*In English:*
*I translated this text from its original version in Spanish using a translating AI. Although I know English and I could have done a more careful job, life is too busy ATM. It makes a partialy good translation of the essence of the writing, and it is good enough for now. *
**Incarcerated sister, dungeon, life, wars**.
**Text written with my sister Coline on my chest** - #FreeColine - *(+ info below)*.
....
I have a sister locked up,
in one cell or another,
in what we call "a far country", which could be many places
which could be many places
and in this case it is called Senegal.
The sister locked up
lived free, worked healing bodies with her hands and her knowledge of physiotherapy
and travelled
in search of simplicity, humble living
and resistance to the inertias of domination over,
violent inertias,
that are keeping the prosperous future of this planet on a tightrope.
on a tightrope
of extraction, pollution, genocide and war;
of oppression by system.
The locked-in sister and I
have and dolemos, connected to life on this planet,
feeling the collapses of ecosystems and murders of worldview and life of this and other eras.
We cry similar tears
and seeing love and resilience soothes and rejoices us
moments
and makes us smile every time;
reminds us that we inhabit and are one thing
in the deep
beneath all the things we are.
My sister is being made "legal accusations"
that sound like tales from another era
and which are not accurate;
they don't get it right
they do not represent
the symphony of her days,
of their traces.
If the people who have power are the ones who abuse,
they err,
impunity appears and it doesn't seem to matter
that whole lives are swept away.
She is sentenced to "life imprisonment", they call it,
to the rest of the days you live, here locked up your flesh and blood,
they say espionage, conspiring against the state
and do you know where they kidnapped her? The powers of "the state"?
They kidnapped her in Dakar
after being in body and mind, present,
at a meeting, in the streets, on the 17th of November...
with so many other people.
More than a thousand brothers, sisters, brothers, sisters
have been imprisoned with my sister,
with threats of trumped up charges
for joining together
in the desperate illusion of perhaps being able to turn
to directions that do not ignore
that the earth, the people, the soils, the waters
cry
of needing
to feel honoured.
So many crimes against life
humanity
with power and impunity;
and lives, like my sister who beats locked away,
with the threat of life;
with the threat of death or snatched away
of their potential,
to offer their gifts, gifts,
to the history of the evolution of everything,
like the lives in Congo, Yemen, Gaza, Tigrai, Syria, Amazon, Ukraine, Syria;
like the more-than-human lives that do not tell in anthropocentric words their stories.
My sister is not a criminal,
standing up for what is right does not make you a criminal;
my sister is a sensitive human,
connected,
who went to venture into that part of the world
in search of simplicity,
full of humility,
with the intention of honouring and observing what it means to potentially repair
inherited legacies,
to take charge;
what it means to be human in this era,
racialised as white
in a world that condemns,
and what can I perhaps do with my
do with my attention and presence.
And do you know where my sister looked, in those lands, the stories she told?
They were stories of love,
of humble agency
of those who have enough
and want to see abundance in times of competition, scarcity and uncertain threat.
Stories of birds flying overhead
and how it starts raining just at the exact moment when a situation is released
and so is the story that is told.
Perhaps her light, which is not hers, which is nobody's and everything's in animism and ours, makes her dangerous in the face of a power that is not hers, that is nobody's and everything's in animism and ours,
makes it dangerous in the face of a power that does not want to fill the possible experiences
of common sense the possible experiences
of a future that could perhaps still be tending to be prosperous for anyone.
for everyone.
So I cry with my sister
and she is silenced.
And maybe these days at the trial she will be condemned
or maybe they will deport her and release her
which seems less possible
because power always tends to accumulate
in those who do not know how to honour the whole sacred life.
I don't know if knowing her story
makes it more likely that the verdict will be that she is released
than, at the very least,
that they keep her away from those lands.
I do not know how to judge better from worse
I cannot, though I try, listen to her.
So here I am,
love,
in this heartfelt plea,
channel, I invoke
this incantation in intention:
May them who sees her and hears her and feels her
be unnable to help but see a crack open in their barriers,
through which the compassion that inhabits every being that we are,
from which courage is born,
may it spill out in drops that touch them;
who cannot avoid his action intoxicated with compassion,
of courage.
Of those minimal gestures
that whether we know it or not
go between waves
consenting to points of inflection
when the time comes.
May my sister
may she breathe calm and vision and not be broken;
may she not be turned
into a weapon
geopolitical tool
nor a trench;
that its life be honoured
that we honour her.
May she feel her body embraced here again.
May her story
not be lost in the sand.
And as I know she would want,
may this my incantation of intention, my prayer, not be for my sister alone
because she was never
neither from me nor for me nor for her
but it is and will be
for all of them, elles, them,
creatures
creatures
whose opportunity to live the fullness of a life that thrives
depends
on the execution of the power of a few hands and heads,
that from so many barriers of fear, greed and violent inertia
have forgotten
that courage is born of compassion.
Let the cracks come and possess them,
like rain on the rocky sandstone
let the barriers disintegrate at the touch of each drop
and be seen
inexplicably
immeasurable,
avocated
to offer their power
to life for life.
Coline, sister. We are near.
Fdo: Virginia Victoria
.................
“The dungeon is the hidden curriculum of white modernity, the prosthetic abjection to its thesis of citizenship.
The dungeon is not a place per se. It is a place of no place, a placeless place, a ‘place’ that the locateability of the citizen-subject is beholden to, the shadow underbelly of the city’s claims to foundational morality. The dungeon is how whiteness was invented. The dungeon is that child in Omelas* whose misery purchased the mirth and advancement of the city. The dungeon is the abject excess that is unaccounted for. The hidden guest at every meal.”
Original text from Bayo akomolafe: https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/post/why-i-sang-in-the-dungeons-a-prophecy-to-end-the-year-2023
*Omelas is a place in a tale writen by Ursula K- Le Guin.
The ones who walk away from Omelas https://www.utilitarianism.com/nu/omelas.pdf
..........
**WHAT IS BEING DONE?**
You can follow the campaign of Coline's family, colleagues and sisters on social media:
#FreeColine
https://twitter.com/FreeColineFay/status/1743752989603406162
https://www.instagram.com/p/C1xk0BbKD9t/
Sign a petition here: https://chng.it/XNySyVGQ94