In Consideration of A Kingdom: Two Sides To Every Story

On February 15, the Marvel Film, Black Panther hit the Big Screen. Not only was the film epic on multiple levels, but the responses on opening night. It felt like a family reunion, bigger even.  I arrived ten deep and a friend jokingly inquired as to when my mix tape was coming out.  There were photographers and radio stations. I think I even saw a black carpet. For me, it carried a deeper meaning since, as a child of the comics, I only had Black Panther (T’Challa) and Power Man (Luke Cage) and Storm (Ororo Munroe) . My other favorite was Nightcrawler (Kurt Wagner), he is blueback.

Sure I’ve heard all of the pundits speak about it not being a black film or how people are so excited over a fictitious character and how we still dropped million$ into a non black organization and barely support black films. If someone delivers good news, it really doesn’t matter the color of the mouth.  Black Panther is an illustration, a parable of the possibilities.  What would Africa be had it not been colonized? Had it not been stripped, raped, and impregnated by the ones with the biggest guns and smallest hearts? How far our spirituality linked with impending inventions would have advanced us had it not been for a mass interruption, spiritual rerouting, and consequential disconnect with the ancestral paths, the cosmological connections that already had a knowledge of life beyond this planet? Where would be be had we not been injected with an overdose of patriarchal martial destructive genes spliced into our cerebral conduct? Be aware that when I speak of Africa, I speak not of Africa as a continent only because we know her children stretch way beyond that real estate.  This Afrofuturistic vision, Black Panther, in the incubator of the imagination gives us a glimpse of the possibilities.  It was birthed from the imagination: the seat of greatness.  Greatness inspires greatness…or awakens it.

Now let’s look at our hero T’Challa and his proposed antagonist, Erik Killmonger. If you haven’t seen the film, tune out.  This is a spoiler alert. Wakanda, under the rulership of a reign of Black Panthers, prides itself on being untouched by the world at large, thereby avoiding wars, outside influence, rendering it free to develop to its fullness. Killmonger, a misplaced  Wakandan, spouts razor sharp truth in almost every statement about the colonizers and what a revolution should be about.  His method is to use the power, wealth, and developments of Wakanda to set about the freedom of the oppressed through warfare. Although seemingly ruthless in his quest and temporary claim to the throne, you must understand that he, unlike T’challa, has experienced first hand the maggots of oppression eating the soul of a people. These two men reflect Professor Xavier and Magneto from the X-Men series, Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Dubois, Dr. King and Malcolm X, the SCLC and the Black Panther Party.  The story isn’t new.  It’s not about who is right and who is wrong.  It about what the truth of what we need as defined by the ones who need it. What we must realize is that they are two sides of the same coin. The night and the day of a complete revolution. The ebb and flow of the same man. This is most evident in the underground (allegory) fight between the two Panthers.  It not one against the other, it’s one against himself.  T’Challa, in the end makes good on the hope of Erik when he decides to extend the hand of liberation beyond Wakanda.  There comes a time for a reckoning within, united by a truth that may not always be pretty. Fact or fiction, the power is there if you care to find it.  Now is a time for using what you have to do what you can with it. A time to cease the war against ourselves and flow into the power of One: One people, One purpose, One love.

Killmonger

“In My Mind, I Couldn’t Find A Place To Rest, Until…

Some years ago, I was in my favorite public library, Barnes & Nobles.  Positioning myself in a cozy spot on the floor in the African-American section, I leafed through several books, soaking up images and words while simultaneously creating my own from the filing of the information. Eventually I reached for a book with an inviting green cover and began to read. It was as if a breeze blew through my soul and time wrinkled.  I consumed the meal in that book ravenously.  As a child of nature, this text spoke a language that was strangely and in a way uncomfortably familiar. When I surfaced at odd intervals, I found myself looking over my shoulder to see if anyone I knew was around.  I didn’t want to be seen engulfed in this text. The idea of it conflicted with the letter of my parents’ religion, in which I had been battered and fried.  The inner chatter of that imprint conflicted with the idea of the book in question.  But my soul felt it. I didn’t know how to reconcile the two but I knew what I knew.  The book was on Witchcraft. Not that it was the practice perfect for me in all forms but it spoke to me because most who followed the path were in tune with the forces of nature, had a knowledge of herbs and medicines, gave council and were valuable parts of the village and community as Shamanic healers and leaders.

It was like when Tupac said in, So Many Tears “I grew up amongst a dyin’ breed. In my mind, I couldn’t find a place to rest, until I got that Thug Life tatted on my chest. Tell me, can you feel me?” My mind dug in, my soul was a lost child who had found its mother. Quite befitting when there’s been only a father and son in my wake. Mother/father/ nature connection is paramount. The African cosmological synapse presents a fully inclusive path to view life in 360 degrees which connects rather than compartmentalizes and subjugates facets of this life journey.

The Dogon, Dagara, Yoruba, Luba, and other African religions/pathways laid out the blueprint and created the structure for mind, body, spirit connection long before modern psychology or the branches of other religions arrived at the door. The connection to and importance of the natural world was evident in every aspect of daily life.  In present day, author Richard Louv in his book, Last Child in The Woods, states,” At this very moment when the bond is breaking between the young and the natural world, a growing body of research links our mental, physical, and spiritual health directly to our association with nature – in positive ways.”

Once again, I’ve come to that place, even deeper this time, beyond my childhood and long hours in the woods. On Sabbath afternoon hikes on the mountains or rides out in the country areas looking out across the converging rows or leaning treetops, linked me to something beyond the present realization. Ancient voices spoke on the winds that blew through me in the the cradle of the natural world.  The ancestral paths connect us to all life.  Nature is an integral part of the return to ourselves.  As elder and teacher of the old ways, Patrice Malidome Some says, and I’ve heard it said by the elders in my own family.  I knew it in my bones.yemaya_by_m_curtiss1

Your Silence Will NOT Protect You

This most potent statement by luminary visionary, Audre Lorde, speaks to the prophetic nature of purposed passion and undying vision.  She also states, “It is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.” At this juncture, this fat grisly top-heavy bend on the historical continuum, I issue not a statement but a question… What is your silence? What are you silent on that whispers hoarse in your time of solitude, that makes your own thoughts so discomforting that you drown them out with looping music and mindless conversation, the silence that screams and pitches fits on your psyche, the silence that has and will destroy any relationship that you’ve hoped to experience. The one that you choke on in liquid form and makes you step to the rhythm of a strange but common drum. You cannot drown it, kill it, out run it, hide from it, or ignore it. You can’t eat it away, dress over it, shop it out, work around it, fuck through it, smoke, pop, or snort it down.  You can only break it.  Your only way to freeness and truly living is to break your silence. Not only will it not protect you, it will systematically destroy you and everything you have, even dipping into your generations to come. It is not designed to protect you but to keep you enslaved to your darkness, locked in a prison of pain and consequential fear of speaking it. What…is your silence?

Foreword

Here we are in this cycle of a thing called life.  It doesn’t stop, some just get of from time to time, while others get on, some more than once. So while you’re in it, be in it.  In fact be in the minute because that’s truly all you have.  Some wise dude told me once, and I paraphrase and refry…

Your guilt and regrets rise up out of your past only in your mind, choking out your enjoyment in the now. Your anxiety and fears reach back from an anticipated illusion called  future, and stifle your dreams in the present.  All you really have at the moment is the moment, so you might as well be right there in it.  Yes we puff and plan, strategize and shift into gear for go, but as ole Johnny said, (Steinbeck) “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”  So don’t go around laying heavy plans with rats.

It’s Black History month, African-American Heritage season, and so forth. On March first, guess what…