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At a 50th birthday party, I received a premonition. My mother (a feminist), my mother's friend (a spiritualist & descendant of sharecroppers), and I (an artist) sat around a table discussing homesteads, gender politics, and desires. Suddenly, my mother's friend met my gaze and seemed to have a premonition. She said, “You feel familiar”. I nervously reassured her that I had never met her and racked my brain for any possibility this could be true. She tightened her grip and repeated herself: I was not someone from the past but from the future. “I can feel you from the future”. I attempted to explore what she meant, but as fast as the portal opened, it closed. “It’s just a feeling”. I chuckled and took what she said as an indication of my greatness and inevitable success. I toyed around with the idea that she was somewhat of a Shaman. How much of this was magic, and how much was a middle-age crisis? As the years passed, I never forgot what she said.
“I can feel you…from the future”. What did she mean by that?
“I can feel”
During the 2020 Black Lives Matter Protests, my body went into full blown fear. Though I was thousands of miles away from an American shore, I sat on my living room floor heaving and terrified as if struck by something. In an attempt to calm myself, I meditated. What came to me was something of an image. I saw them. In the ether, all those who are dark, my kin, who had died at the hands of white supremacy. I was neither scared nor welcomed by them. It just was.
As I came to, a wave of grief came over me. I sobbed. Then calm.
I’ve never shared that before, but I felt it was important for me to say this. That I saw them and that they were real.
We are continuous witnesses, and the containers in which we understand why are constantly changing. Sometimes we hold onto them (white supremacy), steadfast in fear of who we will become without them, and sometimes they (adolescence) shed like silk off the body.
My therapist, a close witness of mine, always tells me “the body knows”. I wonder what my mother's friend saw in me? Did she see my mother's father? A man who rebelled during the Rhodesian Colonial apartheid. Later, birthing a woman who would rebel against the confines of her own culture. Did she see herself? A descendant of those who remembered to carry seeds in their hair, therefore understanding the importance of preserving knowledge and life. Or did she hear power in my words that night? The impact could be felt so far that the distance started to turn into the future. Did she start to understand that feelings are more than just a response, but a collection of memories and clairvoyance?
Are premonitions an ancient technology, and are our bodies and therefore our feelings tools with which to understand life?