Sensuality, pleasure, and joy.

Surviving the apocalypse and a solstice ritual suggestion.

“I want our futures to be safe, but I also want them to be beautiful”.

- Ayana Elizabeth Johnson

Once December arrived, the intense grief and anger I’d felt in November shifted into a persistent feeling of despair. After the greedy CEO was killed and we were told to think of it as a tragedy, after Daniel Penny was acquitted for lynching Jordan Neely on a train, whilst genocide continues, whilst authoritarianism becomes the norm across the globe, and whilst we continue to ravage the Earth and as a result experience environmental disasters that predominantly impact marginalised and poor communities, despair seems like an appropriate go-to.

I keep thinking of Octavia Butler’s Parables and how she predicted this shit show of a decade back in the ‘90s. But there is a line within her novel Wild Seed that gives me hope: ‘Thus, when her enemies came to kill her, she knew more about surviving than they did about killing.’

In her essay, Uses of the Erotic, Audre Lorde describes the erotic as empowerment through sensuality, pleasure, and the shared experience of joy, and that it’s only through the full embodiment of the erotic that we are able to change the world. It’s for this reason, Lorde tells us, that the erotic has been systemically suppressed.

I’m learning that I can’t single handedly change the world (I’m really not that good at things). But I can make changes within my daily life that connect me to the erotic and that ripple and reverberate outward, serving as a commitment to our collective liberation and honouring our universal oneness: stuff like eliminating single use plastic, loving my postnatal body even though it now exists beyond western beauty ideals, calling my representatives, buying from local farms, laughing harder and more often, listening to great music, figuring out ways to give less of my time/energy/life force to tech companies, spending more time in the present moment, continuing my own anti-racist journey etc. etc..

I can be more loving. More compassionate. More courageous.

I can teach my daughter about sustainability, and social justice. I can teach her to be kind, to be in her body, to love herself fully, and to always fight for what she believes.

But I must also teach her how to survive, so that she knows more about surviving than the system knows about destroying. And this system knows a lot.

One night, late November, I found myself on a prepper website, looking up the price of gas masks (I’m embarrassed to admit that but hey, here we are), and then continuing on down that rabbit hole to see what else one might need in the case of a cheeky apocalypse.

I didn’t purchase anything from the prepper site. Firstly because I’m not rich (turns out gas masks are very expensive). Secondly because I realised that if I’m buying a gas mask for myself and my child, I also need to get one for everyone else and their child as I’m not getting on that Ark alone (you hear that Noah, ya dick!). Plus stockpiling and hoarding a bunch of khaki coloured stuff seems very uninspiring to me. Survival needs to be way more sustainable, and inclusive, and a bunch more creative and life giving than some ugly arse gas masks and some dehydrated food pouches.

You can’t buy the erotic on a prepper site… or any site. Living from a place of sensuality, pleasure, and joy is something that takes work. Especially when it requires us moving beyond hegemonic understandings of what pleasure, sensuality, and joy actually are. The erotic is not a hedonistic pursuit.

Lorde’s work and legacy both sustain and inform alternative worlds beyond that of the white supremacist heteropatriarchy. This is radical and exciting stuff. It’s those kinds of alternative worlds that we must create for each other if we are to survive.

I know that I need to work on fully embodying sensuality, pleasure, and joy and that I need to model this embodiment for my daughter.

This blossoming commitment to the erotic is already transforming my despair into something else, something more hopeful and inspired. It has me beginning to believe in the possibility of something more. Something new…

A new world, birthed from the erotic, where no one is left behind; where we tend to the Earth, to our own heart, and the heart of the collective. A new world where our children not only survive, but most definitely thrive.

(And f*ck you Noah).

“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”

- Maya Angelou

Some things that are helping me to embody the erotic…

• The book Loving Corrections by adrienne maree brown.

• The book What if we Get it Right: Visions of Climate Futures by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson.

• Walks through a rose garden with mum.

• Scones with jam and cream.

• Turning off the news and social media notifications on my phone.

• Deleting the Temu and Shein apps from my phone.

• Donating to Yes magazine.

• Book shops.

• Afrobeats.

• Learning how to do my baby’s hair.

• THIS range of kids’ t-shirts by First Nations artist, Ryhia Dank.

• Contact naps with my baby (she’s about 12kg now so this is no joke).

• Prentis Hemphill’s Becoming The People podcast episode with Kai Cheng Thom. They have a beautiful conversation about transformative justice, and how we villainise and leave people behind, when really no one should be left behind: no one should be erased.

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This week is the solstice. In the southern hemisphere, where I am from, it’s the summer solstice. The brightest day of the year. The beginning of summer. In the northern hemisphere, where I live, it’s the winter solstice. The darkest day of the year. The beginning of winter.

My plan for the solstice is to make flower crowns with my nieces, go for a walk, take a cold shower, nap with my baby, eat cake, and set intentions for the new year.

The following is a ritual/activity suggestion for the solstice. A way to honour the season. A way to honour where you’re at. A way to honour the Earth. A way to embody the erotic. A way to just let yourself be…

Thank you SO much for being here with me.

I HOPE THAT YOU ARE ABLE TO TAKE CARE OF YOURSELVES
AND YOUR COMMUNITIES

LOTS OF LOVE XX

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This email was composed where I am currently staying, which is the region now known as Melbourne, Victoria. I would, therefore, like to acknowledge the people of the Kulin Nation, Traditional Custodians of the land for which I am on. I pay my respects to their Elders past and present.