Jihad is an Arabic word meaning striving or struggling.

Greater jihad is the struggle within oneself.

Lesser jihad, that of the pen, tongue, or sword.

The prophet Muhammad said the best Jihad is the word of Justice in front of the oppressive sultan, also the one in which your horse is slain and your blood is spilled - the highest form being the person who has spilled the last of his blood.

Walter Rodney was a historian and journalist from Guyana who was assassinated in 1980 at the age of 38. It is alleged that the car bomb that killed him was ordered by the president of Guyana. He was an ideological threat to those in power in the Caribbean, Africa and North America. He wrote the book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.

Patrice Lumumba was a politician who became the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The details of his life and death are too dense to fit into a few sentences. He was a critical force in liberating the Congo from Belgium in 1960. He was killed at the age of 35 by a Belgian firing squad in 1961. All that remains is a golden tooth.

Tahar Djaout was an Algerian journalist who was assassinated in 1993 at the age of 39 by the Armed Islamic Group. One of his killers is quoted saying Tahar “wielded a fearsome pen that could have an effect on Islamic sectors.” A famous quote of Tahar’s is “Silence is death. If you speak you die. If you are silent you die. So speak and die.”

These people are champion mujahideen - or jihadists.

Champion and Champaign are derived from the same Latin word, campus. A word used to describe a battlefield. So here is a toast to the slain and righteous craftspeople of words. Those who use the pen and the voice as a weapon against the thieves of liberation.

The things I want to say.

The revolution will not be televised.

We do not change people’s hearts. We guide each other to find our hearts and realize we are capable of love. We will find our love may conquer the injustice within ourselves.

An open secret if you will. Love was always there. Love will always be there. Love is eternal.

I’m finding my voice. I’m in a strange car being driven by a stranger. This all feels like a dream. Wake up. I’m awake. Like Dorothy, suddenly snapped back to reality. I’ve found it. I’m learning to use it as a tool for positivity and love and attunement. I will use it as a fearsome and effective weapon.

My voice and my breath intertwined. One holy O.

Imagine a tapestry that goes on infinitely, each thread is simultaneously beginning and ending the story. each word and breathe is a heave of losslessness.

We’re almost there. But it’s only going to get colder. Do you have a light? We might as well go where we’ll end up. I remember having a place to go, having someone to talk to, having people who taught me and loved me and someone to look up to. This love is eternal.

I’ve been punishing myself for as long as I can remember. For what I didn’t do, for what I did. For what’s been done against me. But like a flip of a switch, I stop. My environment will punish me. I will be punished as is seen fit. Not a trial by fire. A punishment of fire.

People invent signs to use as tools to cloister you. Our environment is a prison which I will fill with love.

I could sense a shift. The atmosphere has changed. I could breathe a bit easier. It’s like chimes in the wind. The shushing and clanking. The hemming the hawing. Teetering tottering. Seeing sawing saying. The listening the doing. A tightrope walk over a canyon of insanity. It’s precarious.

The moment feels like an eternity. Until the moment is long gone it will have been with you your entire life. A cascade of eternities one upon the other. The moment is always with you. You are the moment cascading lush around me. A bearded man preaching a soliloquy. A kernel of truth for all to hear. And less it all becomes.

You are stranded in the desert feedback loop of time. The moment - it’s gone, it’s here, it’s now, it’s happening. It will happen. It is ceaseless, until upon its ceasing.

I’m going to show you a trick I learned. I’m going to create a moment. You are in it. you are it. so am I. I will create moments for you. I already have. I am now.

All this Babble

A radio bantering along the breeze of the ocean tide.

Silence is death. If you speak you die. If you are silent you die. So speak and die.

Stake your claim.