Recalibration

I haven’t blogged for about two months, though I really meant to. I experienced many guilty evenings and mornings when I chastised myself for my inconsistency. “Write!” commanded a fairly insistent voice from inside my head. But I couldn’t. Besides the vicissitudes of being a liberal arts professor with papers to read, papers to grade, meetings to attend, editing a book manuscript, and the joys of office hours, a cacophony of voices and images was always there, just outside of my vision. Often those voices won and pulled me in. “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” is what the voices said. And, the sky was falling. In fact, it fell.

Chicken Little was right to exclaim that the sky was falling. He/She wanted to warn that something was changing, however mistaken or narrow Chicken’s view was. They were worried. But here’s what I saw when the sky fell: more sky. Cerulean blue sky and beautiful white clouds. Somewhere else: soft rain. In the distance, an orange sunset with rose-colored streaks.

Many ancient civilizations addressed this truth, that with destruction comes creation. Destruction brings opportunity, a renewed vision, and a clear, if teary, eye. “Out with the old and in with the new.” It was normal for me to weep and mourn, I understood. “The sky was falling,” after all. I was like the proverbial “deer in the headlights,” caught off-guard even though I thought I knew the terrain. That was part of the lesson – like Chicken Little, I couldn’t see the whole landscape. After the sky fell, and after I saw the blueness and the white clouds, I understood I was living through AN ending but not THE END.

Africa is still there, large and busy. Black Atlantic diasporans are still loving each other or bickering, or both. Americans, under duress, are reconsidering what they want. Europe is re-evaluating itself. Asia is rising. South America is stand-up, stand tall, stand by. The Middle East is tearing its clothes. The Caribbean is holding on, in spite of big waves.

The opportunities are riding in on what seem to be menacing clouds. What a show! It’s fine. How amazing to be a witness at a time like this. Scary, but amazing. I wonder what we’ll do, in this new world. At the very least, write and witness.