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There’s a big park a few blocks from Symone’s mom’s house that I used to walk thru everyday the summer of 2020.
It’s got a black gate going around most of the perimeter, with a horse stable and a driving range on one side. Within the park is a pond about just smaller than a basketball court, a gazebo, walkway, and a few football fields worth of grass, trees and huge hills.
I’d put on a 2-3 hour podcast and just walk around the pond, up and down those hills, listening and writing in my pocketbook along the way.
These long & wild walks were something that I started doing in Dayton during the first months of the pandemic.I couldn’t stand being inside on my computer all day, so I’d stay outside as long as I could, exploring new parts of the city and my soul.
We lived close enough to the rivers that I’d walk down to them and roam around. But in suburban Chicagoland, moving water is hard to come by. There was a cute lil fountain in this park’s pond though so that was good enough for me.
My mantra back then was “Follow the water.” I’d hear it over and over and over again in my head as I walked circles around the water and swirled thru out the park. Walking in whatever direction felt right.
As my breathing relaxed, I took in all the sights of the clouds, trees, wind blowing thru the fields of grass and wildflowers. I appreciated everybody I encountered. Literally every body - human bodies, dog bodies and plant bodies, but there was somebody in particular that caught my attention and hasn’t let go.
The red-winged blackbird.
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The true name of the red winged blackbird is in Potawatomi:
mskwangéjêk
One of those podcasts I listened to on my walks thru the park was a Winona Laduke speech titled “Water Is Life”. Among many things, she talks about the power of names. in recovering the sacred.
Names are sacred, and they hold stories.
As the Potawatomi are the Keepers of the Fire, they recognize kin, “where his wings are red he carries the fire”1
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Every time one of these cute lil niggas silently swooped into my view, I’d instantly be entranced by their distinctive plumage. Their red and yellow shoulders are nearly neon they’re so bright.
And their black feathers reveal purple and green hues when viewed from different angles.
I dreamed up a whole fashion brand inspired by all the cool colors and patterns that bird feathers take on, just from staring at this bird.
I had no words yet for why I resonated with the red-winged blackbird though. I started by reverse engineering the word Iridescence by literally Googling “when the color changes depending on the angle oil spills puddles birds.”
Iridescence became one of my favorite words and in classic fashion, I had to learn the etymology of the word. It’s basically Latin for rainbow-tendency, and the “irid” part is derived from Iris, Greek goddess of the rainbow and messenger of the gods.
Which is a lot of how I feel about birds actually - as ancestors and messengers - because I found the red-winged blackbird as I grieved the passing of my Papa.
I credit him with instilling in me a deep love and appreciation of our environment. And he didn’t have to say much, but he showed me everything about what it means to breathe with the earth and believe in harmony among all species of people.
He did say though that if he could be any animal he’d be a bird so that, “I can fly around and shit on all y’all niggas.”
So while I felt his presence among the trees, I saw him in the red-winged blackbird.
I welcomed the association as a sign that I was in the right place, on the right path, closer than ever to Papa.
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From Wallace Stevens’s poem, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird:”
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.2
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Papa was always whistling.
That’s how you knew he was home.
It didn’t matter that his whistle wasn’t perfect, because it was distinct.
At once mundane and mysterious, Papa's whistle was it's own kind of magic that only he could create.
I don’t remember the exact tune he would whistle, only that it was his and no one else's.
So in the time since he has passed away, I have found myself whistling whenever I’m thinking about him, which means that I whistle almost everyday.
When I’m walking, I hear a bird song and play with it in my mouth.
Echo the rhythm and realize that I'm participating in an ancient form of call and response.
The thing is that I’m still coming into my own calling.
I’m still searching for my song, or rather relaxing into it.
Remembering my voice.
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I could have sworn that Malcolm was one of the men that Henry Louis Gates wrote about in his book Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man.
But when I fact checked that, I realized that I had conflated that book cover with Said’s Representations of the Intellectual and The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
Together these were three books that I would stare at and flip thru, but never actually read, when I was younger.
For some reason I couldn’t bring myself to take flight. I needed to stay nested in my fantasy and nature books.
It’s incredible how much you can learn from a book without reading it though, because on its own, the title Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man reassured me that we were not flat, one-dimensional stereotypes.
And Malcolm certainly has 13 ways of being seen.
His life was one of courage, complexity, and constant transformation.
I don’t think his childhood gets talked about enough though.3
Because before he was a fish out of water, alley cat, jailbird, bookworm or big dog, he was a hatchling growing in his mother’s garden:
One thing in particular that I remember made me feel grateful toward my mother was that one day I went and asked her for my own garden, and she did let me have my own little plot. I loved it and took care of it well. I loved especially to grow peas. I was proud when we had them on our table. I would pull out the grass in my garden by hand when the first little blades came up. I would patrol the rows on my hands and knees for any worms and bugs, and I would kill and bury them. And sometimes when I had everything straight and clean for my things to grow, I would lie down on my back between two rows, and I would gaze up in the blue sky at the clouds moving and think all kinds of things.4
I see in Malcolm the same deep love of a place and a people that I see in Assata. Both freedom dreaming in soil and sand, surrounded by the love of living lands and waters.5
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I been this blackbird since before I knew I was.6
She is Sankofa.
The bird with a beautiful voice & beautiful feathers.
The bird who left home & got lost.
The bird who remembered & returned.
The bird whose flight I followed for years.
The bird whose song I heard in whispers until she shared her story in the first session of Sankofa Seasons at the American Indian Center.
Sankofa’s constant calling brings me home to the Present.
Here this place is full of New People who embody blackbirds, whether we be black naturally or slick from oil spills or otherwise burnt by white hot hatred.
We see each other thru our songs & work & rest & play to right the wrongs of the fire last time.
May we catch the rhythm & rhyme along the beat of this big fire building heat.
May we take these broken wings and learn to fly.
Free. Still. Rising. Falling. Breathing. Believing. Being.
Blackbiirds.
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On the Wings of the Seventh Fire by Yabwé Kwe/Christina Foster7