I’ve noticed an interesting phenomena among colleagues and friends which seems in some ways to be in time for spring.
A thawing.
A release from the rigidity of solidity, the cold blockage of movement and flow. The Águas De Março, Waters of March, and just as the song, the slow awakening from a winter slumber flows into an up tempo. It’s the joy in your heart.
What have I seen, noticed, thawing? The freeze on their voice. The speechlessness at the atrocities gracing their screens, the hardened faces in the face of such disregard, such lack of care, concern for others. The back turned on the vulnerability, on pain purposefully caused. The fear that if the conditions of living are made so inhumane for the one designated “other”, what will happen to me, to us, to everyone.
They’d gone quiet. A throat chakra gasping for moisture, caught in a draught with truth. It showed up in the form of, “I wrote a thing, but I know I can’t publish it,” or my daughter, friend, husband, colleague, “Just penned this incredible op-ed, but if it goes public they’ll lose their job”, or some other dire consequence that scares us into silence.
They’d gone quiet because the relentless assault on their humanity, directly and vicariously, was demoralizing in its shock. They were in awe. Wishing away the accounts as mere AI phenomena and not the real, present and dangerous harm that it was. That it is.
I, too, found myself in a similar type of quiet. Waiting to sense my muse. She is always there and yet, with all the things coming at me, and you and us, I was befuddled. She was lurking. Watching me. Too much to say, so much to absorb, nothing came out. Heart drop kerplunk. What are we to do in this? What are we to do with this? The thoughts spiral, trying to make sense of our pain, personal and prescient, and theirs visceral and never-ending.
And then you realize the way forward is actually to write. To loosen the grip of restriction. Write the first words that come to mind. To heart. To fingers. To pen. Thaw the freeze on your spirit. Realizing stopping you, blocking you, was the point. It is purposeful. Tightening and restricting by design to curb your freedom; stop you from dreaming.
Freedom of thought, because all you can think about is the last terror. The last wrong done without consequence. Atrocity becoming mundane. The last affront they deny.
Freedom of movement. “Where are your papers?” “Don’t dance like that?” “You can’t go there, can’t wear your hair like that, can’t look like that, can’t love like that. Can’t. Can’t. Can’t.”
You just can’t.
That’s the fascism playbook. Different levels of living for those that dare to live differently. Those that dare to live boldly. Embodied. Outside of conformity whose lies promise to keep you safe, until you need to be kept safe. They drop you.
Oh, but it is thawing. The ice is melting.
Hearts warming to the thought of coming back home to ourselves, the homes we have abandoned. The homes we have forgotten. The homes that remember they are always our home.
It is thawing. Eyes tearing, melting away hurt, loss, and anger masked in faces of indifference, faces grimaced, muscles tense, anticipating attack.
An opening, an awakening, the waters flowing, the words are coming.
Write them.
Speak them.
Let them flow.
It’s the joy in your heart.
