maybe you know something about being haunted by a motif. people, ideas, phrases constellating — inviting you towards another way of being.
i recently learned the word trenchant. someone used it to describe this very trenchant book1 and it is now one of my favorite words, a quality to which i aspire.
trenchant (adj) keen, sharp, vigorously effective and articulate, sharply perceptive, clear cut, distinct
a while back b described m’s feedback to their hostile workplace2 as “the generosity of sharpening.” this phrase gestured towards what’s possible when we give each other, or institutions, honest (cutting) feedback. it has lingered with me ever since, it shifted my relationship to feedback in such a breathtaking (breath giving?) way.
and j shared that she had a knife on her altar, to invoke cutting away what is no longer necessary.3
and i heard Andrea J. Ritchie talk about how steel sharpens steel in the context of political study and the importance of being in relationship with people who push and challenge you.4
and how cutting up is another way people describe joking, roasting, talking shit and making each other laugh. and you can’t roast people well unless you know them well, unless you’re willing to look.
and d shared this article about a writer choosing to get top surgery, in which i learned that the etymology of decide is to cut off: “Decide: it comes from the Latin words de, off, and caedere, to cut. Taken together: to cut off.” lol.
and all of these pieces continue talking to each other, to me.
and it reminds me of the way that adrienne maree brown talks about honesty in relationships:
how cutting the shit is also about a reverence for our time, each other’s time. and all of it part of the ongoing struggle for integrity.
and to give feedback, to tell the truth “is not an investment….It is a total risk of everything, of you and who you think you are, who you think you’d like to be, where you think you’d like to go — everything, and this forever, forever.”6
snip snip.
In the Wake by Christina Sharpe ↩
we were beginning a several month journey with other wealthy white people who long to repair the legacy of their ancestors involvement in genocide and enslavement, forging relationship with each other to be accountable in redistributing hoarded wealth, lifelong work for many of us and our families. ↩
"Abolition is the Future", Andrea J. Ritchie, Ash-Lee Henderson, and Imani Perry, part of the Highlander Education and Research Center’s 90th homecoming celebration ↩
Emergent Strategy, 146 ↩
https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/04/13/james-baldwin-the-artists-struggle-for-integrity/ ↩