The Free List : Vol. 1, No. 9
REMEMBER THE BEADS YOU WORE
The end of the world doesn’t look anything like you’ve been taught to think.
Put away the John Cusack movies commiserate with oversimplified, Abrahamic frames; and the one with The Rock in it where Cali falls into the ocean. That one, too.
The end of the world is white supremacy crashing to asphalt — through the asphalt, and back to the Mycelial Network of Ancestors who remember what happened before: taking the poison and changing it into miracle grow that isn’t some unnatural beaded oddity we use to fertilize our gardens.
Remember the beads that were before.
Remember the beads you wore.
The perpetuation of the plantation over now; it’s children singing in front of broken monuments to soldiers forced to kill for profit, its affordable organic restaurants replacing McDonald’s as king. It’s “organic” no longer being a necessary moniker for food and “food” no longer being the focal point of relation to non-human life; it’s pathogens behaving in the Ways they knew before our manipulation.
It’s the end of our forgetting. That’s the end of the world.
Inaugurations where pop stars shout onto the mall in Spanish and take up all the space with their blood red skirts, and yellow jackets sting with language for purple mountains and for Very Purple coats not far behind them; watching, praying, protecting — this is reconfiguration.
This feels like a good place to remind you that I am a Black woman who does not want or need your idolatrous tendencies. Be careful of them in this moment, as it keeps you from focusing on all the work there is to do. Look that way. See those ways.
The world has ended before and it will end again and again until it’s right, and IT DOES NOT REQUIRE EVIL TO BE REMADE. “Evil” and “destruction”and “decay” and “decomposition” are not the same concepts. “Evil” and “Death” are not the same ideas. This is also an Abraham-based contortion that has shaped so many kinds, so many minds into only to imagining change through their shallow understanding of Revelations (and Hell, the other 65 books). This is also an invitation to actually learn to read the Bible, the Torah, and the Quran—Deep— if that’s what chu gon continue to base your life on, Hallelujah/ אָמֵן /Inshallah
If we’re lucky and intentional (because intention does matter),
If we accept the anointed sweat of those who dreamt us—
we’ll be here to talk about the world’s end every time. Some of us will. Somebody we know will. Somebody we birthed will, because the air will be clean. Somebody we touched, once.
Preferably, these talks will manifest near water, around a fire, if cold. Royal, Black Panther Premier Purple, Eggplant Purple and Sunshine Yellow coats welcome.
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All of the work here is brought to you by the gifts of our Ancestors; seen and unseen, known and unknown. May we remember our rising, may we light the shadows. May we all together thrive.
