People pretend to love...
visiting Salaga village in Salaga, Ghana, i attended an atonement ceremony during which i received a new name.
follow me...
below is a meme that basically encapsulates in fresh Black Americanese what my Ghanaian name means.
i know, right?!
Boss.
The actual meaning of my new name is something of a "choose your own adventure" parable - many things can and probably are meant by it. In effect, it doesn't mean anything... until you interpret it based on your own lived experience in the here/now.
My new name is more like sage advice - like those non-fortuney fortune cookies - rather than just aligning to a familiar concept like "joy" or "happiness."
It's like this: People pretend to love themselves, pretend to love each other, when they forget who they are. They pretend; they pretend to love, but they don't. Also, for those villagers, this name is a bestowed as a living reminder that the slavers always pretended to love Us - entrapping Us this way - but they never did. Not ever.
I'm getting my name tattooed soon. I want this to be a part of my physical tapestry, my visible touch in this world. I want to remember the ever-timely caveat to watch for those who pretend even, and especially, when that person is me.
It took me a little head-rattling and heart-searching to grasp what this name was telling me, how and in what ways it was true for me, and what meaning I would choose to look for in it and in my world... given that I always have that choice.
My muse arrived and spoke a verse to me about all my new-name-ponderings on one Ghanaian night...
and here it is:
Titiaka
People pretend to love each other, but they don’t
hiding behind symbols and words
just words
People pretend to love each other
then the pain comes
they betray
and ally with enemies seen and unseen
People pretend
and the hurt comes
they’ve forgotten who they are and how to speak it
people
they have so many devices for misunderstanding
so many words where none are needed
so many gestures to hide hearts that are breaking
souls that are sick
People pretend to love
they’ve forgotten that it is like the sun
this Love
abundant, effortlessly
travelling from here to there and back again
with no hindrance, no stopping
and when the westward winds blow
you bid me go with you
I follow
compelled, not by will
but by bloodstains and heartbeats and so many tears
prayers unanswered, forsaken
daughters & sons
of suns and moons ago
People pretend
so watch for them
and their honeyed words
watch for them and their
death masks
whispering their death wish
pronounced like salvation
suffocating Espiritu
that Great Spirit
reduced infinitesimally to proportions almost unseen
People pretend to love each other, but they don’t
See them clearly when they come
see to it that they go
~O. Woods, 2017
My first audience for this poem was comprised of 5 people in a restaurant in Tamale. 3 of them are dear sisters of mine, 1 of them was a server at the restaurant, and the other (unbeknownst to me at the time of my oration) was the owner. There's a whole other story that goes with the evening there that night under a nearly full African moon, but the ending is what is most interesting for this accounting.
The owner of the restaurant gave my sisters and me a ride back to our hotel (which was right down the street and totally walkable). He said that we may not be completely safe and he wanted to make sure, personally, that we were. He told me, after I tried to offer him payment for the ride that he had heard my "prayer" earlier and knew we were good people and always wants to help good people.
Overjoyed and a bit overwhelmed by his generosity, it nonetheless did not escape me that he called my poem a prayer.
And, after I sat with this and considered it, I think he may be right.
I know in real lived life, actually & for myself, that prayers are blasphemous if disconnected from action.
And, in this light...
I must do, be, live in ways that say I take deliberate effort and time to know what's what and who's who... I mean love your enemies and all, 'cuz they are a part - even if distant - of the human bodycollective. Yet love your enemy AS an enemy, not as you love your friends. This confusion has keep us on this open-air plantation for far too long.
To know your enemy is to know yourself, where knowing yourself must come 1st. To the degree that you can accept your own darknesses for what they are, you get that much closer to knowing what your enemies can and may look like in your life.
Simply: e'rbody ain't yo' friend, and knowing this is the good news.
