Saturday Substack
“The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you can alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.”
— James Baldwin
“To be loving is to be open to grief, to be touched by sorrow, even sorrow that is unending. Love is an act of will—namely, both an intention and an action.”
— bell hooks
East Harlem Friday, September 12, 2025
photo by RCE+
Harlem is always shifting, always becoming. The place where change refuses to stand still. Where history pressed itself into the brick and concrete, where culture gave texture to air. Here, I hear the voices that shape me. I call them by many names—sometimes nicknames, sometimes tender pet names—but always by a name. To name is to honor, to locate.
The voices that shape me are embodied, each carrying their story in a particular cadence that calls me. Some of these voices echo tenderness and love. Others remind me of the traumas I carry, the wounds that remain unresolved. This afternoon, violence rattled the entire building. Doors slammed, neighbors shouted, the very air was charged. Sometimes violence is the loudest teacher. And we’ve seen it again this week in the death of Charlie Kirk.
Violence has been mounting since I was in college, when the first school shooting shattered the illusion of safety. The militarization of the police has folded violence into the everyday. Religion, education, science—all of them have played their part in carceral logics, voices that confine rather than free. They are loud, insistent. They haunt.
And yet—there are other voices. Tender, yes, but firm too. Voices that call me toward the divine lure of improvisation, of fugitivity in becoming. This week in New York, I found myself searching for the anchor that has always held me: the acorn. Small, overlooked, and yet capable of becoming an oak. I, too, have grown into this oak. Strong, rooted, and still reaching.
Becoming is constant change. And when the anchor slips, when the center feels lost—what holds us? What becomes our truth?
This is the moment we’re in. A moment that asks us to discern: what is your truth? What is your center? What voice will you allow to shape you?
Now is the time for radical self-inquiry. Now is the time to make shelter in one another.
Ritual Exhale
Place your hand on your chest, feel the steady beat that has carried you through every storm.
Inhale the voices of tenderness, exhale the voices of violence.
Inhale the strength of the oak, exhale the fear of losing your center.
Inhale the shelter of one another, exhale into belonging.
And whisper: I am becoming. We are becoming.