overdue

I had my annual physical yesterday and picked up a flyer announcing free meditation and yoga classes at my clinic. I’ve got to try SOMETHING because running every other day helps me manage my anxiety, but I need some additional tools. I am completely wound up right now and should have gone for a run as soon as I rolled out of bed, but instead I ate some leftover pizza and now I’m too full to hit the park. There’s a Bernie Sanders rally in Prospect Park at noon, which means there will be loads of people and I really want silence and solitude today. My To Do list is wearing me down and I’ve made some progress this morning, but I don’t even feel satisfied once I scratch a task off the list—probably because I’m already stressing about the next thing I have to do. Learning to be present in each moment would be a good thing for me. I confess there were times at my launch party on Thursday when I was thinking ahead, wishing I could speed the clock up even though I was extremely grateful that folks took the time to come out and celebrate the release of The Door at the Crossroads. Even as I was reading from the novel, I felt my mind jumping around and had to force it to settle down. Monkey brain—that’s what Buddhists call it. Or is it drunken monkey brain? The point is, we have the ability to control our thoughts and I think some serious brain training is in order for me. Yesterday I participated in a symposium at the African American Museum in Philadelphia and each presenter had 15 minutes to talk about how s/he is reaching new audiences in the era of Black Lives Matter. There were some fantastic presentations but by the end of the day, I felt like someone else held the remote control for my brain and that person was flipping through channels instead of landing on one. Afterward I met friends for dinner and we talked about the importance of The Colored Girls Museum; Ebony suggested the museum founder produce a picture book and immediately I started constructing a narrative in my head. By the time I sat down on the train back to NYC, I’d chosen a title: Milo’s Museum. It’s about a Black girl who notices there aren’t many people who look like her at the museum, so she creates her own museum in her bedroom closet. Another friend of mine, Gabrielle Civil, once gave a performance in her closet and my other friend Marie is one of the artists featured at the CGM in Philadelphia. What Milo needs is a tete-a-tete with a Black woman artist—maybe a neighbor or a relative. One of my super talented artist friends came out on Thursday night; Cozbi brought her equally talented daughter, Jana (pictured above), who informed me she makes her own books! Jana’s the kind of girl who could easily open her own museum. Vashti DuBois founded the CGM in her own home, and over dinner last night we talked about how so many Black women still wait for outside approval instead of making things happen ourselves. One reason is that many of us have internalized the endless messages that tell us we’re inadequate or that our efforts are illegitimate without white and/or male authentication. Other times we want things to be perfect and so we wait until everything is in order—and everything is NEVER going to be in order. I’m not good at spontaneity and I try to be flexible when I’m teaching, but “just go with the flow” is a tall order for someone with anxiety. Children don’t worry about being perfect and they don’t overthink things the way so many adults do. I am a grown-up—I have to finish filing my taxes today—but I need to cultivate more of my child attributes. I doubt I’ll ever be “carefree” again, but maybe I could find more joy in each moment instead of trying to be “responsible” and “productive” all the time…