“This continent is seed.”
I was surprised when I looked in the mirror last night, like I hadn’t looked in the mirror for months, like maybe I hadn’t really looked…
I was surprised when I looked in the mirror last night, like I hadn’t looked in the mirror for months, like maybe I hadn’t really looked at my own face up close in a very long time. I formed my face into a smile, took a closer look at the lines they call crow’s feet. Are these…new? Or have they been here the whole time? Or, have I been smiling so little that they look foreign to me? I think it might be the latter.
Diane di Prima died yesterday. Someone huge died yesterday, quietly. Someone whose work I loved and respected. The way she wrote the word yr. My phone knows not to correct me when I type it that way because I taught it how. I’ve been thinking of Diane often these days, specifically her visioning of the way a city or world might could be. I’ve been thinking of her introduction to her last book, The Poetry Deal; the way she wrote into being the whole possibility of a world, spoke it aloud without shame or fear. The idea that all humans could and would be cared for in this potential parallel world.
This is possible. I have to believe it to keep on breathing.
I am thinking of the way Adrienne Maree Brown theorizes that “ ‘all organizing is science fiction’ by which we mean that social justice work is about creating systems of justice and equity in the future, creating conditions that we have never experienced.” I believe her when she says “We are creating a world we have never seen. We are whispering it to each other cuddled in the dark, and we are screaming it at people who are so scared of it that they dress themselves in war regalia to turn and face us.”
On a call tonight, while my children watched tv in the next room, one of the speakers shared with us a daydream he’d had, a dream of what might could be. He described a flash of vision he’d had earlier this week, drew us a picture of a block party unfettered by social distance, occupied by all kids of folx of different ages and stages, all dancing together in the street in celebration of something, maybe or maybe nothing, just visible joy-in-motion.
We have to believe it to keep on moving. We are whispering to each other. We join hands in the dark and squeeze them tight, eyes closed and smiling.