oba and oya have it out

I've never talked about Oba, not in public anyway.  More, I whisper about her.  Whisper to her.  Whisper around her. Anything might offend. I try not to think about her too much.  Living with her can be pure hell.  But only sometimes.  Here's the problem:  her self-defeatism, if that is a word.

We had a conversation yesterday, 'conversation' being the polite word for it. She fucking cried, pouted, complained, and blamed (everybody else). Again.

"I'm all alone," she wailed, like I'm not right there next to her, as usual.

She then went on—you know the drill—nobody's helping her. Nobody's supporting her. Where's hers? I've heard this all before. Nobody's giving her a break, how 'bout a grant maybe, a really good job where you don't have to work.  How 'bout free rent? Or no rent at all. How 'bout sex? Where's mine?

She cut off her ear, they say, to feed it to Chango.

You know, I just don't have much sympathy.

Oba could use a really good therapist, as far as I'm concerned.

She counters saying I don't understand her. Don't understand her pain. Her sense of humor. Her struggles. Her ambitions.  How-hard-it-all-is for her in this world.  She's absolutely right. She struggles like mad, and everything's a struggle. 'The world' just isn't taking care of her, and she's furious about that.

She's got to do it herself, and that just pisses her off. And she's sick of people telling her to pull herself up by the bootstraps and do it the fuck herself.

She raises her voice. She yells when she's not being just plain morose. She cut off her ear and fed it to Chango. (I mean, it didn't work too well for van Gogh either as a coping mechanism, but hell, at least he didn't stop painting).

Do you think that kind of behavior makes her more attractive?  Do you think Chango was moved?

I'm not much of a supporter of woe-is-me strategies. I grew up hearing them, and I must say all it did was harden my soul.  Make me want to never ever ask anyone for anything. Not long for anyone. And certainly not pine for them. I have no sense of 'deserving' or 'undeserving'. No sense of entitlement at all.

Expect nothing.
Be ready for anything.
Be prepared.
Maybe I'm a Boy Scout at heart.

It's not like Oba needs to pick up a sword to make her point. Granted, that's not her way.  Just pick herself up. Dust herself off. Hold her head high. And get goddamn to work.

See what she's done?  She's got me the fuck swearing.

Maybe I've got way too much of Weber's Protestant Ethic in me and not enough of Mauss's prestations.  Or maybe I'm too selective in my sense of reciprocal obligations. Maybe I'm just a bitch with a sword. Maybe I'm supposed to fix her tight little universe for her. Find her a Chango and hand it to her on an ebony platter. Cut off my own ears and feed them to her so she can see I'm listening?

A good therapist is what she needs.
Maybe I should give her mine.

ellegua at the crossroads, baby

Standing at the crossroads waiting for the light to change. Permission, really, is what we seek. Although we don't think of it that way. That's what Ellegua's about: letting us pass. Or not. When we're standing at our own pedestrian crosswalk we assume that permission. That it's just a question of when we get to go. We never seem to question the if. Is that an American sense of self-entitlement — or is it merely human?

But the larger the crossroads, the more we have to consider the if. Should we cross that line?

At what point can I change direction?

At what point am I freed to change direction?

At what point do I change direction?

They're not the same.

M said no. And he's a psychiatrist!

People like stagnation. Okay, he didn't say it quite like that. He used the word 'comfort' — people stay because things are familiar. Because what's already there is known, and that's a form of comfort.

I think I screamed. And I'm not a screamer.

I think I said I'd rather slit my throat than go on and on and on knowing every word I'd ever say, every word I'd ever hear. That 'comfort' was stifling. That there were no surprises any more.

"People don't leave for that reason," he said, reasonably.

They leave because of abuse.

Sorry, that's not true. Often, people stay — despite the abuse.

But here, there was no abuse.

He's a very good man. He's always been a very good man. He's still a very good man.

I left because I was at the crossroads.

What else can you do? A force larger than my self compelled me across the terrifying abyss into the unknown. How could I have known what was coming? And what did I find on the other side?

Women.

Was it a shock? No, not at all. I just wasn't expecting it quite so fast, although I'd been waiting my whole life. And doing nothing about it. Very passive indeed.

Stepping to the other side was a new kind of comfort — the inevitable one.

We find ourselves facing Ellegua. Sometimes kicking and screaming. Sometimes welcoming, with wonder and not fear. Did I ever say thank you? I'm not quite sure.

But I'm saying thank you now. A little late, I know.

Did I ever not say thank you?

The vista opens. Here's another crossroads, baby.

Something's there that I can't see.

"Instead of trying binoculars, baby — close your eyes and trust that you're with me."

Wonder School or Fear School, baby.

So. Okay.

I'm at the crossroads — though I don't know where it leads. You stand behind me. You give me a little push. You guide me. I take a step — eyes closed, with heart wide open — into the unknown.

To Ellegua, with love and gratitude. Wonder School, baby, here I come.

But I'm still gonna question it. Every step along the way.

That's just what we atheists do, baby.

on being oya to your chango

Yah, I wanna be Oya to your Chango. No domestic tranquility for me. I was cursed, to tell the truth, so that's how it would be. I think it's worked out pretty well, to tell the truth. And yah, he actually used that word 'curse' — a little dramatic, don't you think? What kind of moron curses in this day and age?

So. I'll be your Oya. We'll have our adventure. We'll ride off and conquer death together. Conquer grief together. You'll raise your battle horn and give a blast. Shofar, the way shofar was meant to be! But at the end of the day, you'll go home. Oshun, with her irresistible smile, awaits you. She'll ground you. She'll hold down the fort for you.

I figured the whole thing out recently. Was trying to explain my worldview, somehow. Not the worldview that I'd like to have. No. The cosmology in which I seem to operate.

I think it was that comment, "Too bad you don't like opera..." that helped me figure it out. See how useful our mothers are? No. I don't want to live inside the opera. It's absolutely true. Opera belongs on the stage, right?

So what kind of hypocrite am I?

A. F. C. Wallace wrote this wonderful article about time. It's published in a fairly recent issue of AOC — Anthropology of Consciousness. Last five years, maybe ten. I don't know, I can't hold on to time. Time-slipping. That's another piece of the puzzle. Wallace talks about three kinds of time.

Linear time: in which events are placed sequentially, and then we call it history. We count in days and months and years. Decades, centuries, millenia. The point is that we count. We keep track. This happened. And then that happened. This is the least interesting of the three, although it does point out that there are consequences to our actions. That's not a bad thing at all. But it makes it sound like this thing led to that thing — if we string the things out just so — and that might not be what's really going on at all. We might have left out a string or two or three in our analysis.

Cyclical time: in which it's never over. In which we have another chance to try it out again. If this cycle doesn't work out so well, hell, we'll just reincarnate, and it'll be better next time. And then we don't have to worry about death so much. Next time, next time — as if there is a next time. As if there are do-overs. As if we get a second chance or third. As if only the truly 'evolved' (spiritually speaking) will get a chance to be released. Then, and only then, are we okay with death.

And then there's:

Mythical time: in which the gods are ever-present. And so is id, ego, and superego. These things do not recycle, and they're not linear, evolving from child to adult; from magical to rational. That's long ago been demonstrated to be absolute nonsense. Mythic time is ever-present. The capricious pantheon of gods — whether Sumerian or Egyptian or Greek or Ugaritic, or the mythic time of the Songhay empire — are archetypic patterns that we play out. We look to the gods and see ourselves. In all our folly, and in our glory too.

Bachofen says that the struggle between the gods takes on a dialectical form. Can we call it dialectical mythology? First, he says, in the earliest myths, the female deities held sway. Goddesses reigned supreme. And in their hubris, they abused their power. The males rose up and conquered them. Gods! And eventually, one god supreme. And when that god becomes so tyrannical that they can no longer stand it, women will rise up, and the goddesses will return. Right.

Bachofen says mythology hands us the pattern. He doesn't say it's historically accurate. He says we carry it all ourselves. Each of us — until we discover our collectivity and rise up — and become gods.

Okay. That's not what he says, that last part. But I like it.

I've inhabited mythic time and space my whole life. I feel more comfortable there.

Teish came over one time. Voodoo queen extraordinaire. Priestess. Dancer. Storyteller... We were working on a project together. She walked into the house. Intake of breath. She walked into my bedroom. Seeing with her expert eye.

"Oya," she said.

It's not the first time I've heard that. Bibbo says it too. Candomblé practitioner from Brazil. He's told me this for years.

Oya, they agree, is the orisha of my head.

There's no Oshun for me.

That. That right there. That was the curse.

Well, fine. I can live with it.

Apparently, my entire house is 'done up' as an altar to Oya. Tribute to her. Her colors. Most of all, her feeling. A place she is at home in.

This does not at all match my mother's description of my home. Early Istanbul whorehouse, is what she calls it. Bordello. Brothel. But my mom, she likes opera. Whereas Teish — well, Teish is just stating the facts. Right?

I don't think I'm as brave as Oya. I don't think I take charge. I don't do battle, that I know for sure. I'm not a goddess of radical transformation. So what the hell are they talking about? But when they say these things, I can feel Oya's heartbeat inside my own. Maybe I don't understand bravery and battle. She's not a man, after all. Maybe Oya's bravery is something else entirely. Maybe I've got it. Maybe I don't.

Maybe Oya takes chances. Maybe Oya says yes, where others would say no. Maybe Oya leaps where others tiptoe.

And maybe Oya is only Oya when she meets her own Chango.