The Friday unwind 009: Are you running away or towards? and other observations from a stranger

Location: Caye Caulker. Travel diary daydreaming, making pilgrimage, Sonia Sanchez, Gil Scott-Heron

Fridays are for unwinding. Inward journeys, outward wanderings, departing flights to nowhere but good memories — all are welcome here. Take all the space you need. In this series, unwind and unravel with me into a daydream, into a place that feels like a Friday spent elsewhere.

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Welcome to Life Is In Love With Me if you’re new. If you’re a regular recipient of this newsletter sweetness, welcome back! 🌹🥭🌹🥭🌹🥭

Last week I shared an essay on Pisces season and the overstimulated artist and 11 affirmations for remedying doing too much. It was beautiful to see which words resonated with readers and equally beautiful to receive affirmations in return. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the post had made its way to Instagram too: 

franzizo

A post shared by @franzizo

Deeply grateful and glad the affirmations are finding homes all over. 

Otherwise, I’m trying to keep myself in gentler rhythms as we approach Spring. Some things that I’ve noticed put me immediately into unwind mode are: 

Watching white sheets blow in the breeze, making and pouring my own rose water, patchouli, listening to Friday afternoon elation as school kids pass by my house, Cleo Sol, choosing to rest and redistribute my workload. 

the colour!

As for the vibe for today’s letter: Sasha Marie’s Radio Show, absolutely. Chapter 99 inspired today’s letter in part (especially 24:40), on running.

Now for today’s letter

Enjoy x

Because I always feel like running
Not away, because there is no such place
Because if there was I would have found it by now
Because it's easier to run
Easier than staying and finding out you're the only one
Who didn't run
Because running will be the way your life and mine
Will be described

— Gil Scott-Heron, Running

I hear these spoken lyrics by Gil Scott-Heron for the first time, gently leaning over the mantle, getting as close to the speaker as possible so I can really feel what he is saying. Am I running or leaving? I can’t decide. I pull back the speaking part once more, exact in where I restart the mix, listening closely for the answer behind the melodies, underneath the heavy poetry in Scott-Heron’s voice.

In another time and part of the world, I was meeting Negrill, an islander and stranger at the time, but one I wanted to have drinks with on a tiny rooftop on a tiny island in Belize. Both solo travelling in our 20s, both bewildering our mothers by our desires to go far, we wanted to sit somewhere high and away so we could swap notes and discuss our adventures. 

When I say it was a tiny rooftop, I mean it comprised of about 3 deck chairs facing the direction of the sunset with very little manoeuvre space or reason to rearrange their positioning. To arrive in the first place, you have to climb a ladder that overlooks the bar and the lined-up Belikin bottles. Up we went, balancing our drinks in one hand and holding down our dresses with the other, free to speak in a privacy we giddily greet with exhale as the sea breeze and bar noise blanket our conversation. It took 5 minutes and some slow head nods to confirm that we had the same humour, similar upbringing, and identical feelings about the Bad Bunny album of that year. We both want to go anywhere that speaks to our wanderlust and work hard to give ourselves that. 

When asked, I began to list my countries so far. “So in Mexico: Oaxaca, Veracruz… I lived in Chiapas - San Cris - for 6 months, Palenqué, where else? I’ve been to Tulum, Playa, Valladolid—“

“Cancún?”

“No. Not Cancún”

“Oh, OK”

“Yes. Also, Mérida after Valladolid. Bacalar …Mexico City of course. And then Cuba, Jamaica, Morocco and I want to see more African countries, and honestly Lisbon in Portugal has rich African culture. There was Spain, France—”

A pause for thinking and probably self-monitoring. “And then other parts of Europe too when I lived there.”

“Nice. This is from when to when?”

“Last few years I’d say”

“All in the last few years? What are you running from?” The question (her outrightness, the Caribbean directness that amplifies all questions, the fact that it was obviously rhetorical but begged thought) took me aback for some reason. I smiled it off, told her to come out of my business and we laughed the way Black women do together when there is more to say. I’m very used to people having strong reactions to me being a young woman living nomadically without an end goal in sight. It really does lead to some questions. Many of them I have answers for. This one landed differently because I didn’t have a response that felt fully honest.  

Credit: Amara Amaryah

‘There is no place for a soft / black / woman /there is no smile green enough or

summertime words warm enough to allow for my growth’

- Sonia Sanchez, Present

The question was not intended as a question, I know. I consider it as more of an entryway to examine my patterns of leaving. Why do I leave? What do I leave for? How did I get into this pattern of personal exodus? And, what feeds it?

Before nomadism became a way of identifying myself, I had always been a poet. Poetry, like the lines cited from the Sonia Sanchez ‘Present’ poem from her timeless collection Shake Loose My Skin, is my primary way of communicating myself and my bearings. As a Black woman wanderer, a solo one, a sensitive one, one whose dreams revolve around leaving what does not nurture me, there is often a lot of path-making, generational reaffirming involved in how I move. I travel for my future bloodlines, for my younger selves, for the women I’ve watched self-sacrifice. I’ve moved countries for love and I’ve moved for better health. For softness, curiosity, and always for the tug of my intuition. 

I am left running, in all directions, for the same reason Sanchez and Scott-Heron left me stationary, absorbing the poetry that articulates my life with more confidence than I could. I run often, towards myself or towards what I know belongs to me. Sometimes I run in the opposite direction, carrying it back to those (family, sisters, women, the open-minded) I know cannot immediately run where I do.

As travellers, this feels like the kindest thing we can do in a world that glamorises and obsesses over what it means to be a ‘digital nomad’ or to enjoy global citizenship. There is much running for us to do. People are watching to see whether we arrive, others are waiting to surprise us with fresh love in places we didn’t expect to arrive, there are those preparing to jump-sprint-jog into a life that may be spent unlearning, adjusting as we do, to new terrains. Most of the time we have to run away from ourselves, rather from who we thought we would be as we started this journey, come back, reintegrate, teach, gather enough breath to move steadily into new chapters once more. 

And the chapters are many and deserving of thanks, God willing. But I will land here, with Scott-Heron’s reminder that “running will be the way your life and mine / will be described” and this instruction:

and my singing

becomes the only sound of a

blue/black/magical/woman. walking.

womb ripe. walking. loud with mornings. walking.

making pilgrimage to herself. walking.

-Sonia Sanchez, Present.

Journal Prompts and Questions

Write about a time you enjoyed ‘making pilgrimage to yourself’, as Sanchez inspires.

What are you running towards? What are you running from? How does it feel to stay still in the midst of running? Would they still beckon towards you?

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Thank you, so much, for being here.

Below I share some more writings that I hope you will enjoy.

An Origin Story: Food Poisoning In Mexico Turned Me Nomadic

The Friday unwind 006: A Final Pep Talk Before My Year Of Audacity

A story about quitting my job to write

Musings on Black nomadism (pt 1)

The Friday unwind 004: When there is nothing to become

Love,

Amara Amaryah

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