“Now here I am, and there I am, and all I am, free to be anywhere at all in the universe.”

-Toni Cade Bambara, The Salt Eaters

A couple of weeks or so ago I said the universe speaks to me in death.  I was talking about the death of the brilliant Gloria Naylor whose writing has had a major impact on my work.  I was processing the death of my grandfather who died a few days before she did.   Gloria Naylor’s first book was published the year I was born.  She died exactly one month before the release date of my first book.   This week, as I continued my process of rereading Gloria Naylor’s books and tried to write poems about my grandfather, my father died.  I didn’t know what I knew.  Can that be true?  What I should say is that words are as powerful as they have always been.  And it’s a power greater what I can understand in any given moment.   To honor Gloria Naylor I have been in the process of designing the Black Boundlessness Intensive which begins on Monday.   It doesn’t feel like mere coincidence to me that just at the time where my heart is breaking and suturing itself again, when I am screaming and crying and vomiting, when I am laughing and rejoicing and remembering.  Just at the time that I am grappling with how to relate to my father, who has left behind the boundary of his body…I am also sitting here crafting word portals for us to access black boundlessness, time travel and space ellision.

Black Boundlessness.  How can it not feel like abandonment?  In a society that seeks to constrict and constrain and contain black bodies forcefully and unrelentingly, what have I learned?  How can I not resent my father for his freedom to be anywhere at all in the universe?  How can I understand and honor his lifetime of imperfect but lasting attempts to somehow be with me?  In Bailey’s Cafe, which I am rereading right now, Gloria Naylor works with the distinction between the edge of the world and the end of the world.  They are close.  I can feel how close they are right now.   Here, where it hurts to breathe through tears.  Here, where I have no appetite.   My father’s illness and death line up with systemic racism, what Ruthie Gilmore explains as the production of early death for black people.   A cruel pattern in our health system (can we call it that? a health system?) where most Black men don’t know they have prostate cancer until it has spread far beyond the prostate.  Where the type of testing that could cause early detection isn’t usually covered by insurance, and where my father didn’t have health insurance for decades.  When he was finally covered by the affordable care act, there was cancer in his bones.

My father, who used to dance awkwardly and often to all the music of the Caribbean, was limited to a hospital bed.  And like countless physically disabled people he used his computer and his phone to still be everywhere.  Truth be told, even when he could still walk he spent more time on facebook than anyone his age I know.   He used poems dedicated to loved ones and to strangers as an intentional practice of attempting to move beyond his own body, beyond his own history into someone else’s experience. Interestingly enough, he still ended up writing about systemic racism and sexism in almost all of those poems.  Not that long ago, as he explained to me the relationship between a poem he wrote for me and a poem he wrote for my grandmother, my father explained that he thought of life as a cosmic dance floor.  Earth was a very small part of it.  All of our energies, the living now and the living ever were dancing, improvising, responding to each other’s movements.  In the picture at the top of this post I am holding my father’s hands on a literal dance floor.  And now what was his body is ash and dust and I am responding to spirit.  This is a difficult and strenuous part of the dance, black embodiment, palpable loss.  And a worthwhile one.   So I am continuing to design the course.  I am qualified to design this course, in which I am also a student.  And I am offering praise and gratitude to one of my most important teachers.

*Free to Be Anywhere also refers to the title my cherished mentor Farah Jasmine Griffin’s 1996 essay “Toni Cade Bambara.  Free to Be Anywhere in the Universe.”  The way she honors her father in her work on Toni Cade Bambara, and in general, guides me.

Lucille Clifton has a poem about “the feels everything woman.”  Quiet as it’s kept, that’s me.  I am feeling revulsion and outrage that people within and alongside of my communities are aligning themselves with explicit racism and sexism.  I am profoundly triggered by the many people in and alongside of my communities who are actively protecting and justifying rape culture. I am devastated by the profound betrayal of our planet that our entire species has enacted evidenced by the announcement that the Great Barrier Reef like most of the coral on our planet is dying.   All of the healing work that I have done, all of the rigorous work that my community has supported me to do, to move past my numbness, to live beyond my coping mechanisms and to live in my body instead of only in my brain means I have no where to run.  I am part of all of these communities.  I am connected to this planet.  I feel everything.  And today feels especially apocalyptic.

Lucille Clifton is one of the prophets that I reach for at times like this.  Clifton did not sugar coat anything.  Not child sexual abuse, not racism, not sexism, not dialysis, not cancer, nothing.  And she has a group of poems called “Message from the Ones” which we reviewed in last month’s Soul Talk: Legacies of Black Feminist Magic intensive where she hear very clearly, in the 70’s no less.  That humans are no favorite child of the universe.  That this world is not the only world.  That we will one day drink the poison that we release onto the planet. That we cannot hurt anyone here without hurting ourselves. That if we are intent on destroying ourselves the universe will not stop us.  And yet.  That same reality, the humbling reality that human beings are neither the center nor the pinnacle nor even a middling example of what life actually is, devastates and liberates in the same moment.  What if all the selfish, scarce, fear-based, divisive, harmful things we do to protect our fragile human sense of who think we are lose their illusion of value.  What if it’s not even about us.   What if there is, as Clifton suggests, a limit to what we can destroy.  And that’s ourselves.  I don’t know about you, but today is a good day for my ego to die. Today is a good day to listen for possibilities beyond what I think I can do.

Towards the end of her series of poems Clifton offers:

“there is a star

more distant

than eden

something there

is even now

preparing”

the historical “even now” that Clifton was talking about was the end of the 1970’s the horrifying time (before I was born) when Ronald Reagan rose to be president.  When corporations got free reign to abandon workers and to pollute and extract everything from the planet.  When the United States used it’s military and local police power to target and destroy revolutionaries of color around the planet.  In Grenada, Nicaragua, Greensboro and more.  When technological resources were focused on making Nuclear war more possible more quickly.   And we need the perspective Clifton offered ESPECIALLY NOW. At least I do.

This is the poem that we, as participants in the Soul Talk Webinar created for this moment of presence and preparation.  May it sustain you.  Release you.  Transform you.  I am strong enough to feel everything if part of everything is loving you.   If you want to participate in the next Brilliance Remastered online intensive (next week) check it out here.

With love and all the feelings.  Even now,

Sista Docta Lex

even now

by the participants in the Soul Talk: Legacies of Black Feminist Magic Intensive

“there is a star

more distant

than eden

something there

is even now

preparing”

-Lucille Clifton “Message from the Ones”

even now spirit is speaking

even now black women love themselves

even now we create freedom

even now we gather for mutual healing

even now the moon can hear us

even now stars are birthing darkness

even now darkness is birthing stars

even now the alchemists are busy

even now, god still looks out and calls it good

even now there is plenty of time

even now we are activating our purpose

even now we dance and shake loose our chains

even now we cry without shame or apology

even now we laugh without abandon

even now love finds everyone

even now our spirits flow between planes

even now we dream in real time

even still we are our ancestor’s living dream

even now we must dream of future generations

even now as it’s scary to do

even now we embrace the resilience of the young

even now we are invested in our own healing

even now there’s prayer in every breath

even now we listen to the frequency of hope

even now the song is uploading

even now I am visible

even now I have my own story

even now I am still standing

even now the ocean rises to meet me

even now this blessed body arches toward love

even now we create beloved community

even now I take the risks to expose oppression

even now the Cherokee ancestors are proud of us

even now the birds understand

even now the moonlight shines on us all

even now I breathe in the scent before it rains

even now we are the sweetness of honey

even now sweetness sustains us

even now our capacity for love is growing

even now the universe calls to us “yes!”

The recent Soul Talk: Legacies of Black Feminist Magic Intensive was the blessing I needed I as navigated hospitals and funerals at a powerful moment of transition for my families chosen and given.  In conversation with Akasha Gloria Hull’s Soul Talk and Sonia Sanchez’s 1982 play “I’m Black When I’m Singing, I’m Blue When I Ain’t” we used words, sound and movement to get at our breakthroughs, our powers, our areas of necessary growth and connection.  We were honest about the pain of what we have witnessed and are witnessing at this time and together we transmuted that pain into clarity of vision for what we are part of creating.  We worked through the differences between what fear teaches us to say about ourselves and our people and the spells we need for the presence and future we deserve. We exuberantly hailed the emergent revolutions of our lives with a loud black “I SEE YOU!!!!”  Most importantly, we witnessed each other without judgement and blessed each other with black generosity and grace.   Together, inspired by Sonia Sanchez and Toni Cade Bambara, we created this invocation of Black Blessings. Use it.  I am using it to send light to the spirt of our sudden new ancestor Gloria Naylor (join me tomorrow online at  Place: A Homegoing Ritual for Gloria Naylor if you want to partake in that blessing process).     I recommend speaking these blessings out loud.  Use it to reclaim your workspace.  Use to reset the energy in your home.  Use it call and response style with your comrades at the beginning or end of your next session.  Use it some other way and let us know about it!

Black Blessings

by the participants in Soul Talk: Legacies of Black Feminist Magic

“I will rock you in blackness so you will grow to love yourself.”

-Sonia Sanchez (in the play “I’m Black When I’m Singing, I’m Blue When I Ain’t”)

“Black Blessings” (at the end of letters to Octavia Butler, June Jordan and other black feminist writers)

-Toni Cade Bambara

black blessings

ancestral magic

black blessings

resilient spirit

black blessings

queer abundance

black blessings

collective brilliance

black blessings

prismatic expressions

black blessings

heart connection

black blessings

willing hands

black blessings

nurtured pathways

black blessings

infinite journey

black blessings

alchemic expansion

black blessings

observant historians

black blessings

collective victories

black blessings

open faith

black blessings

writing transcending

black blessings

passing down wisdom

black blessings

foundational rhythm

black blessings

community dance

black blessings

breathful joy

black blessings

the telling of our stories

black blessings

piercing insights

black blessings

embodied memory

black blessings

hurt unearthed

black blessings

harmers apologizing

black blessings

lovers holding

black blessings

queer safety

black blessings

possibilities opening

black blessings

flamboyant universe

black blessings

tended love

black blessings

wild babies

black blessings

welcome ancestors

black blessings

emanating energy

black blessings

unstoppable laughter

black blessings

black blessings

black blessings

Fannie Lou Hamer
photo by Louis Draper

Homemade Field of Love: Redefining Kinship Intensive

October 20+21, 2016  3pm-6pm Eastern

In honor of the (re)birthday month of Fannie Lou Hamer (and just in time for the time of year where navigating chosen family and family of origin gets real) this intensive draws on Sista Docta Lex’s research in Fannie Lou Hamer’s archival papers as a resource and precedent for movement mothering, revolutionary kinship and unstoppable love.  Fannie Lou Hamer, a survivor of a pattern of coercive sterilization against poor black women, practiced mothering without permission.  We will work with artifacts from Fannie Lou Hamer’s organizing and correspondence, family materials,  unpublished tributes to her after her death and the case-study of her mothering and mentorship of June Jordan as primary texts for our own exploration of intentional kinship.  This intensive is for anyone who believes that love beyond biology and the law is a revolutionary imperative in their life.

Registration is limited.  Reserve your space with a $50 deposit here:

registration for the whole intensive is sliding scale $185-250.  (Installment payments available upon request.) Email brillianceremastered@gmail.com and let me know your goals for the course by October 18th.

In response to the unexpected death of crucial author and thinker Gloria Naylor due to heart failure, Brilliance Remastered is offering a special series on her work in the month of October.  This is a guided opportunity to reread some of Naylor’s work or to learn about her work before engaging it for the first time.

Place: A Homegoing Ritual for Gloria Naylor  Thursday Oct. 13th 6pm-8pm Eastern

Best known for creating interconnected ecologies of Black life including the intersectional urban community of Brewster Place, the surburban sacrificial scene of Linden Hills, the time travel enabled landscapes of Mama Day’s sea islands and Bailey’s timeless Cafe, Gloria Naylor has now taken her place among the literary ancestors.  This one-night session will draw on Naylor’s enduring works as we (all of us who have benefited and continue to benefit from the black women’s literary renaissance of the 20th century) to lift Naylor’s spirit into an elevated space and to clarify our own relationship to our place in black communities at this time.  All are welcome.

Register here.

Revolutionary Class Suicide: Linden Hills  Monday Oct 17, 12pm-2pm Eastern

In 1985, just as the beneficiaries of the first Affirmative Action generation were having children (Sista Docta Lex is one of those children) Gloria Naylor had the nerve to write about Black surburbia, and the hard-won homes and gardens of a new Black professional class, as hell, through the structure of Dante’s Inferno.   This is a one-day seminar for those of us who have with our own lives, killed the dream of a certain form of Black middle and upper-middle class respectability.   I first heard the term “class suicide” from the college-educated daughter of college-educated professionals who chose to use her educational and class privilege in service of a social justice movement that does not provide the relative financial stability she could have potentially accessed.   This seminar activates Gloria Naylor’s brave work about the costs of assimilation into the American dream as a resource for those of us who dream and live otherwise.  This webinar is healing and transformative space specifically for black folks. 

Register here.

The Black Boundlessness Intensive:  Monday Oct 24-Tuesday Oct 25 3pm-6pm Eastern

Drawing primarily on Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day and Bailey’s Cafe, this intensive activates land memory and time travel as crucial resources for contemporary Black life and operationalizes Naylor’s magical realist, speculative historical work as a basis to inquire about how we remember, how we time travel, we we become unwound and how to get unbound.   Participants do not have to have already read Mama Day and Bailey’s Cafe (though you will definitely want to once we are done!).   Come to this intensive ready to interrogate your own boundaries, remember the storms that precede you and clear out the back alleys of your spirit.  This intensive is specifically for black folks. 

Registration is limited.  Reserve your space with a $50 deposit here:

registration for the whole intensive is sliding scale $150-225.  (Installment payments available upon request.) Email brillianceremastered@gmail.com and let me know your goals for the course by October 20th.

  Monday Oct 17, 12pm-2pm Eastern

Register here.

In 1985, just as the beneficiaries of the first Affirmative Action generation were having children (Sista Docta Lex is one of those children) Gloria Naylor had the nerve to write about Black surburbia, and the hard-won homes and gardens of a new Black professional class, as hell, through the structure of Dante’s Inferno.   This is a one-day seminar for those of us who have with our own lives, killed the dream of a certain form of Black middle and upper-middle class respectability.   I first heard the term “class suicide” from the college-educated daughter of college-educated professionals who chose to use her educational and class privilege in service of a social justice movement that does not provide the relative financial stability she could have potentially accessed.   This seminar also takes seriously (as does Naylor’s text) the reality of literal suicide within the Black middle class. This seminar activates Gloria Naylor’s brave work about the costs of assimilation into the American dream as a resource for those of us who dream and live otherwise.  This webinar is a healing and transformative space specifically for black folks. 

Register here.

Monday Oct 24-Tuesday Oct 25 10am-12pm Eastern

Drawing primarily on Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day and Bailey’s Cafe, this intensive activates land memory and time travel as crucial resources for contemporary Black life and operationalizes Naylor’s magical realist, speculative historical work as a basis to inquire about how we remember, how we time travel, we we become unwound and how to get unbound.   Participants do not have to have already read Mama Day and Bailey’s Cafe (though you will definitely want to once we are done!).   Come to this intensive ready to interrogate your own boundaries, remember the storms that precede you and clear out the back alleys of your spirit.  This intensive is open to all people. 

Registration is limited.  Reserve your space with a $50 deposit here:

registration for the whole intensive is sliding scale $120-200.  (Installment payments available upon request.) Email brillianceremastered@gmail.com and let me know your goals for the course by October 23rd.

Between here and Charlotte sits Kannapolis, North Carolina, earthly birthplace of Parliament Funkadelic’s George Clinton.  He was born in Kannapolis and was raised in Plainfield, NJ (my own earthly birthplace.)

This morning I am drawing on the mothership connection, that studied and instinctive response to repeated and predictable state violence that has caused George Clinton and other geniuses to envision and activate technologies of escape.   Earlier this month as I prepared to talk about Alice Walker’s invocation of Mother-ship, in her “Democratic Womanism” and “Democratic Motherism” pieces in The World Will Follow Joy with the visionary apocalyptic archivists who participated in the Last is a Verb Webinar I received a gift in the mail from my irreplaceable namesake, author, Alexis De Veaux.  It was a Parliament Funkadelic t-shirt she bought at Afropunk.  On the back it says

‘Citizens Of The Universe/Recording Angels/We Have Returned To Claim The Pyramids/Partying On the Mothership/ I AM THE MOTHERSHIP CONNECTION’

Alexis Alexis MOTHERSHIP Mother-ship Plainfield Plainfield North Carolina North Carolina. Oh North Carolina.   I am collecting coincidences because systemic violence against black life cannot be the only pattern.   I seek a generative pattern, renewable fuel, to keep basing my daily decisions on Black love.

This past Sunday my grandfather (my mom’s dad) passed away.  On the same day my father-in-love (my partner’s dad) had a major stroke.  And I noticed (maybe because I was attuned to it by grief) that the fathers of several of my friends died too.  And then Keith Scott a father doing what my father does (sits and reads) was blown into eternity.  Charlotte, where my father-in-love lays half-paralyzed recovering from a stroke, exploded into what it already was, a place where only banks are safe, where Black life is a threat, where property is prophecy, where body turns to stone.  What happens when our fathers return to the mothership?  Alice Walker wants all of us to return to the mothership we are already on.  She is asking for Mother-ship as a rigorous responsibility to generate live instead of destroying it that she says is our sacred pre-existing contract with mother earth.

Next week our next webinar Soul Talk: Legacies of Black Feminist Magic remembers that exhausted from responding to the murder of 12 women in Boston within 3 months, the Atlanta Child Murders, the KKK attack in Greensboro, the US invasions of Grenada and Nicaragua and the rise of Ronald Reagan to the presidency Black women like Akasha Hull, Toni Cade Bambara, Sonia Sanchez, Lucille Clifton, Alexis De Veaux, Dolores Kendrick, Michele Gibbs and Alice Walker decided to take their magic seriously. Using ancestral listening, divination, channeling, astrology, dream analysis and other methods they created a precedent for those of us who are committed to radical internal and external transformation.  It is definitely time to take our tendencies for space travel, inter-dimensional wisdom and out of this world presence seriously.

How do I balance my mothership desires for escape from these wretched patterns with my mothership commitment to breath life into even this space, especially this space?  I have been drawing on this poem co-written by the archivists in the webinar for orientation when I ask myself “where” and “how”?  What is the trajectory of the drastic change that I and we need at this time?  This poem has been grounding and space-making for me this past week.  And I pass it on to you with love.

The Mother-ship Connection

By the participants in Last is a Verb: Archiving After the end of the World

To our mother’s gardens.

To the sacred pyramids.

To bliss.

To wellness.

To breathing easily.

To wholeness.

To balance.

To your hearts desire.

To abundance.

To vulnerability.

To trust.

To intimacy.

To willingness.

To sweet remembering.

To fullness.

To evolutionary love.

To forgiveness.

To the place where self-recrimination is no more.

To the place where practicing the art of discernment is effortless.

To respect.

To inner peace.

To home.

To being enough!

To complete connection with all beings.

To safety in this life and the next.

To the future our egun so boldly envisioned for us.

To confidence.

To self-love.

To the world stage.

To iridescent caves.

To our own bone marrow.

To joyful discipline.

To the first and forever dancing ground.

To the blessing place at the bottom of the ocean.

To the best place.

To the sound of joyful heartbeats.

To the sound of drums.

To the song of the first birth.

To the end of patriarchy.

To the abyss-womb.

To the intergalactic intergenerational way-station.

To the dark place where love is first and lasts.

To the vision of the third eye.

To our Truth(s)

To starseed.

To beyond the milky way.

To the new day.

To the ancient future.

To our daughters.