Confession

There was something I had to say. I hope I can proceed towards getting my schoolwork done after saying it. I'm trying to find some strength here.

When we were in Djibouti the three of us would sit in the hotel room. It was just me and my sisters. We'd come back every night to that place and we'd talk every night. Maybe someone would be on the bed or on the chair or the cot and we'd talk about realities and things. And continuing the efforts we had begun and the viewpoint from which we were looming was large and the thing I wanted to do most was come back to Wesleyan and share all that I had learned.

We were seeing macro and micro then. There is a viewpoint that comes when you can look from above over the skies. We saw so many connections when we were in Djibouti, between the experiences and needs and desires of people and young people in Djibouti and back home. We saw so many connections between the global and local experiences of black people and people of color. The force of our desire to be! The force of our desire to be! God! It kills and makes alive.

If I note anything of what I've learned through this project it has been this desire and this global force of us to be! to make some kind of way for ourselves and our dreams, extensions of ourselves and our living to be. It defies words that desire. That desire and that wish that I feel from us as a global people is so strong. It pummels me over. I won't try to explain it here, but..It is so strong. It is both a legacy of everyone before us and always new. You can feel it in the pit of your belly, when you look around you and at yourself

As young people You greatly just want to be in the world?! Oh goodness, you really just want to be! so Hard. And you wonder if there is there a place for you? Is there room for you this brown girl of power to enact herself, to paint herself in color on the face of the world? And leave her legacy and a voice. And take her place? Is there room for us?! to take our places. Is there room for me?

We all just want to be! All of us people, young people, black people, global people want to be! To find a way for ourselves to BE! Open a path and a way for us to be! The parting of the red sea! The opening of a global and personal and local skyway.

If you should think of any of the things that have seemed to oppress, disenfranchise, limit, or disable people like/ poverty, or slavery, racism, or prejudice, or fear, disbelief, ignorance, or anything that makes you feel bad in your gut ..

All of those things at their root are assaults upon our human desire to be. just to be. to make ourselves in this world.

All of those things seem to attempt to rob you of your coming. To rob you of your very coming.
How strange is that? If you are born, you are coming! You are coming to be! If you walk and learn to speak and walk, you are learning to be, you are accumulating and aggregating your ball of fire, your ball of light, your bolt of lightning. Your being here.

(what is youth but coming? but is a dream but something coming..? you know?)


This thing that happens, this implication of silence and this unbeingness (notbeingness) kills us. It literally can kill us and our dreams to be. Why do you think Langston Hughes talked about a dream deferred? Why do you think he did it?!
Why do you think he talked about that silence and that pain? It is both a dream, and a person deferred, shot off, postponed!It is your son or your daughter that does not complete themselves. POSTPONED! A dream and a people postponed! Put off! Put off ok!? Put off! Told their time is not now. Told they will be saved for later! Next year. Next life. Next week, tomorrow. Loose ends that are people that are forgotten or Langston says it better in his poem. Can we stop this?! Can we pay attention? Can we catch these falling stars? Can we catch ourselves and look at ourselves?


And sure you may know about it, shoot you prolly even feel it, but we don't talk about it! We just do not talk about that with young people? Not like just do your schoolwork and get to class on time and be alright kid, just be alright.. whatever, but who talks about it? Don't just assume we'll make it. Don't just assume we'll be alright! Don't assume we don't see or understand the past or the present! Don't assume that doesn't pain us! Don't assume that we don't see! That pain that wracks youth and young people and our growing. Particularly! those whose recent people's histories have been wracked with attempts at our unbeingness and in some cases our not even being alive... and you wonder if you will be ok

Who talks about that pain?... and i won't explain it here now..

Who talks about it with us? Who tells us it will be ok? Who confronts it? Who stomps down the monster? Who yells about it? Who stomps it into the ground? Who shakes it up and down? Who throws it against the wall?When we are young people and trying to understand our lives..?

I think it breeds a sense of apathy and depression.. actually.. so many people talk about young people not wanting to do things or not being active.. have people actually thought that maybe some of us might be depressed.. and actually think what they want to do can't happen.

Not just talking about it all the stuff that ails, but envisioning a new way and a way that is full of power.. a way that is really old too.. all of the stories of our people were not just full of pain.. black people were alive and had history before slaveryand native americans had stories before this present now and past attempts at their goneness
none of those things are who we are

but if we don't confront the monster that plagues our dreams and dream up that new old way we will always be running

That's why I'm writing this. I feel it now and too.. that's why I'm writing right now! It affects me! But doing this project helps me ok? Sometimes when I'm writing here is when I feel most vulnerable and need to find courage! I have to muster myself and scream! bloody raw murder! that I'm here or I will be at the brink of losing myself ..

i Actually NEED to do this project. I need to.

\Who heals us? How can we heal ourselves? I think it's wrapped up in dreams.

I'm having a time right now. I'm having a time right now. That is a confession and that is an opening to the world.