Where can I find you at the end of this world?

And how will you travel to the next??

Hey there,

If you are reading this:

I hope that you’ve been taking good care of yourself and the ones you love. I hope that the bitterness of this world and its heinous dramatics hasn’t completely robbed you of the joy and laughter that you so deeply deserve.

I hope that you are allowing yourself to feel. That you aren’t suppressing your emotions to a place where you can barely reach them. That you haven’t given up on what it means to have, harness, and practice hope.

If someone has ever told you – or you innately felt the need – to not worry about the world right now because “you can’t do anything to change it,” or because “we are powerless” and “it has always been this way… I want you to break that rule and way of thinking. Right now. 

I want you to think about the parts of your life (and of the lives of others) that you touch daily, weekly, once a year, maybe even once-er’ry-blue moon. To think about what makes you feel full and fulfilled with a taste of serenity; then to think about what drives you towards intense rage and infuriation pushing you along the lines of sensing insanity.

Remember those moments and actions that make you feel these things.

Become engulfed in the swelling tides of these emotions and allow yourself to confront them. 

Also – always – please remember to cherish and practice imagination. Let your mind take flight into glimmering skies of possibility, and cosmic galaxies of the impossible.

At least, these are the things I’ve been tryna do, more intentionally.

Lately, I’ve been plotting (as always). Hurrying to scribble down reflections and ideas for future possibilities, continuing my marathon against time, returning to caring for myself, and trying to get back to thinking and feeling and imagining – deeply.

I’ve made it my mission to carve spaces that allow me to feel fullness, to embody and honor my multidimensionality. Asking what it means to be free, and what my own, and our collective, liberation can be and become.

Swimming in pools of uncertainty, trying to recollect fragmented, sharp crystals of determination.

Pushing boundaries with question marks has become a habit of mine. I question everything.

Reading voraciously. Collecting words and images for research and reference. Teaching myself the unknown truths of things I thought I knew. Listening to Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange on repeat like it just came out. Experiencing Janelle Monáe’s The ArchAndroid for the 10th time in a row. 

I’ve also been continuously working to create, furnish, and nurture spaces that all portrait this stained-glass-esque image of living that I’m dreaming of – I’m calling it “Fragments of Futurity.”

This journey of Fragments of Futurity actually began earlier this year, around February as an independent study during my final semester as an undergraduate student. My pitch for the study was to craft an “explorative research study centering figures, concepts, and cultural movements about imagining and building towards futurity. Overall, I would like to use these learnings to develop a creative project that reflects upon how lived experience and cultural epiphanies both support in building new worlds (aka world-building).”

Now, I am implementing this study into a lifelong practice and way of living.

I’m excited to share moments of this journey of Fragments of Futurity with you as I am preparing to publish a series of projects, reflections and epiphanies with you soon. One of which will be releasing in a week or so (yay!).

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this lil’ reflection I had recently:

From My Notes – May 11th, 2024:

These past 4 years have been so transformative. Much more than just attaining a degree. I had the honor of crafting and supporting communities, and harnessing my own specially-curated archive of knowledge. At the same time, I’m reflecting on how it’s been 5 years since I first began finding ways to organize for community gathering and envisioning justice. Now, I’m entering a new era. I’m stepping into a new dimension of life. I’m meeting myself again and again, and it’s a beautiful evolution to experience.

I’ve unveiled so much about myself through the guidance, knowledge, and support of my educators and collaborators: the brilliance of the Avant Garde and embodying the “non-realistic” like a boss, crucial (yet deeply under-emphasized) Queer (especially Black & Brown) histories that have paved way for the world we live in today, and the fact that systemic and social structures, capitalism, standards for “acceptability,” “professionalism,” and “beauty” are really all just imagined principles for living (pointing me back to the question, whose imagination are you/I/we living in??). 

I learned that binaries and borders are often really BS, which I believe I’ve always thought deep down. And that everything is really just made up, so why wouldn’t we begin to write our own stories?? 

I’ve had courses to indulge in the pure phenomena of Black Femme Artistry, and the power and politics of Sisterhood. Fragments of Futurity. 

I’m blessed to have grown such a luminous academic experience and support system over the years.

I’ve also been brimming with gratitude for opportunities to develop sooo much experience in doing the work that I was born to do. The work that God said, “Wait, turn around. Look here! This is what it’s really about!! This is where you need to be.” I’ve realized that there are sacrifices that I’m going to have to continue to make to fully walk in my light, to be who I was destined to become. I’m also realizing that nobody else has walked my path, or felt my vision in this exact way, and that’s a journey that I have to prepare myself for regardless.

Beginning my academic journey in the midst of a global pandemic, and commemorating my graduation in the midst of one of the most devastating and heart-wrenching continuities of global crises (these colonial-imperial-genocidal nightmares); I think of the many human beings who had these kind of moments brutally torn and tarnished, shredded away from them. I grieve for them, and think of them often. 

If my time spent (un)Learning inside and outside of institutions means anything, it means inner and inter-communal solidarity. It means transnational solidarity and work towards understanding. It means shattering the boundaries and binaries that confine us. It means identifying the cosmics and the poetics in how I see life through my lil’ kaleidoscope. It means living as me, regardless of how people feel. It means care and empathy. Creative and ambitious, radical strategies for safety, and envisioning + crafting err’thang they told me – they told us – was impossible. That’s how I’m living my life moving forward. 

Fragments of Futurity is the name of the game. 😁✨

Sending u Light ☀️ 🤎

— Jasmine Lewis