“me oh my, how the time does fly | time and the river keep a rollin’ on by”
That phrase of a refrain by John Hartford has flowed in and out of my mind for decades. Just last week I sang it at the sight of sunlight on the French Broad River. Reflections of the infinite and finite nature of time. Meanwhile, the Appalachian springtime frenzy of flora and fauna has been feeding my soul. Such sacred awe.
Reading Wilma Dykeman’s classic The French Broad (1955) alongside its banks has been a pure delight. She left a treasure with her body of work. I am glad her son and daughter-in-law, Jim and Anne Stokley, are preserving her legacy in such thoughtful ways.
Back in March I went to Andrea Clarke’s birthday party. Andrea has been working with Anne and others to document her grandfather James Vester Miller’s legacy, developing a walking trail map of buildings he constructed. As I was talking with Anne at the party, she pointed out Wilma Dykeman’s image in the painting behind me (a mural by Ian Wilkerson at the Wedge downtown). “She always wore a hat,” she said. I smiled at the synchronicity of the hat on my head. An inadvertent homage to a writer I admire, whose work informs my own.
Without going into too much detail, I’ll share that I am reorienting on the journey that is writing. Next month will mark 10 YEARS of me regularly sharing essays and information via amiworthen.com. Time and the river roll on by for sure. Waves of words on the shore of destiny.
As my long time readers know, these writings have mostly focused on racial equity and local history and the intersection there of. They have been influenced by many people and things, including my friend Dr. Darin Waters and his discussions of the “collective narrative.” It essential for collective liberation, the lodestar I follow.
Last night, in the novel Women of Light by Kali Fajoardo-Anstine, I read, “he couldn’t help but think that Anglos were perhaps the most dangerous storytellers of all – for they believed only their own words, and they allowed their stories to trample the truths of nearly every other man on Earth.”
There is, as novelist Chimamanda Adichie speaks of in her influential TED talk, danger in a single story.
Narrative violence, like all violence, is painful to experience and witness, and has been occurring throughout human history. Our current narrative landscape is a particular kind of mess, mirroring the havoc being reeked on the natural one. Yet we can continue to tend to both with love.
And so I reaffirm these intentions:
May my storytelling expand understandings.
May it be informed by, and accountable to, community.
May it be helpful and healing.
May I mentor the next generation of storytellers.
As all is ephemeral, may we also prioritize pleasure.
And, finally, apropos of nothing and everything, one of the most profound pieces I’ve read recently is “Repair, Renew, Revise, Revise, Revise,” Kiese Laymon on the Great Migration.
Excerpts:
“Some of us are obsessed with liberation. Some of us are understandably obsessed with reparation. All of that is vaporous without repair.”
“We can repair us if we will ourselves to ask and answer the questions: What do repair and restoration look like for you today? What do you want them to feel like tomorrow? Do you have the will to ask someone you’ve harmed how you can repair that injury? Do you have the will to find yourself in the never-ending processes of repair and restoration? These are human questions, but they are really writer questions. We must repair what encourages suffering. We can only restore something that was whole in the first place. But what if we were never whole. What, then, are we restoring? And what does this have to do with the migrations north for Black folk in the Deep South?
I am afraid of those questions. I wonder if you are too.”
Of course I encourage you to read the whole, incredible essay.
Here’s to truth telling and love.
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(all photos by me except the one of me, taken by a friend)
Ami Worthen 