On Second Thought…
What’s the best that can happen?
I had a date in the bush With all the gods, So I went. I had a date in the bush With all the trees, So I went. I had a date in the mountain With the Kontomblé. I went because I had to go. I had to go away to learn How to know. I had to go away to learn How to grow. I had to go away to learn How to stay here. So I went and knocked at doors Locked in front of me. I craved to enter. Oh, little did I know The door did not lead outside. It was all in me. I was the room and the door. It was all in me. I just had to remember. And I learned that I lived Always and everywhere. I learned that I knew everything, Only I had forgotten. I learned that I grew Only I had overlooked things. Now I am back, remembering. I want to be what I know I am, And take the road we always Forget to take. Because I heard the smell Of the things forgotten And my belly was touched. That’s why I had a date with the bush. That’s why I had a date with the hill. That’s why I had a date with the world. Under. Now, Father, I’ll take you home. I am back.
— “The Song of Return” in Of Water and Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman by Malidoma Patrice Somé (1994), pg. 295-297
Something about the repetition of return made the dance feel quotidian.
The grandmothers who could guide me through initiation were dead, so I went where they lived. I followed their song and returned to Dawn, greeted by a group of ancestors who collaborated on me. One put clay in my hand, another a pen. One told me to meditate with metal, teaching me how to bend time like a material. One braided my hair and another instructed me to paint on leather. They said the flesh was the portal and I didn’t know what they meant until I finished the story. Surrounded by a forest of family, I remembered everything.
The sacred space between child and ancestors, bouncing light between our bodies, we became nodes in a social network of our own codes. Shining. In hindsight, it was always about the light. The grills, the hair, the rims, the belts from the mall bearing your name so we’d remember. You were always the lighthouse, a choir of cheekbones, shoulders, noses, foreheads, beaming in the dark. Following the light and a map made of cornrows, we dance on an internet of refusal and touched each other in our own programming language.
There’s vulnerability in knowing when to practice with your body instead of your mind. The social network we’re craving is the one encoded in our DNA. A landscape with intuitive protocols for persistence. Protocols that cut a path with a ball of clay and a pen. Protocols that put a song in your heart so you can upload it to mine. Moving memory drives of reflection. Becoming each others mirrors of desire, we refract light. Charging the nearest node in the net with just enough juice to make it to the next day. We wake up. Log on again and return to the web of belonging, each dance a protocol of homecoming.
Seeda appears from left of the field we’ve turned into a stage,
“Why are you so terrified?
What’s the worst that can happen?
You shine so bright that everyone abandons you.
What’s the best that can happen?
You shine so bright you light a fire in others.
The practice is deciding to perform the second thought everyday.”
This sacred, quotidian dance: remembering to return the fire. For no other reason than to give thanks that someone shined their light on us…that time we got lost on the way home.
Seeda School Enrollment is Now Open
Today marks another return. Enrollment into the Seed A World Spring 2024 Retreat is now open! Thinking about joining us? We kick off the seasonal ceremony of remembering our desire in tomorrow’s Worldbuilding Workshop.
Together, we’ll revisit the site of your zone of desire and seed a world rooted in a truth we had to forget in order to remember.
With light,
Ayana
Rest in peace to an eternal lighthouse, Faith Ringgold. The one who reminded us the world we need already exists through crafting the memory of the truth. We shine in your honor.
