Occasionally if you're lucky as I have been, time coalesces, eddies and through the eye of the vortex that forms as if off a canoe paddle, you can see a little flash of eternity. Even more rare is when a languageless voice describes to you in that instant what must be on the other side. For me, this happened most recently at the Candian Festival of Spoken Word. Kirsten and I attended the final poetry slam at the Metropolitan United Church there on Queen Street, and much of that evening was transcendent. Slam teams from Ottawa and Kingston and Toronto and elsewhere laid down phrases that reverberate now. But the voice from beyond was d'bi young.
We were warned.
The inevitable consequence of that warning was the elimination of any second thought about Africa. We have to go and participate in the dialogue. Any hesitation is tantamount to plugging back into the hegemon and contributing what little half-dead triple-A battery power we can to it. We are not going to save anyone but ourselves, but in doing so we will, God willing, take back our small personal powers and cast them towards the cause of emancipation.
It has been nearly a month since my last post. I am nervous about logistics. There is paperwork that has not cleared, there are phone calls unreturned, and while these would be minor abberations on the ground, the fact of the matter is that planes take off and leave with Western linear precision. Unexpected expenses are limiting some elements of control that I would otherwise have.
Fewer than three weeks remain. I will need to apologize in advance to all of you whom I will not get to see before I go; you know how much I love you.
We were warned.
The inevitable consequence of that warning was the elimination of any second thought about Africa. We have to go and participate in the dialogue. Any hesitation is tantamount to plugging back into the hegemon and contributing what little half-dead triple-A battery power we can to it. We are not going to save anyone but ourselves, but in doing so we will, God willing, take back our small personal powers and cast them towards the cause of emancipation.
It has been nearly a month since my last post. I am nervous about logistics. There is paperwork that has not cleared, there are phone calls unreturned, and while these would be minor abberations on the ground, the fact of the matter is that planes take off and leave with Western linear precision. Unexpected expenses are limiting some elements of control that I would otherwise have.
Fewer than three weeks remain. I will need to apologize in advance to all of you whom I will not get to see before I go; you know how much I love you.
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