The Pattern, The Pattern, The Pattern

When words fail (image content warning)

All week long an image kept coming to me.

It was Maya Angelou, at a protest. She was standing in front of a policeman on a horse. She stood like a god. I believe she was.

She stood like someone who’s countenance beamed:

I know who you are.

And I know who I am.

We are brother and sister.

Equal.

And holy.

And free.

But in this moment,

You have forgotten who we are. And I have not. You will not pass me or touch me as I hold this remembering for us.

And then the policeman did not pass.

Because my brain is fried from over use + over processing of information, I didn’t trust my memory of this image. I went searching for its source: the documentary Maya Angelou; And Still I Rise. Which I first watched in 2020, shivers coursing without ceasing down my spine….

…..only to go on a wild goose chase that took me over an hour. And was ultimately a dead end, because -

this documentary is not streaming anywhere

In the U S of shaking in our boots A -

At All.

Coincidence?

Maybe. Maybe its a coincidence that we cannot even pay to access the voice of a god -one who’s embodied dignity, compassion, and sense of justice just might be the exact frequency we need most to succeed in our resistance.

I believe that Dr. Maya Angelou understood something most don’t. Not because they do not want to. But because they are blinded by habit, ignorance and pain:

Oppression is not simply a system. Or a regime. Or a willfully mad, traumatized, man-child weaponizing the alienation, fear and ignorance of a brute force to do the dirty work they can’t even wholly grasp as dirty as they execute it - so desperate are they for daddy, for the bully to finally grant the belonging + power that they believe will end their pain—-

Oppression is a pattern.

Oppression is a force.

Oppression is a sickness.

And we have each been exposed. We are all susceptible to its possession of our will.

Oppression is also a lie. But the lie only succeeds if we believe it.

Believe what?

That some are better. That others are worse.

That some deserve. That others don’t.

That there is one right. So all else must be wrong.

That there is not enough to go around. So we must build walls to ensure that we, at least get ours.

And some will say, well that’s the way the world works. That’s the way the world has ALWAYS worked.

But I would say, has it? Or has history been shaped and told primarily by those who are desperate to keep it working that way?

(Look into the origin story of the Fertile Crescent. The bits that came before patriarchy settled in).

Also-

Has it really been working?

Or has our inability to imagine another way kept the same pattern in circulation, while simply moving around the players from time to time?

As we resist, which we must — which I do. Resistance efforts that move me more than I can say —I would ask that we do so with an invitation in our hearts:

A whisper that says, join us in remembering who we really are. Join the dream of another way that makes room for all as equals, all at once.

We have to stand up and say NO, while at the same time holding a love and compassion in our bodies that is so fierce, it has the power to burn each and every illusion of separateness away.

Until we learn to subsume the pattern of oppression rather than fight the people who play out the pattern, we will only ever succeed in helping it repeat.

And even more powerful than fighting or attempting to control the pattern of oppression in another, we must take responsibility for where that pattern of oppression still lives within ourselves.

This week, I was searching on my phone for something and some old images leapt out and hit me like cold water in my face. I had a dejavu in a dejavu in a dejavu.

I had made them with green painting tape in a frustrated creative flurry in 2020. I had been watching Dr. Maya Angelou. I had been thinking much of the same thoughts I’ve tried to share here, not knowing how to speak them the way she did so so well.

“When I decided to speak….” Dr. Maya said with the self possession of a true and timeless queen. I replay her tone over and over and over in my head….

While I still don’t know how queen on command, the time has long passed to wait to try.

More honestly, more vulnerably, I gotta tell you that when I was accosted by these images that I thought I had successfully tucked away in a folder called “Part of the Pattern 2020,” I saw both my sameness and my growth.

Because they portray a stark rendering of my body, that at the time I was still holding with some amount of self oppression and shame. But now, when I gaze at them, I feel gentle admiration. Even pride. I feel a tenderness that blooms and holds me when arms of another and a culture cannot.

xx,

Yan

---