28 days --- 56 ways to be Young, Gifted and Black: Ayumahani Sigu

How do you spend your days?

Taking time to jot down my dreams, hopes and fears. Accepting what comes and goes. Collecting sounds. Feeling the ground, the winds, the moon and the suns. Cherishing my loved ones. Preparing to complete my undergraduate program in the late spring. Affirming my black life’s existence and legacy/heritage as eternal. Thinking about collective black struggle. Re-reading the story black creation.

What brings you Joy?

The possibilities of love-making-documenting-creating-remembering. The genealogy of black love and knowing that I was made in/by/through love. Skating with cousins. Dancing with my cousins. Learning about my ancestor’s technologies of communication.

What is Liberation to You?

Liberation is love being made possible and infinite. I know that love isn’t a utopian conception or idea. But Maya once said that: “Love liberates.” And when I heard that I felt that. For more than 1500 years, black bodies/communities have been the subject of desire, speculation, capture and torture by outsiders. I see liberation as being intimately connected with pro-black love and survivance of that love, and black bodies/masses having the ability to be safe from outside interference and violence. Technologies have to be used/shifted to free black bodies from capture-hood, devices of anti-black mind-control, and self-hate. I stand on tops the same earth as my ancestors who made my breath, my body, and this pro-black liberation love struggle possible. Liberation would be me meeting with them across the stars and oceans and them greeting me with open arms, singing and dancing under the light.

Comments

be like water | erev rosh hashana d'var 5785

🎶 Be easy, take your time, you are coming home to yourself, coming home to yourself. 🎶 We have gathered at the appointed time to bless the creation of this world. Yet as we gather, we continue to witness the devastation and despair that hurricane helene has left in its wake. And the Israeli govt is expanding its war, destroying homes and families and so many lives that represent entire worlds. and here we are. Some of us feel rage, anxiety, or fear. Some of us are feeling discouraged, lonely or even uncertain what to feel. And some of us are feeling grateful for this opportunity to gather with beloveds or excited for the possibilities that can come as the new year is finally upon us. And i am sure that there is a mixture of some or all of these feelings. whatever and however you feel is just right and is welcome here. may it be so that this ritual, this spiritual technology that we have been gifted with, gives you just what you need right here and right now. 🎶Be easy, ta...

Breathing in Pesach

(Illustration by Sarah Quinter) Tomorrow, when Pesach begins, we will tell the exodus story. To be sure, there are many reasons we engage in this ritual. It is one that is rich with drama, curiosity, family interaction and revelry. It is also fraught with myths about how it got started and the many traditions that have developed over the years. However, we are commanded to take our time, lean back in our chairs, eat and drink heartily, yet, there is so much pain, sadness and death all around us. It seems increasingly harder each year to step away from what is happening and breathe a little. But that is what we are supposed to do --- breathe. Breathe. BREATHE. Breathe into the notion that there is freedom on the other side of this reality we are living in right now. Breathe knowing that as we move away from oppression, towards liberation, we leave as an erev rav, leaving no one behind. Breathe knowing liberation is our default, our birthright. Full Stop. ...

Parshat Va'era -- Living Through the Chain Reaction

Greta Hort notes that one thing that stands out about the Egyptian plagues is their relationship to natural phenomena that occur in Egypt’s ecosystem. And Professor Ziony Zevit tells us that using this theory the first six plagues can even be explained in their sequential order. The naturalistic account is connected initially with the violent rainstorms that occur in the mountains of Ethiopia, to the south of Egypt. 1. The first plague, referred to as dam, blood, was caused when red clay swept down into the Nile from the Ethiopian highlands coloring the river and rendering its water undrinkable. 2. The mud affected the aeration of the water that lead to the death of fish. Bodies of dead fish clogged the swamps inhabited by frogs. The rotting fish crowded the frogs out from the swamps. They left the Nile and sought cool areas in people's houses: the second plague. But, the movement of frogs occurred only after they had become infected by some communicable disease. 3-4. Since the ...

The fantastic adventures of Koach Baruch

Search This Blog