this is what it sounds like
(an ecological approach)

4.
if there is a bell¹
it is our laughter²
if there are 12 tambourines
they are these children³
if there is a woodwind echo⁴
close your eyes to taste the deep breaths under⁵

this will teach you when to dance⁶
and when to dart⁷

5.
neither tobacco⁸
nor trend⁹
nor tire treads¹⁰
are edible
for long

6.
seeds are¹¹
package bonds¹²
portable and small¹³)
birds and wind will take them home.¹⁴

1. Time as Community: This means creating sacred and regular times to gather as community and also that our connections and accountability to each other is what makes our brilliance full of impact and eternal. [↩]
2. Along with the energy of our ancestors, the loving energy of the community—the way we bring our whole selves into the room with a spirit of play and desired intimacy for transformation—is another key resource of the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind. This is what makes it summer, the heat (sometimes literally) of our bodies in the space. [↩]
3. The Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind is eternal because it is intergenerational. We are learning to create child-inclusive, parent-supportive spaces. We have consistent participation from elders and babies that remind us all to improvise and be present. [↩]
4. The participants own and fund the projects in many ways. Participation itself is the most valuable contribution. Participants and supporters also donate food, shoe racks and coat racks, tea and childcare, reiki sessions, photocopies and art supplies, advice, money (literally enough to sustain the rent and utilities of the inspiration station, which is where Alexis already lived), documentation and spreading the word. The ecology of the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind is ever evolving and folks self-identify their contributions. [↩]
5. Many of the most important parts of our interactions are non-verbal. We breathe the presence of our ancestors. They join us… [↩]
6. in celebration… [↩]
7. and in warning. [↩]
8. The Eternal Summer process is an ongoing lesson in what is and is not sustainable. Tobacco, the plantation crop that was once the economic base of our city and area has now been replaced by gentrified post-tobacco processing plant lofts, and appropriated and commodified knowledge and culture for sale. This is a place where we have trained ourselves to grow a plant that we cannot eat in order to transform each other into cancer. There is much unlearning to do here. The Eternal Summer, a tiny, grassroots educational project literally next to a huge university is an experiment in what nourishment might feel like. [↩]
9. We therefore find it important not to get carried away from our routes by trends in the funding world… [↩]
10. and we take care to make sure that our engagement with national and international contexts is grounded in our local timelines and processes. This is another way of staying present. Alexis is often reminded of this in direct, cosmic, physical, and spiritual ways. [↩]
11. Time Across Space: However, we understand our work here as intimately related to a transformation happening at the level of the planet. [↩]
12. Therefore our DIY multi-media work through podcasts, online videos, the school of our Lorde Webinars, and social networking sites are designed to be intimate portable space, useful for and transformed by communities that are inspired by our work in Durham and accountable to their own local conditions. [↩]
13. (And by DIY we mean for real DIY. There has been no purchase of software for media creation so far. [↩]
14. In the tradition of Ida B. Wells, Kitchen Table Press, and radical women of color bloggers, we use every means necessary to make our love accessible to our wider community of comrades and kindred spirits. We are thrilled by the resonance and participation that folks around the United States and world have found in these projects that we created out of ancestral inspiration and our own local specific necessity. When we had the “Summer of Our Lorde,” when we read an essay by Audre Lorde and had discussion potlucks every month, like-minded people participated through the blog and had their own gatherings in the Bay Area, New York, Chicago, and DC. Some folks even continued with an Autumn of (Gloria) Anzaldúa. The School of Our Lorde (a night school in Alexis’s living room in Durham) has satellite campuses in Tuscaloosa, Chicago, New York, and Fayetteville, and webinar participants as far away as the Rio Grande Valley and Cairo. Queer feminist organizers in Beruit, Lebanon (Meem); Nairobi, Kenya (Fahamu); and Chennai, India (the Shakti Center) are using the multi-media educational tools and version of the practices to support their own amazing and specific work! Long distance lovers all over the world also donate to Eternal Summer; mobilize resources at their schools, jobs, or organizations to hire Alexis to do a workshop, lecture, or training; buy educational materials; donate proofreading; share connections; and give abundant advice and love. [↩]