at first, but once
welcome back to returning to the Source, beloved reader!
i’m extending U my deepest gratitude for your choice to burrow within this pixel-sized pocket of the internet. we're on the eve of a new moon, so have U thought about the new beginnings U want to move into into? more importantly than that, what support do U usually rely on to usher your dreams into reality?
thursday night, i dreamt of a little boy named Braylen, thought i've never met a child with that name. in my dream, the baby had been killed, and "someone told me a lot of Black folks were connected to him." (quote from my dream journal)
as soon as i woke up, i searched online and learned that a three-year-old child named Braylen Noble had been found dead face-down in a pool 2 months ago after being reported missing, and only 2 hours away from where i stay. his official cause of death hasn't been determined yet.
similarly to how i woke up with the heartbreaking whisper of Braylen's name, the word "balagoon" has been on my mind this week, except it's been rattling around far more insistent. balagoonbalagoonbalagoon. i originally thought it was a mismemory of Zora Neale Hurston's posthumously-published work about Cudjoe Lewis, so i ignored the voice until after i had the dream of little boy Noble. g--gle led me to openly bisexual, revolutionary outlaw Kuwasi Balagoon, whom I've never consciously learned about. I have heard about the Brinks truck robbery that he participated in with others though. facing 75 years in prison for his involvement with the expropriation, Balagoon defiantly affirmed "I am in the habit of not completing sentences or waiting on parole or any of that nonsense but also because the State simply isn’t going to last seventy five or even fifty years."
his assertion reminded me of the words that assata shakur's grandmother shared with her shortly before she was broken out of her cage in 1979:
you're coming home soon. i know what i'm talking about. i don't know when it will be, but you're coming home. you're getting out of here. it won't be too long, though. it will be much less time that you've already been here.
and lo! "dreams and reality are opposites. action synthesizes them."
prescient in his own way — and perhaps also pragmatic about his slowly-failing body — Kuwasi Balagoon spoke his liberation into being, but he was not delivered into more years of life by a blaze of glory. a few years into his sentence, Kuwasi Balagoon’s spirit broke free from its vessel, and he died of AIDS-related complications behind bars at the age of 39 in 1986, though it’s far more accurate to say he was killed. he put his neck on the line for our people, and it got caught within two vicious vise grips of the state: the violence of prisons, and the violence of the administration's neglect during the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
i hear the cruel echoes of how he met his end resonating amid the ongoing rages of the COVID-19 pandemic and Black-led uprisings happening all over the world. the (necro)political economy of this country endures, dispossessing and dealing death to Black people primarily. it is one of my greatest wishes for no one else to be martyred.
according to my dream journal, my dreams have mainly straddled two themes this year:
murder or the threat of violence
being left behind or forgotten
at this year's virtual version of the NYC Spiritual Herbalism Conference, Empress Karen Rose shared that "dreams are the soul's instructions," and it's stuck with me ever since. (endless thanks to my brother Sarah for allowing me to sit in on the conference.) i think my recent dreams/memories are instructing me to more intentionally honor those who have passed away. names tend to evade the grave and make themselves known, so giving breath back to some of them is what i'm doing with this new moon. i usually sit at my ancestral altar and make offerings on Saturdays, but i'm currently ~600 miles away from my usual set-up. luckily, my people are with me everywhere, and i also made sure to pack a white candle. all's i need is a tall glass of water, and boom, the line is open.
(oddly enough, i started an elevation ritual for my own lineage around the anniversary of the Brinks robbery this year, so it feels like i was meant to eventually engage more deeply with Kuwasi Balagoon's life and story)
memory lives within the body, it is far more tangible than i think we like to give it credit for. to remember is to assemble that which has been worn away by time or stripped away by force. memory is the effort to keep ourselves and our loved ones intact. memory is our inheritance and our duty.
let me not get too ahead of myself though. introductions are in order!
on me
my name is dkéama, which rhymes with “te quema.” i didn’t realize that until hearing the bridge in that one melii song and thinking somebody called me; i appreciate the rhyme even more because it's well-aligned with my tropical sagittarius sun and leo moon placements. my name must include the accent when written. my name usually autocorrects to “dreams.” my name gives me a special kinship with every Black person with a name "too hard to pronounce." my name means family in its own special way. my name is my own my own my own.
i started typing this issue from occupied shawnee, wyandotte, and miami territory, though those are not the only tribes that have historically stewarded the land i inhabit. i’ve been there for four years, but it isn’t home to me. more like a well-established stopping point. there are people i’ve met there who feel like home, and i’m thankful for that.
i center Blackness in everything I do! Blackness permeates every part of my embodied experience. As Ebony Oldham put it “...Blackness engulfs [my] being.” when i say “we” or “our,” understand that i mean Black people. i believe that there is alchemy in Blackness. since the advent of chattel slavery and the codification of anti-Black logic into every facet of the world, we have been debased, and still we are able to transmute gold despite those conditions.
on Black feminism
once formally introduced to the living legacies of Assata Shakur, bell hooks, Angela Davis, and many other Black feminists back in college, i began finding the language to more adequately articulate my experiences as a Black woman (who later came back into being as a Black trans person).
pour moi, Black feminism is not simply a political framework, but it is also an Apocalyptic and cosmological practice. Black feminism is concerned with the objective of undoing global empire (i.e. ending the world as we know it) to build something new. this is where the alchemy of Blackness comes back into play: our collective magnum opus is a world where we are free. cosmos are born from the dark waters of Chaos, just like the erotic power that fortifies us throughout our process of architecture.
on being trans—
my gender has taken on multiple forms over the course of my life so far, and this language still isn’t sufficient enough to encapsulate my experience, but if i had to distill my current understanding of my gender into one word, it would be trans—, hyphen inclusive.
when i say trans—,
the hyphen [serves] as the mandated link between my Blackness and my gender. the punctuated prefix denotes my prefigurative gender politic, indicating how my multiply-errant embodiment desires to exist beyond the colonial imagination. the hyphen to suggest: —formative, —Atlantic, —mutative, —cendental, —gressive. to be Black and trans (trans—) is to know flight, passage, and change.
Blackness (and its fugitivity) is embedded within the hyphen and open space thereafter. i used to identify as non-binary, but i eventually grew tired of claiming an association to the colonial project of binary gender, even through my negation of it.
a quote I always come back to when thinking about my gender is by Che Gossett: “Blackness troubles trans/gender; Blackness is trans/gender trouble.” Blackness immediately confers deviance from the white status quo — since i am proud of my Blackness, i am thus proud of “being a problem” (h/t DuBois).
on connecting to Spirit
i fell in love with tarot as a divination system ever since i got my first deck as a birthday gift two years ago! as much as i love the artwork of the Next World Tarot, i’ve since switched to mainly using a traditional Smith-Waite deck because the standardized imagery has more easily allowed for my intuition to absorb and assign meaning to the symbolism of each card. i think it’s apt that this issue will come out as the new moon in tropical Scorpio arrives; Scorpio is associated with Death (XIII) in the Major Arcana of tarot. the rider’s flag waves towards deep transformation. you’re your own best pscyhopomp, so think carefully about what U might need to shed completely in order to be born anew. will whatever U manifest bring U closer to the life U are meant for?
[image description: the Death tarot card features a skeleton in dark armor holding a black flag with a white flower emblazoned across it. the skeleton sits atop a white horse, and behind them lies a person on the ground, half covered in a shroud. in front of the horse’s feet kneel two young people. a person wearing elaborate golden religious attire holds their hands out towards the rider in supplication. the sun shines between two towers in the background.]
another way that i connect to Spirit is by venerating my ancestors. i’m the blood of their blood, and the bone of their bone. i don’t have the source for this quote but it’s written down in my journal: “You are the descendant of an unbroken lineage of ancestors, victorious despite the ravages of the world.” what better affirmation exists than that?? it’s a miracle to be alive, so i pay my respects to those who ensured my survival. i feed my dead at the altar, i speak into my water and play music for them, i have their names written out on a steadily-sprawling family tree. reader, if U have an ancestral practice, i’d love for U to share whatever U are comfortable with. how do U show your ancestors that they are loved, even in “absentia”?
on origin
i end where i began: with names. this newsletter shares the same title as a collection of speeches by revolutionary leader amilcar cabral. “returning to the Source” also signifies continued enlightenment through aligning with my own higher purpose. within esoteric traditions, the Source is also understood as Keter, the One, the Non-Dual. it is the integration of Self and Other, or of Heaven and Earth.
“returning to the Source” also articulates how i’m reclaiming that which has been hidden and erased from our people. Sankofa -- “go back and get it” -- is the Akan concept of incorporating lessons from the past in order to move forward with clarity. i’m dedicated to learning from traditional African spiritual practices, as well as the enduring Black radical tradition, because this knowledge bolsters my sense of individual agency within the collective struggle for Black liberation. like Toni Morrison imparted upon us, freeing oneself comes with the imperative of freeing others.
finally, i’ve been inclined towards storytelling since i was un bambino, so this newsletter is an affirmation to all of my selves that my stories deserve to be shared. i’m poised to spit out my tyrannies, triumphs, and thoughts in a way that feels meaningful to me.
“I have not gained any faith from what I am currently witnessing in the world; yet I refuse to live like that. That is not what I came here to experience. Yes, we all endure pain and tragedy but life can be sweet as long as the fruit has been tended to." — Kuwasi Balagoon (emphasis mine)
as we enter the shadow of the new moon (at the end of a hellish year), i’m hoping for all of our wildest, world-ending dreams to bear fruit.
until next time,
d.