black

You’ve got to love your local library

| Sheree

With my knapsack on my back, I went a wandering. Wandering and wondering is part of my summer field guide plans ( more to follow here with updates). It wasn’t too hot and it wasn’t too cold. It was just right.

I had a bundle of old photographs with me, probably half of my family archive of photographs, as I was going to get them photocopied for a project I’m working on ( more to follow here too).

At my local library, there are two photocopiers. I usually use the downstairs one. But this one was broken. Has been for a few weeks. So I had to go upstairs and use that one.

This photocopier upstairs is manually operated and all monies have to be given to the librarian sitting not far from it.

I asked to use the photocopier. They said yes and I started the job. As I’ve said there were a few photographs to get through and the librarian did say they were leaving momentarily, swapping out.

They stayed for the duration of the job. I paid for the copying and then I took a minute to turn around and look at the new books . Something I do from time to time.

The librarian said at the same time, I was just going to say that there are new books in if you want to have a look at them. Don’t you just love getting your hands on new books? And I had to agree with them.

And there, right in the middle of the shelf, facing me at eye level was the new book from Christena Cleveland, The Black Madonna.

You might remember that another book from Christena Cleveland has been featured on this blog. God is a Black Woman. Ring any bells?

A book I travelled with to Paris, and the outskirts as I took a mini trip to France in search of Black Madonnas.

Well, Cleveland’s next instalment is The Black Madonna, is a further reclamation of the divine feminine, part memoir, part global stories, part historical records, part invocations and rituals. Total liberation.

Part way through this book, where at the end of each chapter there is an invitation to actively allow Black Madonna into your life more fully, I’m drawn to the task of mapping Black Madonna’s loving pursuit of us. Of me throughout my life.

Cleveland presents the story that Black Madonna, is the sacred black feminine worshipped from time, from Africa. When the people of Africa were stolen, taken across the ocean to be enslaved, the sacred black feminine in the form of Osun, orisha of the Osun river begged Yemoja, Mother of all Orishas and Oceans, to let her go with them. Osun’s love for her people was limitless and she didn’t want them to think that she had forsaken them, forgotten them or stopped loving them because of their forced departure .

Yemoja granted Osun’s wish by transforming her into rain, so she could cross the ocean and be with her people who needed her most. So within the Americas, and the Caribbean, Osun crossed an ocean, transforming herself into a more light-skinned goddess so her people would recognise her in these strange new lands, where they had been enslaved and all Africanness bred and/or whipped out of them. She crossed an ocean not just out of love for us, but to empower us. Who has not heard of the slave rebellions inspired and led by Black Madonna, by black women? Who do. you think Harriet Tubman’s North Star was?

Black Madonna. Shape-shifter. Black women. Shape-shifters.

Anyway, I thought I’d share my mapping of Black Madonna’s loving pursuit of me for the past 6 years on this blog this month as I’m in need of feeling that I am not alone.

I’m in need of feeling that I have a black divine presence in my life who’s got me. Who’s there to catch me when I fall.

I’m not religious more spiritual. And because of the white washing of religion,I would’t claim any religion as truth, as something to put my faith in. Never.

I’d much rather put my faith and trust and love into black women. God is a Blackwoman, right. And there is something about Black Madonna that keeps drawing me back to her. That gives me peace and joy when I sent eyes on her.

So who wouldn’t these feelings to continue? Who wouldn’t want to highlight and amplify these feels through difficult times?

Purple’s not usually my colour

| Sheree

I love colour. Colour brings me a lot of joy. Red is usually my go to. Brown used to be my nemesis. But through use and practice I have learned to work well with brown now.

But purple is still a stumbling block. I’m not sure what it is with purple. It’s a regal colour, a symbol of power. But it just doesn’t do it for me.

It might be its sense of power that might be just too much for me. Too powerful.

Anyway, I was determined to worked into the colour purple today. Different shades of purple, to build up some layers, working it toward a pink palette. This sat better with me, for me. Made it easier on the eye and heart to be with purple.

Laying down the colour field, the piece felt flat and incomplete. Adding black and white lines worked for me. Gave me something to hang a feeling on.

That feeling was, the purple can stay 💜

To start living how I want the world to be

| Sheree

What’s one small improvement you can make in your life?

I’ve been noticing how my work/ being has been reactive. There’s been a sense of scarcity and time urgency that’s been guiding my thoughts and actions. There’s been a hopelessness. Because some incidents are out of my control but which have impacted me. There’s been feelings of not being appreciated, feeling a lack of trust and working without purpose, moving away from my core values and moral compass.

I might have been using food or drink to numb my way through the shit. Through the ‘work’, not allowing myself to feel and be present. Really present to all the feels.

Do you feel me?

I know I need to take a step back and really look at the life I’ve been living. This is the only life I have and cannot be relived. I have a deep desire to change the system. To abolish the system and live otherwise.

And yet in order to change the system, I have to change my life, how I live my life. The way / how I live has to reflect the way/ how I want the world to be.

What does this mean in reality?

How I am just as much as what I do within the system will have an effect on system change. I have to be living my life with intention and purpose. Making sure I’m living my values, that I’m not compromising my integrity. That each decision I make is coming from that place of love and trust and hope.

That I’m not shutting down but open to togetherness but also trusting my gut that when I say ‘no’ it’s not from a place of malice but from a place of capacity and boundaries.

I’m learning, I’m sharing and I’m growing. Alone and in collaboration.

And I’m feeling and shifting into the practice and recognition that this is coming from a place of love and care rather than exhaustion and pain.

Small steps. Small acts. Small makes up the large. Small scales up to large.

I’ve got to be practicing the world I want to see now in my own life. Daily. Practice.

Love not hate.

Cooperation not competition.

Conversation rather than condemnation.

More care less harm.

More listening less violence.

The turn towards Mother Nature rather than against her.

A recognition in the value and worth of every human being regardless of race, class, gender, religion, ethnicity, age, sexuality, body type and body and mind abilities.

these are a few of my favourite things …

| Sheree

I’ve missed a few days here.

I don’t know if I expressed it openly but I’ve been trying to post every day here in honour of a practice from years ago of being creative every day.

This last week, home alone and probably depressed, I’ve been beating myself up for not doing more. More out in society as well as within my own practice. I’ve been on a rollercoaster of emotions and I’ve not been kind towards myself.

Coming out the other end though I can see that I’ve been doing what I’ve needed. Rest yes but also quiet, small magic.

I’ve been collecting brown paper from packages. I thought I’d use them within the creative retreats I facilitated this year but it didn’t happen. So I have a very large pile and what I love about the brown paper apart from the sound and texture is the un/uniformativity of it.

These papers are teared to fuck. Fragile and worn and rough. And I love feeling them. So this week, I might not have been posting here but my sitting room became a factory conveyer belt as brown paper got the credit card treatment of smeared paints. Acrylic paints that I’m using up that I love the mixtures of, that gets under my nails and onto the carpet. And I love it. One side wait to dry and then the next and then let’s fold and put these single sheets together to make a whole

This practice has made me whole again this week. I’ve been writing within this new journal this past couple of days and I feel so good to be doing so. Better.

I’m grateful to wake up each morning and {BE}. I’m grateful that I’m no longer chasing recognition and the big bucks. I’m grateful that I don’t give a fuck about being perfect and always having to smile.

I’m grateful for the community I have around me. Cultivated over years. They care for me and I care for them.

I’m grateful to myself for never giving up on me and for always having my back even when it feels I’m falling apart. Falling apart but big hands to put me back together again, but better.

Outdoor First Aid Training

| Sheree

For the last two days I’ve been completing my refresher course in Outdoor First Aid Training.

First completed during the pandemic, my certificate had run out and I needed to retake the course.

It’s simple, First Aid saves lives.

Basic first aid can mean the difference between life and death. A Red Cross survey showed a staggering 59% of deaths from injuries would have beenpreventable had first aid been given before the emergency services arrived.

Sources

Only about 4-5% of the population in the UK are First Aid trained. This for me is not enough people taking responsibility. This for me is not enough people l caring about other people’s well-being. This for me is not enough people demonstrating care in community.

What maddens me further is that women are more likely to not receive life saving first aid because people, usually men, are uncomfortable about exposing women’s breasts in conducting life saving CPR. So more women are dying without receiving first aid because of other people’s embarrassment. Fucking hell. I’m telling you now, if it’s the difference between showing my boobs and being able to live for another day, fucking get my top and bra off as soon as possible and start saving my life. You have my consent now.

I’m now trained up for another 3 years. But I won’t be leaving it there. I’ll make sure I’m refreshing my skills more frequently as well as moving onto an advanced first aid skills training course. I don’t think you can ever be prepared enough for saving a life , as who knows what scenarios will present themselves in real life, but at least I will have the confidence and the know how to try and save a life.

Fugitive Practice

| Sheree

For those of us who live at the shoreline… Audre Lorde

It will be 10 years this August that I started my visual journaling practice.

Then it was called Dreaming on Paper, as I completed the course of the same name by Lisa Sonora.

I needed a safe space to explore the tumult of my feelings and thoughts. I was going through a traumatic experience of escape really. Escape from the life I’d spent the past 12 years building up, that was took away in the flick of a Facebook post.

I ran away from the public, the writing community, my home as I travelled into the Scottish Highlands and Islands. To heal.

Visual journaling helped me heal. Helps me continue to heal.

Overtime, I’ve come to understand my visual journal practice as a fugitive practice. Within these paints, images and words, dreams of freedom are planned out and eventually come to fruition. Projects, happenings, events – all on my own terms.

I mean, the whole point about escape is that it’s an activity. It’s not an achievement. You don’t ever get escaped. – Fred Moten

Within these visual journal spreads, I work out how to escape, how to get outside white supremacy culture while still having to be living on the inside. Coming to terms with the thought of that the outside can only occur from the inside. Being here.

Visual journaling is me trying to create an opening, a break in the fabric in which to slip on through into the otherside/ outside, into the woods running between the trees with the dogs barking at my feet. Creating beauty, creating a beautiful space in which to linger in while the terror rages around me.

Visual journaling is a safe space, is a nurturing space, is a free space.

My bedtime lover(s)

| Sheree

A book is much more faithful than a lover I think.

A book can open you up to so many different experiences at the same time as reaffirming everything you’ve been feeling and thinking and struggling with.

I’m not sure a lover can do all that for me. But many more than one lover could?

Hence spending copious amounts of time in bed with books.

Reclaiming the Black Body: Nourishing the Home Within by Alisha McCullough is one of my current reads.

I used to be of the persuasion to read one book at a time. Devote all my time, focus and attention to one book in order to reap the glory/ knowledge/ whatever!

But these past few years, as I’ve become thirsty for stimulation and attempting to find like-minded people/ theories/ lovers, I’m moved into reading multiple books simultaneously, also known as “syntopical reading”.

And these books are not on the same topic either. They range from poetry around grief, non-fiction on gardening, personal essays around deep time, romantic and crime novels and short stories about myths and history. The list goes on!

I’m so enjoying this eclectic and multiple reading practice as it’s keeping me engaged, creating unique and original connections and it’s keeping me feeling loved.

By me.

So one of my current squeezes is Reclaiming the Black Body and I’m devouring it in small digestible bites because it is speaking to my soul.

This book is calling to attention the deep-seated, long-time, disproportionate amount of trauma, violence, marginalisation, discrimination, and adverse childhood experiences of Black women and femmes, and confounded by misognoir and racism, how we have learned to cope with it all through increased imbalanced eating behaviours.

Usually called “eating disorders” but even using that language implies that the individual is to blame and implying that some of us are just not equipped to nourish our bodies and do not know how to look after ourselves.

‘Disorder’ implies stigma and comes from the Western health ‘care’ system which from time has excluded and harmed Black people.

So this book is a balm for the wounds of silent struggles Black women and femmes have been going through around eating imbalances including myself. And is a vindication that we’re not fucked up and broken and just beasts, being less than human but that we are doing our best with the tools that we have to strive and thrive within a system that is hell-bent, historically and now, to demonise the Black body.

I will continue to cosy up with this book and others in bed, night and day, as reading is hitting the spot!