writing about writing~~~some reflections

Reflections and ripples

As I write this, I am sitting at the same table I was sitting at when I first learned to divide. This is the table I had breakfast at after I began my first period. I introduced my first fiancé to my mother at this table. Not much has changed about this table but the people who sit around it are dramatically different. My mama, the spicy intellectual, who ran a tight ship and kept me off the streets and encouraged to do great things has mellowed out a lot. In her retirement, she takes long walks and likes her house to stay silent. I am writing right now about rhodessa jones' Medea Project for Incarcerated Women. I am writing about the "power and possibility," the title of Elizabeth Alexander's most recent collection of essays, of staged embodied narrative and the transformative implications of story telling and movement. There are indeed transformative qualities.

This kitchen table used to be surrounded by yellow walls. The refrigerator is the same so is the stove. The floor is different. Large beige ceramic tiles. I can't remember what is was before, but once a mouse got in and ran so quickly across the floor to get away from us we couldn't help but laugh. The walls are now a creamy white. Once I splashed red kool aide on these walls. They are much different now. So am I.

I am writing at this table now. Trying to finish this paper, that I want to read to my mama. She knows her baby is at NYU writing and reading all the time. Writing through graduate school. Writing about women writing and reclaiming their labor for their own well-being. I am writing about how women undo time. The trauma of the prison industrial complex ages us, whether we are locked up or not. I am writing about how this goddess called rhodessa rewinds the narratives, back through the rough parts, back through rocky roads women want to forget, back through the good parts too. She wants us to hold onto the good parts. The good parts reveal a different part of the self. One that does not need to be bandaged up by drugs, bad relationships, self-deprecating behaviors and actions.

I must admit I am possessed by the narratives women write about their time here on this planet. I think a part of my life's work is concerned with how we take back the time that really is all ours. How we make our bodies bend time to our specifications. I wonder what rhodessa is doing or undoing right now. I wonder what toni Morrison is doing right now? I wonder what audre and june are doing right now. I wonder what my mama is doing right now. Oh she is playing solitaire and looking at the stacks of books I brought home to write with.

I am looking for an origin that may not exist. I want to know where cycles begin. Is it behind the wind? I want to know how cycles can be interrupted, shaken, cracked open to reveal a new sunlight. I am looking for a way to interrupt my own harmful cycles. I am looking for a way to intrerrupt the cycles of women who look like me. African women, poor women, white women, spiritual women, Houston women, women in florida. Women everywhere, who share a similar skin. I am called to continue writing and performing an intervention that shines like this little light of ours.