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I woke up today to the news that I was not selected to mentor trainees interested in writing grants. They had over 70 mentors who expressed interest and well, none of the students had similar interest as mine, so I was not needed for mentoring. At first, I was stunned. It’s not every day that people reject me with grant writing. But then I remembered maybe it was all for good.

My ways are unconventional and well, this isn’t the first time I have been counted off. So I decided to write this to myself. Mostly to showcase that until it exists, then all the dreams I have with grant writing would be dreams. To turn it to reality, I need to put it in words. I need to be deliberate about what I mean for example when I say grants are stories. I also lack time and patience. My head is still on a long break from work that the idea of teaching or mentoring may not be right for me these days.

But I can persevere. The next couple of days are my attempt at making sense of grants as stories, my attempt at explaining it, celebrating it, and bringing it to the center of my life so that folks will understand how it has helped me soar. I don’t know what the structure will look like but I will try to share tibits of what I imagine this can be. Motivated by this rejection, I wrote a lot today, as in a lot and for the first time, decided to keep it from here. Not because I don’t think there are aspects of it worthy keeping, but more so because I am learning to find myself in this process, learning to persevere courageously too, until this story I have been telling to an audience of one, makes sense.

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Ben Okri has a poem, “I sing a new freedom” that ended with these worlds: “children of the stars…ought to amaze.”

I agree and as part of our recently concluded STAR designathon which ended this weekend, I reminded students of STARS about why all of them are quite simply

Amazing

Brilliant

Celebrated

Dominant

Elevated

Famous

Genius

Hero

Icon

Just

Kindle

Lead

Major

Noted

Outstanding

Prominent

Quest

Renowned

Stellar

Talented

Unique

VIP

Worthy

X-factor

Youthful

Zenith.

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You are draped in all colors of the sun. All the shades of blue skies. All the greens of leafy trees. You who loves a life that cannot be denied. We named you after God so you never forget your name, never forget that you can own beautiful heavens, powerful earth and brilliant stars. You are also more than you seem. You name is God after all. Nothing can prison your mind. You who are free like air. A child of dreams. I pray you keep bursting open doors that amaze us all. We love you Olisa. Happy 6th Birthday, Olisa.

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If anything I do, in the way of writing grants or whatever I write, isn’t about lasting, or sustainability or the community or villages I belong too, then it’s a waste of time. These days I want to indulge myself in open conversations that allows the collective ‘we’ to dream, which is to say, sustainability, is like air. Everything we do must have that at it’s core.

The best grants I have ever written, those that failed and those that succeeded, have at their rim, a desire to last, a desire to remain, long after the funding ends. We begin always with the end in mind as the end is certain. But what we do from the beginning is unquestionably crucial. When you don’t plan to last, when you don’t even know why you ought to last, you ultimately keep nothing. You are also lost. Which is why I ask always, what will you keep? For me these days, every single thing.

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The idea of lasting is like electricity. The switch turns on, and I am fully charged. My mind becomes a tunnel threatening to force me to burrow deeply. Eyes are bright, like the sharpest blue of spring sun. Head focused as if on a edge of a cliff. As if waiting to meet another head unbowed. Mother bear turned research lion, I begin to work day and night until the ideas in my head on how to last take shape. They haunt me on days I dream of becoming. A bird and her nest, I take pieces of information, stick by stick, about which ideas to follow or not follow, for proper definition of what it means to last. I will not stop until the last stick is placed.

Sustainment is beyond wishful goals these days. It cannot be the music I heard yesterday. The type that lingers on what to do. Not the why and how to truly do it. Failure has tightened my heart with a band of doubt that only success or more failure may unravel. So I put more oil in my lamp, sip a cool glass of mango juice, and go back to work. These days I am mostly waiting, for when Spring will come and whether flowers will sprout or whither. We spent last fall planting seeds that I pray flourish this Spring. The dreams are as wild as a bed of wild flowers. This idea of lasting may seem trivial to some, seem unlikely to some, seem unbelievable to many, but then it’s me and if my dreams are not bigger than me, then I’m not yet dreaming. Spring has my heart in a knot, only time will loosen it, ideas may loosen it, or failure may keep it tangled and back to the dull hull of the previous year’s ache. Either way, I’ll wait for Spring.

Art I saw on Twitter today (@Dr. Chandra Ford) inspired these thoughts in lasting.

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And when I speak of love, I speak of you. I speak of how you emptied yourself in me, one fine Friday evening and nine months later, we birthed a queen so powerful like the amazons of Dahomey, Queens of Nimo.

I speak of our boys, all three of them with beauty so numberless, wisdom so endless, that it can only be God.

When I speak of love, I hear stories of life along a place where crocodiles roams free, you a little boy, roaming free, yet trapped in a world that would rather silence you with brute force. I speak too of the ways you sailed through that life to this. Sailed through joy, sailed through sorrow, and still survived, connected to a higher glory.

See your love, is like an amazing grace, one that found my soul when I was so lost. Your love, is central to my flow, central to all I breakthrough to find my soul, like moments where I fall to the ground with my face to the ground. And when I stand, even though I tremble, your love is there, holding me steady, like a rock.

Your love is kindness, tenderness, everything in Corinthians, and eternal. Your love is like a tree by streams, with roots near water. Even on days without rain, your love keeps bearing fruits, keeps staying green, never running out, never running dry.

Your love, this love, will never be moved, not when it’s the very air I breathe. Your love, helped me birth Belles that are dreamers, boys that are artists, and theorists, and mind healers in a world where minds remain in disarray. Ours is a mesmerizing array of perfect love that drives out fear knowing that there is no fear in love. Your love, this love that birthed these words that I speak of, powerful, numberless, endless, glory, rock, eternal, this perfect love is you, God.

Happy Valentine’s Day to my forever rock, forever love, Zobam. This day means a lot as one of our earliest dates when we first met was on Valentine’s Day. He knows what to do when I weak and I the same for him that it truly can only be God. He is the foundation of that which defines us and I am forever in awe of all he is doing through you. You complete, give me something to think about always like Jill once noted. Plus you school me, move me, help me to be more than I could ever dream of. I am all that I am because you love me and I know that the plans he has for us are beyond words. Eyes have truly not seen them. Love you, my forever Chi, the one who literally was born to save me.

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I have been speaking about sustainability for a long time. I woke up to to a phone call this morning that asked if I could speak on it to a group in less than 30 minutes. I said yes ( because I have been thinking about this topic for a long time) and proceeded to create a presentation in 30 minutes. During the presentation, I was mesmerized by the person speaking. Granted it was me, but the words that seem to come to me, came from places I tend to ignore about why this topic truly matters to me. I have written failed grants about it. Dreamt about it. Thought about writing both fiction and non fiction on it and well it is at the heart of why I keep this blog in the first place. The idea of something, anything that lasts. Not for publications or accolades, not even for funding, but because I care deeply about why things should last. I found myself speaking about people now dead who championed this issue. I spoke about papers from 1990 on this issue. I shared my dreams and new ideas soon to be birthed this year about it, but above all I realized why I care deeply about this work.

This urgency to give meaning to sustainment is the source and meaning of my work these days. It continues to help me dream, widens my ambitions with any health issue that remains a persistent source of inequities, reminds me often that I will fail because people don’t understand it, yet still I will rise. I want to believe this fever for all things sustainment will break one day, and I too may end up saying that things never last for a reason. All the things I do these days, all these writing are both my guide and hope. Every single thing I keep is reminder of the very thing I continue to seek. What am I seeing, what is seeing me too, and how I tell it’s story is the reason I know I need to reach beyond myself this year. This work is out of this world, like the very air that I breath. So I close by claiming it, naming it, as I prepare to intensify, what may seem impossible, with my biggest dreams still.

My plans for sustainability are beyond me, but I will dream, be ambitious, embrace the dip, and still rise. Amen.

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The first dance takes your breath away. All the deceased left behind, dance in a line with pictures of him on their hands. They dance and cry, disturbing the air, till your feet and eyes get used to it. Solid grounds are no longer at ease. Minds wonder too, who will mourn the deceased? Death has no where to run. Not when life still is the starting point. So who will mourn the deceased? Who will come to speak of their name, their honor? Who will wear precious clothes, those gold or royal for the deceased? Who will cradle all their steps like trees rustling in the wind? Who will sing of all the ways they survived? Who will join those they loved to keep moments of silence?

Last night, I saw who, with many that wore blue. Some wore clothes red and royal. Others simply looked regal to keep their pact with you. There were backs bent to the ground in your honor. Money sprayed around for your honor. Many came to tell death of how you lived. Death saw you belonged to a people. Death saw your children welcome all the people that knew and loved you. Death saw Umuada, daughters dancing for you. Death saw a hall full of people for you. Death saw them seated at tables red, white and purple for you. Death saw all sorts of geles worn for you, in reds, gold, purple and blue. Death saw a room full of Ichies and Iyoms for you, all dancing and singing for you. Death saw lions and lioness chanting for you, their great lion. Death heard prayers too for you for grace, for rest, for perpetual light to shine on you. Death saw all this people dance and dance till the break of dawn for you. Tell me, are you really dead?

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There are stories within stories within stories and in stories. That was how the play began. Then a group of students at Saint Joseph’s academy began to take us down a path where all stories begin and end and begin again and end, masterfully weaving all of it together to illustrate the joy of storytelling. I was mesmerized. I had never heard of a play and when I was invited to attend a play on storytelling, I was hooked. The girls were brilliant. I am still in a sort of daze about the audacity of stories. If only we truly understand how they can hold all of us together. Keep stories.

The cast, Bravo!

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As days become week, and weeks, month, and months year, the angering for your life lingers. As days become week, and weeks, months and months year, memories of you, and echoes of Osodieme, lingers still. Days will be weeks and weeks will be months and months will be years, yet what will become of all this anger, the memories, the echoes of you that continue to draw air on their own, as if life has barely moved, as if death nourishes us still. Your cervix may have won this time, but we are up fighting as nothing else matters.

Keep resting till we meet again.

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I like to find treasures in books. Some old, some new. Some full of prose, some simply poetry. If beauty was measured by the books you read, I’ll be the most beautiful reader you’ll ever meet. Keep all the books you read.

My last son is in his ABC recital phase and one book I keep coming back to always is the Black BC’s book by Lucille Clifton. The richness of our heritage, the boldness too, makes this book a treasure always to hold and keep. I personally believe it is one of Ms. Clifton’s most powerful book, one that I hope to use to inspire my son with during this phase of his life.

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What’s so nice about our home in the evening is that everybody is there. Dad in his blue scrubs, sitting on a chair. A child on every chair and grandma too. Rice on the table with fried plantains and fish stew. All of us, smiling, as we eat, hoping the night lingers as we sit, hoping we stay awhile like this, until at least the last plantain is set free, until hearts too are at peace.

Eunice in the Evening by Gwendolyn Brooks

I have been re-reading Bronzeville by Gwendolyn Brooks. It’s simplicity is stunning. I love everything about this book, Eunice in the evening being one of my favorite as it reminds me of my own home too these days. Dinners together are a treat, one we cherish on days when Dad happens to be home. It inspired my thoughts above. Keep evenings with your family.