a gene pool versus who is in a home (who lives with you in the present within your dimples, the broadness of your nose, the way your body starts to age and repeat the same glitches as someone before you; the way you respond to questions or deflect conflict).
Who is far out from the phone’s camera frame, out of shooting range, out of a roll call of names.
Out in the clearing, over on a summit, looking down or straight on at land and signs of life that are better off without me, or you, or anyone for that matter. Uprooted, repotted, out of direct sunlight.
Whose art installations and monuments sit out on the sculpture park where all the visitors are brown and their picnic blankets sit beneath empanadas and Coronas instead of PB&Js and LaCroix? The artists' names on all the plaques are slow and heavy meditations on sound.
Who is out running, not because they need to chase something or escape, but because the body is celebrating, fusing, learning...
Who else is just realizing that (t)here might actually be safer than the space we were told to live inside of?
Where is the door, the window, and the sun in relationship to each other? Who looks back at you from the other side?
5. Playlist for redirecting :
Some sounds for moving forward, even if it means taking the most roundabout way possible.
6. Asset Mapping :
A slide from an asset mapping workshop I led with my students last week. Now is probably a good time for all of us to consider what we have to offer, what we seek from others, and what we wish to share.
✨ If you have the legal protections and infrastructure in place to vote, please do so today on behalf of so many who cannot. Furthermore, If the administration does switch over in January, please do not go back to sleep. Regardless of what happens, continue to show up and build out the language that fits you best when creating better systems.
Take care <3