Lauren the main character in Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower as been occupying my brain for the last couple of weeks since finishing the book. I am finding myself not just thinking about the character but actually find myself consulting Lauren regarding how’d she’d handle a situation or approach something I am encountering in my day. I am much better off after reading the Parable of the Sower, which at first glance might be a pretty dark story to be reading in this messed up timeline, but there are two primary takeaways from the story for me that are equipping me for dealing with this shit we are facing.
First, Lauren writes her way through each moment. She writes when she is in the safety of her home and walled community. She also writes when she is out in the open trying to survive walking down the open freeway with limited resources. Writing is just as important as the gun she has, if not more. This is how I feel about writing right now. There is no way I can get through the day without writing about what I am seeing and feeling. Writing is just as important as food, water, and exercise for me. There is no way I can get through this moment and all of the thoughts swirling around in my head without putting my thoughts down, reorganizing, and publishing in my notebook or within on my digital domains.
Second, having black voices in my head informing my thoughts reveals just how deficient my legacy programming and belief systems have been over the years. Having a tall black woman living in my head helping me make decisions throughout my day provides so many more nutrients and balance in my brain than my 8.5X11 white male existence can manifest. Once the walls go down and you actually let in the black and brown voices into your head you realize the reasons why we are all so fucking angry and blustering all the time. Having Lauren in my head living alongside the other cast of characters who live rent free in there helps balance things out and stabilize me in these messed up times. I feel like the little band of people Lauren accumulates in her journey are assembling inside my head, and while the world is still a very dangerous place, I feel like I can trust the voices in my head a lot more than I used to be able to.
I cannot understate the importance of reading and writing in this moment. Not just reading, but reading the works of diverse voices. I cannot understate the threat that television, the Internet, and artificial intelligence is having on our well being. As I write my way through each day I find myself getting further and further away from the Internet. And this is a good thing. As I read more each day and incorporate their voices into my own thinking and writing I am finding myself unwinding my earlier programming that has left me angry, frustrated, and raging against the world. I have no idea what this moment has in store for us, but I am confident that writing and sharing of stories with each other is how we are going to get through this. This isn’t something that we can only do online, and it requires us doing the work to sit down and actually read a book, and make the commitment to write regularly—-otherwise we won’t be able to make sense of what is happening to us and find our collective way forward.
