I am a writer who is afraid of writing;
I am an speaker who is afraid to speak to more than two people at a time;
I am an activist who is full of courage but always fearful;
I am a reader who reads and dreams at the same time;
I am an educator who is constantly learning;
I am real and fake and often cannot tell the difference at a given moment;
I love people but feel safer on my own;
I am always on the run but cannot hide;
my home is where my heart is which may or may not be where my home is;
I love to take photos but after 20 years still cannot get it right – but just occasionally very occasionly I get it right and that makes all the failures worthwhile;
I am full of confidence and drowning in self-doubt;
each day without fail I wake up with anxiety but I always manage to make it through the day;
I am visible and therefore vulnerable to shame;
I am invisable and therefore vulernable to being silenced;
I am connected but full of disconnections to people, to situations, to experiences.
I have a longing yet my belly is full. I am imperfect but yearn to be perfect.
I have passed through many places, created many spaces, loved many people, made many wrongs but in all my life I do not know what I have done. This is me and with whom I must live with on the most intimate of terms - but I know with the certainity that night follows day that I am not alone in this.
Sokari – founder and principle writer on Black Looks [June 2004], free from the tyranny of editors and other censors.
www.blacklooks.org/about/
