The majestic jellyfish in all of its myriad forms ever on the cusp of another adaptation. If humans could watch how others move in concert with their environment that conservation becomes not so much a matter of conversation as a practical means of doing and being in the world. Then will sanity seat itself back into all those other areas where it is now lacking.
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The majestic jellyfish in all of its myriad forms ever on the cusp of another adaptation. If humans could watch how others move in concert with their environment that conservation becomes not so much a matter of conversation as a practical means of doing and being in the world. Then will sanity seat itself back into all those other areas where it is now lacking.

I am both sides Black / ‘til blue in fact / the conundrum which brewed / yet grew intact / of personal fiction or relative fact / his bubbling admixture / touch of healing human tincture / temper / temper / tucked beneath / a fortress of patience / parsing regret when faced with life’s reflection / peaceable approach to every decision rendered / these years my own to remember / those fears now slowly dismembered / return me to this Earth in present / where once i was intergalactically gone ‘til november / change where you stand / transform the world.
Pop-upView Separately

I am both sides Black / ‘til blue in fact / the conundrum which brewed / yet grew intact / of personal fiction or relative fact / his bubbling admixture / touch of healing human tincture / temper / temper / tucked beneath / a fortress of patience / parsing regret when faced with life’s reflection / peaceable approach to every decision rendered / these years my own to remember / those fears now slowly dismembered / return me to this Earth in present / where once i was intergalactically gone ‘til november / change where you stand / transform the world.

Excerpt from Alice Walker Interview with Tavis Smiley regarding “The Chicken Chronicles” and “Hard Times Require Furious Dancing”

Smiley:            What do these collection of poems do with regard to helping you grow personally and as a writer?

Walker:            I realize that sometimes the suffering, Tavis, and I’m sure you know this very well, the suffering on this planet among humanity and the way that we have botched up almost everything, it’s so intense.  It just is so hard.  What do you do with the pain?

So I have learned over my fairly long life already that dancing is a great medicine.  When I cannot bear it any longer I just call my friends and sometimes even not my friends, I just turn on, I don’t know, Tina Turner or somebody, and I just dance.  It’s so much better than violence, which is what often comes to mind.  Some kind of like oh, I could just… ooo.

But that is not the answer for those of us who really love peace and prefer non-violence and beauty.

Smiley:            Do you think people are more, beyond Alice Walker, do you think that people really can dance furiously during difficult times like these?

Walker:            Oh, I know they can.  We do it all the time.  And it’s an old African and Native American tradition.  And I think possibly just a human one.  Although in some cultures I’ve noticed people are still afraid of dance.

But the tendency for healing is to move the energy in the body and there’s no better way to do that, I think, than dancing.  It is something that you can do in a solitary way or communally.  It’s very good for us.

Black men are in my work mostly to stand as counterparts to black women, which makes them vital. I do think, although I haven’t always felt this way, that it is harder for black men in this society to survive. Given the fact that this is a patriarchal society, I think that they expect more of themselves than women do. The ways that black men are given by this society to define themselves as men entail that they succeed in a way that women are not expected to. Failure resonates differently for black men. Although I consider myself a feminist, I think on some level we as women say to ourselves, Yeah, but I’m a woman. I never understood why men would go to the wall for some issue. I thought, what’s the point, let it go, what’s the problem? But I see now that it is in the socialization of men. To have these expectations floating in the universe, and then to be a black man, and not be able to reach those expectations—-it resonates differently.
Gloria Naylor from interview in “I Know What The Red Clay Looks Like”

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