Tell the stories

According to Patricia Riles Wickman, the importance of the role of the storyteller cannot be overemphasized:

Cultures in which the entire responsibility for replication and perpetuation of the cosmogony is bounded by the ability of its members to hold its elements within the living memory of each generation, without recourse to written codification, embody a type of dynamism within themselves that is unique to orally codified cultures.  This dynamism is both parent and child of the process: such cultures are constantly required to perform, at the same time, twin activities, regenerative and perpetuative.  They encode and institutionalize a ritualized cosmic past that objectifies the culture, even as they reinvent and reinvigorate a social present that uses as its benchmark the very cosmogony that is constantly being reinstitutionalized. This is the process by which, within orally codified societies, the reproduction of a structure become[s] its transformation. [p.60, Wickman]

Where are all the birds?

sad.for true.
David Lewis, Jr. is the last living medicine person of the Bird Clan of the Muscogee in Oklahoma.  Lewis description of his role as medicine person to the clan, and the void that will be left if he is unable to find a replacement for himself underscores one of the ways in which Creek culture is being eroded by modern pressures and influences:  

 excerpt from Creek Indian Medicine Ways, by David Lewis, Jr. and Ann T. Jordan

" I know that I'm the only living, true medicine man left who has actually been initiated.  It is nothing to brag about; it makes me sad.  We have a lot of carriers (uninitiated medicine people) who practice our medicine and they are very strong people, but they do not know the history of the origin of our medicine.  The tribe has ceremonial grounds and they use these red roots all through the summer and the other medicine people use the red roots, but they don't know the history of where red roots come from.  The history of our medicine is only taught to the initiated medicine people.  I haven't found a replacement to initiate to carry on this medicine culture.  There is an old story that says you will be given time to find one.  Maybe that is why the medicine people lived to be old people; they put off finding a replacement.  But you just can't find a candidate as easy as it sounds because the selection process is so strict.  I don't think I will ever find one. "

mirror, mirror on the wall

 

Mirror, mirror on the wall

Who's the fairest of them all


while walking the my breakfast joint i ran across this mirrored tray on the street.  

i was very tempted to bring it back home...

but not into my house.

still, i may decide to rescue it.

Riddle me this?

seven sot,
six sprung,
from the dead the living come.

Bird sat on a dead tree and laid her eggs. six birds hatched. one fell out.

one of my favorite words

espantapajaros....

The Bee-King

" Dream o' honey, Lots o' money
  Dream o' bees, Lib at yo' ease ...

broom malfunction

all my spooky friends will agree :
doesn't it look like somebody parked their broom in the tree!

the newest broom

In Pagan & New World African tradition, the jumping of the broom is
symbolic of taking a leap into a new life together. A marriage is
consecrated after the couple jump the broom.
Presently, the broom I am making for this purpose is drying off in my
backyard. I stuck it in the tree to dry and I tell you, if my neighbor
didn't know up until this moment, I'm sure they think I'm crazy now...
picture to follow,

thedarkcyde
Sent from my iPhone

Making New

Trees are people too

Here's a pen and ink drawing I did back in my Tuskegee Days. It was a designed to be a backdrop for the play Waiting for Godot.

new materials

I just gathered more material for a wedding broom I'm making for my
friend.

Sent from my iPhone

motif

Twin Beliefs

Seems that in both Yoruba and Muskoke Creek traditions, twins were thought to be a strange thing.
They were feared and deemed dangerous because it was said that they are privy to the unknown, unseen
and untold things. This power made them an oddity.
If twins are same sex, they were thought to be friends or relatives in their previous life.
If they are opposite sex, they were thought to be husband and wife in their previous life.

I feel strange around my birthday and around samhain because i am a twin. My brother decided
after just a short time here that he didn't like it. He wanted to stay on the other side. He can totally cover more ground
than me that way!! Maybe he didn't wanna be here but I've always wanted
him to be here and that feeling never subsides.

Happy Birthday to us!

--
bloggin from gmail

the book of night women : marlon james

this book is really making me think about what made these womenfolk
that came her, or born here in the hostile climate of bullwhip days
tick. how did the manage and what secrets do they keep from us in this
present time.. I'd like to think I wouldve been one to run.. but would
I have???

Sent from my iPhone

rural tendancies

i am increasingly aware of the fact that the older i get, the more like my grandmother i wanna be. for the fact the more like my great-grand, my mom, my great-aunt..... all of them are crafty/folky in the kitchen,garden or the sewing room. i never learned to sew BUT i have learned alot of things through JUST DOIN. i guess it's the knowledge that handed down through the blood. if i put my mind to it, i KNOW i could sew. i started a patchwork once, last year and i kid you not i sat down and when i got up, i was like " how did i do that? " , " did i do that?"
it's almost like i go to this place in my mind and they are there, and if i focus really hard they show me what to do through the work.
weird huh.
i am the weird one.

just saw this at lunch

why is this cotton in a shadowbox on the wall of lake merritt bakery
in Oakland?

obamanos

trying out the new phone

Gotta get the voice activation to work

Sent from my iPhone

Obama o's

the stories shall unfold

--
- n g a t i -

O