Breathe, said the wind.
How can I breathe at a time like this,
when the air is full of the smoke
of burning tires, burning lives?Just breathe, the wind insisted.
Easy for you to say, if the weight of
injustice is not wrapped around your throat,
cutting off all air.I need you to breathe.
I need you to breathe.
Don’t tell me to be calm
when there are so many reasons
to be angry, so much cause for despair!I didn’t say to be calm, said the wind,
Breathe, by Lynn Ungar (https://www.questformeaning.org/quest-article/breathe-ungar/)
I said to breathe.
We’re going to need a lot of air
to make this hurricane together.
A little over a year ago I had a desk at a school, a multi-tenant high school building in Brooklyn, with some classrooms converted to offices for our program on the top floor. I remember going into the bathroom for the first time, and I can say for sure now that I was triggered.
I’m not sure if it was the stainless steel toilet, or the dish soap resting on the rim of the tiny sink (I couldn’t imagine washing out a dish there), but I was deep in my feelings. I fired off an email to one of my more senior colleagues with ideas about how we could make it better. ‘We’re only here temporarily, but thanks for sharing,’ was the response.
I went to a lot of different schools growing up. I spent 3-6 months at a time in different foster homes in different suburban corners of Los Angeles. I have seen a lot of different classrooms, and a lot of different school bathrooms. This one was depressing, and I wouldn’t realize that many on my team felt the same way until months later.
When I left that bathroom for the first time, I noticed immediately opposite of the bathroom door, past the always locked-down elevator was a tiny window, too tall for most to make use of, and bolted shut so it only opened part way. I opened it, and cool air rushed in. I felt better immediately.
Fresh air is medicine.
It was then that I started to think deeply about the ways in which schools can be spaces that give us life and hope, at the same time that they are spaces of oppression and staggering need. I began to notice the ways that whiteness and coloniality pervade the experience of schooling, and I began to really notice the way my own schooling has left its scars on my innermost self.
Just breathe.
“…Not that pie in the sky stuff, not a preference for optimism over pessimism, but rather “an orientation of the spirit.” The kind of hope that creates a willingness to position oneself in a hopeless place and be a witness, that allows one to believe in a better future, even in the face of abusive power. That kind of hope makes one strong.”
Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
I spent a year studying hope, in part because hearing Bryan Stevenson speak on it made me feel that unconquerable hope is something I can offer my colleagues. It’s one of the key ‘value-adds’ I bring to every circle of folks I engage with. A light that shines brightest in the dark places of the world, as Tolkien puts it.
Taking a deep breath of fresh air is a good place to start any journey back to hope. As you draw oxygen in, your lungs are performing a miraculous process of passively exchanging toxic gas (CO2) for the oxygen that your cells (especially your brain cells) are in continuous need of.
It takes about six minutes without oxygen for the brain to die, which is why CPR exists. Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation temporarily pumps blood through the lungs to keep the brain alive until the heart can be restarted. In a way, our heart really exists in order to pump oxygenated blood throughout the body, but when the heart stops, it is the brain that becomes damaged beyond repair first.
I bought a couple of tiny potted plants, and put them on that windowsill. That was my sign of hope. I wonder if they are still there. Maybe, but then again, maybe not.
At this time where so many things that we took for granted seem gone, let’s try to remember that the rhythm of our breath is more than a necessity. Your time here, even time spent trapped in your apartment, is a blessing. You have the power and wisdom inside of you to reimagine the world after COVID-19. We have the collective wisdom and power to make our hopes for justice, opportunity, and dignity real.
“In any event, no reality transforms itself…”
Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Ch. 1
Transforming our systems of oppression into spaces of humanization will require a lot of thoughtful, collective adaptations. Transforming our reality begins in our own lungs, our own oxygenated brain cells. To put it more pithily: You have to put your own mask on before helping anyone else.
If we don’t learn how to breathe and make space for the breathing of others, we will continue to act out the script of whiteness and coloniality that operates within each of us. We will let ourselves be abused until we turn to our fellow and abuse them in turn. When there is no time to breathe, we just default to the biases and norms that got us here in the first place.
In order to do something new, to transform, we have to withdraw and catch our breath. Then breathe with a new purpose, and teach others to practice alongside us until there is enough breath to generate that hurricane.
So breathe.
We are going to get through this. We are going to be back and better than before, but not according to any timetable that we are comfortable with. We are NOT going back to the way things were. We have experienced too much, and we may never have a more complete disruption of the racist, militarist, capitalist system that keeps us competing with each other for our bread. We will adapt, we cannot fail.
Just breathe.
It has been a long time since I published a blog article. For about a year I published monthly fugitive blog articles at C.R.E.A.D. (pieces that I will be revisiting over the next several months, but which if I’m honest I haven’t even looked at since Kahlilah died. I miss you, sis. I hope you got that good internet in heaven.