I have not been doing my time listening to ghosts.
When I don’t spend time listening to ghosts, they intercede on their own, and my own, behalf. They wake me up at four am, wondering why I’m not writing their book. They make shadows move and creep along the corners of my vision, living in my peripherals—in my side eye. They probe between my toes, tripping up my steps and start their own choirs of harmonious and discordant notes just beneath the realm of hearing. So quiet I can’t be sure if it is me really hearing them, does anyone else hear them, what are they even saying, etc.
And they also continue to come through, aguardanme, continue to have my back, never mind my bad behavior. It is almost like they know I will come back around. They trust me even when I don’t trust myself.
This week was a prime example. It is a time of genocides, yes. The slavery scholar in me knows it has been that time since a mother and daughter were used to begin the slave trade in 1441 (Morgan, Reckoning with Slavery), and that the apocalypse has happened to us over and over again since. It is also that time of year when those of us ensconced in U.S. Empire are forced into a brief speed up before being allowed by late stage capitalism and institutionalized Catholic-Christian centrism to slow down.
Which is to say, there’s about two weeks in December where everyone’s schedules, emails, to do lists, and meeting agendas are trash because everyone is trying to check off all the things they wanted to do over the course of the last twelve months in fourteen days.
And then there’s a brief respite for two days to one week and then we are back at it again.
This week set a pace that, if it continued throughout the year, would most likely kill me. It was filled with microaggressions and outright aggressions. It featured a brief look into the dysfunction of institutions that have a stated claim to “diversity,” a reminder that “diversity” has become a word that means nothing, certainly nothing in the realm of structural change. And it reminded me that now, more than ever, we need to have clarity about our struggle, our frameworks, our solidarities, and how we decide (and if we decide) to be in coalition together. Everyone’s verbiage isn’t aligned with practice, and some folks aren’t interested in the journey between words and study, words and action, words and movement.
This week brought home, quite clearly, the insidiousness of the academic industrial complex and imperial knowledge formations, their ability to reproduce themselves at any and every instance, in how we speak, how we create walls, the sense of scarcity and “specialness” we impose on our work and our own imaginations, and, in no uncertain terms, the ways we treat Black, Indigenous, and non-Black women of color’s knowledge and labor.
But-And-Also
I spent the week with radical beloveds. At every turn, when I least expected it, a radical beloved appeared. Accomplices gathered over coffee. Comrade artists appeared randomly at the coffee shop just in time for a quick ki over lattes. Sister mamas poured from the woodwork, not once, but twice, thrice, over the course of the week; pulled up in their cars, passed by in and out of doorways, grabbed drinks, dropped by the crib for impromptu playdates, brought hugs and energy and spirit and optimism and joy to the interstices of each day. And each time I thought, well this darn thing is gonna be the end of me, they were there, unassuming, almost utterly by chance, as if to say, mmm, yes, true, and-also-this.
I’m listening.
The and-also-this is the place where I have always lived. It is where I have been made. It is the place between the waters that created me, between archipelago and diaspora, between Black South and urban Black north. And this place where a land of women shows up for itself over and over and over and over again, sweet and salty waters pouring down, this where I learned to be in the world. And I will never give it up. It is the praxis that saves my life over and over again. I had a hard time remembering that this week as one thing after another tried to stamp me (sometimes even with my permission!) into this box or that box to be used for this thing or that thing that have nothing to do with what I truly believe in, want for my community, for my people, for the living or the dead. But at every turn, in literal practice, a practice forged with and by myself and others to knit a different kind of community together, I was reminded, Santo reminded me, spirit guides reminded me by LITERALLY THROWING WHAT WE HAVE CREATED IN MY FACE OVER AND OVER that we, and I, are about this work, about this life, about radical and transformative Black femme dripping life and we are about it because it will continue to save your life long after these buildings are crumbled into dust. It will save your life across centuries and worlds.
Hear my voice telling you to SHOW UP.
It was a beautiful week for remembering that we create the things we think we need to survive. And when we do, we are held, a thousand-fold, by what we’ve made. Creating is a promise and what you’ve created will demand you keep that promise. I want to create and be in community with those creating intentional, everyday, embodied, empathetic worlds. This week, that community filled my cup with joy. With witnesses. With relationships. With care.
So I want to acknowledge that I was filled even as I wasn’t looking for it. That I was filled even as I was blinded by the battle at hand, even as I thought it was all too dire to be solved or resolved, even as I despaired that our institutions would ever change. I don’t think that they will change in our lifetime. And it is all too dire to be solved and resolved in one fell swoop. And I was and continue to be blinded, winded, exhausted by the battle at hand and ahead. But-and-also, we are making new worlds. We are practicing new ways of being. We are showing up for each other. We are planting seeds. We are bearing new fruit. We just are. And when they tell me different, I’ll come back to these words and remember this week and remind myself who I need to be listening to and change the frequency on the dial.