Sublime

Insight must illuminate the particulars of our lives: who labors to make the bread we waste, or the energy it takes to make nuclear poisons which will not biodegrade for one thousand years; or who goes blind assembling the microtransistors in our inexpensive calculators?

From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines, Going where I list, my own master total and absolute, Listening to others, considering well what they say, Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating, Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.

For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.

In the white man's land one could be comfortable; one might seize opportunities and make one's way. But one would never feel quite at home.

“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”

For Black women as well as Black men, it is axiomatic that if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others — for their use and to our detriment.

Like Sappho, she pursues love as an “absolute emptiness which is also absolute fullness.”

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