Today is a new day. Today is a good day. Today is a day. I feel like I am navigating an ever flattening labyrinth designed for my demise. It’s a miracle I’ve lasted this long in a world so clearly designed to ensure my destruction. A world designed to lead me astray. This world and the rich men within it require I remain lost at sea. It requires I allow people to occupy my body, my mind, my soul, my space — people tell me they should be allowed to use my body like a drive thru. That I be content to be made an object. It’s wildly fascinating to me that I am tasked, encouraged, persuaded, burdened, deceived into permitting these trespasses against my beautiful black body. Just as Africa is a rich, wonderful, and vast world of endless spectrums, richness, joys, pains, potentials, experiences, loves, losts, gains, releases and revelations - so is my body. My inner world a universe within a universe. My body like my mother - Africa. The Arab conquest of North Africa just like the European conquest of South Africa, the French conquest of much of central Africa - and now the Chinese conquest. Contaminated by invaders and invasions.
This disfigured endless exploitation of my mind, my body, my people, our minds, our bodies, our people, our land, our cultures, our souls. The way they try to shame any of us who dare reject whatever slop served up that’s supposedly meant to nourish us. This cancerous slop that makes us mutations of those who seek our death. I violently decline the fodder I am given. What they see of me is not my portion. Who am I beyond the deception of the “white gaze”? Who am I beyond the treacherous trap of Eurocentric pathologies? How do I find myself when they have stolen myself from myself? Am I buried away - like the story of the Kemetic deity who became Ausar? Dissected and dismembered - each piece hidden in different craters in the Earth. That’s what we are as the global African family - one whole that’s been dismembered, disfigured and seemingly destroyed. The Sun people - children of the soil - castrated from each other. Misguided, lost on a boat with no steer. Are we to jump ship? Well if the ship is our abuser’s ship - we are better to take our chances with the violent thrashing of the waters.
I do not feel seen safe, seen, protected or respected in white spaces. I do no feel safe, seen, protected or respected in spaces that exalt whiteness. I am my people and my people are me. African women are seen only as objects to be exploited. We are supposed to be content with the leftover dog shit served as gourmet. Too bad I violently decline being made to feel indignant - hence the violent decline of dog shit platters.
I am not a toy, I am not a hole, I am not something - I am someone. I am the living material proof that my mother’s mother’s mother’s mother’s once was. I am alive and I breathe in life. I take in life, and as such create it. I am a walking womb, vessel for life - simply a being. I am living in a suitcase of matter but I am not mistaken by my casing. I can’t be made to believe my realm begins and ends in human form. But as I do exist as an African woman - I am glad to call this vessel my temporary home.
I can’t be made to believe my body, it’s own realm, is for the amusement and disposal of the world. After all the world - old and new - has for too long operated on the throat of Africa and African people.
They know what I know. They know their time is coming. They know we will see them unmade and undone. They know this poison is growing weak - they know we will rise again and as such there will be wide reaching violence - the death rattle of the old world will shake every room, but it is destined to die.
In fact, this world - as it is now - was born to die. The next world will be sweet, supple, fertile, just, honest, kind, exude depth, have order, be balanced, peaceful but aware and ready if ever chaos and destruction are to arise again. The white man and the sand people, the yellow man and the remaining aspiring colonizers have taken advantage of our self-ignorance for long enough. All the while plundering our portion of Earth - the most fertile, abundant and giving.
There is always a price for injustice. We will be the makers of our fate. Our Supreme Creator has gifted us with a piece of itself. The only reason we are aware is because there is a small piece of the divine living within us. Our nucleus, our battery pack, the Source within us.
The invisible world is just a mirror for the material world.. Matter and material - no matter the material, or lack thereof. Since our Divine Maker, Ancient Ancestor, Eternal Elder is the battery pack in all, Creator of all, Designer of all - we contain within us, like all of life - that which animates and designates us with a purpose. And have just has much capacity to destroy as we can create.
I am all too happy to be here. Despite so much betrayal, deception, disrespect, silencing, erasure, injustice, violence, abuse, maiming and murdering - I am still here. I am, I exist, I see, I taste, I create and I destroy. All within, around and because of love. In fact, if it weren’t for all the love I contain within me I would have descended into hatred and madness long ago. Love is the secret sauce.
My heart has broken a million times but I am still alive. My existence is a testament to the Divine Creativity of our Most High. I am bound to my love and respect for our Cosmic Creator. I am obligated to become the warrior, goddess, creator, destroyer, protector and the like as required by my agreement with my Ancient Ancestor before descending down unto this plane of chaos.
Regardless, I am honored to exist as I do. To live in my body and experience this beautiful form. The greatest gift of all - to exist as an African woman. And no matter how long it takes, I am “remembering that which has been dismembered”.