what if it's not that deep?

lately, I’ve been feeling ease. 

I don’t currently have any deadlines. I have stable housing for the next eleven months. there is no itinerary I need to urgently coordinate. I’m caught up at work. I enjoy the work. and I have a healthy and able body. 

there are things to be done, but I feel an ease in how I am approaching each day. I wake up and each one feels distinct. what are we doing today?

this ease is uncomfortable for me, so used to always facing a challenge. (though now I laugh at how many I must have constructed for myself) 

so this ease requires practice. I find myself in a practice of asking: what if it’s not that deep?

first time back in NYC in 18 months, the city I always thought I should be in, the city everyone asked if I lived in, the city that supposedly had all my friends, had all the opportunity, hosted all the conversations. what does it mean to come back? how does it feel? 

and what if it’s not that deep? 

what if I’m just here to hang with my friends, eat a good bagel, and have a good time?

I walk through the streets of Bed-Stuy happy to be surrounded by black people flowing in and out of brownstones, homeowners tending to gardens, elders gathered on stoops, families grilling on the concrete. 

I’m not the white millennial couple pushing a stroller, but I’m not a local either. each time I pass someone on Quincy I wonder if they can tell I’m visiting. does my tote, my sneakers, my outfit, my piercings and my iced matcha latte cue that even if I’m not going to all the Parties, Talks, and Community Events, I’m still another brooklyn 20-something self-proclaimed progressive artist moving in and pricing out? 

But each morning: “peace and love, peace and love to ya”. 

Returning to Atlanta, I’ve decided I really like that I wave to cars when I cross the street and make eye contact and smile when I pass someone on the sidewalk. when I moved up north for school, I was made to feel awkward for the way I carried this part of southern culture. People stopped when I passed and waved to them on campus. “Do I know you?” “What? No, I was just smiling and saying hi.”

Earlier this winter, as I came home to my old apartment in Atlanta, a man spoke to me as he finished dropping of a food order to my neighbor.

“What was that?” I asked since I didn’t hear him. I wasn’t sure if he needed help finding the right house since the numbering and different porch steps were confusing on our street. 

“I was just saying hi. Just being courteous,” he awkwardly smiled and skipped down the rest of the concrete steps that connect me and my neighbor’s house. 

“oh.”             “…..heyyyyyy!” I even more awkwardly yelled back with a laugh as I continued towards my front door. 

It was a small awkward interaction, but it stuck with me. 

I always overthink how I interact with Uber drivers and other gig workers. I am so aware of the gig economy, the VC funded, fucked up power dynamics of it all —and feel some desire in each interaction to show that awareness — definitely a side effect of the guilt I feel for participating and my ignorance from having never participated on the other side. 

I know you’re underpaid. It’s fucked up that my ability to rate you on five point scale can completely fuck your ability to work tomorrow. I see the dark design in the UI of the app, the way it’s glaring diiiiing! distracts you from driving, how the diminishing progress bar produces urgency and rushes you to accept the next drive, the fare for which we both know shows up significantly lower on your end than it does on mine. Uber needs all those extra percents on top to pay back their investors 1000x. I can imagine how the slider UI is supposed to make it seem fun! (I imagine the product manager who proposed the feature said it just like that with his intonation going up at the end: “fun!”) for you commit to another ride even though you’ve been out driving since 1am.

I want to be friendly. I want to be kind. I want to never forget each service laborer I interact with is a human tryna eat, possibly a parent trying to feed. I want to never forget that my comfort comes because of someone’s labor. That a dollar is a never an adequate translation of that exchange. But really all I need to do is be courteous. To let it be awkward. I don’t have to force a conversation if they’d rather be on the phone or listening to music in their earbuds. They don’t have to ask about my day, cause really, sometimes it’s not. that. deep. 

Late stage capitalism may be crumbling and many people are suffering as the dying system thrashes in purgatory, but talking to the human in front of you? Having enough humility to not pity their position or glorify yours? It’s really not that deep. It’s just plain courtesy. 

Most people don’t say hi in New York, so when I say “mornin’” or wave or throw a peace sign to the neighbors sitting on their stoops, I normally don’t expect a response. But on my morning route returning from my runs, when I’m normally retracting my steps with a bagel in hand, in those the last few blocks of Quincy, before I get to Tompkins, there’s an older man whom I have come to recognize and look forward to seeing. 

He smiled the first time I waved to him with my mouth full of can-i-get-poppy-seed-toasted-dark-with-tofu-scallion-cream-cheese-please? and he chuckled as he carried something to his car: “I see you’re feeding your face”. “I’m trying!” I clumsily replied, cream cheese smeared across my face and hands. “Peace and love to ya. Peace and love,” he smiled to me as I passed.

And “Peace and love, peace and love” every morning after, the last 5 times I’ve seen him. 

“Peace and love.” 

“Peace and blessings,” as Samá would say. 

What if it wasn’t that deep? What if I didn’t have to over analyze how I present? how others interpret me? If I didn’t have to guess what energy I was bringing? if people perceived me as outsider or not? too white or too black? in solidarity or in ignorance? 

What if I could just declare: Peace and love. Peace and blessings. 

And so lately, I have been praying — declaring — asking for what it is I want to bring. how I want to be, what I want to call in. 

I pray even though I never grew up praying. Even though the only time I was ever taught how to pray was by my 10th grade catholic boyfriend who bought me a book on how to be catholic and would take an hour at the beginning of every date to walk me through a new chapter of the workbook. There’s a lot of horror to unpack in that childhood relationship, but I remember how he introduced me to the structure of nightly prayer: reflect back on your day. Where did you see God today? What are you grateful for today? What do you need to atone for? What do you want to ask for?   

As my spirituality and beliefs evolved, as I experienced grief and met the world, I have reshaped that formulaic agenda into a practice of dialogue:  with spirit, with my mom, with my ancestors, with the stars and the many beings of earth. 

My spirit is not punishing. My ancestors are not punishing. I do not have to perform for them. But I do speak to them. I do believe they are listening to me. 

So I am praying. 

Speaking out loud my wishes, my visions, my cries.

This morning I woke to the hum of my dear one sobbing in the room next door. So I creak down the hallway, knock on her door. I crawl into her bed, wrap around and hold her, and listen to her grief. Between each line of her sorrow, I pray to spirit, I call upon her and my — our — ancestors. Help us make her a home. Help us learn from our lineage. Be fugitives with us. Be with us. Let her feel this love I offer.  I squeeze her tighter and hope she hears my prayer. 

I have been overthinking what it means to send a newsletter, what it means to text back, what it means to be an artist, what it means to honor my thoughts, my learnings with an archive. 

That last one is really all I want to do. I don’t want to run a newsletter. I don’t care about being a capital A artist. 

I want to maintain a practice of continuous creative thought, I want to continue learning, to be in a continual practice of augmenting, reshaping, expanding, and adding nuance to the way I understand the world. I am thinking some big thoughts! I am having some beautiful conversations with my loved ones! I want to write that shit down! 

And! I’m not saying all (or any) of these thoughts swirling in my head and heart are profound. I never claimed to have figured anything out!, but I am starting to see relations, to untangle patterns — I am learning. I am loving. I am praying. 

And I’d like to share that prayer. 

With you, as you are often who I pray for. You are often my coauthor, dreaming with me the landscapes of the world we are rearing.

And with my future self, so that she remembers, so she knows she is of a lineage. So she can show herself that she is trying. So she can flip through the archive when doubt creeps in and says what have you done? what are you making?

I am making this, I am making me. I am making us. I am being made.

And of course so much of it is that deep. These borders cut deep, gauging wounds in our flesh as they sever us from each other and our earth. These histories are brutal, hidden but looming, inherited and re-invested. It is that dire. 

But I can’t bear that weight in every instance. And I don’t have to, because our love, too, is that deep. Our histories that beautiful, our lineage that powerful, our entanglement that enchanting! 

With paradoxic ease I am floating between deep sincerity and complete tomfoolery! 

I read a heart-opening novel about the succession of colonial massacre on the island of Timor, and I stalk the map for all the places in Brooklyn to buy mochi, bringing an extra serving of sweet squish back home to Marie each time. 

I can’t bear the full weight of history, but I will learn it, and in the face of it I will love deeper. 

I will feel gratitude for the safety I have in this body and know that the scales of safety are not linear, the definition of it un-objective. My fear and my need for safety is valid even if I am privileged (and foolish) enough to have spent $25 on bottled coconut water at bodegas this week. My fear, my safety is not in isolation. Rather than shaming or invaliding, I ask how am I in-relation to those I pray for? What systems of domination entangle us and where do I sit within that system? My fear of guns is not separate from his fear of bombs. My fear of alcohol is not separate from their fear of emotions. My fear to walk home is not separate from her fear of pastors. 

What if it’s not that clear? What if it’s not that distinct? What if it’s not that simple to avoid replicating harm? 

What if I trusted my own intentions? What if my beingness is not punishable? 

I can fly to NYC just to hang out with friends. I don’t need to have a deeper reason or justification. I can travel because I am curious. And I can send a damn email to a dozen friends without worrying about what that means, what commitment I am making, what intentions or systems I need to have ready. 

The truth is I have been overthinking how to send this email for nearly a year. In fact several years — some of y’all might remember eight? my failed attempt to manually send a newsletter through texts? I worry about the medium, the format, my intention, the way you will receive this. Do you perceive an ego? Does this feel like a gift? Can you tell that I mean it?

So rather than worry, I’ll pray: 

I want to make an archive, a record of this home making I wake to each day. This making of a world I commit myself to, this unending curiosity to know this earth and her many lineages. I want to make a home and I want to make home with the people I love, to invite you into it. I want to offer refuge; I want to offer play. I want to share this record, this recipe, this question, this attempt at practice. May I be in iteration in company, may the interfaces surface as they need to and fade when they don’t. May there be abundant ease where there can. So much of this is so heavy, let us step light and dance when we can.