Let the stories begin!
I am sitting here in my soon to be old room in New York City on a Tuesday evening writing my first of many blog posts about my journey around the world.
This is all about breathing deeply and trusting the Divine Wisdom that is within me, and taking action. That has amounted to me setting up this basic website and writing my first blog post.
Since as far back as I can remember, I’ve been an innovator, a precocious child, always asking questions, wanting to know why. This made me the bane of my mother. It irritated her that I want to know why things were the way they were.
One thing she could not - or would not - explain is racism. Growing up in West Point, Georgia, a small town half way between Atlanta and Montgomery, I wanted to know why the son of the white lady my mother worked for was not my cousin. I did not see that he was white and belonged to the group that traditional southern culture had set up to rule over the people who looked like me - Black.
In the fall of 2021 when I visited Helsinki, Finland, I experienced for the first time what it was like to live outside those artificial racial structures of America. For the first time, I was not feared for simply being. In fact, the Finns, a friendly people, paid little attention to me, except to be helpful to me. There were certainly moments of racial awareness. But, ironically, it came from people who were strangers themselves - non Finns. Indeed, Finns were more concerned with whether you were Russian or Swedish because of the oppressive regimes of those countries. I suppose you want to pick our battles.
One indication that I was experiencing something different was that one day in the early fall when the late-arriving sun made a brief appearance in the shifting, overcast sky. My heart leapt for joy. My jet lagged body prevented me from going immediately out to greet it as other Finns and northern Europeans do, savoring that last bit of warmth before the dark bleak winter sets in this land of the midnight sun. By contrast, I could not imagine, my sharecropping great, great grand parents looking forward to the hot Georgia summer sun beating down on them all day as they picked cotton in the fields of the local land barons.
I don’t know where I am going from here. It is a time to take a lot of deep breaths and trust MY Universe. I’m planning to apply for some creative residencies. Please keep your fingers crossed and donate to my creative work of creating and supporting safe, collaborative, just, mind-opening, free-wheeling, fun, and dramatic storytelling experiences for memoir writers, playwrights, storytellers, poets, fiber artists, drummers, and dancers.
Breathe and trust your Universe,
Mahet
