Do not be afraid to create your own heaven
for those big eyed dreamers trapped in a city of small minded snares, do not be afraid to create your own heaven ~ Kataalyst Alcindor
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Imagine there is no there, there
I inherited wander lust from my father, a wandering Jew. I grew up in New Orleans, Managua, San Salvador, Puerto Rico, Atlanta, Brooklyn, Manhattan, San Rafael, San Francisco, Miami and was two months from being born in my father’s birthplace, Havana except fate had other designs. And yet New Orleans is where I have always called home. As this country spins away from its axis of love with an administration plagued by hatred, whose followers…
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My ancestors taught me
My ancestors taught me how to rub two nickels to make a dollar. My ancestors taught me how to move my hips unselfconsciously to music. My ancestors taught me to listen to birdsong. My ancestors taught me to love profoundly. My ancestors taught me to appreciate babies. My ancestors taught me to eat with gusto. My ancestors taught me to read for joy. My ancestors taught me to adorn myself. My ancestors taught me to…
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The last frontier is the human heart
I went to a conference on Racial Equity sponsored by the Kellogg Foundation and Isabel Wilkerson was the guest speaker. I wrote this down in my notebook: The last frontier is the human heart. And this is what I’ve learned in 57 years around the sun. The road always leads to a place where the heart opens or hardens. We have to be intentional and proceed with love to keep our heart open. While pain…
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Everywhere
The news is horrid. The world is on fire. How can anyone heal when there are new wounds daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, lifetimes? Later that night I held an atlas in my lap Ran my fingers across the whole world and whispered where does it hurt? It answered everywhere. everywhere. Everywhere. -Warsan Shire
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Failure of Imagination
Run from what’s comfortable. Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious. I have tried prudent planning long enough. From now on I’ll be mad. ~ Rumi This month marks five years since I started my own company, Greenlight Global Research. When I started GGR, I had little idea of what I wanted to do because I had fallen into what I loved doing 18 years earlier. Much like falling…
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A Soul Light As A Feather
All of these things sort of collided into one another and actually started making sense. At Jazz Fest, I stopped at a friend’s party and another friend was there explaining to a handful of people what feathers mean. Feathers are messages from the spirit world. She’s a Candomblé priestess. I listened to her story intently because I’d been out at the Fairgrounds and was soaking wet, which gave me this otherworldly feeling as I sat…
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I Believe in Me
If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started. -Marcus Garvey In all those years of walking through the double wide school doors, released from the tedium of institutional learning, to my mother’s car where loud radio music awaited me – I’ll never forget what she always said, “Chile, I don’t know where you get that confident swagger…
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The story always begins with an ending
My life has me once again tossing around like a dinghy in troubled waters. Too much time is spent on work with the project either offering money or meaning, and hardly ever blending the two according to my desires. Tatjana’s diagnosis of terminal cancer has my whole system on lock down while she handles this news better than me. Another friend’s diagnosis of cancer pounds my already aching heart. And yet there is joy and…
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How to tell a story
According to W.B. Yeats: Only that which does not teach, which does not cry out, which does not persuade, which does not condescend, which does not explain, is irresistible.