How does one find belonging in a space where most are wandering spirits attempting with different upbringings and culture? Is finding belonging even a worthwhile goal?

Why it takes much more than a nebulous dream to effect real change in our immediate context, and by extension, in our broken world.

On my recent trip back home to Kenya and how it helped me slow down, reconnect with what's important and gave me time to reflect on my getting back to the hectic life in New York.

I am home for the first time in a while and the memories of my childhood home have something to say about my being away. What questions am I being asked to stop ignoring and confront with a ruthless honesty?

What can we make of work that never really feels finished? So much of what we aim to achieve is much more primal in nature than we care to admit. Where can we strike the balance between what we can do versus what we have no control over?

It has been quite the ride so far this past several months at a new position. But there are always somethings to take away from my experience as the year winds down. Here are some few thoughts.

And it's almost as if I left through the back door. The sense of escaping what I knew to be how things were supposed to end. How are things supposed to end?

I turn the faucet all the way to the right for the last few seconds of my shower – a ritual I have taken up this past winter. The practice reminds me of high school when I didn't have the luxury of steamy personal bathrooms but rather run-down swaths of stalls – some of which didn't work entirely.

In the dust there lays some sense of what was past, what was forgotten and what was lost. My feet sink into the particles as I grab onto what are my calloused toes from too much running away from something. I dare not look back – dare not tempt the shadows that I conquered.

I sink Into patterns, A slow agony of todos and expectations, Demanding of me, wanting from me, What I do not seem to have, but questions of: What not to do, what to prioritize, When to sleep?

The question I often asked was some flavor of “how do I tell stories that portray the diversity and complexity of our people?”

Twenty-four 1. is slow, is fast, is blurry and gets lost often, in its becoming. 2. It has no ring to it, no newness, no uniqueness. 3. Everything is mundane with rabid desires and ugly hair in odd places. 4. Memory remains of the past and the future is yet one day at a time.

I'm in September. And it almost feels like a transition with an end of the longest summer in my mind. The days are now here and there marked by rain, the shrinking daylight, and later the deadening of leaves. This September my mother turns sixty.

Ibegin to meet with my mother on call each week in the Summer during the pandemic and we decide to talk about anything and everything. As we speak, my intention is to learn more about her and that, eventually, she can learn more about me.

It is imperative for you look beyond my words for truth. Be wary of simplifications and too much complexity. Even more, centrist conclusions for how we wrestle with an idea is particularly suspicious and may be flavored sometimes with anger, other times with pain and at times with hope just to make them that more palatable.

There is a lot that's going on. A lot of disarray within our composed lives that ask us to retract from what we know about ourselves and others and our worlds. Different forms of us emerge, perhaps for revealing what frames need testing, understanding.

As a means of expression, I see writing to be a medium to clarify my thoughts, to work through experiences and to conceptualize meaning and make sense.

I miss the appointment. They send a note. In looking over our records, it was noted that you have not returned to this chest center for re-examination. There are calls from mama. She wants to know how I'm doing.

I am stuck thus Gone are the spaces where I lie. Where does truth become a lie Becoming has a sly tune to it maybe because I realize I needed to be naive in the first place.

Fragility is embedded in the hope of a better next time, Dust begins to settle in such a present, a comfortable promise

I know – for a fact! from whence I be. The earth sentenced me to foraging the dust until I've bored deep into the skin...

At times, many times, the urge to fulfill others – to fill myself up with the noise and voices, to take all of the outside in and gobble it down with a shot of anxiety – is everywhere I turn my face. It is to me, one of the most compelling feelings yet the reality of what I face each time.