let this be the healing
Just as some books find you when you most need them, so does art, so do poems, so do people. People are on the move; they are moving. In the group texts:...
I do not need my freedom when I’m dead.
I get to vote, because of hundreds of pieces of paper painstakingly filled in (except for the ones that must be intentionally left blank); and thousand of...
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Another last-minute flight home tomorrow, because this is life now. They don’t tell you, when you decide to uproot yourself from the place that you are from,...
intention’s ambush
[Housekeeping note: Taking a rest day]PS: Got that sewing machine though! Special thanks to Lam, Eleanor, Ann, and Erin for their expertise, generously...
I know you / I see you / I hear you
Some things I’ve found inspiration in recently: “How to navigate a maze of perverse incentives without losing yourself. The search for purpose, validation,...
Give me weapons of minute destruction
Challenged by [gestures broadly at everything]. Sustained by the echo of small joys: gallons of tea shared with a friend; long walks in beautiful places;...
perhaps we do well to live with uncertainty.
I am in Trinidad for reasons, some of which required leaving the office on Wednesday at short notice and managing to score the last seat on the flight that...
This is what we have / we do what we can.
What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Me, I find myself reaching for music, back into the depths of the archives. Sometimes it is soca (touchless),...
i want to talk about respect. / how even the desperate deserve it.
If you study international relations, or humanitarian law (which is the law of war and of armed conflict, which may or many not overlap with human rights...
Wake up, people, examine your minds
Songs in the key of Independence It's amazing to you I'm sure / We didn't get Independence before This is the voice of the people / The people in the...
I am treacherous with old magic
I had forgotten, or suppressed, the particular kind of knowing discomfort — indeed, a whole-body unease — that accompanies seeing women in highly visible...
when we speak we are afraid / our words will not be heard
On Friday night I attended the screening of the remastered version of The Spook Who Sat By The Door, which I’d never seen and with which I was only vaguely...
The ice sheets will melt. / Things will get ugly.
Most people don’t get to have it all; most people are fighting for just a fraction of what’s left. The people with the biggest share fight hardest to keep...
the time is always now.
I knew this week I’d invoke Baldwin; I didn’t know, as I was thinking about which of his lyrical sentences I’d start with, that the one I would keep going...
love that casts a widening pool of light,
When you have moved constantly, over decades — cities, states, countries — putting art on walls falls down the priority list. For a combination of reasons,...
even as each moment is an answer.
Sometimes you plan to spend an evening in a botanical garden and sometimes instead you are obliged to stare at red and green numbers flashing across a...
do what has to be done, again and again.
You do not usually know when you’re living through something that might later be described as a “turning point”. But sometimes, sometimes you do know. At...
What strengthened me, for you was lethal.
At some point we each have to navigate the boundary between informed and overwhelmed; to accept that there is a difference between opinion and judgement. I...
Let your laughter fill me like a bell.
I have long believed that you rise up or fall down to the level of your best group text. This is not a novel idea; many a reasonable and unreasonable...
I had long hair and it was political.
I do not remember when I first realised how annoying I found the phrase “identity politics”, and whether that preceded or was a consequence of realising how...