The first revolution is when you change your mind
about how you look at things,
and see there might be another way to look at it
that you have not been shown.
— Gil Scott-Heron
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, 1970

This is my happening:
I have forgotten some, but I am in awe of each moment that I do remember. Each floor I've felt under my bare feet. Each road and bump. Each animal that I've seen through moving windows or touched or eaten. Each person who made me catch my breath, those I never met, and even those who I detest.

This is my privilege:
I have always eaten plenty. I have seen the world from trains and helicopters and small planes. I have choices. I have a body that has been shamed, that I have blamed and twisted and regained, and in the end it has still given me a son, as it was designed to do.

This is my revolution:
I am upright once again, which is why I call this my revolution. Something else will happen. I will still change. But these adventures with goats and water, these transitions that came with marriage and with death, these disasters that I witnessed—these wars and earthquakes and their aftermaths, their rubble, their refugees, and their rage—they seem a story completed now. They’re connected to each other and they’ve come back around again and make some sense of the beginning.

​Image: “La danse (first version).” Henri Matisse. 1909. Oil on canvas, 8 ft 6 1/2 in x 12 ft 9 1/2in. From: Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:La_danse_(I)_by_Matisse.jpg