I spent yesterday, October 7th, at the YWCA Racial Justice Summit. It didn’t turn out to be much about Gaza, to my relief, since my feelings about that are pretty complicated. (I’ve appreciated reading Starhawk’s recent posts on it). The plenary speaker, Andrea Ritchie, helped connect the dots between abolition and everything from microaggressions to fascism, while suggesting emergent strategies to interrupt criminalization and work toward the world we want. She gave us a prompt for a visionary writing exercise: Imagine a world without police, prisons, or barriers. I wrote:
How, when she asked for volunteers to share what they’d written, did I have the courage to read it in front of hundreds of people? Well, reading my off-the-top-of-the-head writings at Herspiral classes and retreats for years surely helped. I’ve learned that the writing often doesn’t fully arrive in my being until I’ve reread it, and reading it aloud can have powerful effects on me, even if I’m not thrilled with the writing.
Also, I’d recently been thinking about the “Spontaneous Poetry” offerings I’ve encountered. My friend Susan Podebradsky sat at a booth at a festival and wrote poems for people a few years back, and I still have the one she wrote for me. And this past Sunday, there was finally no line when I arrived at Madison Street Poet‘s booth at the Monroe St. Farmers Market. I told him, “You’re so brave!”
He said, “Or creatively foolish. Would you like a poem?”
I said, “Sure.”
“What about?” he asked.
I hesitated. I hadn’t thought about this ahead of time. “Maybe about that. About bravery, and foolish creativity, or creative foolishness.”
I thought that would be enough, but he wanted more information, more specific context. I told him, a bit reluctantly, that I was considering a large investment of time and money in a regenerative agriculture project my friends are doing in British Columbia, Canada, and that my husband wasn’t very happy with me about it. Then the poet asked for my name, and began. On his manual typewriter, he created this:
It brought tears to my eyes. A near stranger told me once, in a not especially supportive way, that I reminded him of Don Quixote. To feel seen, in this more positive light, by this creative stranger & writing compatriot, was moving. I read the poem aloud, there at the market, to him and his partner (who I learned is this accomplished ceramic sculptor), letting myself cry a little as I did. And I wondered if I’d someday have the courage to do what he was doing. To not only create a poem for someone spontaneously, but to give it away, no strings attached, to do with as they wished.
And four days later, I had an opportunity to do something similar: offer some spontaneous poetry of mine to a banquet-hall full of people! It seemed to go over okay. Later I wrote and read another poem in one of the breakout sessions, and after that, much more terrifying for me, participated in a breakout session on improv theater! (Much scarier if I don’t have time to write my words down first!)
The prompt for the second poem was a quote by Dr. Thema Bryant, “May those who perpetually pour, receive. May those who constantly carry, discover what it feels like to be supported. May those hidden behind walls of silence, find safe places to speak. May those who fight for others encounter those who will fight for you.” I wrote:
I pour
and I receive
I receive
and I pour
I pour what i receive
i receive what i pour
i am vessel
i am river
i am lake
i am ocean
i am drop in ocean
in sky
in planet
in galaxy
in cosmos
i pour this now
into forever
Thank you, YWCA, for the safe places to speak.
I LOVE the poem about pouring and receiving! To me, this immediately takes us to the realm of non-duality. It takes me to what I have often found — that having gifts received is itself a gift, and receiving the gifts of another is itself a gift to them. (Or at least this can be the case and has been my experience, esp when the giving/receiving happens through freely choosing rather than from “should” energy.) The water imagery is very meaningful to me as well for a number of reasons. It brings Rumi to mind. Are we not drops in the ocean of consciousness? And can we sometimes hold the ocean within our Selves? Water is life. THANK YOU for sharing this gift.