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The Plot of Our Repair

| Sheree

I had the pleasure of gathering with the WOC Azadi again in Sheffield today.

We gathered to share ideas around how to plot/plotting our healings, our liberation together.

Visual journaling was on hand to capture our thoughts, feelings, plans and plots.

It was such a nurturing and nourishing space in nature. It was a gathering of hope and aspirations.

It was an honour to be part of the day retreat. Ideas for The Plot of Our Repair came about from a reading is Saidiya Hartman’s essay , The Plot of her Undoing (2020).

The plot of her undoing begins with his dominion. It begins in the fifteenth century with a papal bull, with a philosopher at his desk, pen in hand, as he sorts the world into categories of genus and species. It begins with a bill of sale, with a story in the newspaper that enumerates her crimes, with a note appended to the file: she answers questions easily, but appears stupid; it begins with a wanted poster that reduces the history of her life to a single word-condemned.

And then towards the end of this essay there is a switch. A turn to explore how we can undoing the plot of her undoing. How we can move against the forces aiming to ruin/ control/ oppress the black/brown woman.

The undoing of the plot proceeds by stealth. It is almost never recognized as anything at all and certainly never as significant.

…

It begins with the earth under her feet. It begins with all of them gathered at the river and ready to strike, with all of them assembled in the squatter city, with all of them getting ready to be free in the clearing.

The undoing of the plot begins with her runaway tongue, with her outstretched hands, with songs shared across the unfree territory and the occupied lands, with the pledges of love that propel struggle, with the vision that this bitter earth may not be what it seems.

The undoing of the plot, the plot developing towards our repair was started before us. We stand on the shoulders of our ancestors. We continue this journey, this plotting together. Today makes me feel that we have already won.

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.

The Wind and Rain

| Sheree

As the north-east is gripped in another cold snap, with wind and rain, in May, I’m desiring a return. A return to Faro, Portugal, where in March, I enjoyed a few days of warmth, relaxation and inspiration.

A May Day’s Musing

| Sheree

April was the reset month.

After making plans for the year, 2026, April was a time to reflect and reset after the first quarter of the year.

April didn’t go to plan.

April is always a funny, awkward, weird month for me, what with it being cut up with Easter holidays. And both my babies being born in April. This year was also another April birthday as we welcomed Nath’s partner into the fold.

April is something and nothing.

April, I thought it would be a good time to review the situation. It happened I suppose but not to the depth and width that I would have like. That I probably needed.

April has come and gone.

Come the end of the month and I don’t feel any further forward. And it feels like last year, when I couldn’t get traction after an elongated winter hibernation. Every month that came along was like a reset, a restart as I had no momentum.

I’m not sure if I’m that bad this year but there’s that lingering feeling of what am I doing? Where am I going?

April, Who am I?

I could blame the menopause as I feel as if I’m in that stage of life now. Everything is slowing down or giving up working ‘properly’ bodily, emotionally and psychologically.

Some days I’m missing the plot , dropping the ball, checking all the way out.

In these moments of losing myself, or any kind of sense of self and direction, I fall back into trusted routines and rituals.

I go back to the start, back to ‘go’ and don’t collect my £200. But restart anyway.

I invest in my morning rituals. Those habits that ground me and set me up for the rest of the day.

Waking up early, getting some fresh air into the house and my lungs. Making fresh ground coffee and grabbing my visual journal and letting everything spill onto the page. Get ready and walk out. Walk where? Anywhere. Just be outside and give thanks to be able to {BE}.

May. This is my plan for May.

To stick close to my morning routine and everything else can follow. The sea and Mother Nature are in there too, no doubt.

Hopefully, putting down this trusted track will help support getting me back to myself.

a sea of skulls each one different from the next

| Sheree

after Ron Mueck


“Mass” by Ron Mueck at NGV Triennial

Here is a mass

of white upon white

skulls, tumbling

everywhere upon the galleries’ floor

a turning sea, resting

biting into another

black holes

shadowed sockets

promising questions without answers

a warning? a threat?

what remains long after our bodies have decayed

an impressive 100 skulls,

dwarfing visitors as they loom

here and here, cool, corridors

as catacombs above ground

forcing us to face our mortality, yes,

but also a certain care is needed in life for each other. Yes?

It’s quitting time, quitting time @ Tara

| Sheree

Jot down the first thing that comes to your mind.

Sweeping violins. A Southern Belle, pretty and shallow, chatters on as young men flock around her feet, captive. *Fiddle de de.* Relishing in colour, technicolor; rich reds, blues and greens of the gallant Old South. Pan out see mansions surrounding by plantations. Bonnets and ribbons. Dances and horses. Cotton.

Extract from: The Melodrama of Gone With The Wind

Found poem: 

Source: http://www.art21.org/texts/kara-walker/interview-kara-walker-the-melodrama-of-gone-with-the-wind

I first read Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell while completing an extra year at college. Gaining extra ‘A’ levels while I waited on my then boyfriend to make the grades.

I identified with Scarlett O’Hara, the bitch of a heroine, not Mammy. I definitely was no mammy. Not here to fetch and clean and be loyal. I definitely was not obese and coarse and ugly, or ‘have a shiny, glossy face of contentment as she be the most happy slave alive.’

Of course as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned where I’m placed in society. It’s okay to fantasise being the white heroine but I’ll never really be her. Better learn my place – to be there for the pleasure and enjoyment and whim of the white folk – and smile.

But what about my own pleasures and pains? Apparently they don’t exist. Apparently I’m incapable of such things, such finer characteristics. My reality states/shows otherwise.

It’s quitting time. I’m retreating into the woods in Aberdeenshire for the next week. I’m taking this opportunity as a reset. A chance to focus on my pleasures and pains. Drink on Mother Nature and give thanks for this life I have which isn’t being subservient/ submissive/ subjection to anybody.

I refuse the Mammy as well as the Scarlett, as they are both constructions and constrictions to control the female body.

I’m much more interested in the overspill, the excess, the unruly body. The blackwoman body that I live with/in daily and how nature supports me on this journey.

As a wind of flames sweeps through Georgia; menacing reds and oranges against a bleak dark sky swirl and crackle in time with fast ascending music. Real danger and Butterfly McQueen (real name not character name that would be Missy) flits around like a blue arsed fly worrying with no sense or plan.

Extract from: The Melodrama of Gone With The Wind

Found poem: 

Source: http://www.art21.org/texts/kara-walker/interview-kara-walker-the-melodrama-of-gone-with-the-wind

I’m no Missy either.

Cloud Watching in Faro, Portugal

| Sheree

Things are definitely looking up when I give myself the time and space to look to the sky.

Spending time cloud watching is always a good indication to/ for myself that I’m slowing down, that I’m breathing that little bit deeper, than I’m present.

When clouds go missing from my radar, from my daily view then it’s time to worry.

As it’s another indication that I’m not taking my medicine, that I’m allowing the shit of this world to overtake me, to bog me down.

Cloud watching, cloud appreciation is such a simple task, gift to myself and yet the loss of it, can mean the loss of self.