On Vitality (Sort Of)

dogwood flowers awakening

This began as a series on the Spring of my body, the re-awakening of vitality. And it cornered quickly - a transition. This is how it is, sometimes. How the words move with what’s moving in me.

1. Vitality is here. Remember this feeling, the return. Remember that it is not possible without rest. Remember that stopping is sacred, natural, and disruptive. Life moves again as it becomes ready. Sustainability is actually not possible under these conditions¹, it is not meant to be possible under these conditions. Whenever possible and safe enough, pause. Do nothing. Don't try. Look and feel, with eyes and heart and nose and skin, with tired limbs and spent mind. Whenever possible, and safe enough, pause and be. Be patient. Wait for impulse to return.

2. Resist the urge to overexert when vitality rises. This pattern is born of illusions of infinite expansion, achievement, homogeneity, control. Inertia exists in orbit but not here on the ground, not in nature. This pattern is born of the fear of dying before I complete all I'm here to do.² ALL THINGS CYCLE. All things grow and decay. All things change³.

3. Decay is only fearsome because it brings uncertainty, because we deny it on every level. We deny rest because we view it as a form of decline; unproductivity is anathema. Everything must prove its worth through sacrifice of life energy and life itself⁴.

4. Uncertainty is abomination. Everything in it’s right place, controlled, tied up with a bow; academic processes producing predictably uniform outcomes by design. The unpredictable is dangerous. We cannot tolerate uncertainty and uncertainty is inherent in exploration, therefore exploration is to be discouraged. Uncertainty is inherent in transitions, a creative imperative. Therefore we cannot tolerate transition - a departure from the known and a threat to the status quo. Transition represents what cannot be controlled or easily understood.

5. Transition offers chaos, choice, possibility⁵. There is vitality in transition. Transition is where we might become more than we have been by entering the unknown. Transition is our most natural state⁶, budding everywhere in nature and continuously in our bodies, our lives. We are always, always becoming, even at the end of life. In every moment we don’t fight transition we declare it’s centrality. We stand more firmly in our humanity.

6. A liveable future for all will require some mountainous transitions. Good thing we know some people with whom we can learn about transitions⁷. And we know some people (we some of us, all of us⁸) who could use solidarity, safety, and support.

1. Ruth Wilson Gilmore on racial capitalism: “Capitalism requires inequality and racism enshrines it.”

2. and the illusions of immortality that disintegrated with your physical being 20 years ago. Yes, I miss you mom. Yes, you are still teaching me.

3. Thank you Octavia Butler. Thank you S who originally suggested I read Parable of the Sower almost 10 years ago. To amb & Toshi Reagon for their study and sharing of her work.

4. Ruth Wilson Gilmore again, thank you. “Racism, specifically, is the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death.”

5. “God blessed me by making me transsexual for the same reason they made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine: so that humanity might share in the act of creation.” Julian K. Jarboe

6. Sort of (note: spoilers at this link) was a beautiful, human, tender watch for me this winter. I loved it enormously. Watched almost to the end while my partner was out of town and rewatched it all over again with him. "Everything in the galaxy is just one thing becoming another. Every person is constantly growing into a different version of themselves. We are all in transition. It's the most natural thing in the world."

7. Immigrants. Birthing parents. Babies too and children - people, not property or pawns. The people of Gaza and the DRC. Anyone with a chronic illness or disability. Trans people. And and and, including all the beyond-human beings alongside us in the natural world.

8. 5 Things About Now - #4