-excerpt-
The story of an African American writer is something of a rise and a
decline. I do not know why I did not take the time to write this a
long time ago. I guess I was just as afraid as I considered everyone
else to be. I am taking the time to create a climate wherein future
conversations about black male writers like me will take place in a
suitable setting. Even the music that I listen to seems to be
contrary
to the sensibilities of taxonomists. If my life has been anything
close to being like a novel, I remember playing one of my real life
characters in front of a room full of schoolchildren, the youthful
leaders of tomorrow.
Sometimes the lessons that we use to instruct the world of the need
to
think are hard to come by.
I remember being taken aback by thoughts of those beings whom I was
encountering were set on the doom of others who look like them,
pretending not to know the grave lessons upon which heroism was to be
established. The sheer nasty nature of contemporary Hitlerism was
something that had to be outdone. Getting all of the black race to
unite behind a symbol of hope is what drove me and what continues to
drive me. If a religion is not created in which the black race is
victorious and awe inspiring, this race will perish as other races
that were underdeveloped in the face of a changing modernity ...
This era needs good honest historians. All of my adult life I have
been working with hopes of doing something that will make a
difference, that will change the contours of history as I know it.
And
since we African Americans are not to win this war waged against us
by
inactivity, we should unleash the fury of our ancestors onto them,
Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X (Al-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz), Marcus
Garvey, W.E.B. Du Bois, Henry McNeal Turner, David Walker, Olaudah
Equiano. Those immortals who were preparing the day in which we could
garnish enough men to make the sacrifices it takes to be a tom and
win
the heart of the oppressors. They make slaves feel good about
themselves, they make them feel much better about being thoroughly
assimilated examples of neutrality. We have no other honorable way of
negotiating our lives here. We know that our country has not always
been home for us, we know that social death is a beginning. What more
honorable way than to initiate our meeting our maker than by
worshiping him to the extent of resisting those who are the real
atheists?
The living legacy of the resistance movement is what drives us to
continue to in this struggle. The resistance takes place in the world
in which we live, not in the world to come, not in the world of
tomorrow. Those instances of being in touch with the soul of a people
is what leads to one attaining greatness, the summit of human
understanding. A full emancipation of the racial instincts is what
the
modern period points towards. We dare not turn back. Alas, I have an
opportunity to make something real happen, even if I will see it as
an
unseen entity.
Lightness, happiness, and freedom
I feel light. The feeling of being Light is something that does not
come to the African American as an easy accomplishment. The dark
cloud
of history is being swept aside. The world of my own past, especially
the world that is recorded in writing, is one in which I did not feel
lightness. The ugliness of taking a position in which your own
culture
is under scrutiny takes away from a natural historical imagination.
It
is when we take the chance to un-darken our inner selves that we
recognize the enormous light that is inside of us, that tunnel vision
that we need to perfect in order to function as Light. Becoming light
is a wonderful enterprise, as it takes you through all of the horrors
of what being yourself is and what the self means. Light is universal
I have come to hear in my days of going to and fro. Truth and
falsehood are both Light. Darkness is based on ingratitude ... Hating
the spaces in which I was reared, the knowledge that I was given, the
everyday life that I had to live ... there was only darkness in those
days. Those days of smiling and yessirism and nomaamism are behind us
now, enshrouded in the murkey clouds of youth. Boyhood is forever a
remembrance to the Man who knows that at the Final Judgment his
father
and mother will be of no avail to him or anyone else besides
themselves in the singular. It is true that Knowledge is Light, and
it
is equally true that enlightenment comes in all shades, sometimes
transparent and occasionally blinding.
Happiness is earned in this world. What better way to establish a
basis for an edifice of happiness than to learn what one thinks
happiness is for himself? The old Cartesian mandate is that I rule
the
thoughts of all others out until I recognize the imagination as
embodied, as creator, as thinker. The rules of the games have to be
reconfigured to fit my own conception of my mind and body. It is only
then that my soul is engaged in music, only then that I can discern
the bliss of being. The joy of reaching the ultimate plateau, the
thril of being engaged with one's own delusions and priorities.
Freedom has been a goal from the beginning, the origins. This end has
become a beginning. I am no longer afraid of myself, as frightening
as
I can be. God knows how much esteem I held myself in, but the future
seems to reside in a quite arrogance, a will to the goodness that is
within. Idiots always have the most valuable things to say. No one
likes to pay attention to them because many times they may very well
be right. I refrained from listening to myself and willed an
ignorance
as big and uncivilized as an elephant. The crackle of the world
inside
of me is so densely muted that it is a miracle that it makes an
occasional appearance in these pages. It is so swift that it has just
returned with news of its presence making a real difference in lives
of the land in which he came to consciousness. It seeks a
consciousness that only God knows, for it is far too secretive about
its latest exploits.
I know that you may think that the narration of my story is all
twisted and leads to nowhere in particular. You may still be enslaved
by the logic in which you came to know reality. Hiding behind all of
the smokescreen is a real problem, and that problem is indicative of
itself: you may have no earthly idea how long it has taken for you to
summon your true history. And that history is a short one; in fact,
it
is being made, imagined, and it entails a great deal of traveling.
Seeking to be conscious of the dominant and subterranean elements of
existence led you to a school of ideas that you have abandoned, and
these religious sanctions have driven you to deny me because you can
only sense me and will never see me because I am a mirror of your
world. In plain language I am a reflection of what really is going on
out there, on the outside of your body, only according to all of the
intricacies of me, all of me, all of the organs and circuits inside
of
me. I am interlaced with the world out there, but for the sake of
conversation I have distinguished the outside in separate terms.
I show myself at the darnedest times. In front of an audience it
becomes clear that I am taking my listener to a new arena, one where
she or he is forced to confront problems, and coming up with a
solution on three important elements: lightness, happiness, and
freedom.
Our character is too aware of the elements that effect the people who
look like him, but he has looked into the mind and not action. The
latter has been a bit tapered off in his indirect approach to
understanding certain things about himself. He aspires be be a great
man of reason, and he is thoroughly convinced that there may be some
truth to the matter, at the present moment, that all of the
architects
of the free world seem not to look like him. He wants that to change
for the sheer sake that he knows that the jeers of the world of the
accomplished hurt and that sublimation of those injuries lead to all
sorts of abnormalities or adaptations here and there. He can be
himself without noticing because he has a certain disposition and
inclination to practice his methodology of cognition. There is a
distinction between concentration and worrying. There are no doubts
about his wanting to give freedom a loud hearing in the eyes of
mankind. And his appearance has less to do with his personal
ambitions
than it has to do with his will to individual and collective powers.
The doubters out there think that there is no way for this world to
change. They do not fathom the doom that is impending. So there are
those who use everything that they have to consult with God. There is
something boring about not doing anything. Actions speak louder than
words. But words inform all actions.
Our character has been holding onto a pernicious case of double-
consciousness. Words shall be put into action. There are belle
lettres
which go unheard of until the act is done and finished with. Let
every
human being know that we African American men come on the singular
vein of destiny. Let the children sing the hymns of patriotism until
every one of them is secure in a world at peace. There is something
to
making yourself into an archetype, an African American intellectual,
a
respectable man. But there is also something to putting thoughts into
the minds of all to see and feel. I feel it now. That brewing of
warmth that one feels when reaching a finish line. One morning as I
was walking down the street on my way to catch the tro-tro downtown,
I
looked into the eyes of my brothers and sisters for the last time
from
this side of the world. I am looking forward to a time when we will
know what it is to be exclusively on a place of existence in which
all
of the intimacies of our private lives come into public view. That
art
of invisibility is spectacular to the eye, so spendid that I salivate
in anticipation of smelling it. Take the mask off. I long to hear
those words. I will no longer know what it is to deny my connection
with all. The chimes of the bells are ringing. They reverberate. The
insects singing in other words. Can't you hear us?
Drained
Why deny your roots? Who can deny that I am here? Speaking truth
comes
with a price. But that was a far differnet world. There is no mistake
that others will know that negative space of twoness. Seeing beyond
the veil makes things a lot less confusing. It used to seem that we
had no other choice but to play an African American intellectual
martyr. The people whom I was closest to came first in my limited
view
of things. There are benefits to be learned from such a heroically
futile enterprise. There was no one there who I recognized as
providing a better way .... forward.
There comes a price of knowing the meaning of timelessness. Cleaning
all of the debris away led to us taking a long stare into the context
of this rubbage. Make no mistake about it: the origins of a man or
woman are not as complex as we tend to make them out to be. Education
should teach that. One has to watch the theater of the "living" wolrd
from a viewpoint of offering suggestions from a heavenly sphere of
immateriality. Who knows? Maybe one day one of us will figure out a
way to come back from the dead with a dispatch about what is really
going down over here. We see every second people praying and speaking
to God and occasionally to us or the other elements in their
immediate
presence. Imagine, if you will, the world from its total reality for
one instant and there is no turning back after the struggle to know
and knowing the struggle no more. Some characters seem to never be
forgotten. Imagine the shock of each and every one of us coming to a
conclusion, only being unable, at present, to communicate this
information on a massive, total scale to people around planet Earth.
We die fighting. Our ancestors assure us that we are mistaken in the
belief that the world in which we live is separate from previous
life.
And I am increasingly coming across communication that we, in fact,
can cross over at a certain stage of civility. Who knows? These
things
come full circle. How long, Lord?
--
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