#14: This sparks joy 💥💫
welcome back! I missed you!!
Hello dear people,
It’s been ages since joy has been sparked! Imagine that! Oh dear! I am excited to be back here with you in a cyclical creation that I have come home to once more. I hope love and light finds you in unexpected places in the coming days. Here is this week’s list!
Also, new invitation: If you would like to submit your own joyful things that you think this community will benefit from and feel aligned to, here is a Google form to do so with some guidance/ideas included. Together we can spark even more joy than I could ever do alone, so I am super excited to test this out! I would love to receive any songs, essays, poems, vibes, art, media, books etc. that are sparking joy for you and give you a shoutout if you would like. In the meantime, here’s this week’s list:
1. This artist
Follow South African artist Kimathi Mafafo on IG here: kimathimafafo
Artsy: Multidisciplinary artist Kimathi Mafafo is celebrated for creating works that explore beauty, materiality, and gender inequality in Africa. Mafafo’s works span embroidery, oil painting, and installation, and often depicts Black women surrounded by natural motifs and sumptuous textiles.
2. This invitation
What a beautiful invitation. What if?!!!!
If you’re looking for a wonderful person to support in the universe and follow on IG, Sonalee, aka @thefatsextherapist has got you!
3. This photograph
Follow Nigerian visual storyteller Oluwatoyin Adedokun, @ToyinVisuals on Twitter and toyinadedokun_ on IG.
“My name is Toyin Adedokun a documentary photographer passsionate about storytelling that creates consciousness about social, environmental issues and culture for development.”
4. This essay
I LOVE and very often think back to this beautiful essay discussing magic and science by our dear community member
who writes . This is such a beautiful paradigm shift — that science pretends to be above magical thinking but it literally is the study of the unexplainable; the magical.
If you would like to learn more about the difference between Science (the methodology) and Scientism (the ideology) I recommend this quick video:
5. This poem
For me this poem does not spark joy but beauty, pleasure, desire, and also, dis-ease. It powerfully captures the Erotic. I love the idea that we surrender to desire in much the same way we do to the ocean, a river, a lake: “Enter any body of water and you give yourself up to be swallowed”. Wow.
6. This show
I haven’t felt sucked into a world and a show like this in AGES. My inner child felt completely delighted. My cousin and my best friend both insisted that I watch Silo. I devoured it. It’s so good and I loved it! Here is a beautiful write up on the show from my bestie Alex, who is currently patiently sitting on the phone with me to give me the strength and support to be able to finish this newsletter for you because we were meant to create in community:
7. This song
if you are craving affirmation, and you are open to having your spirit be moved, listen to this:
8. This meme
I just… the accuracy! My birthday is July 9 so I am feeling the cancer season vibessssss and so happy I get to be a summer baby while I’m in the northern hemisphere.
9. This photo
This tree is saying so much right now. We are a delicious oneness, pretending to be separate. We are interdependent, relying on this one precious earth, needing each other more than we’ve ever been taught to acknowledge or understand.
10. This milestone
300K on TikTok! Thank you all! I can’t be measured by a social media platform trying to exploit my free labor by appealing to my inherent human need for social approval! And also! I am proud of myself for thinking out loud when it always feels precarious and strange and threatening to do so. I am SO proud to be part of this generation (not age-wise but consciousness-wise) of creators and feelers and artists and thinkers, and to be continuing the work of all those that came before us. TikTok is a new medium for doing old things: we have always had storytellers, healers, artists, philosophers, comedians, poets, teachers — none of this is inherently new in the grander scheme of human consciousness — but the mechanism and the scale at which it can happen is certainly very new.
There is a double edged-sword, more visibility and eyeballs means more danger, but today we are not going to focus on that. I’m proud of myself for continuing in spite of all the fear and anxiety involved (both of which I hope to be rid of in time and through therapy and coming to accept myself more and more but perhaps this is just a dream). I’m proud to be part of a community of voices trying to shift consciousness towards love and abundance and away from oppression and imposed scarcity. A special shoutout and co-congratulations to my precious friend and mutual
for the same milestone I am in awe of you and I love you and I owe you a phone call very soon!I’m proudest of all to be able to attract thoughtful, loving, curious, and imaginative souls like YOU who are tired of oppressive ways of being, thinking, feeling, seeing, relating. Who approach the world with an open heart and mind in spite of everything that this world tries to do to desensitize us. Who insist on dreaming and reimagining and deconstructing and reconstructing even when it feels impossible for our dreams to be realized. And who want a world with more community, ease, freedom, abundance, pleasure, meaning, purpose, togetherness, and wholeness. I really believe that other worlds are possible, especially given that we live in many of our ancestors’ versions and visions of another world, even though their fullest dreams have not been realized, and it’s beautiful to be part of generations of people who have tried and are trying to bring them into Being.
11. This practice
Here are 3 mutual aid projects we can support:
Uganda LGBTQ Emergency Fund GoFundMe for Ugandans facing anti-LGBTQIA+ violence
OpenYourWallett GoFundMe (Twitter here) for Black Queer and Trans Americans
CareForGaza’s PayPal (Twitter here) for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation
Thank you for being Here! I am sending love your way.
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Comment/like/interact <3 Thanks for all the love so far!! It means the world!
Such a profound honor to be mentioned by you here in this list of things that spark joy, Ayanda. I feel love, connectedness, and oneness as you pull us into what your consciousness is absorbing through these lists, and what a beauty to also be included on it. I had my first memory, recently, of when we all used to be connected as spirit beings, before/after bodies. And it's fun to think of the ways that writing/videos help us connect and co-guide as we individuate and try to figure this thing out. May we never be above magical thinking :-) <3
Beautiful! Thank you for this lovely list, sending to a friend!