May I never lose that terror

that keeps me brave.

A pile of paper chains I made from marbled paper scraps to decorate for my girlfriend’s 50th birthday a few weeks ago.

“May I never lose that terror that keeps me brave.” Alexis Pauline Gumbs introduced me to this line of Lorde’s poem “Solstice,” a prayer, as she called it in her book Survival Is A Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde. It is a prayer, a mantra for moving forward, and just the nudge I need. I’ve been meaning to write about it since the solstice when I synchronously happened to stumble on it. But weeks have slipped past. I opted to write about lighter content the following day, my last post on Dec 22. And now, somehow, here I am a month later, it’s still dark, and the news is still suffocating.

I had time set aside to write tonight, but I felt overwhelmed by everything and nothing at once. So, I refreshed my inbox, and the internet gods blessed me with a newsletter from Radical Vitalism.  

“It is time to connect, to become entangled, to join with others, to have faith in the cumulative effects of our networks. It is not egotistical to think your actions matter, it is revolutionary, for you are one among a multitude and each action contributes to the groundswell of change. In this apocalyptic age, what world do you want to see emerge from the ruins? What will you do to make it happen? Remember that the most drastic upheavals in human history emerged from times of great desperation. This is such a time. We’re desperate. Get used to it. Everything matters.”

This excerpt of an essay written by Janet Kent, one half of Radical Vitalism, centered me and brought me back to Lorde’s words. Janet and RV’s other half, Dave Meesters, are two old friends I’ve been in community with for a few decades. Many things I’ll share here will have dotted lines back to them. I have spent heaps of time at their off-grid home in Southern Appalachia, learning how to slow down, photographing their handmade homes and happenings they have hosted. I lived briefly with Janet in New Orleans a lifetime ago, pre-Katrina. Many chapters of intertwined years have brought us together over and over and will hopefully continue to do so. Together and individually, Janet and Dave are creators of incredible work, ideas, change, magic, and mischief. I can’t recommend their writing enough, and I am so glad they have a space to share some of their long-form writing.

In lieu of the perfect photo of Janet and Dave’s land (apparently not meant to be found at this moment) to accompany the last paragraph, I’ll share this timely reflection from 2017 that I just stumbled across while digging through random photo folders. For the last year or so, I’ve been pulling photos and screenshots off Facebook with the idea that I’ll finally delete that account, but there’s little rhyme or reason to it all. But now it seems oddly perfect that at some point, I saved this to reshare and reflect on the moment of our political shitshow that’s on replay. In our house, we’d also refer to this as a “Parliament Big Ben moment,” sorta IYKYK movie scene that encapsulates a vibe. Written in a state of overwhelm, just like today, eight years ago.

Personal journal entry list from January 29, 2017

When I wrote this, I was living alone in rural middle Tennessee and had just gone through a particularly difficult breakup. Without unpacking it in depth, this skeletal list was a part of my coping mechanism of not knowing what to do and feeling very lost. I appreciate my past self for this, the reminders, some more relevant than others, and the photo documentation. I’m grateful I don’t feel as untethered this election, and I know I still have a local and national community to connect with to continue our fight for collective survival. I’d be honored if any of these 2017 ideas were added to your to-do list or inspired something similar to bring your nervous system into a better place. 39-year-old me wrote:

Think more about protection and what different forms of armor can look like.

Working on things I can do from the country to engage, resist, and show solidarity with my fellow humans who are fighting back in many ways.

• Delete Uber - *this one is funny because there was no Uber where I lived, but there must have been a boycott. But now that I live rurally again, I still don’t have it on my phone.

• Gather different resources and try to stay focused. Get certain resources to folks who can utilize them directly with the work they do.

• Try to be a support system- continually check on friends, their needs, and safety, and offer what I can. ASK WHAT THEY NEED. This can be done in many ways from a distance.

• Send love notes and beautiful things to make people smile.

• Continue to call representatives!

In the next post, I’ll pivot back to a deep research dive, but I’ll end this mishmash of a post by looping back to Janet and one of my Facebook pulls that was in the same folder as the picture above. This poem was written in 2016 after the mass shooting at Pulse nightclub that took the lives of 49 people and injured 53 more. When I heard the news, I was working with a group of artists in Black Mountain, NC. Janet wrote and shared this on social media, and I painted this large copy to hang at a shrine we had built at the residency to honor those impacted. When I reread this tonight, so much of it can be overlayed with the genocidal violence and fascism we are witnessing now.

We can still hope and pray for these things to be true.

Poem for Pulse by Janet Kent, 2016. Illustrated by Faythe Levine.

A prayer for those who lost their lives to hate.

A prayer for their loved ones.

A prayer for those who will face persecution as a result of this violence.

A prayer that the rising tide of fascism in this country does not gain momentum from this massacre.

A prayer that the lives of those who were marginalized and oppressed in life are not used in death to further the stranglehold of power.

A prayer that we rise and fight.

Thanks for joining me here, off the meta platforms, as we figure out our next imperfect steps together.