Yesterday was the first day of this month’s online intensive Becoming Turquoise: On Intergenerational Accountability.  We created an altar that transcends space and time, we reclaimed and renamed who we are and what and who has shaped/is shaping us.  We wrote, we laughed, we remembered.  We taught each other about our ancestors given and chosen.  We playfully called to the future.  We drew on the wisdom of generations of texts by women of color . We theorized the embodied and non-binary work of the word “her.”  We activated the oracle.  We looked in the mirror.   We learned new words and honored the power and pull of what we don’t know.   And together, we wrote this expansive poem about our accountability to give an account to you.   Enjoy.  Again it is best read aloud and even more divinely read together.

P.S. Don’t forget to send your questions and or sign up for tomorrow’s Q&A for Current and Future Grad Students!  You can get your questions answered even if you can’t log on tomorrow night.  Sign up here:  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/because-brillianceremastered-qa-for-current-and-future-grad-students-tickets-34931279397

accountable to you

by the participants in Becoming Turquoise: Intergenerational Accountability

accountable to the oceans

accountable to the sea snails

accountable to horses

accountable to trees

accountable to night

accountable to moonlight

accountable to breathing

accountable to being

accountable to the moment

accountable to this moment

accountable to the bigger mysteries you will never fully understand

accountable to little mysteries

accountable to the land

accountable to Elders

accountable to truth-telling

accountable to the little people

accountable to ancient transformers

accountable to those who died in revolutionary struggle

accountable to the smiles of all the children

accountable to petals

accountable to rain

accountable to heartbeat

accountable to the places where turquoise happens

accountable to stewards of the land

accountable to the beauty and silence and wisdom of caves

accountable to dolphins

accountable to whales

accountable to coral

accountable to birds

accountable to chasms

accountable to wind

accountable to salt

and all other crystals

accountable to the not-yet-born who are waiting

accountable to dreams

accountable to you

Last month I had the honor of facilitating the online intensive Begin: Seven Possible Futures for Black Feminist Artists and what do you know?  We were all being reborn.  Was it the demand of the Summer Solstice? Was it the moon in Cancer?  Was it Octavia Butler’s birthday?  Maybe it was all of that.   Or maybe that’s just the nature of showing up. We are all at the end of something important, and at the beginning of something that makes us vulnerable.  What a joy and a resource to support each other in that.  During the intensive, I revealed that I am at the beginning of a relationship to my creative practice that requires MUCH more trust.  I am at the end of series of patterns that have led to me to believe that I had to make everything happen by myself.   Some of us were at the ends and beginnings of relationships, new career paths, transformed relationships to community, embodiments of love.  What about you?

We know this Summer is transformative for you because you have reached the end of something that used to seem to work just fine and you are opening yourself up to something possible, based in your beliefs, that may also be challenging and scary.  So today, we offer the poem that we created to guide ourselves through our process.  And if you want to join us for this month’s online intensive:  Become Turquoise: On Intergenerational Accountability, there are still some spots left.  The intensive is July 24-25 3-6pm eastern.  Sign up here by Friday (July 21st).

Enjoy the poem.  It works best out loud.

Love,

Sista Docta Lex

“this is the dark water of renewal. offering only one message:  begin.”-

“Seven Possible Futures for the Black Feminist Artist” by Alexis Pauline Gumbs in Obsidian

begin

by the participants in Begin: Seven Possible Futures for the Black Feminist Artist

prayers unlocked and loaded

begin

early morning everything

begin

shining alchemical desires

begin

connection to the earth, connection to the sun

begin

knowing happens in the dark

begin

black body radiance all love all directions

begin

harvesting goodness from the shadows

begin

harnessing ancestral magic

begin

unhesitant confident musings

begin

root work, root chakra, root vegetables

begin

reciprocal relationship with my creative self

begin

purple crown energy clearing

begin

love as lifeforce simply sustained

begin

green heart chakra lights

begin

peacefully profound precise presence

begin

quenching confidence. radiant being

begin

being breathing becoming

begin

Dear Bright Thunder,

I think we all learned a lot over the past few months.  We couldn’t help it.  Or maybe we made a commitment to be deeply transformed.  Or maybe both.  Brilliance Remastered is in transformation too.  First of all, starting this summer Brilliance Remastered will no longer be offering one-on-one coaching or office hours and I will be working on a resource guide (book and ebook) packed with customizable guidance for your revolutionary intellectual transformative life! So now is the time to ask every question you always wanted to ask.  Sign up for a collective Q&A session below!   Secondly, Brilliance Remastered is continuing to host transformative online intensives as part of our Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Transformational Summer School! These are small sessions (always less than 10 participants) so sign up ASAP.

All the Questions You’ve Always Wanted to Ask (But You and Alexis Were Too Busy to Ever Have Tea)

 I’ve noticed that y’all keep asking me the same questions at social encounters. And I love each and every one of you and your specific brilliant lives (that are shaped by the same systemic patterns), but as an evolutionary being and a Gemini I don’t really want to have the same conversation over and over again. So while we work on Brilliance Remastered: The Get Yo Life Guide (not the real title of the very real forthcoming book) over here, I am offering some recorded Brilliance Remastered Q & A Wednesdays Sessions so we can transition together and have so much more fun when I see you this (eternal) summer!  These special webinars  will consist completely of answers to the questions closest to your heart regarding intellectual life, community accountability and getting free in/from institutions.    Sign up for the session that best suits your life and offer a question.  Attend and hear the answers live or not.  Everyone who signs up will get the recording and your question will be addressed!

How Did You…?: Brilliance Remastered 101 Q & A Weds, June 7, 2017 6pm EasternThis webinar is open to anyone with any question related to intellectual work, community accountability, publishing, freedom, life etc. Sign up here.

Because…: Brilliance Remastered Q & A for Current and Prospective Grad Students  Weds, July 26, 2017 6pm Eastern This webinar is specifically for people who are applying to graduate school, thinking about applying to graduate school or currently in graduate school who are interested in clarifying purpose, strategizing freedom, finding balance or building alternatives. Sign up here.

At this point…: Brilliance Remastered Q & A for Faculty, Admins and Independent Scholars Weds, August 16, 2017 This webinar is specifically for people who are finished with school (at least for now) and are looking to craft a community accountable career or to transition from one institutional relationship to a different approach. Sign up here.

Summer Intensives:  In the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind context, summer is a time to leave your comfort zone, make space for transformation and emerge renewed with insights that you will carry forward for the rest of the year.  This summer spiritual intellectual renewal feels more urgent than ever.  Here are the webinars for the next few months!

Water in the Desert: Brilliance Remastered Summer Intensives 2017

Begin: Seven Possible Futures for the Black Feminist Artist: Weds and Thurs June 21st and 22nd 3-6pm Eastern

In apocalyptic times all futurists are artists.  This is for those of us creating despite everything.  Whether you are a self-identified “artist” or a self identified “black feminist” or a person identifying as some other creative force, some other version of black love you are welcome.  Based on Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s piece “7 Possible Futures” in the most recent issue of Obsidian ( which is an excerpt from her forthcoming book M Archive: After the End of the World), this is a space for us to activate a creative approach to our futures.  To face the apocalypse capitalism has created with exactly the tools capitalism can’t value.  This online intensive will use meditation, individual and collective art-making and a plethora of black feminist references (especially to Jacqui Alexander’s Pedagogies of Crossing) to offer insight and energy towards your creative future.  The course is limited to 7 participants.

Reserve your spot with your $50 deposit towards the sliding scale ($150-250) fee here, and email brillianceremastered@gmail.com with your intentions for the course by June 18th.

Becoming Turquoise: Intergenerational Accountability  Mon and Tues July 24 & 25 3-6pm Eastern

This intensive is designed for those of us who are ready to deepen the practice of dedicated art-making, intellectual work, activist work and community building. Who is your work dedicated to? If your work is accountable to multiple generations, how do you generate practice, measures and resources that sustain that work in the moment?  Based on “Xuihatl: Becoming Turquoise” a poem by Alexis Pauline Gumbs in Imaniman (a recent anthology of poetry in honor of Gloria Anzaldua), this online intensive is for old souls and young elders whose work would not be imaginable without deep relationships of longing and accountability to the very old and the very young, the dead and the not yet born.  We will use individual and collective poetry, stone and crystal work and meditation and conversation to deepen and resource our intergenerational work.  The course is limited to 9 participants.

Reserve your spot with your $50 deposit towards the sliding scale ($150-250) fee here, and email brillianceremastered@gmail.com with your intentions for the course by July 18th.

When Wind and Water Got You: Place, Purpose, Past and Presence: Weds and Thurs August 23 & 24th 3-6pm Eastern

This intensive is for those us listening for place.  Are you listening for signs to guide you as you decide the place you want to live?  Are you listening for guidance on your place in our intersecting movements? Are you seeking more creative and spiritual technologies to use as you listen to the place you love, the place you live, the place that you are from?  Drawing on a forthcoming experimental map and series of vignettes by Alexis Pauline Gumbs in issue 23 of Ecotone Magazine (the vignettes are excerpted from her forthcoming book Dub: Finding Ceremony which draws on the work of the theorist Sylvia Wynter) we will use individual and collective mapping, poetry and meditation to face displacement, place ourselves newly and open our senses to what place is teaching us right now.  The course is online and is limited to 8 participants.

Reserve your spot with your $50 deposit towards the sliding scale ($150-250) fee here, and email brillianceremastered@gmail.com with your intentions for the course by August 18th.

That’s all! Please have the best summer ever.  We need it!

Love,

Sista Docta Lex

“Loves music.  Loves dance.  Loves the moon.  Loves the Spirit.  Loves love and food and roundness. Loves struggle.  Loves the Folk.  Loves herself.  Regardless.” –Alice Walker (From the definition of Womanism)

Last night during the Brilliance Remastered online intensive Dig: Womanist Archeologies we dug more into the meaning and impact of womanism as a poetic term and a sensual possibility.   We engaged the moves in Alice Walker’s definition of womanism from adult discipline of girl-children to transformative mother/daughter conversation/provocation mode.  And we focused on what it really takes to love ourselves and the folk regardless.  We made long luscious lists about our love and pondered about the relationship between all that love and those mountains of work.  We reveled in the abundance of our love and its specificity.  And then we thought about what David Scott says about the “the archeology of black memory” and what is disappeared and obscured.  And what about us?  What about the dirt we don’t own up to, to preserve the sense of self we have right now?  So we asked ourselves again what loving ourselves “regardless” meant.  Regardless of what?  And we named all those things that come up for us as obstacles to loving ourselves,  and all that stuff in the dirt that disguises itself as self-love but is really just personalized capitalist aspiration and we dug it up and declared our love more powerful.   And then we asked ourselves what loving the Folk “regardless” meant.  And who are the Folk anyway? And we looked at what comes up between us and our Folk, and even the people who would not identify as our Folk and even the Folk who would not claim us as their Folk and we declared that love IS love regardless. And we celebrated the power of love to be enough it itself.  We celebrated the power of love to have infinite forms and not to have to meaning liking and being around all the Folk at all times.  We celebrated the enduring presence of love REGARDLESS of where we are on our journey and where are Folk are on their journey too.    And love forgave us for all that hidden regard we had been giving to the not-love outgrowths of systemic oppression and reminded us that she has always been here regardless.  Dirty and divine.

With the clearing, composting and transformation we experienced we decided to name what we are growing, what we desire, what we are searching for right now, as fecund and creative and in plain sight and subversive as the garden.   Enjoy!

And again if you want to join us in the future…here is the email list! http://eepurl.com/bsb6rj

Love,

Sista Docta Lex

searching: possession and possibility

by the participants in Dig: Womanist Archeologies

after Alice Walker’s “Searching for Our Mothers’ Gardens”

searching for our ancestors’ truth

searching for our ancestors’ voices

searching for our grandmothers’ drive

searching for our grandmothers’ grit

searching for our mama’s resilience

searching for our mother’s wisdoms

searching for our fathers’ words written on our hearts

searching for our brothers’ love

searching for our sisters’ hands

searching for our sisters’ communion

searching for our sisters themselves

searching for our mentors’ archives

searching for our teachers’ wisdom

searching for our loved ones’ messages

searching for our lovers’ hearts

searching for our folks’ forgiveness

searching for understanding of the complexity of loving others

searching for our own magic

searching for our womanish knowing

searching for our full moon’s illumination

searching for our memory’s secrets

searching for our longing’s songs

searching for our destiny’s signposts

searching for our spirit’s nourishment

searching for our intuition’s brilliance

searching for our ability to self-care ourselves

searching for our childselves’ playfulness

searching for our moments of remembering to breathe

searching for our own fire

searching for our flesh’s sanctuary

searching for our hearts desires

searching for our dirt’s divinity

searching for our spirit’s hope

searching for our oldest knowing

searching for our deepest healing

searching for our highest good

searching for our guides’ trust in the universe

searching for our belief in our own power

searching for our place among the stars

searching for our plot of ground to dig up and be reborn

searching for our silver lining

searching for our purpose’s birth

searching for our life’s callings

searching for our moment’s tools

searching for our city’s redemption

searching for our community’s home

searching for our society’s conscience

searching for our love’s calligraphy

searching for our time’s anthem

searching for our society’s turning point

searching for our waiting portals

searching for our movement’s breakthrough

searching for our revolution’s dances

searching for our community’s understanding

searching for our community’s blessing

searching for our communal healing

searching for our blackness’s blessings

searching for our leaderless leap

searching for our mothers’ smiles

searching for our daughters’ futures

searching for our children’s freedom

searching for our freedom’s names

Last night was the first session of the Brilliance Remastered online Dig: Womanist Archeologies Intensive.  We offered up our layers, listed everything we could recognize about ourselves and then asked, what’s under that? And what’s under that? We made a space for our multi-layered muddy dirty water reservoir secret cave core of the earth selves to be present.  We gave ourselves permission to learn from every layer of our being.  We grave dug for the relationships to work that haunt us, through the legacies of Zora Neale Hurston’s fear of being forgotten and craving a “cemetery for the illustrious negro dead” through to Alice Walker who bemoaned the “mountain of work” ahead of her generation which she felt must work “as if we are the last generation capable of work” so that their books and dead bodies wouldn’t be lost to history like Zora’s was until that same Alice Walker went digging for her.   We looked at what it might mean to be grateful for the major work our elders and ancestors did in order to make themselves legible to us in print while at the same time not taking on a tradition of working ourselves to death or in a way that harms our relationships in practice.   Pause right there.   Deep breath.

We thought about the moment when Akasha Hull challenged a room of hardworking black feminists gathered at the Feminist Poetics Conference in honor of June Jordan to consider loneliness and whether it might be time to focus on our relationships more than the tangible objects (like books, essays and manifestas) and historical victories we have cherished thus far.

(You can watch the livestream of that amazing conference organized by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan here by the way: http://feministpoetics.blogspot.com/)

We excavated the layers of labor in our lives.  We shifted “working like there is no tomorrow” (a phrase in Barbara and Beverly Smith’s collection of black feminist letters) into a serious question about what on our long work lists we would still do if there literally was no tomorrow.   We gave ourselves permission to evolve.  We gave ourselves permission to let go.  We turned mountains of work into rivers of reciprocity and recognized intergenerational urgency as a gift, instead of a burden.   We took responsibility for a present and a future where we honor the hard work of previous generations by working softer and with more intimacy than we thought was possible.

And we wrote you a poem about the deep reciprocity this type of layered lovework takes. See if you can take on one of these mottos and refine your day with it.

If you want to be on the email list for future online and in-person intensives join that number here: http://eepurl.com/bsb6rj

returning: deep reciprocity  

by the participants in the Dig: Womanist Archeologies Intensive

“my motto

as I live and learn

is dig and be dug

in return”

-Langston Hughes

love and be loved

in return

inspire and be inspired

in return

see and be seen

in return

shine and be shown

in return

dig inside and be discovered

in return

change and be changed

in return

connect and be connected

in return

give and be delighted

in return

move and be energized

in return

fly and be fly

in return

meditate and be grounded

in return

release and be peaceful

in return

stand up and be visible

in return

speak and be heard

in return

listen and be wiser

in return

gather and be community

in return

write and be with everyone

in return

write and be fulfilled

in return

practice and be impractical

in return

breathe and be free

in return

praise and be danced

in return

dance and be embraced

in return

rock and be rocked

in return

touch and be touched

in return

kiss and be kissed

in return

nurture and be fed

in return

cook and be nourished

in return

dig and be found

in return