Day 29

I got an email yesterday from a student (learners, that's what we call them now). She has been courting me to be her mentor as she approaches her doctoral dissertation. She is interested in the effects of corporate racism and the experiences of African American professional women. As a black female executive herself, she knows first-hand the realities of racism. However, she has not always found professors willing to support her perspective.

After reading her email, I was immediately excited to work with her. I jotted down the names of black feminist authors I would encourage her to read. I began to strategize about how I would help her position herself in the scholarship to support her thesis and how I might defend her against pressure from other committee members. Like an anxious school girl responding to her first suitor, I woke up this morning thinking about how to reply to her email.

Why does the prospect of working with this particular student excite me so much? Perhaps it is my love of black feminist thought; or my desire to champion oppressed groups; or my compulsion to go up against the privileged fat cats in academia. I'm not sure. But I am sure about one thing. I need to follow the excitement.

I experience the excitement as a million effervescent bubbles rising up from my extremities to my head, as if I am a tall, clear glass being filled with ginger ale. It is pure energy. I am certain that everything I see in the material world is fed by this energy. It is the same energy that gave rise to Beethovan's 5th, the light bulb and m & ms. All of these things began in consciousness and were transformed through this energy.

All creative work, including writing is fueled by this energy that we experience as excitement. We have to pay attention. When we encounter something that makes us bubble over with enthusiasm we must write about it and read about it and talk about it and dream about it. We must immerse ourselves in that energy. Like a hot spring it will heal us and make us whole.