I celebrated my 37th birthday on January 20th, the first day of Aquarius. While I don’t know a lot about western astrology, I have often found it fitting—as a person in diaspora—to be an air nomad. Aquarius is the anti-status quo sign, who above all else prioritizes freedom. That word has been politicized to mean many things, but I’d like it to mean liberation for all people and not just the privileged few.
Borderless. I love open sky. I love the feeling of an airplane taking off. I love being connected to different communities and places even if I’m not from any of them.
Lunar New Year is almost here. In the solar calendar, I was born at the start of the year. In the lunar calendar, I was born at the year’s end. But while it’s easy to get trapped in the borderlands—the in-between where so many diasporic peoples are cast—I’d like to think that those of us here are entirely our own invention. It takes ingenuity and strength to be and build a bridge. To reach across nothing but empty air and sky, and firmly connect separate lands. To be innovative enough to build something out of seemingly nothing, and reliable enough that others trust what you’ve built and stand upon it, too.
It is not lost on me that January 20th this year was both Martin Luther King Day and inauguration day. An American contradiction: a day that honors a Black man that the US govt as**ssinated (but only as a bank holiday), and a day that ushers in a white man who embodies oppression and the status quo.
Let this be a reminder to all of us, at a time when there are people working to fracture our communities. Cusps, intersections, and borderlands are not undefined, identity-less spaces. They are places where we must confront the greatest fissures in ourselves, in society, and in the values that we claim. They are places where we must believe we can walk on the sky, and via our imagination, craft, and resolve, we make that belief true.
Break the status quo, my friends. Build bridges in their stead. Then, together, we can walk on the sky, free as we were always meant to be.
