We keep a laundry hamper in our third floor bathroom for sheets, towels, etc. Last weekend, I brought the load down to the first floor and washed all the the things. I even managed to fold all of the towels and sheets and put them back in the hamper to journey back upstairs. Then, the hamper sat in the living room next to the couch where I folded everything — Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday….On Thursday I finally brought the hamper back up to the third floor.
This morning, I finally put the towels and sheets back in the linen closet. Why was today the day? What’s different about this Sunday morning that I finally could complete this simple task?
As I continued to move slowly through the morning — removing bedsheets (time for another load y’all), scrambling eggs — I realized that this was the difference. There was no need to get a kid off to school this morning. There was no pressure to get in my morning meditation, prayers, and journaling before the work day started. There was no pressure.
My interest about living a slow life is piqued as I write this post. After a quick google search of “how to live a slow life”, of course I uncovered a Pinterest and Instagram worthy queue of blog posts and images depicting slowness as an aesthetic appeal — rustic, feminine, white, and young. Anyway…
Rewind! Google “black people and slow lifestyle”. Eehhh… kind of, but still more Instagram accounts. Okay, “African Americans…” “Black people and living a slow life” and articles of the Black/White wealth gap appear along with articles on “COVID and inequality”, “Anti-Black imagery”, and “racial disparities and climate change.” What the f*&!?!
Whew! I thought I was coming here to meditate y’all. Nope, I am coming here to agitate or be agitated by racism, misogynoir, and the capitalist patriarchal heteronormative nonsense society we’re living in. Why can’t a Black woman find rest and ease on the internet that looks and feels like her easily?
That’s a rhetorical question. And, I do know of places to find such things. It just erks my nerves that our experiences are so invisibilized. Yes, invisibilized — a verb that connotates the intent to make something/someone unseen, inaccessible. It is erasure.
