On Monday, I experienced something that seems trivial to others, but was a profoundly moving experience to me.
A woman requested free tickets to the festival I am running. She asked because I have posted on the event there is a limited amount of free ones available to the community for hardship. Well, she asked, so she got. Closed mouths don't get fed, you know?
I dropped them off at her home, and she introduce me to her son and her infant daughter. The boy is 13, and wants to study Reiki. He was also interested in learning to lay hands. Well, that is at the event, so cool. The mother was doing Psalm work, and practicing herbal crafts.
Her eyes were so large and her spirit so happy when she found out she was not alone. She had no idea there is a community of magical folks and was so happy that the event was in a place that is just off the beaten track enough that she can maintain her privacy from her neighbors.
Meanwhile, the whole way home, my eyes were filled with tears. I mean, lay my face in my hands, tears.
Why?
Because it filled my heart so deep and hard with how much I miss seeing my people, seeing other brown faces, breathing the same air as I do as we speak of things that make the impossible happen.
It struck me like a bell. I have never been to an event in Detroit like this event will be. I thought I made this event for several reasons, but maybe it was really about reunion. A Black magical family reunion.
The city is so spread out now. The only spaces and faces that gather together that I travel are filled with good and honorable people. But there are so few that are like mine, that when I see them, it is like filling a cup and drinking deeply when you didn't even know you were thirsty.
I find that my heart hurt so much, but was so glad, at the same time. Because I know the legacies of why we are so segregated here, I am not surprised it is this way. But it doesn't mean that an arbitrary mile road stops the flow of our magical folks on both sides of the 8 Mile border.
For those who are not from here, yes, 8 Mile is really a thing. It is the Michigan Mason Dixon line. We have others, as well. Going downriver has its own divisions.
But that simple moment, that act of connection, when my brown eyes met her brown eyes, all the memories came into my breath. As I shared what became, for me, a sacred moment in time, I was overwhelmed.
She did not know that as we talked and I smiled, that my chest was filling up with emotion. She did not know that I had been so happy to see a Detroit address. She had no way of knowing that with every block, my childhood of sitting cross legged on the porch and listening to my friend's Mother's blues records came back to me.
I had memories of hair being oiled, and the smell of Ultra Sheen and Pink Oil on Creole hands and African hands. I remembered looking through glass cases, filled with Anna Riva books and brown paper bags stained with conjure oils. I heard the voice of my mother in her kitchen, and felt the hands of my father as he put a new set of lodestones in my palm.
As I sat in my car, I turned on the Curtis Mayfield "Diamond in the Back" as I turned South from 8 Mile rd, that I felt like I was riding on a cloud. I played that song 7 times on the way there. On the way home, Al Green led my way back up, up, up to a home in a city where I would have taken my life in my hands if I had been caught there after dark in my childhood.
I no longer believe that this festival was just my idea from my own mind. I am not divine messenger or anything. I walk the path of the Sacred Fool, and make more mistakes than I can remember. But maybe, just maybe, in this moment, I found the reason why this had to happen. Maybe this will be the beginning of a bridge.
Or maybe, it will be just a good day in a park.
But in any case, this I believe. Magic is a thing, and cannot be contained by borders, cities, races, or nations. It lives and breathes and travels and is passed on as it wills.
And on this day, I felt it pass onward, to share with a younger set of brown eyes....like mine.
#detroitconjure
A woman requested free tickets to the festival I am running. She asked because I have posted on the event there is a limited amount of free ones available to the community for hardship. Well, she asked, so she got. Closed mouths don't get fed, you know?
I dropped them off at her home, and she introduce me to her son and her infant daughter. The boy is 13, and wants to study Reiki. He was also interested in learning to lay hands. Well, that is at the event, so cool. The mother was doing Psalm work, and practicing herbal crafts.
Her eyes were so large and her spirit so happy when she found out she was not alone. She had no idea there is a community of magical folks and was so happy that the event was in a place that is just off the beaten track enough that she can maintain her privacy from her neighbors.
Meanwhile, the whole way home, my eyes were filled with tears. I mean, lay my face in my hands, tears.
Why?
Because it filled my heart so deep and hard with how much I miss seeing my people, seeing other brown faces, breathing the same air as I do as we speak of things that make the impossible happen.
It struck me like a bell. I have never been to an event in Detroit like this event will be. I thought I made this event for several reasons, but maybe it was really about reunion. A Black magical family reunion.
The city is so spread out now. The only spaces and faces that gather together that I travel are filled with good and honorable people. But there are so few that are like mine, that when I see them, it is like filling a cup and drinking deeply when you didn't even know you were thirsty.
I find that my heart hurt so much, but was so glad, at the same time. Because I know the legacies of why we are so segregated here, I am not surprised it is this way. But it doesn't mean that an arbitrary mile road stops the flow of our magical folks on both sides of the 8 Mile border.
For those who are not from here, yes, 8 Mile is really a thing. It is the Michigan Mason Dixon line. We have others, as well. Going downriver has its own divisions.
But that simple moment, that act of connection, when my brown eyes met her brown eyes, all the memories came into my breath. As I shared what became, for me, a sacred moment in time, I was overwhelmed.
She did not know that as we talked and I smiled, that my chest was filling up with emotion. She did not know that I had been so happy to see a Detroit address. She had no way of knowing that with every block, my childhood of sitting cross legged on the porch and listening to my friend's Mother's blues records came back to me.
I had memories of hair being oiled, and the smell of Ultra Sheen and Pink Oil on Creole hands and African hands. I remembered looking through glass cases, filled with Anna Riva books and brown paper bags stained with conjure oils. I heard the voice of my mother in her kitchen, and felt the hands of my father as he put a new set of lodestones in my palm.
As I sat in my car, I turned on the Curtis Mayfield "Diamond in the Back" as I turned South from 8 Mile rd, that I felt like I was riding on a cloud. I played that song 7 times on the way there. On the way home, Al Green led my way back up, up, up to a home in a city where I would have taken my life in my hands if I had been caught there after dark in my childhood.
I no longer believe that this festival was just my idea from my own mind. I am not divine messenger or anything. I walk the path of the Sacred Fool, and make more mistakes than I can remember. But maybe, just maybe, in this moment, I found the reason why this had to happen. Maybe this will be the beginning of a bridge.
Or maybe, it will be just a good day in a park.
But in any case, this I believe. Magic is a thing, and cannot be contained by borders, cities, races, or nations. It lives and breathes and travels and is passed on as it wills.
And on this day, I felt it pass onward, to share with a younger set of brown eyes....like mine.
#detroitconjure
