here.

I move or the air moves, stirring the moment. Everything is moving. Outside a siren's sound swells in the air smothering the soft notes of a song. Someone dies a violent death almost every other day in this city. But that is only part of the city's story. The grid of streets in southeast Baltimore is becoming familiar, the stretch between Patterson Park and McElderry wearing out my shoes. The people I run into at workshops and lectures and in the community, are becoming expected, affinity and connections sprouting.

I spent last weekend at the prison with AVP. This week, Coach Carter cooked us crabs and we walked to the river with him and his son, later we watched spoken word poems in the 'man-cave' before the football game. "I wanted you to meet my family because we are going to be family. We're going to work together, cry together, struggle together and celebrate together."  Over the week, I listened to people in the neighborhood, especially youth, share their experiences of racism and participated in community art. Listened to lectures by Davon Love, the Baltimore Algebra Project. D. Wight, and Eddie Conway-- discussions of structural/systemic racism, of inheritance, of race and pride, of whiteness, of the prison industrial complex and isolation, of what it has meant for black parents to raise black children and police their behavior so the police won't, of counter-histories, and the importance of remembering.

"One of the things that makes a community strong is their ability to pass on knowledge."

"We have a responsibility to remember..." to disallow the disappearances from history (of entire cultures, of protest and movements, of people), to remember the stories that the system does not want us to access. I never know where to begin this remembering all the stories I'm entrusted and the encounters that need to held on to... this living is so immense.

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it." - Rumi 

Baltimore and I are becoming more entwined, and its scary for me to look at a place with the idea of longevity. I'm frightened when I am moved by this city and feel a sense of belonging inside myself, frightened of the lives I might say no to by saying yes to being here, by giving myself to this community-- and frightened by the weariness of insider/outsider dynamics-- but the discomfort whispers of growth.