Transitions...

Transitions are exciting and difficult. Since I last posted a lot has gone down.

1. Moving from Rochester to NYC.

Foundation is very important to me. I'm a homebody, a double Capricorn, and a real hostess. When planing gatherings or work sessions, I tend to always insist that I host them. When my foundation gets shook, everything else becomes more difficult to focus on. I went from a temporary home to couch surfing, and in the midst of that there is so much I've had to and still need to accomplish: completing online English courses, finishing up final projects and papers for my grad program (including my end-of-year portfolio, which is still in progress), applying for food stamps, medicaid, and a second B.A. in Art, helping my mom find work and stable housing, and looking for work, for examples. So all of these things add to the foundation-shaking factor, especially with my life locked in a u-haul storage box.

But what has been interesting and confusing about this shift is that its the first time in 7 years that NYC is technically my home. I'm a drastically different human today compared to 7 years ago, and gentrification has done a lot to change my "home" in those 7 years as well. My first moments here have been a mixed process of mourning, reflection, and celebration: mourning those aspects of the city I created memories in that are no longer there; reflecting on who I was 7 years ago and why I left NYC and how my current relationship to this city is, and will be different- a process of facing my past and healing, a process of constructing a new self.

Something automatically shifted in all this foundation-shaking that allowed me to stay focused. There was a shift from being rooted in my physical space to being rooted in faith. I remembered what life had taught me in my 6 years in the Bay Area, and that's that intuition is the voice of Most High within us, and that when we are on the path that She has set before us the Universe will provide - always. So my intuition has been my closest companion in all of this, and even in the midst of all these challenges I've been feeling like the most blessed person on earth!

2. Shifting from University Student mode to Educating Artist / Family Member / Friend mode.

This is going to be a process of unlearning. There are so many hidden emotional, physical, spiritual, and intellectual habits I've acquired as a University Student. As an unhealthy workaholic, I've let myself neglect my own humanity. A lot of my creative energy has been stifled; for the most part, my relationships with others, including family, have been put into the back-burner; my physical well-being has gone down significantly in the past 7 years; and although I know I've been walking down the right path, I've been consciously in and out of touch with my connection to Most High - I've been so focused on cultivating my intellectual growth that at times I've neglected the rest of me. That's gonna change.

Balance is going to be significant in my continuing process of self-actualization. I have to remember or learn what it means to be a complete human being. Working for social justice has to include developing healthy and holistic selves, there is no movement without a people. It has to be a part of what I'm working towards, what I'm building (not just trying to take down and destruct). And I can't guide others in doing the same if I'm not there myself. A "movement" of people who neglect their own humanity is a dehumanizing movement. And although I can't say I've neglected all other parts of myself all the time, I know I can do better at strengthening my consciousness of all aspects that make me a complete spiritual and human being.

Goals and Blessings.

I have a commitment to stay true to my vision and my path in this life. I've been recently blessed with the opportunity to teach at the James Baldwin School. It was at the top of the list of schools to teach in. I didn't get the position right away. My commitment to my vision was tested and strengthened by Most High, and in that work She provided the perfect opportunity. As far as I've studied and witnessed, this school will support, respond to, and value my work and my vision.

My emotional, spiritual, and intellectual well-being depends on my growth as an artist, at least partly. I'm going to be working towards a second B.A. in Art at City College of NY. This way I'll be present and attentive to this process, while working towards getting credentialed as an Art Teacher in addition to my English credential. I don't see this as "extra work" but as necessary work for my own spiritual existence. I also plan to cultivate my work as a fiction and non-fiction writer.

I have faith that the harder I focus on and walk down my chosen and spiritually inspired journey, the more the blessings will continue to come.

Freedom Time- Lauryn Hill

Freedom Time


powered by ODEO

[Selected Verses]

What's got 'em
Drunk off the spirits
Truth comes, we can't hear it
When you've been, programmed to fear it

..........

How can dominant wisdom
Be recognized in the system
Of Anti-Christ, the majority rules
Intelligent fools
PhD's in illusion
Masters of mass confusion
Bacholors in past illusion

..........

Hungry and thirsty
For good meat we would eat
And still, dined at the table of deceit
How incomplete
From confrontation to retreat
We prolong the true enemies defeat
Destitute a necessity
Causin' desperation to get the best of me
Punishment 'til there was nothing left of me
Realizin' the unescapable death of me
No options in the valley of decision

..........

How can we show up for
An invisible war
Preoccupied with a shadow, makin' love with a whore
Achin' in sores
Babylon, the great mystery
Mother of human history
System of social sorcery
Our present condition
Needs serious recognition
Where there's no repentance there can be no remission

..........

What's goin' on, what's the priority to you
by what authority do we do
the majority hasn't a clue
We majored in curses
Search the chapters, check the verses
Recapture the land
Remove the mark from off of our hands
So we can stand
In agreement with his command
Everything else is damned
Let them with ears understand
Everything else is damned, let them with ears understand

Feeling Homesick...

Reflections #3

I'm grateful for this space. Its sort of like a time capsule. It serves as a reminder of who I am becoming, and lessons I've forgotten. After re-reading my reflections series #1 and #2, I realized how much more relevant these realizations have become over a short period of time, and how important it is that I keep these in mind as I make my major transition back home to New York City in July.

Recently, I've been hit with a blessed humbling experience. I came down to NYC from Rochester and met up with a homie I haven't kicked it with in 8 years. Imagine that. This was the cat that turned me on to the Bay Area, and now he's turning me on to myself. During these 8 years I've completed a Bachelors degree, and now I'm finishing up my Masters. The Bay Area had turned me out to some new critical eyes for looking at the world. I learned that I had been living a life of systematic power indifferences. What trips me out though, is that this shouldn't have been news. I guess I was taught to not look at my own life experiences as sources of knowledge, truth. So, I came to understand the value of my perspective through theory, politics, and academia.

Seeing my homie made me realize how much I've become immersed in the language of academia and lost touch with the language of my self. The balanced had been tipped, and I became this thinking potato that seems to have forgotten where I came from. I'm grateful for him caring enough to challenge me on my shit. Grounding me in my own dirt. I came back to the East Coast thinking I had to be accountable to the community I left behind. What I'm realizing now is that I've got to become accountable to myself... first. There's this piece of me I've been unaware of. And its something I need to battle and be conscious of as I'm reorienting myself back into my old stompin grounds. Again, the lesson of humility is worth remembering here. Its time for me to reconnect.

The Courage to Write

I've decided to highlight one of my students' assignments on my own blog because of her ability to do what is most difficult for writers to do: to take risks. Once we settle into ourselves and realize that the places from which we must write from are our most vulnerable and painful ones, we've become self actualized writers. Here, a 9th grade student, early in her writing, establishes this inherent ability in her writing.

Amane, a practicing Muslim, focuses on how the social experience of 9/11 and the "war on terror" has affected her personal experiences in day to day life. She begins by establishing her experiences as a young citizen in the U.S.:

I practically lived in the United States my entire life. I stood up and and put my hand over my heart and recited the pledge of [allegiance] every day in elementary school. I watched the [superbowl] and sang the national anthem, every time, just like every one else in the U.S. does....

She goes on to describe how this has changed after 9/11:

After 9/11 occured every thing changed. I would go places and get insulted. "Terrorist, go back to your own country. We don't need more of you here." They would say things like that and even worse sometimes. I didn't understand, this is my country....

Do you have any idea what it's like for me to go for a ride in a car and role my window down. I get middle fingers, I get called names, I get spit at, things get thrown at me, and again I also get shouted at. Like other kids my age, i go to the mall to go for a walk and go shopping. But i wish i could do this with out being stared at, gawked at, laughed at, talked about, threatened, and again "Go back to your country."

What is most compelling about this account is that after having been targeted and dehumanized on numerous accounts, still alive in her is the courage to imagine and hope for a world where difference is not a threat and empathy is the norm:

I believe that away from here, a place for rebels, outcasts, untouchables, and uncomfortables to be free. To become their own society. That way they would all be normal, and they would all keep their pasts in the present to think before they hurt or cause hurt the way people bestowed it on them. We, outcasts, we can all be a family. A real and true 'free country'. An outcast is someone who is ostracized by society. An out cast... is me.

I would like to invite Amane to extend that hope to the people of the very land we stand on. With persistence and a struggle rooted in love, justice will prevail. To read her complete post visit her at http://xxarabianpunkxx.blogspot.com/2008/03/outcast.html.

A New Companion

She was my friend's cat, and couldn't afford to pay the pet security and extra rent that landlords love to charge. Her name is Sofie. If it were up to me I'd call her Shadow because she loves to follow people around. Especially my mom. She thinks she owns my mom. She loves to talk and be spoken to, and she's her liveliest in the morning and takes constant cat naps throughout the day. She's earned nickname "Meowmona" because she will meow until she gets what she wants. A true fighter, perhaps.

UPDATE: Sofie had to go back to her old mami, because she was driving my mami nuts... I miss her dearly and I know she misses me too. I mean, she peed on her old mami's rug and walked back into her carrier, which she usually fights not to get into... trip.

Winter Soldier Mike Prysner Testimony

Via La Chola and Flux


Part One:


Part Two:

I <3 Sudy!

M.O.V.E.: Challenging U.S. Hegemony

Conquest

Come over to SPEAK and check out our read-a-thon in support of Andrea Smith's tenure case at U of Mich. Andrea Smith is one of the most revolutionary thinkers in exploring the intersections of oppression of people of color, women, survivors of sexual assault, and writes from an indigenous perspective. She's also a co-founder of Incite!.

Conquest is a must read for folks who are working for social change in any setting, and a must read for folks who are trying to understand how to reflect on their own process of decolonization.

Transforming Silence into Theory

What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you sicken and die of them, still in silence? -Audre Lorde

On my venture to discover an epistemological framework that stems from experiences like my own, I've started to read and re-read some authors by radical women of color. First on my list is Audre Lorde's "Sister Outsider." I've only read a number of selected essays, including "Transformation of Silence into Language and Action," "Scratching the Surface: Some Notes on Barriers to Women and Loving," Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power," "Sexism, An American Disease in Blackface," "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House," and "Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference." (Whew!)

While I took more extensive notes relating to very specific moments and influential people in my life, I am choosing (at least for now) to focus on some broader themes. Below I've listed a few quotes that I think should be considered on this venture. The quotes I chose are focused more on initiating self-reflection and understanding the context of myself in society and myself in the movement. Definition and redefinition.


The future of our earth may depend upon the ability of all women to identify and develop new definitions of power and new patterns of relating across difference... For we have, built into all of us, old blueprints of expectation and response, old structures of oppression, and these must be altered at the same time as we alter the living conditions which are a result of those structures. For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. (123)
As I reflect on my responses to oppression, it seems that a lot of my inspirational drive is rooted in anger and destruction. I don't attempt to invalidate the existence of anger and the desire to destroy oppressive systems within society and within myself. I believe this drive comes from the desire to eradicate with urgency the injustices we survive each day. Every day is filled with negation- institutional driven negation, self-negation under the guise of self-regulation. But at what point and in what spaces do I really get to experience and understand an authentic self outside of "the master's house"? How am I to build a new "blueprint" for living if what I seem to have at my disposal are the master's tools?

[The master's tools] may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master's house as their only source of support. (112)
To what extent have I been working under the influence of competition? Has my response to oppression been locked in a set of behaviors that perpetuate stagnation?

It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for acting. -Simone de Beauvoir quoted by Audre Lorde (113)

What are the sources of knowledge I have not yet tapped into that stem from my own experiences? How have I been forced/trained/pressured to silence those places where knowledge has been forbidden? If I haven't been reaching into these spaces, where have my sources of knowledge been coming from and what are these other sources rooted in?

Wishful Thinking: Reflection and (Re)Vision

My body has spoken. One of the best words of advice I have recently received was from a fellow blogger hermana, Sudy, who said, "your body never lies." This is probably the most honest blog entry I've written in a long time.

Lately I've been insulated by the "go, go, go" motion of daily living. My body is tired, unmotivated, and unwilling to invest energy in situations I have in the past been able to sustain. I've only recently stopped to think, reflect, and scratch the surface of this ongoing depression. My mind took me to the one place I've been scared to go: What if the goal I've set for myself is not conducive to my role in inciting the change I want to incite? As a go-getter, strong willed (read: stubborn), goal oriented individual I was frightened by this prospect. Often times though, our bodies will take us to places our minds will not allow us to wander.

So I entertained this possibility. I had to reexamine my vision and its clarity. I had to reevaluate the course I was on. I had to rethink what epistemology I was working with. How much of my theoretical framework is male-centered? Has my vision been co-opted? An even worse fear came upon this reflection: Have I been unknowingly functioning through a framework that negates me and others like me (i.e. woc, queer, survivors of sexual and domestic violence, etc)?

Lex calls these silenced spaces. After talking to Lex, another blog hermana, I was surprised to find that someone else understood so clearly what I was experiencing. Ashley, another hermana I know from the world of educational institutions has experienced the exact same process of self examination. I am so blessed to share words with these amazing women.

Some of the questions I've begun to consider are:
How much do schooling institutions limit the way I want to reach my community? What was my vision before I became inspired to work in schools? What is my vision now, after working my way into that goal? How have others worked to inspire that goal and is this a vision that I truly encompass? Is this truly my vision? How effective is this vision in addressing and working through the issues that are important to me and those in my community? Do schools offer the authentic spaces for healing, decolonization, and self/community -actualization? Am I most productive in spaces of actualization vs. infiltration? Which one, if not both, or is there some other framework that is more conducive to epistemologies that reflect experiences like my own as a queer woman of color and a survivor? What DOES a queer/woman of color/survivor epistemological framework look like???

As part of trying to explore these questions, I decided to start by using a tool I've come across (sort of serendipitously on several occasions) through others' blogs. Its called a wishful thinking list. I sighted it first in Lex's blog and then mendi lewis obadike's website. I'm using it as a tool to clarify for myself what my experience is, what my vision is, and what my community is. This list is dedicated to my mother, myself, and other survivors of domestic and sexual violence. The number of items, 39, represents the number of years my mother has survived an abusive marriage with my father. The list is a work in progress and I could probably make other lists dedicated to other groups. This particular group or issue is one that stands in the forefront of my experience right now. It is the issue my body is working through, and the one my mother is working through in everything she does. Its a public issue that tends to get only personal attention:

1) People are attracted what you say before what you wear.
2) Your lovers respect you out of love and admiration.
3) When looking for work, building friendships, or making love, there is equal balance in power on all sides.
4) When you speak, your accent always enhances the profundity of your words.
5) At all learning institutions, teachers and instructors are aware of your presence and the learning needs of others like yourself.
6) Others do not see you as up for game as you walk to the corner store and any man that comes to close proximity is not a threat.
7) If you feel that the fire has burnt out, your lover will not manipulate you into staying.
8) Your body is unscarred and holds memories of only love.
9) Your heart is unscarred and unafraid to love.
10) You control who has access to your body.
11) Your lovers remind you that they are blown away by your keen insight and intelligence.
12) Male leaders in your community are genuine, consistent, and acknowledge your skills as necessary assets to your community.
13) The female leaders in your community are plentiful and draw from their experiences as women; they are a reflection of you.
14) Financial difficulties have never been a factor in deciding whether to bear children or not.
15) You feel alive, healthy, and strong in your body, all the time, everywhere.
16) What, how, and where you worship has never incited fear or violence.
17) All human touch you experience from others will come out of love.
18) You are calm, comfortable, sociable, and happy around others you don’t know.
19) No one will try to isolate you from the people you love.
20) You know where you came from, what your name is, and where you want to go.
21) You have memories of your father guiding and loving you with words of encouragement, inspiration, wisdom, and love.
22) Your cultural practices are valued by those different than you.
23) There is no dominant culture; the only thing dominant is diversity and love.
24) Nobody takes you for granted.
25) Your children are safe wherever they are, whomever they are with, and whatever they are doing.
26) Any country you choose to travel to acknowledges the strength, value, and inner-beauty of all women.
27) You can acquire clothing and other goods without wondering if other women and children were abused in the process of its creation.
28) When you speak, others listen.
29) Every opportunity for intellectual, physical, and spiritual growth is available to you just when you need it.
30) When others use your name in conversation, you are assured that they refer to your greatness and talent.
31) When you dream, you smile in your sleep.
32) When I smell your scent in a piece of garment, I am reminded of memories of you as always happy, free, and loved.
33) Your children admire your strength.
34) There is always time to pursue what your heart desires.
35) You know what your heart desires.
36) Your stories are considered anecdotes for wisdom.
37) You consume food without guilt.
38) Every tear your have shed has been out of joy.
39) Every moment you spend alone is done with self-love and out of choice.



Much like BFP's 40 Days of Contemplation I've decided to embark on a journey to define my epistemological framework by reading works by other radical women of color, queer woc, and works by woc on survival. Audre Lorde, Sandra Cisneros, Andrea Smith, Patricia Collins, and Anzaldua are among those in my list. If you could recommend any please share. Also, if you've got a list to share of your own, please link it here, as I am continually inspired by others who are exploring their visions as well.

Friday Myday

So in the practice of getting into the rhythm of full time teaching, I've finally decided to designate a block of time to myself. I call it Friday Mydays! (Corny enough?) Since the roads were too dangerous with ice, sleet, and snow, to drive to the bar to shoot pool, I found myself creating a website with googlepages. Although it doesn't allow enough flexibility to get too creative, I don't think it came out too bad. See for yourself: The Examined Life.