010. on freedom
I recently saw this image of Pat Parker. Joyful, a pup’s arms wrapped around her shoulders. I’m thinking about getting a pup. There are so many reasons why I haven’t.
I saw Jamila Woods perform live about a week ago. Since then, I’ve been thinking about a thing she said. She told the story of Harriet Tubman’s traumatic head injury. The National Park Service said, “As an enslaved child, she endured a severe head injury when an overseer hurled a lead weight at her in anger. Stemming from that injury, Tubman continuously suffered from debilitating seizures and other painful conditions.”
She also had prophetic dreams. After one she famously chanted, “My people are free.”
So, I’m thinking about freedom. About how, maybe, the ability to sit around pontificating about freedom is a kind of freedom. I am also thinking about fear. What there is to be afraid of. What to do with that freedom and that fear. How to always be true. I’m thinking about how Toni Morrison said she was bored with evil. How it was not interesting but cowardly, weak. Goodness is more interesting.
It is day 145 of genocide in Gaza. Day 320 of war in Sudan. I am thinking today of Assata Shakur, about political prisoners, about my father, my uncle Dale, how we do deserve a Black history year.
The president, while eating an ice cream cone as people in North Gaza die of starvation, erroneously said, by Monday there should be a ceasefire.