All This Refreshing Blackfullness...
blackfullness n how Audre Lorde described her majority-Black community in St. Croix as in:
“there is a large and everpresent Blackfullness to the days here that is very refreshing for me…” -Audre Lorde “Above the Wind” 1990
Last night’s workshop Part & Parcel: Audre Lorde and the Idea of the Community Accountable Intellectual burst my heart. The tensions, longings and complexities in our relationships to the communities that claim us and/or that we want to claim are full of energy and insight. Together we bravely invoked communities we don’t know how to claim, used prepositions and pronouns to reflect on our relationships to multiple communities, for example here is my draft invocation of my communities of belonging/longing/origin/practice/accountability:
we the people of durham on top of black wealth and haunted by freedom
us black women of the world between pain and infinity
you the movements that shape me up under the concrete and my skin
us the diasporic west indians about this bright business of excellent longing
they the people with PhDs holding so many tremulous offerings
all a we the queer black troublemakers with magic hands and vulnerable hearts
you the gentrifiers with out home
me the ancestral multitude inside inspiration and urgency
me the mothering multitude in welcome and wonder and awe
me the waves of words coming with nerve and beauty and change and spit
AND THEN we sounded out where in our bodies we are holding knowing and fears about particular communities and reflected on how patterns we learned in our families of origins are impacting the ways we relate with larger communities now. Whew! That was a lot. I am grateful for the bravery and openness of all the participants. We went there!
And then finally, inspired by Audre Lorde’s poetic license, i.e. her invention of the word “blackfullness” to describe what she loved about her chosen community in St. Croix, where she went to save her life and transform her longing for Caribbean homeland into accountable action, and in the full knowledge that we have yet to invent the words for the relationships we desire most with the multiple communities that call us, we created a lexicon of words for what we want it to feel like. I was challenged this morning to make a poem with all of these words and here it is!
refresh
as in
the
overflowingfullness
of blackessence
where
choruschoir-osity
meets
talkability
our
amongstness
in deliciousifizing
nurtererances
the utterosity
of our
bigheartfull
furiousflowerings
into
vibration-magining
consensualizing
softiness
oh the
fambulosity
of our
cocoon-ealing
sustentrance
the openbreak
of our vulnerabattling
deartenderwarrioring
and all this
fawntastic
hugwarmy
affirmance
blove joy
siriusloy
a
horizoncommunionfothefuture
a
queerremakethismoment
for every incognegro
kairopractor
yes it’s a
gentlerizing
dancibration
full of
desireizing
bunnylove
yes.
the moonstatic
rebellation
of our days.
Upcoming Brilliance Remastered Online Events
Ask Sista Docta Lex ANYTHING about the life you are building as a community accountable scholar/artist/writer/changemaker at Dec 3rd’s online Brilliance Remastered Q&A.
Sign up is open for next weekend's online intensive 'My Words Will Be There': Audre Lorde, Black Feminism and Ancestral Listening (Dec 7&8)
And there is ONE more spot in this weekend's intensive on Grief, Memory and Ancestral Listening: http://brillianceremastered.alexispauline.com/2019/11/22/grief-and-memory-an-ancestral-listening-intensive/
And if you just generally want to be the first to know about all Brilliance Remastered online and in person workshops you can join the email list here: http://brillianceremastered.alexispauline.com/contact/
