Song of the Week

Teach Me How To Dougie and Only Time by Enya, LIL BOTA, Cali Swag District. I love this mashup and I am a Enya loyalist. Listen to this song as you read to help open you up.

Updates!

The main thing I’m leaning into this week is, that I’m charge of bringing my presence with me. It’s been four years since my dad passed and I’ve been reflecting about that this week. I visited the place where he parted this world, chatted with the lady who was with him when he died, lit incense, candles, shed some tears. I also felt anger surface in a way that surprised me, because I haven’t felt that in a while around him. Sitting with it I found I’m relieved that he isn’t suffering anymore, but angry in the ways he was absent in the past, and again that I don’t get to be around his liveliness and the ways he doted on me and totally treasured me.

I’m going to be going down to Wisconsin to visit and I’ll make some chess pieces out of clay bake. My plan is to leave these chess pieces somewhere near where we spent time together. I loved playing chess by a fire with my dad, it was something I became obsessed with once my 8th grade teacher taught us how to play and ritualized it. My dad was one of the few people who would play with me and it became a core memory we had together. We were unhoused and/or in precarious housing situations for many years, so I struggle to know exactly where to settle when it comes to place—where exactly did we live again? I’m sure I’ll find a place, and in some ways I’m grateful to have many places that are imprinted with more nomadic memories. It’s given me a sense of agency of being able to make a bed anywhere, and make do with what I’ve got. Whether or not a place or a people hold us, remember us, listen to us, or give us what we need, we can meet more of our own needs by bringing our presence with us. I know this is a little heavy on the individual agency end, and right now that’s what’s useful. I’m going to do this by bringing my clay chess piece and meeting him, and myself here.

I’m also feeling really grateful for the Grief and Rage Circle this week which gave me space to connect with others and feel my feels. Follow them on their new IG account! They hosted two events that were spaces for connection and communion around all kinds of grief, centering rage and grief around genocide and colonialism. We made rosaries at the Afghan Cultural Center at one event to transmute rage into unwavering courage with Marwa Nasser Metzler. At the other event we went to the Mississippi (Wakpa Tanka) river and connected to Ki’i (Hawaiian gods) and the Jordan Rivers around indigenous sovereignty the world over with Kealoha Ferreira. They have one more event this year on November 29th on Sacred Anointing.

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xoxo Eiko