*Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Dub, Finding Ceremony Acknowledgements p. 253
It’s because it’s on turns one today. Today would be my grandma Margot’s 90th birthday. She’s been on the other side for four years and counting. In her honor, in your honor, in honor of all the lives who make mine possible, I write here. The practice: each week(ish) turn my attention towards enthusiasm1, towards the breaking through. I keep practicing lest I forget. Goddamn, it’s precious.
“We talking about practice. We owe each other everything.”2
The more I look for it, the more it’s there. I mean, the more I practice turning my attention to it, the more available I become to the miracle. The sacred, the divine, the mysterious, the uncanny, the kind breaking through, in many ways, at many scales. Slipstreams. Life—the will towards it, its insistence, cannot be squished.3
This is the devotional.
It’s funny that we say we’re getting choked up when we’re on the verge of tears, tearful. I find that the tears make the breathing easier. There’s welling today. “An orphaned tear escapes my eye hoping to catch up with the rest of its salted companions that make up the ocean.”4
awestruck, tenderhearted:
“And then if you're lucky, and I have been lucky, everything comes back to you. And then you know why one of the freedom fighters in the sixties, a young Black woman interviewed shortly after she was beaten up for riding near the front of an interstate bus—you know why she said, "We are all so very happy." It's because it's on. All of us and me by myself: we're on.” — June Jordan, Civil Wars
93 of you are here, along for this ride. Thank you for your attention, for your regard, for your presence. I cherish it. You’re on.