black bodies

Fear to Fury

| Sheree

James Baldwin when interviewed after the SNCC Freedom Day demonstration in Selma, Alabama, October 1963 described what he saw there.

When was asked if he was afraid in the moment when the police were moving in on the African Americans waiting patiently to vote with guns and clubs and cattle prodders, Baldwin replied,

“ The thing is you get – you’re so scared – I was scared in the morning. Before it all began. And I was scared the first time I walked around there. But, later on, I wasn’t scared at all … Your fear is swallowed up by, you know … fury. What you really want to do is kill all those people.”*

* Quoted in Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America And It’s Urgent Lessons For Our Own, by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

“The helmets were, you know, like a garden. So many colours.” James Baldwin *

Let’s Go Outside

| Sheree
Visual journaling 04/05

At the moment, I’m using an altered (romance) book as my visual journal. I go with my moods when it comes to deciding what to use next for my visual journal. I listen to my gut and what she’s calling for in terms of size, shape, texture of page, of journal she needs in order to show up daily for the next month or so.

So with an altered book as my journal I was calling for space to explore colours but also layering, composition and found text.

There will be pages that are heavy with colour and my handwriting while others I’ll crave colour with space and some text cut ups applied.

I’m using Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye at the moment to create found poetry for double page spreads. The Bluest Eye was the first book I read in which I found someone who looked like me and who felt the same self-hate I was experiencing around growing up in a predominately white society being within a Black body. It was revolutionary for me and my personal development to find this book when I did.

I suppose using a copy of the book now to cut up and repurpose is saying something about how I’m feeling at the moment and how I want to see myself on the page. How I want to take back the space, take up space and be validated. But on my own terms.

I love how powerful visual journaling is to my psyche and how I move my body through this world but does so through such a simple process. It never ceases to amaze me what comes to light and fruition through this practice.

running free

| Sheree

Climbing trees, juicy mangoes

pliant flesh and ashy elbows

to be running free through the long grass

and burrs sticking to legs, gaze widening

no thought for shiny brown skin

causing hate, no thought for others

just green

Compassion for all parties involved

| Sheree

In a gondola steered by a bunny with pink
ears and white feathered wings, I rest.

Serene and floating upon a turquoise body of water,
I keep my eyes closed, keeping out the light,

keeping out thoughts of failure.
Let me just drift into the unknown

where there may be green shoots to suck
and damp grass to tinkle my toes.

Who knows, what’s around the bend.
All I know; I’m wearing my favourite bow,

my rubber giraffe is sinking like a ship
along with my rocking horse of dreams.

Fear on the Playroom Floor

| Sheree

An oversized, blue fluffy bunny
is the things of nightmares.
Garish, stalks the playroom floor.

I hide behind the enlarged
building blocks, hands over ears and heart
busting my chest. Afraid

the bunny will hear me, find me
and beat me. Beat me for being me.
I didn’t do anything wrong.

I fear this fear. Not knowing
where the next blow from the taloned
paw is coming from and why.

Not knowing if my existence
is an affront or punishable offence.
I dream of other floors

with soft cushioned landings
blankets and warmth, like
under autumn leaves breathing orange.

Rubbernecking

| Sheree

She’s called Daphe, the woman running the business training out of her Notting Hill home.

The Thames curves south from here by Chelsea, sluggish brown. The city’s awake and burning.

Have you been to see the damage yet? he asks, in our snatched conversation.

Almost gleeful in his hunger to hear details about the tower block which blazed leaving so many people missing or dead.

He says there’s photographs of the missing stuck to tree trucks, walls and railings. Black, brown and olive skinned and missing.

I don’t want to see this suffering. The ruins becoming a tourist attraction. Leave them with some dignity. Always having to endure the gaze in life and death.