They came to Bethsaida, and some people
brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him
outside the village. When he had spit on
the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, “Do you see anything?”
He looked up and said, “I see people; they
look like trees walking around.”
Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s
eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his
sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.
Mark
8:22-25
Here’s a
short story I got published back in Spring 2003.
I was playing with the idea of Gestalt and leaps as well as the all too
common inability to understand one another’s structures and patterns.
Ndi ne
zala ya Bantu ya sambombo—I have the hunger of six men. Such was my name before I became a
shaman. It was a powerful name and still
no one has forgotten what I used to be called, as I am still strong. I am old now and though my hunger for food
has dwindled, my appetite for knowledge outmatches that of any man.
As an
effective shaman I have kept my new name secret, but this does not mean the
other villagers do not use many ways of calling me. Spitting Jaguar for my fierceness. Weeping Snake for my power of healing. Scar-face for the marks left from my
encounter with a mother wolverine. But
most of all, I am known as Feathered Eye, since my ability to see the spirit
world matches that of the birds of the air.
* * *
The
name’s Arnold O’Dally. Everybody has
called me Arny since I was a toddler.
That is everyone except my mother who came up with the goddam name and
insists on referring to me as I was christened. I think I’m supposed to be Irish, but that
means nothing to me, and though I have spent half of my life outside of the US,
I have never visited the ‘homeland’. I
prefer jungles and animals and strange savages with spears—don’t ask me
why. My friends all think I’m insane,
and I have never denied it. So
what? I still have to live with myself
and my own likes and dislikes. I think
they’re the shit-heads for holding 40-hour desk jobs while I travel, but I
suppose there are more shit-heads of their type than mine so they must be the
normal ones. Everybody loves democracy,
right?
* * *
Most
shamans are like the chicken or guinea fowl that can only fly in a short spurt
to the nearest tree in order to roost for the night. They see little in the spirit world and the
small visions they see make no sense without understanding the larger landscape
of the other world. My own spirit has
the wings of the falcon and it can rise to see the other world as easily and
plainly as I can see your face when I am talking to you. And if you are anything like the white men I
have met, than you think that what you touch with your hands and see with your
body’s eyes is the only world around us.
I no longer try to explain or convince others how obvious the spirit
world is which they are blind to, but I think you will see my wisdom when I say
that I have learned that there are two different kinds of shamans for the two
simultaneous worlds we live in. There
are those such as myself who have the feathered eyes to help and guide us
through the perils of the other world, and there are those who wield great
magic for all that which the body can feel and see.
I have
met several such shamans and I have been shown marvels that few of my people
would believe until they saw it themselves.
These shamans of the body’s world showed me shining sticks that barked
louder than any dog and shot a tiny yet deadly arrow, quicker than any
bow. I can remember a dark box that
shivered and made the strangest music. I
also saw colorful sticks that, at night, could shoot out firelight in a
straight path. These white shamans had
more wonders than a chief has children, and I pestered them over and over to
show them all to me until I could wield the magical wonders myself.
* * *
Well, there
are travelers and there are travelers.
In my opinion, anywhere where you spend more money a day than you would
at home is not worth your time. I once
did those hippie trails nearly all over the world, and I don’t remember a damn
thing. I know I visited some exotic
places, but there was nothing I saw that could compare to the wild things that
were constantly floating through my head.
That was years ago, and after one failed marriage I find I come closest
to sanity when I’m alone on trails made by animals, as far away as possible
from civilization or hippie love.
Savages are all right, but they can drive you nuts at times.
Like that
time I was in central Africa, supposedly on some anthropology project. I was really just the guide for this big-ass,
avant-garde anthropologist from Chicago.
He had this self-inflicted policy that he wouldn’t use English until he
had learned the local language. Of
course he spent all his time trying to communicate with me in some fabricated
sign language in order to get me to ask the locals a question in a relatively
known trade language. Hell, now that’s
insane. I doubt he ever learned a lick
of their language, though the system worked all right in the end once I got
proficient at reading his dumb-ass signing.
We were out there long enough that I forgot he ever knew English and I
nearly shat my pants when he started talking again once back in the civilized
world.
* * *
Of course
I realize that not all white men are shamans.
Especially those who claim to know about the spirit world. I think that in trying to become shamans of
both worlds, they eventually lost their minds.
Nobody will forget their loud voices and how they insisted that the only
thing that had feathered eyes were certain banana leaves stuck together which
they all carried around like one would a machete. They called it ‘Godz buuk’. When I asked them how dead leaves could see
they said that it was living speech.
Then I asked them how they could know their buuk had feathered eyes when
they couldn’t see any of the spirit world themselves. They insisted that the spirit world was a
place we enter after we die. Such
children! How do you speak to children
who insist what you see is not there?
I took
these men to a yam plant and asked them what they saw.
“We see
green leaves and stems,” they replied.
I told
them there was more to the plant than they saw.
Suddenly they grinned like one who has solved a riddle.
“Yes,
there are roots and yams underneath,” they said.
Impatiently
I grabbed a hoe and ripped the plant from the earth.
“I am not
talking about what is only covered by the earth for a short while,” I
scolded. “A plant has a spirit. It can be weak or strong. Healthy or sick. Stubborn or fragile. Perhaps this one has a temper, or that one is
grouchy because there are too many bugs bothering it. You look at this yam in only one way—a very
simple way, but you must learn to see the plant from above as a bird if you
wish to speak on matters of the spirit world.
I love
children, and many come happily to me to learn about all things in life. But I do not tolerate children who insist
what they know is the whole truth. Thus
I sent those white men away from our village with great anger. Tchaka!
Children can be so ignorant!
* * *
I think
my temporarily mute anthropologist figured he was something special when he
learned that the head shaman had recently driven out some Bible-banging
evangelists doing their missionary duties along the main river. Of course, I don’t think it hurt that I had
traded my extra machetes for some deserted mud hut to shelter in for a few
months. But like I said, sometimes the
natives can drive you nuts. Most of our
dealings were with the very shaman that had sent the evangelists away. He had more curiosity than a damn jungle
monkey, but I had no choice but to humor him since he obviously had the
authority to say whether we stay or leave.
I’m sure by the end I showed him every technological gadget we brought
along at least twenty times over. The
anthropologist, at first, frowned his disapproval until I explained (in
English) that this was means of job security.
I almost wish he hadn’t agreed after the thousandth time of turning the
flashlight on and off till the batteries finally died. I didn’t mind, however, demonstrating with my
old but dependable Remington 30.06 rifle.
Of course, once word got around what my ‘barking stick’ could do, I had
to sleep with it under my pillow lest it should conveniently disappear.
The
funniest, however, was when I pulled out my Polaroid camera. I remember I took some nice pictures of the
shaman himself against the backdrop of the village. But I swear, when I showed him the pictures,
he just gave me a blank stare.
“That’s
you,” I said, swinging my arm in the direction of the village. “Your own nosy face in front of these huts.”
He
insisted that all he could see was pretty lines and squiggles.
“Look,” I
pointed at the picture in his hands.
“There’s the chief’s hut with the courtyard in front. And that’s one of his topless wives sweeping
the dirt with her idea of straightening things up.”
The
shaman just shook his head. That’s when
I went off into this elaborate explanation of the second dimensional world
versus the third dimension—to absolutely no effect.
It
reminded me of when I used to hang out with my son from my flopped
marriage. Some times children can’t get
the simplest concepts. I remember
explaining the idea of money to my kid, but the poor guy couldn’t understand a
damn thing. Just like the shaman. I did my best to explain how land animals can
only move on a two-dimensional plane, whereas fish moved on three because they
could swim up or down. That didn’t work,
so I tried birds flying in the air while we remain on the ground. For a brief moment, I thought there was a break-through
when the shaman’s eyes lit up with sudden understanding.
“You are
a shaman as well,” he said as if that settled everything.
Shit! Savages can be so stupid.
No comments:
Post a Comment