{"id":3706,"date":"2016-11-09T17:00:05","date_gmt":"2016-11-10T01:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alteritas.net\/GXL\/?p=3706"},"modified":"2017-04-14T19:23:51","modified_gmt":"2017-04-15T02:23:51","slug":"why-we-call-it-what-it-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/GXL\/?p=3706","title":{"rendered":"Why We Call It What It Is"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"wagga-cumulonimbus\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Thrice this dreary winter I\u2019ve dreamed the death
\nI died in Africa, not buff savanna nor undulating sands
\n<\/span>but where the vertical panorama of cumulonimbus
\n<\/span>is self-contained, where thunder claps call out
\n<\/span>on their own, downpours taking up the theme.
\n<\/span>Was it soma or coma? Hepatitis on the Pepper
\nCoast\u00a0let my liver have the final say.<\/p>\n

Quarantined, stunned\u00a0with soporifics,
\npinned against a sallow tumescent\u00a0sky,
\nI felt the whole treacherous tropics gouge
\ninto my guts, leaving me brittle bones from brow
\nto ribs to toes with shriveled pulp for viscera,
\nflaccid shrunken testes. My sap was hot with bile,
\nmy shit pale clay, piss shit brown. Was I then to die?
\nWas this my unction, from a friendly mantis tacit prayer,
\nfor incense the stench of coffee blossoms in fetid air?<\/p>\n

A rooster crowed, a dog barked at a stooped
\nand wizened, demented old man. Myself, I saw.
\nThen all gravity cut loose. My bed became a bier
\nin surging currents, dipping down past pallid
\nshores whence no one I remotely knew beckoned.<\/p>\n

Limbo? Purgatorio? Inferno? Whom\u00a0are<\/i>\u00a0we supposed
\nto meet there, anyway? Fathers whose afflictions
\nwe grow to share; lovers transmogrifying
\nin our arms;\u00a0lumpen bums lurching at us to beg
\nchange, faces\u00a0chafed and skinned like the hindquarters
\nof small\u00a0game, rubby veins blasted to the surface?<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

[We each live out protracted\u00a0crises de foie<\/i>.
\nWe call it the liver because this gland strives
\nagainst\u00a0death\u2019s inward seepage. Mine did, and won.]<\/p>\n

***
\nIn Spring, 1968, when the whole\u00a0planet seemed to be erupting, I was quarantined with hepatitis in West Africa, isolated from everyone else and put in the care of a Kpelle<\/a> houseboy, James. I failed grossly at learning his\u00a0language but I did have enough shards of it to exchange words, though not until after the katabasis<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0described above and my return to the surface.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Did I merely dream that I was dying and descending into the underworld? Or was I actually dying but then made\u00a0a miraculous recovery in the course of the fever in question? <\/em><\/p>\n

The next morning I woke to\u00a0find myself alive, as if washed up ashore on the near bank of some\u00a0Styx, exhausted but suddenly hungry.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Ng\u00e1 ba mii?<\/span> James asked, have you eaten, usually meaning rice, which is the main crop and fare of the Kpelle. I had eaten nothing for weeks in fact, so deep had been my nausea. It was just after dawn but I had this hankering for roast chicken and French fries. <\/em><\/p>\n

W\u00e9li t\u00e9e<\/span>, I replied. Returning from the dead enables one\u00a0to speak. Within a<\/em>\u00a0couple of hours James obliged me with the best\u00a0<\/em>poulet frites\u00a0I have ever eaten, though probably not the best thing for my liver at that stage of things.<\/em><\/p>\n

Wine had to wait two more months. When I did return to alcohol, it was to <\/em>frizzante early afternoon palm wine, one nectar of the many gods that be, this on my twenty-third birthday in July of the summer that was.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Palm wine is something to catch as it goes. In the morning it is pure sap and juice, by noon it is spritzy and slightly intoxicating. As day goes on it turns more and more complex, fuller in flavour, sometimes sour, but more and more intoxicating. \u00a0As a\u00a0Kpelle proverb has it, like a women.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

I was lucky that I had only\u00a0hepatitis A\u00a0<\/a>, viral but not serum. \u00a0I was young. The afflicted lobe of my\u00a0liver regenerated. That belaboured gland has\u00a0held steady for almost fifty years against the glut of toxins I imbibe. <\/em><\/p>\n

All that remained of my descent into the underworld was the bundle of words and images I have re-purposed here, though the suspension points betray the lack of an ending.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Boiled<\/a>My photo of a Kpelle <\/em>sma boi egg seller, Gbarnga, Bong County, 1968. \u00a0Head photo:\u00a0https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cumulonimbus_cloud<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

< Memory the Mockingbird<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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                Thrice this dreary winter I\u2019ve dreamed the death I died in Africa, not buff savanna nor undulating sands but where the vertical panorama of cumulonimbus is self-contained, where thunder claps call out on their own, downpours taking up the theme. Was it soma or coma? Hepatitis on … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Why We Call It What It Is”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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