In Haiti, the only seasons we know about are rain and shine. There’s no need to check the weather. If it’s going to rain, your senses alert you. You can smell the earth around you, the giant, menacing clouds chase all the blue out of the sky, and the leaves vibrate, performing a divine rain dance. Quick, seek shelter. Our storms reflect my temper: as powerful as our Thunder Lwa, as short-lived and potentially destructive as a flash of lightning.
Spring, Autumn, and Winter were the stuff of novels. Sweater weather was visiting my uncle’s house in Florida in the summer where he kept the AC on 69. I never complained about my endless summers, I’m a June baby. That is, until I met Fall.
I moved to North Carolina in July, coincidentally, the last time I posted on this blog. North Carolina is an interesting place, I’m not sure what I expected. Decorative nooses? Guns on the sidewalk? It’s just a regular place with regular people. White people here be whiting but they do do that everywhere.
What I found instead was breathtaking, omnipresent nature. The view from my balcony is a small patch of woods. Behind them, a babbling brook that I can see and hear from my bedroom window now that the leaves have fallen and the winter began. Red cardinals visit me when I curl up in my rocking chair out there, with a candle, my bluetooth speaker, and a book. They’re often accompanied by crickets and other bugs, they whisper to me, welcome home.
Living in a place with seasons helps you tune into the Earth’s rhythm. So many lessons are contained in the flow She takes, which reverberates in every fiber of our beings. We are part of Her as She is of us; this is felt the most in Autumn.
The air cools down, the day shortens, causing changes in the pigments of leaves, giving them the bright reds, yellows, purples, browns, and oranges. It is a fairly known adage that people are more scared of being free than they are of bondage. We create the ties that bind us in life and we spend the rest of it crushed under their weight, blaming all around us. When we contemplate our true power, many of us run away.
That’s because better means change. To want to be better, to desire our best is to seek the grueling process of complete metamorphosis. Additionally, change requires healing. To heal means to face our deepest fears and insecurities and accepting them as guides towards what we really want and what we can work on, not as obstacles. Interrogating our triggers leads to deeper self-knowledge while freeing us from them, opening us up past the limits we imagined for our life.
Fall taught me that. To let go and to flow. To unleash my colors on the world, utterly unabashed. And ultimately to let go of those colors too, as they do not define me, but hint at something even bigger, that pushes me to dig deep. The cold keeps me in bed, forced to look within, to listen and edit the stories I’ve been telling myself by integrating the lessons I accumulated throughout the year. Winter is here.
With the gadgets, the theories, and the daily routine, we often forget the magic in our bones. We are made of star stuff, the same things that form everything on this planet, from its core to its outer layers, encompassing all of the life we know. Why wouldn’t it make sense that we’re subject to all the tiny changes around us that we may not be fully aware of?
Often we name things and believe we’ve captured their essence. I call it the Adam effect. But truly, we’ve only just described them as they appear to us, which is different from understanding or definition. What are dreams? Emotions? Desires? What is Energy? There’s so much we don’t understand about our making. Sure, we have our stories, but do we understand? Do we want to?
When the changes in the outer world match your inner turmoil, learn to listen. That’s the lesson of the seasons. It’s often understood as a cycle. I see it more as a spiral. The movement is represented all around us: the leaves as they tumble down, literature as written by Franketienne, the wind and light as painted by Van Gogh, DNA, the hips of a fanm kreyol to the rhythm of the tanbou, the coils of black hair.
Embrace change, let it engulf you, drown in it, and watch yourself be reborn. You can’t lose yourself by digging deep within, though it may feel like it sometimes. The compulsion to attach ourselves to old definitions of who we are, desperate to have a firm answer we won’t have to revisit, is the fruit of our ego. When we truly allow ourselves to flow, we don’t cry about our leaves being taken away into the wind, swept off, bagged, and burned. We look forward to our new leaves and flowers in the Spring, by setting the foundations in the Winter.
Housekeeping
I have been absent from this blog much longer than anticipated but Grad School got real, real fast. I’m going to be better, to the best of my abilities and to not let a month go by without posting at least once. That’s my small promise to myself that I’m inviting you in.
A lot is coming in the new year. Even though I haven’t been posting, I have been working behind the scenes on some very new cool stuff to solidify Anraje as an entity and to work on my creative career in general. I cannot wait to share them with you when I get to that point.
Have you checked my new podcast yet? I started 99% Anomaly Podcast with two dear friends of mine. It’s a collection of conversations on various topics, where our opinions range from educated and informative to ain’t shit and absolutely hilarious. For your weekly dose of black girl magic and unapologetic Krenglish, you should tune in. Here’s our trailer!
We’re on all major platforms including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Stitcher, Youtube etc. You should also Like our page on Facebook and follow us on Instagram @99percentanomaly for exclusive behind the scenes content.
(Did I just type that out? SMH. What the hell was that? 😛 Seriously though, we’re kinda cool on there so you should)
R.A.J. 
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