As we closed our How She Knew: Fugitive Epistemologies Intensive last week we meditated on the queer distance between here and free.  Is it time?  Is it space?  What other forms of materiality and relation grace the distance?  Using writing as a reflective surface, sound as a place to go and poetry as a skeleton architecture (ask Audre Lorde about that) we looked across.  Using actual mirrors we looked in, we relearned the frame, we time-traveled and teleported to earlier and future possible truths.   Between here and free?  It seems like a distance charted through triangulation (but that happened already), maybe more like a circle.  Probably technically a sphere.  Ask Zora. It’s somewhere (here.)

We offer our closing poem as a map and journey-song for our fellow fugitives.  And of course if you want to see if all there is between here and free is layers and layers of attenuated meaning (ask Spillers about that) and dirt (ask Alice) join us this week for Dig: Womanist Archeologies.  Today is the last day to sign up.  <3

See you on the other side.

Love,

Sista Docta Lex

See You on the Other Side: Journey Poems for Fugitive Intellectuals

by the participants in the How She Knew: Fugitive Epistemologies Webinar

the voice that never died

see you on the other side

deep seating knowing, never forgotten

see you on the other side

being here for you and me and all at the same time

see you on the other side

heart’s wanderings

see you on the other side

togetherness

see you on the other side

new limits

see you on the other side

more questions

see you on the other side

the story of Ferdinand

see you on the other side

all bills autopayed from an account that never overdrafts

see you on the other side

joy in the morning

see you on the other side

my bald and brilliant brain

see you on the other side

smiling brightly

see you on the other side

exercises of freedom

see you on the other side

sunshine on my belly

see you on the other side

baby foreheads

see you on the other side

new flesh

see you on the other side

freedom’s free child

see you on the other side

Alaina’s dreams

see you on the other side

creative presence of praxis

see you on the other side

Ouida’s farm

see you on the other side

graduation day

see you on the other side

great grandma’s story

see you on the other side

generationing

see you on the other side

all my people and the people they bring

see you on the other side

beautifully aging

see you on the other side

love and life from the eyes of an 11 year old

see you on the other side

sweetness everlasting

see you on the other side

the free and naked future

see you on the other side

the food that feeds us fully

see you on the other side

us whole

see you on the other side

the gathered grateful generations

see you on the other side

everyone who ever lived helping to free us

see you on the other side

Waves in the Ocean by Viv Logan. From the cover of M. Jacqui Alexander’s Pedagogies of Crossing

Last night we swam deeper into the How She Knew: Fugitive Epistemologies Online Intensive.  We dedicated lines of our first group poem to our loved ones.  We shared about our journeys of creating criteria for our own boundaries, allowing our fears to ask for love, allowing our dreams to teach us generations.  We experimented with hot water, quilt pieces and greens, creating catalogs of cleansing for what we are ready to release, inventories of freedom patterns worn by the people we love and storehouses of practices that nourish and feed our spirits.  So much clarity and abundance.  For me, the major lesson was about a shift in tone.  What happens when I free myself from what “i know i need to do” and open myself up to what “i know is there for me, when i need it”?  Everything.  That’s what happens!

This group poem is about our dedication and commitment to the continued journey of knowing what capitalism don’t want us to know and slavery don’t want us to remember.  Use it as an affirmation and invitation that your deepest knowing may rise and know you are calling for it.

And again, if you want your own opportunity to dig deep, join us next week for Dig: The Womanist Archeologies Intensive.

Love,

Sista Docta Lex

above everything, despite everything: a love poem for our fugitive knowing

by the participants in the How She Knew: Fugitive Epistemologies Intensive

“i couldn’t see anything but I understood there was something above everything. above everything despite everything I would find fresh air and breathe again. Above everything despite everything I would free you. my best idea yet.” 

-from Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity

above everything

despite everything

you are still here

above everything

despite everything

you are here for me

above everything

despite everything

you will not be thrown away

above everything

despite everything

you already know

above everything

despite everything

i still know you

above everything

despite everything

i can still hear you

above everything

despite everything

i will find you

above everything

despite everything

i am here for you

above everything

despite everything

the water wont stop me

above everything

despite everything

i am listening

above everything

despite everything

i hear your voice

above everything

despite everything

i trust myself

above everything

despite everything

i would choose you

above everything

despite everything

i would choose me

above everything

despite everything

the sky is witnessing

above everything

despite everything

love renews itself

above everything

despite everything

freedom is free

above everything

despite everything

joy remains

above everything

despite everything

God might not want to be called that

above everything

despite everything

color can create but can it hold all of you?

above everything

despite everything

we are still here

above everything

despite everything

we are gathered

above everything

despite everything

we are breathing

above everything

despite everything

we are singing

above everything

despite everything

make love

above everything

despite everything

follow your desires

above everything

despite everything

bring your magic

above everything

despite everything

ask them why

above everything

despite everything

be reliable

above everything

despite everything

let go

above everything

despite everything

make the time

above everything

despite everything

love love love

above everything

despite everything

tell it. TELL it!!

Last night was the first session of How She Knew: The Fugitive Epistemologies Intensive and we made a shared sacred space out of our knowing and growing in this moment and beyond time.  We honored the people who have known us and grown us, we reflected on what the extended prayers of our given and chosen names have taught us and are teaching us now.  We activated the first chapter of Spill as an oracle for our questions for the new year.  We undressed our fears.  We remembered the difference between nourishment and nonsense. We remembered our assignments for this next stage of our knowing.  We redefined the words that shape and limit our action.  We celebrated the tough love of black teachers and remembered that life itself is a black teacher. We looked again newly at the same situations and divined and discerned their lessons.  We listened with generosity and love.  We held each other’s families and futures in our hearts.  And this was just day one!!!!

Check out this discernment poem and use it to look at the challenge, intention or question that you are starting the year with. Imagine that every line is an assessment of the challenge you are facing right now.

And if a love-filled process of digging deep sounds delicious to you, sign up for next week’s intensive:  Dig: Womanist Archeologies.

This and This and This: Discernment and Divination

by the participants in “How She Knew: Fugitive Epistemologies Webinar”

It looks like a pause.

It looks like clarity.

It looks like gut feeling.

It looks like honoring your sacred.

It looks like moving in intention.

It looks like moving in what you know.

It looks like how you break open.

It looks like what is broken open.

It looks like unfolding deeper than deep thought it could go.

It looks like vulnerability claiming.

It looks like why you invite sight to or away from a vantage point.

It looks like been there done that.

It looks like discernment.

It looks like trusting again.

It looks like your listening.

It looks like knowing love is you.

It looks like life giving.

It looks like freedom teaching freedom.

It looks like growth growing growth.

It looks like love finding love over and new again.

It looks like seeking the sweetness.

It looks like sweetness.

It looks like wild forgiveness.

It looks like dance in all its dynamic brilliance.

It looks like a zeal to remain wandering with life.

It looks like movement.

It looks like freedom.

It looks like change.

It looks like me.

It looks like yes to you.

It looks like being my word.

It looks like commitment to my truth.

It looks my own open eyes.

It looks like your purpose.

It looks like closer to you.

It looks like giving way.

It looks like liberation.

It looks like the first star.

It looks like a tender honey comb.

It looks like fear and spilling over anyway.

It looks like everything else I was ever afraid of

(and still did with grace and excellence).

It looks like everyone is ready to support and celebrate.

It looks like the version of myself that has already proven everything.

It looks like how I already got over.

It looks like oceans.

It looks like generations.

It looks like eternity.

It looks like more.

It looks like it is.

It looks like this and this and this.

Weds-Friday, January 11-13, 2017 6pm-9pm eastern

This intensive is for anyone interested in deepening their knowledge of womanist practice, expanding their idea of the archive, and finding ways to research and listen without reproducing patriarchal and capitalist values.

Drawing on Alice Walker’s work, her concept of work, her digging for Zora and her poetic invention of womanism, this intensive looks at Walker’s work itself as a planting, excavating and harvesting ground for generations of long-memoried, ready-to-be-nourished seekers.  Invoking the work of Hortense Spillers, Michelle Wright, Saidiya Hartman, Katherine McKittrick, Cheryll Greene, Kai Barrow and more, this online intensive will be a place where we reconceptualize mothers, gardens, and the dirt that has (not yet) been done.   Come ready to get virtually dirty and to dig deep.

Registration is limited.  Reserve your spot with a $50 deposit here and write “Dig Intensive” in the note section: 

Full tuition is sliding scale $185-225.  Payment plans are available.  Your deposit goes towards the full tuition.

Email brillianceremastered@gmail.com with your goals for the course by Monday January 9th.

detail from Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle’s “Now There Are Three Ways to Get This Done: Your Way, Their Way or My Way”

January 4-6, 2017  6pm-9pm Eastern 

*epistemologies = ways of knowing

The Spill Series is a monthly group of 10 webinars activating the literary archive, technology and text of Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity as a resource for our far-flung community of freedom seekers.  (You don’t have to have read Spill to participate, but you might as well read it anyway

Fugitive Epistemologies is based on the first chapter of Spill “How She Knew” and honors black women’s intimate ways of knowing.  Drawing on the chapter’s literary influences (Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Gwendolyn Brooks) and using the chapter itself as oracle and meditation, the purpose of the intensive is to start the new year and time of this renewed blatantly violent global regime with access to forms of knowing that go beyond the dominant news media, beyond intellectual reaction catch phrases and beyond the systemic pull of institutions to make fear fundable.

This online intensive is for freedom-seekers who are interested in intimate knowing, knowing otherwise, refusal as knowledge and trusting forms of knowledge that have been criminalized.  Some of the forms of knowledge we will explore together will include working with dreams, divination, internal and external meditation and recipes.

Registration is limited.  Reserve your spot with a $50 deposit here and write “How She Knew Intensive” in the notes section: 

Full tuition is sliding scale $185-225.  Payment plans are available.  Your deposit goes towards the full tuition.

Email brillianceremastered@gmail.com with your goals for the course by Monday, January 2nd.

This past week’s Evidence Intensive online and Evidence writing workshop for futurists in Durham were miraculous.  I am so grateful to everyone who participated, I am so moved and honored to be living in this time with you.  Today is the half-birthday of my father, Clyde Gumbs who joined the ancestors in late October.  My half-birthday is tomorrow. The last communication I got from my father was the name of a maternal Shinnecock ancestor of mine seven generations back. Granny Tatum.  I wonder what she did on Sunday mornings while she survived colonialism, and especially the complicated adoption of church practices within Shinnecock community.  I wonder what she prayed for and how I am living into those prayers.

I am honored to share with you a group poem created by the online participants in the Evidence Intensive, which I also used to open and bless the space of the in-person Evidence workshop in Durham.  It means so much to me to be supported by a far-flung and local community of people who care deeply about the future and who invest in my work to play a visionary role in this community in ways that quite literally put food on my table and keep me alive.   In the short story “Evidence” a future researcher named Alandrix is trying to historcize this time.  Alandrix (Drix for short) wants proof of what we did in this “time of the silence breaking” and longs to theorize exactly how it impacted the current world of the story, a world free from sexual violence.  At some point though Alandrix wonders in the research notes whether they are looking for external proof for something their soul already has evidence for.

This poem honors that part of you that travels generations, that knows beyond knowing and that allows love to travel from this moment beyond everything we currently understand.

Again, if you want to be on the list to get emails about next year’s online courses, sign up here.   If you want to be on the list to know about local events happening in the Durham area, sign up here (and check the box for “local”).  And if you want to get Without Apology, my father’s book of poems in honor of Black women, check it out here.

***********************************************************************************************************

My Soul is Evidence

by the participants in the Evidence Intensive

my soul is evidence of intentional laughter

my soul is evidence of truth telling children

my soul is evidence of mountain strength

my soul has evidence of the sacredness of horses

my soul has evidence that rocks and stones are alive

my soul is evidence of waves crashing and receding

my soul is evidence of the healing power of salt

my soul is evidence of the iridescence of the walls of caves

my soul shows evidence of my father’s eyes

my soul is evidence of the trail of tears

my soul is evidence of the dreams of MAAFA

my soul is evidence of the dreamers’ power

my soul is evidence of the resilience of the elders

my soul is evidence that genocide fails and empires fall

my soul is the evidence of my ancestors laughter and prayers

my soul is evidence that Black is vibrance

my soul shines black with evidence of refusal and rebellion

my soul is evidence of queerness at its sparkliest potential

my soul is evidence of the strength of the daily strange

my soul has evidence of the secrets and mysteries that allow my people to survive that which was not meant to survive

my soul has evidence for miracles in dark places

my soul has evidence that Harriet actually saved millions

my soul has evidence that Black slang carries the secret codes of freedom

my soul has evidence that we have always been brilliant, that we are brilliant right now

my soul is evidence that the harm is real and not just in my head

my soul has evidence of receipts on receipts on receipts

my soul has evidence of wounds that scar but not kill

my soul is evidence that the shift is possible

my soul has evidence that truth is the way forward

my soul has evidence that Audre was right to say speak, though we are afraid

my soul is evidence that it is okay to break, break wide open

my soul has evidence of the power of the breath

my soul has evidence that Black feminism LIVES!!!!

my soul has evidence of you now all up in it

my soul is bursting with evidence of baby love

my soul is evidence that survival is sweet

my soul is evidence that tenderness is powerful and profound

my soul has evidence of sacred storytelling

my soul shapes evidence out of longing and listening

my soul is evidence that we can heal, we are healing, we will continue to do so

my soul has evidence that can and will be used in the service of truth and witnessing and healing

my soul carries evidence for the truth tellers to come

my soul has evidence for future archivists to know how much we fought for justice

my soul is a reflection and whispers of unborn legacies yearning for us to make the way

my soul has evidence that stars are using right now

my soul looks back and does not wonder but knows what it knows

my soul lives to love you

my soul has evidence for every dream you’ll ever have

Last night was the first session of The Evidence Intensive: Futurists Beyond Fear.  We gathered together as evidence of our ancestors and the legacies of movement work that have made us possible.  We called in our communities of accountability.  We described the insides of our hearts and what we found there. We time traveled through our own lives unearthing wisdom, trauma, and longing from the different past and future ages of our own lives.  We offered ourselves the archives of our own lives and reached for wisdom from our future elder selves to provide wisdom for this moment.   We chanted, sang, hum, scatted, drummed and stomped “love is the most important thing” until every part of our bodies knew it and every age remembered.   Here is the group poem we made about letting go.  Can you choose one of these ways of letting go to focus on today?

If you want to participate in next year’s webinars and intensives join the Brilliance Remastered email list here.

We Let Go

By the participants in The Evidence Intensive: Futurists Beyond Fear

“We did it. We shifted the paradigm. We rewrote the meaning of life with our living. And this is how we did it. We let go.” –from “Evidence”

letting go of feeling like there is never enough time

letting go of victimhood

letting go of missed opportunities

letting go of the pain in our backs from previous betrayals

letting go of the grief held in our bodies for all those who have passed

letting go when/where my ancestors could not

letting go of every shred of doubt that we make a difference in the world

letting go of every single temper tantrum

letting go of the old dust that has settled on our fire and is choking out our breathing

letting go of not breathing and fear of not breathing

letting go of fear of missing out

letting go of fear of being abused

letting go of fear, FOR REAL THIS TIME, I am taking fear off the pedestal I’ve had it on and replacing it with FIERCE POWER

letting go of not knowing

letting go of judging people who we feel aren’t as ‘enlightened’

letting go of anger at people who are so flaky

letting go of being right

letting go of playing small

letting go of needing others’ approval

letting go of guilt and shame

letting go of having to prove anything to anyone

letting go of apologizing (especially as women)

letting go of pretense

letting go of preconceived notions

letting go of tight constriction

letting go of the happy ending

letting go of resolution

letting go of self-recrimination

letting of trying to do everything and ending up exhausted

letting go of having to do it all

letting go of every message inside me head that contains the word “should”

letting go of control

letting go of this bra

letting go of capitalist expectations (girl, bye)

letting go like #sorrynotsorry

letting go of doubting our own brilliance and capabilities

letting go of regret

letting go of others’ expectations of me, even when they are people I love so dearly

letting go of those who will not meet me on the bridge, I can love me and them too, and still let go

letting go of what “never was but could have been” between me and all those lovers

letting go of the story about how i am always and will always be misunderstood

letting go and loving who and what is right in front of me

letting go of the need for proof, my soul is evidence

letting go of belief systems rooted in a perspective of lack

letting go of limited visions defined by consumerism

letting go of measuring the worth of a day by how “productive” i have been

letting go of linear time

letting go of that capitalist clock

letting go of nice, in exchange for deep kindness

letting go of neoliberal, neocolonialist imaginings to welcome revolutionary possibilities

letting go of survival, embracing liberation

letting go of my old selves, holding onto only the parts that serve me well

letting go of the story that I gotta earn love, remembering it is already all here

letting go of thinking our way to the revolution

letting go of worry, but embracing wisdom, intuition and deep knowing

letting go of pressure to finish the resource guide, it is done and it is wonderful and they all love me even more

letting go of the idea that this dissertation has to be smart, so it can be love instead

letting go and falling backward into a pool of cool, deep water that cleanses all the toxins and toxic energies, leaving me light and ready to receive

letting go so I can embrace the depth of me like oceans, the flow of me like rivers

letting go for peace

letting go firmly in touch with the reality that we’re all in this together

letting go to be grounded and sure

letting go of the weight/the heaviness, making space for that love to come in

letting go to feel again and again

letting go so I can feel lighter, feel what lightness feels like for once

letting go to embrace the lightness

letting go and falling into my dreaming

letting go while being FULLY present with every particle of my body, my spirit, m soul, backwards and forwards

letting go and embracing full and total love

letting go with laughter

letting go with grace and gratitude

letting go with pride in who we are

letting go to the sound of drums

letting go for my grandma and them

letting go for the babies

letting go with the babies!

letting go while dancing the dances of my ancestors

letting go with both hands open, my heart open and my feet stomping

letting go for the futures of those I love but can’t see

letting go with joy and delight

letting go while twerking

letting go while lusting, loving and learning

letting go into orgasmic joy

letting go with TRUST. trust in my intuition, trust in my ancestors, trust in what is to come

letting go with full trust in everything that holds me, including me

letting go sitting on handlebars and enjoying the ride downhill

letting go and never picking it up again

letting go everyday

letting go and arriving in this moment

This past Saturday we gathered to consider Cuba.  After the passing of Fidel Castro some of us thought first of Assata Shakur.  This session was an opportunity to bring the writing and relationships of US based Black Feminist writers, editors and activists (especially Toni Cade Bambara, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Cheryll Greene, Assata Shakur, Alexis De Veaux and Audre Lorde) into our process of reflection.  We noticed that like generations of Black women we have strong desires, forms of longing and vulnerability attached to Cuba. We used those reflections to clarify our sistering in this moment.  Here is the poem we made.

If you want to participate in the last online workshop of the year The Evidence Intensive: Futurists Beyond Fear, check it out here.

Free-er Than We Knew We Could Be

By the participants in the “Without Bridges” US-based Black Feminists on/in/around/with Cuba Webinar

“Sister is a verb.” Toni Cade Bambara

After “Sister in Exile” the first interview with Assata Shakur after her escape by Cheryll Y. Greene in Essence.

 (Inspired by Toni Cade Bambara, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Cheryll Y. Greene, Assata Shakur, Alexis De Veaux and Audre Lorde)

Sister in trust

Sister in listening and holding space

Sister in unconditional acceptance

Sister in distance

Sister in showing up

Sister in living healthy and free

Sister in loving ourselves

Sister in seeing and freeing ourselves from our prisons

Sister with egos aside

Sister in showing our scars

Sister in learning from the ugly

Sister in discernment

Sister in more freedom than we used to

Sister in real rest

Sister in honoring the invisible work

Sister in sweetness

Sister in joy

Sister in gratitude

Sister even in silence

Sister in love

Sister in silliness

Sister in survival truths

Sister in finding our purpose

Sister in availability to purpose

Sister in places we never thought we would be

Sister in life in collaboration

Sister in a way that teaches me to be better to my own heart

Sister in telling each others stories

Sister in shareable salvation