Okane Club

Okane Club

Far from the wistful ambiance of a buddhist garden with its intricate horticultural serenity or the snow-kissed mountains of pagodas dressed in cherry blossoms, I was assaulted by a caffeinated metropolis bent on out- Westing the West.

I was shuttled to the Airwait Hotel at Tokyo International where I stored my gear, showered, ironed my finest suit, put a fresh polish of shine on my shoes, wet my body with a gorgeous fragrance, and hailed a cab. I must have looked like a million yen!

I jumped in the backseat, “Jazz... party...get high... marijuana... take me!”

“Marifauna?” “Yes, take me!” The driver turned around inspectingly then sped off. Little did I know but marijuana was ultra-taboo in Japan. During the Buccaneer days the British Empire imported boat loads of

both opium and marijuana to Hong Kong as a gift of welcome, providing the perfect conditions for conquering the lands just as the party was getting started. Still, every demand automatically produces a supplier.

We drove at breakneck speed through the garishly glowing neon of downtown Tokyo. The city seemed to be wearing a petitely gaudy halloween costume of New York City with three times the populous. People atop of people blending into yet more people.

The driver took a few back alleys where the stench of meat markets ruined my previously acute appetite.

We stopped outside a black brick building, the driver ran up to some distinguished yet dangerous looking gentlemen in tuxedos. They gave me that same glance of inspection while speaking to each other in deep abrupt rumbles of dialogue.

One of the penguins knocked on the door, another tux motioned me in.

In broken English my host welcomed me to the Okane Club. Okane means money and that was an apt description. The club was an ultra-exclusive joint run by the Japanese mafia, the Yakuza

My feet sunk gently into a deep paisley carpet, which seemed to be massaging my feet. Suddenly I found myself in the height of Western opulence with an all-Asian cast.

Like an outlandish and very expensive halloween replica of the finest five-star restaurants in Manhattan, the place was elaborate beyond elaborate. It was a labyrinth of every decadent delight only the fabulously wealthy could conceive, let alone birth.

The first layer was a majestically appointed French-style restaurant with dim lighting, white linens, and an arsenal of a wine list. Leather bound menus, big and luxurious as a coffee table book, rested under the arms of a small army of impeccable servers in immaculate black and white who behaved as if catering to your every whim was the sole purpose for their existence.

As I was ushered in, I noticed a whirl of whispers greeting me with an excited curiosity, “Tony Tawny? Tony Tawny!”

Tony Tawny was a famous actor of Japanese and African-American extraction whom I evidently resembled. So these sublimely coutured Asian ladies began nudging each other, eyeing me with unabashed sensuality.

I was totally in my element.

This section gave way to an ascending spiral staircase where a dance floor as hip as anything in Harlem awaited you with a fully-loaded bar for jet fuel.

On the bandstand, a jazz combo was blazing. To the rear, in the depths of smoke, was another enchanting layer.

Here, I witnessed the classical mythology of Japan. The tea ceremony of Sado was enacted on a polished tatami floor of amber. Ornately intricate kimonos adorned the geishas, who resembled tranquil female ghosts to me. They served the men tea as well as hot sake.

Only now did I really feel like I was in the Orient. The rhythms of jazz were but a forgotten hum behind the softly cascading fountains of water which disoriented me into feeling like I was visiting a Shaolin temple.

My host gingerly stopped against the back wall, knocked, and gave me an approving grin.

The door opened to a pharmaceutical everafter. The room was occupied by small groups seated on futons each supplied with a water pipe and a bowl of hash, opiates, marijuana, and anything else under the sun.

I thanked my host as he seated me to my own personal cubicle. I refused the opium and hash but joyously indulged in the marifauna.

After satisfying my jones, I walked back down to the bar area with an appetite to rival Godzilla.

The entire time businessmen and charming little starlets were receiving me like I was Tom Cruise or Tony Tawny or Orion Roberts.

One of the geishas handed me a huge leather bound menu, thankfully written in English. Another gave me a gentle hot towel service. Everyone had their own personal iron chef who stir-fried opulent delicacies to your specifications.

I ate like a king then returned to my little cubicle where a never- ending supply of enlightenment was waiting. I could of danced atop Mt. Fuji I was so high.

I was then introduced to my escort for the evening. I don’t believe in no religion but maybe I’ve ended up in some sort of sensual hereafter. A delicately exotic creature stood before me. She resembled the achingly beautiful Chinese actress Ziyi Zhang in her boundless yet youth sensuality.

Evidently she’d been specially selected for me and I did not hide my satisfaction. The tuxedo cats looked at each other happily and grunted to each other in a flurry of Japanese.

These tuxedo cats were some ultra-macho dudes. They reminded me of some Italian cats I’d met in New York.

I was their royal guest. My manner, good breeding, or maybe just good luck, had impressed them. They were going to show me the time of my life.

I communicated the best I could. If they spoke English (probably so) they spoke very little to me.

Ziyi took my hand, escorting me to the jazz level of the establishment. Here was a very refined creature who moved in graceful fluidity, like smoke. She must have been groomed from girlhood as a courtesan. Her response to the most subtle of my whims was that impressive.

Her anticipation was impeccable - she’d pour my drinks as soon as I thought about. We spoke not one word to each other, wasn’t necessary. We related on a completely sensual frequency. Like one of my fabulous babes in the city she held her own with me on the dance floor. Eventually, she made it quite evident she wanted me all to herself.

She escorted me to yet another level, where a king-size bed, plush and crimson, awaited.

There we completely exhausted one another.

When I awoke I found a new suit hung against the wall. On cue, she came in, looking just as staggeringly beautiful as she did the night before. She dressed me (the suit fit me perfectly) and we walked outside to catch a cab.

I hadn’t spent a dime on anything, this was cart blanche treatment.

She took me to one of the famous Japanese bathhouses. Never have I seen such uninhibited folks.

This was a unisex place, both men and women together stark naked. Women bathing women, women bathing men, men bathing each other.

Even though I witnessed no copulation, no one was hiding their pleasure and no one was shy. Each human body was an extraordinary phenomena to be treasured with admiration and touch. In fact, it was common for folks to pause their eyes on each others’ privates without embarrassment between them.

So when Ms. Zhang and I disrobed and walked through I heard all the curious whispers of “Tony Tawny?” in addition to the delighted exclamations of “Okee Chimpo!”

Chimpo means penis, okee means big. Women and even some men pointed at it in fascination.

My escort lowered me into a lusciously warm and sunken tub. She bathed me, massaged me, kissed me, bit me, massaged me, and washed me all over. It was rapturous. I’d completely lost myself in the expertise of her tender affection.

That night the Okane Club again opened its diamond encrusted arms and hosted me to another Dyanisian escapade of pleasures.

At last I had a plane to catch. I bid my escort ado, exchanged my appreciation to the gangsters, starlets, tuxedos, and the filthy rich of Tokyo.

The same driver that brought me here shuttled me back to my hotel, from there I was off to Okinawa.

To the East My Brother

To the East My Brother

NSA headquarters, Ft. Meade, Maryland.

Now I’m in the blush, the ultra-secret matrix, the belly of the beast. I was given yet another top secret clearance before descending down a series of elevators to my work area. Armed marines were posted every few yards. This was, and yet is, one of the most fortified buildings on the planet.

I’m assigned to a tiny cubicle in a pitch black war room illumined only by the electronic lights of maps charting the various planetary hotspots.

My first assignment was monitoring all activity coming out of Communist Cuba. The Ronic antenna was the receiver used to pick up the multiplex of signals emanating from Cuba.

It’s beyond outdated now, but this was the central device used to tune into every phone call, every Morse Code, every teletype and walkie-talkie transmission. Anything that moved through a wire we picked up.

After a couple of weeks I was upgraded to a more intriguing assignment. The cold war was thick as black ice and the Russians had a new signal called a burst transmission, which was a combination of various signals crunched into a single “burst”, a solitary “blip” hidden within more traditional transmissions.

For instance, if I typed “My name is Orion Roberts” in teletype, the letter “S” might contain an encyclopedia’s worth of information. That is a crude example of the burst transmission.

So I was trained on this huge wide-band receiver. If you think of a radio that’s powerful enough to hear not just one station at a time but every station on the dial at once, that’s similar to what this equipment did. We listened and listened to all forms of communication until we heard that blip.

When the burst shot through. We “froze” it, recorded it, then began the arduous process of deciphering the code. Another room was nothing but graphs of encoded messages which would then receive further analysis.

I started learning the Russian language, reading Russian literature, immersing myself in understanding the Russian mind. The Russians knew when we tagged them, so it became a real dogfight, a battle of wills. I applied myself completely to my work. I took it personal. The intellectual “wolverine” in me would not be defeated.

Within six months we’d broken that “burst” transmission! The Russians had to give it up.

Our success meant my team would relocate to the island of Okinawa, the biggest field station monitoring the burst transmission. There we would continue our diligent and successful work.

Okinawa was known among the GIs as the “Big Benjo,” roughly translated into “the big shit house”. Fortunately, I’d have a two-day layover in Tokyo.

Shit house or no I was on my way. Michael Thomas caught a train to see me off. Generously, I shared my last bag of enlightenment with my best friend.

Together we got higher than the moon, pulled some glamorous ladies and did the damn thing as only two cats from Illumination could do.

Like clockwork MT had found some “new” urine and would begin his basic training in a couple of months.

With stars in my eyes and a heart full of ambition I jumped on a plane to Anchorage, Alaska for a few hours before beginning the long odyssey to the sprawling complex village of Tokyo.

The Original Friend of Our Souls

The Original Friend of Our Souls

I excused myself.

I went outside and lit a cigarette. Look at me! I didn’t even offer Vesper one. But it just didn’t seem right.

I enjoyed the cool night breeze and the starry canopy above my head. Universal Awe... I never have heard anything like this. Once I heard him out I could reflect on it and put it in its proper perspective. I finished my cigarette and walked back up to his apartment for more of this conversation which had left me speechless. And I thought I’d have a mack for him.

When I reentered his apartment he was still sitting on his bed with the same serious yet serene aura. Again he smiled as I sat back down, his voice never rising above a hypnotic monotone.

“Alright, I’m ready to hear more. Please continue.” “Certainly. Before we had a physical body we had an illuminative body, an astral body. A light body akin to electricity – the uncreated force and motion of animation.

“Your real self is bioelectrical magnetism. The body you dwell in is the product of the earth and the essence does not have to be limited to the shell.

“The real you is deathless and beginningless. There is only one vibration of energy, which is forever. It is Forever Energy.

“Quantum mechanics have come up with something they call the string theory wherein they’ve isolated subatomic particle after subatomic particle only to find something eternal. This eternal something is beyond their grasp. You know why?”

What am I going to say?

“It’s because science is limited. One’s external discovery is limited to the depth of one’s internal discovery. The scientists will not take part in the removal of Suffering and Death (which finances them). Therefore they will remain puzzled. We have the technology to unravel the puzzle, to decipher the mystery. Know thyself and you will know it all!”

“Vesper, at four years old I died on an operating table. Something was put into me right then. I never gave it a name, I just knew it was real.

Elixir: Universal Awe

Elixir: Universal Awe

I knew power was in the hands of the European peoples. Power was like a tennis ball passed from one group of white folks to another for as long as... well, as long as long is long. Right?

The only indigenous folks to rise up to put their two cents in the power game were the Japanese. And what did they get? An atomic bomb.

Maybe Genghis Khan or one of those ancient cats flipped the script for a minute or two but after the commercial break the powerball was back safely in a white man’s hands.

And Black people? Well, according to the history books we contributed nothing to civilization at all. We were nothing but the pawns on the chessboard of time, awaiting some powerful hand to direct us.

Religion says we were damned to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, the servants for those in power.

Hollywood says we were spearchuckers running around naked with King Kong and Tarzan, beating our drums, savages since antiquity.

Yet I knew the indigenous peoples were in touch with another dimension of power that needed not to conquer or oppress.

In college I read documented cases of Western medical practitioners in “darkest” Africa, trying to treat a “fair” patient who was on her deathbed.

Eventually, their medical knowledge ran out. Then the “heathens” volunteered their doctor. The “witch” doctor would dramatically appear in a puff of green smoke; his neck full of bones, his eyes bloodshot, his face painted and surrounded by a mane of wooly hair.

The “medicine man” would rub some bones together, blow some powder on the patient, go into a trance and chant some magic words, basically frightening the white folks to death but always bring Lazarus back from the dead.

That patient would then go on to live another thirty years after that savage African voodoo witch doctor worked his magic. And he didn’t even charge for his services!

The same thing happened in America with the Indians and the pilgrim people. The native shaman heathen would humbly save the day then cook paleface a Thanksgiving feast before they were massacred by the white Christians in the name of Jesus.

So the Blacks, the Reds, the Browns, the dark Native people possessed a very real power, mystic in nature, but not powerful enough to deal with the viscous armament of the West. Maybe this is what Vesper’s talking about. I sent the driver away, sat back down and gave Vesper my undivided attention.

“Tell it all...”

“Orion in the beginning... there was no beginning. There was something that was always here, even if it was just a speck.

“Those who direct the NSA, those who behind the scenes call the shots, those shadowy figures in the Knights Templar, the Roscrusians, the Skulls and Bones, the Illuminati, the Masons and Shriners – all of them are still in the kindergarten of life’s wisdom.

Vespertine (excerpt 12)

Vespertine

With my signal analysis/wave propagation training almost complete and my head blown off by the glories of pharmaceutical enlightenment, I was more than a little anxious to get on with my journey to the Orient.

Advisors from NSA Headquarters were preparing us for the precursor to our official assignments,which was an internship in radio telemetry.

Once again we were sold on all the benefits, privileges, status, honor, and financial rewards to look forward to upon completion of our assignments. Well, I had absolutely no plans for retirement and absolutely no allegiance to anything or anyone but myself.

Before entering the military I had virtually no interaction with White people except the anonymous Caucasian who’d end up on the opposite side of my fist, those who fell victim to a brick, bottle or knife thrown their way or mine.

I knew very well that White people yielded sanctioned privilege over Black people at every bend in the road. Every pursuit in every field of endeavor was limited; our ceiling appeared to be merely the floor of White people.

Now I found myself in all relative terms the peer of the children of the country’s most privileged white people. I was the spook sitting comfortably inside the door – I wanted to study this thing. I wanted to master these people.

Quiet as it was kept, the wise and privileged White power people knew Vietnam was about to break out. They placed their children in the intelligence wing of the military; the most advantageous position to avoid any possibility of seeing combat. The draft was for the poor and the ignorant.

It’s 1962. The counterculture’s rising in wonderbread like yeast. The power peoples’ children are flirting with rebellion, marijuana, and most shocking of all - the epicurean wiles of Negro culture: our jungle music, the lascivious grind of rock and roll and the heroin blue of jazz.

I’d peeped these privileged youngsters in the dark corners of the Baby Grand and the Village Vanguard like pure white salt in a jar of spicy pepper that multiplied slowly every week.

(ponyo excerpt 11) Cryptographic Hieroglyphics

Cryptographic Hieroglyphics

Upon completion of my basic training I was off to Fort Devin, Massachusetts to be trained in signals intelligence, which is intelligence information derived from the exploitation of foreign electronic emissions.

Now I was getting into the nuts and bolts of my training. The Army Security Agency is the military branch of the National Security Agency. The ASA can be split into two distinct branches: information assurance codemakers and signals intelligence codebreakers.

Information assurance secured all internal means of communication from fighters on the frontlines to the executive branches of government up to the President. Critical intelligence can be freely discussed without fear of the communication being compromised.

The other side, my side, was the exploitation of foreign adversaries’ communications via signals intelligence. This encompassed the collection, processing, and analyzation of foreign signals.

It became immediately clear that this is how America kept its decisive edge in the world. The poor African countries and the third world nations forever are at a disadvantage because they’ve got outdated, eight-track tape level equipment compared to the technological breakthroughs of America and (at that time) the Soviet Union.

(excerpt 10) Prophecy of a Gypsy Girl

Prophecy of a Gypsy Girl

Basic training was a joy to me. It was designed to train the mind into taking orders and strengthen the body to go beyond its threshold of pain. I loved the challenge of pushing my body as far as it could go and beyond. Military life suited me just fine. It sharpened me up like one of my grandfather’s deadly steak knives.

I was beginning to embrace a measure of freedom now from my depressed uncertainty, from the Negro drama of college and the high blood pressure of corporate America. The military looked like a perfect vehicle for me to work the full extent of my magic. Basic training put me in a high where my physical body was humming with the same intense vitality as my mind. I was under no delusion of patriotism though.

(excerpt 9) Quilted Genealogy, A New Constellation

Quilted Genealogy, A New Constellation

Cryptographic hieroglyphics: computers speaking in tongues – a multiplex of information. Words are numbers are symbols are signals.

As psychoanalysis strips away layer after layer of ones’ pysche until the real you is laid bare, signal analysis unravels layer upon layer of information, purposely encoded to obscure its core, its secrets.

I would be trained in radio telemetry, signal analysis and wave propagation. How appropriate! My heart’s desire was to strip myself bare of all artifice, until the genesis of me, that voice of the soul that loves me, is all there is of me. To strip away all the bullshit until I am tabla rasa, a clean slate, a clear mirror, free of dust.

Transmitting and receiving radio transmissions is a facsimile of the process of mental telepathy. So why not learn the art and science of radio telemetry which is akin to the art and science of the mind. Why not uncover the secrets of the world? Why not listening in on the secrets of nations, governments, all the power players on behalf of the biggest power player – America?

(ponyo excerpt 8) MERITOCRACY

Meritocracy

Crystal Roberts just shook her head.

Around that time General Electric began cracking its doors a little for Negroes to elevate above custodian status. One of the executives clued Mister Lushus in who, in turn, clued me in.

I went up there and completed a battery of tests. As always I aced it. The hiring officer was this Northern cat, Allen Goldberg. Everything about me, my dress, my verbiage, my background, my attitude, just bedazzled him.

Goldberg made me an offer that day. I would be the first Negro in upper management. Shall I do a little buckdance for you?

The money was good and the work was lite. I bought a sparkling white 1957 Chevrolet. Six months down the pipe I go to the doctor for a routine checkup. I’m diagnosed with high blood pressure.

High blood pressure? I’m twenty-two years old, in tip-top shape. What the hell am I doing with high-blood pressure?

The doctor asked me if I’d made any major life changes recently, if I’d been doing anything different. Nothing, except maybe my new position at General Electric. My intuition kicked me in the ribs.

If this job has given me high blood pressure after six months, I’ll be dead by twenty-five. This is the advancement we’re marching for?

Michael Thomas came down for a visit. He was facing a similar dilemma.

“College is bullshit.” “So what you gonna do Bo?” “I don’t know. If you catch something clue me in.” “If you catch something clue me in!” I will.

MT, being very light-skinned, could easily cloak himself into the confidence of white folks, especially with his affable personality. I’ve always admired him because he could have gone his entire life as a white man but never did. Anyway, he struck up a conversation with this military man from Arlington outside a museum.

(exerpt 7) Elixir: Love

Elixir: Love

June Donahue was my first major love affair. Her father was a juvenile court judge in West Virginia. The Donahue name easily tipped the scales of influence and prestige in the state of West Virginia.

June was a vision of ultra-feminine mystique. Like a young starlet in the glossy pages of Vogue or like Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet, she possessed an equestrian refinement that would easily magnetize even the queers at college. She was a young socialite, a debutante, a miss this and a miss that.

She’d host elegant affairs at the home of her father, the judge. She had a younger, equally adorable sister.

C.J. scored an invitation to one of her spring socials and invited a few friends to accompany him. Always open for adventure I decided to go.

We drove into a stately, gated mansion encompassed on all sides by lustrous automobiles of status.

Being the swashbuckler, I stepped in all continental swagger, like a young Errol Flynn. I wore a tan turtleneck, a mahogany blazer, black pants, chestnut shoes and cap. I sat down to assess any prospects and there she was, this slender, dark cinnamon diamond with huge doe eyes. She wore a low-cut cucumber-green gown, which offered a glimpse of two delightfully plump breasts, her accouterments translucent enough to invite your eyes down the curvature of her body - the intelligent arch of her behind, the subtle sway of her hips. We made eye contact and the earth ceased to revolve.

Ponyo (excerpt 6) Higher Education?

Higher Education?

Michael Thomas and I graduated high school at the top of our class. MT scored a full college scholarship, academic and athletic. We were linked by an umbilical cord of intuition, sharing an entirely freelance view of the world.

We despised religion, particularly the Jim Crow Christianity mumbo- jumbo. The civil rights movement was completely insulting to our sense of self. Why would I permit someone to beat me upside the head in a march? Why would I sit down and demand to be served in a filthy restaurant or sit on a nasty toilet?

We considered ourselves superior to white people. I had my own toilet and I could go to the store and buy my own food to cook in my own kitchen. The civil rights agenda of integration was complete foolishness to me. The burgeoning “black power” movement was still very abstract, but we totally agreed with the “kill my dog, slay your cat” philosophy. Damn right.

But in the main nothing was a challenge for us, nothing was hip enough. We considered ourselves the masters of it all, probably the sentiment of most twenty-year olds.

Going into college my self-confidence verged on ego mania. New York City had sharpened all my life skills, my power with women, and my street knowledge.

I was a dashing aristocratic cat. I was walking in my grandfather’s footsteps, always immaculately dressed and smelling like paradise. I styled myself as the swashbuckler who miraculously showed up and took charge, vanquished the evildoers and ran off with the girl. College was a hell of a disappointment.

My parents businesses were taking off so I could go to any school I wanted. I chose a historically Black college in the state of West Virginia.

Integration was all the rage, but this college was integrated in reverse. White teachers and students had been slowly migrating there for years. As a result, the accreditation standards were far above the standards of other “Negro” schools, it had quite a prestigious reputation.

(excerpt 5) Psycho-Neurosis of Slavery

Psycho-Neurosis of Slavery

No sugar, no salt, no alcohol, just rice. Brown rice that is.

There is a wisdom tradition that adheres to a diet centered on brown rice. Apparently the brown rice provides all the nutrients and amino acids needed to bring the body back to a state of equilibrium.

Obviously, alcohol dulls sense perception and stunts electromagnetic receptivity, paling the chakras. Sugar is a straight up poison producing static in the subtle body, in one’s thinking, inhibiting Supreme Consciousness. Salt taints one’s bodily fluids producing a high acidity, again blocking the ability of the human to receive and transmit light.

Every cell of your body is a receiver. So the brown rice diet was part of an effort to cleanse and stimulate the human body, to reverse the atrophy.

As there is a bleaching process turning brown rice into white rice, brown sugar into white sugar, and a fermentation process to produce liquor, there was a process which turned noble, proud Africans captured during slavery into a Negro, a necro, a zombie with no will of his or her own.

Lynching, quartering, tar and feathering, all the sadistic torture techniques were just bulwarks to enforce the damage done. Thus producing the psycho-neurosis of slavery: deeply embedded morays, habits, ways of thinking, acting, reacting and not acting at all cemented firmly into the collective Black American psyche still evident today.

One of the many outgrowths of the psycho-neurosis of slavery is a matriarchal society among Black folks.

Black men were totally demasculinized, physically and psychologically; our innate masculinity robbed. The X and Y chromosomes functioning only biologically.

Elixr of Ponyo (excerpt 4) New Pleasures, New Excitement

New Pleasures, New Excitement

New York City has always been a playground for the biggest egos. Mine could climb the Empire State and eat airplanes with a fine Harlem debutante in my arms.

Mister Lushus first exposed me to the wonders of the city as a youngster. In those delectable summers, Michael Thomas and I would take the train into Grand Central Station. The whole world would seemingly be there; buzzing, busy little bees.

At LaGuardia Airport we’d watch the planes take off, imagining ourselves landing in some exotic locale wet for adventure. I’d even accompany MT to the symphony where he’d play air conductor to Beethoven’s bravery or Mozart’s magnificence and wake me when it was over. Not to mention Coney Island where we’d gorge on the world’s best Rueben sandwiches and Nathan’s Hot-dogs.

Like a bashful baby-sitter, New York turned into a scandalous temptress in our teenage years, ready to give us new pleasures, new excitement.

Brotherhood: Orion and Michael Thomas

Brotherhood: Orion and Michael Thomas

I first saw Jack Johnson when I was maybe six or seven. He’d slip into town, without observation and set up at Rosewood.

Rosewood Academy was quite famous in Virginia for both its sports and dramatics departments. Our entire educational career from the third to twelfth grade was at that school with a class of twenty-five or so students.

We had a very dynamic auditorium, which Jack Johnson utilized each fall. His production began with a theme song he’d put on the phonograph:

“Lucky ole son, Give him nothing to do But roam over heaven all day...”

That was his theme. Jack Johnson was a small wizard looking cat who didn’t have a race.

He could go amongst any group and fit in. He always wore a dark grey suit, white shirt, and tie which never got soiled; an achievement since he’d always be seen walking out of the mountains. He looked like he was in his thirties and despite his small frame was strong as an ox. He was a very unusual looking cat who spoke in terse riddles you’d have to rewind a few times to decipher. He had this sweet smell about him too.

He’d walk out as “Lucky ole son” wound down. He’d look up and dramatically shout “Amarjah! Give me power! Amarjah, give me power!”

Then he’d run across the street to a graveyard with everyone chasing after him. There a six-foot shallow grave would already be dug with a pine box at the bottom. Jack jumped in and called for two people to put the lid on the box and nail it shut.

“Dirt come to breath, cover body!” His words mumbled together in a dialect of English unique to himself.

The two helpers climbed out and shoveled dirt back atop the crypt. A big mound covered the grave and he’d be down there nailed shut. Just as we made our way back to the auditorium a helper cued his theme song...

Elixir of Ponyo (excerpt 2) - Illumination and the Legend of Ugoma

Illumination and the Legend of Ugoma

The Black people of Illumination were never slaves. My brother did the research and no one from Illumination was ever bought nor sold. Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s trip, was approximately twenty-one miles away. They had slave records. We didn’t.

I grew up in a distinct culture free from the submissive fear and self- hatred still plaguing the Black psyche.

I grew up in Jim Crow. We had clear lines drawn and there were consequences if those lines were disrespected. Hear me clearly, those lines were drawn by us. No one told the Illumination Blacks what to do, how to do, or when to do it.

Just as we caught hell for stepping into the White neighborhoods, we exacted much hellfire on those unwelcome in Illumination, which was any White person.

Obviously it’s different today, but back then everything was Black and/ or White.

I grew up enjoying the sweetness, love, and unity of a very close-knit extended family. My dad, my mom, my granddad and grandmom, my brothers, my sister and cousins all were one big team within a team called Illumination.

Like all indigenous cultures memory was the library, census bureau, and department of vital records. History was orally transmitted from generation to generation.

My great-grandmother said she was a Malaglasy Indian. The Malaglasy or Malagasy are the people of Madagascar. Madagascar is an island on the southeastern coast of Africa, resting on the Indian Ocean. The Malaglasy are a mixture of Black Africans, Indians from the subcontinent of India, Chinese, and Polynesian. Thanks to the transatlantic slave trade we can add Portuguese, French, Dutch, and English blood to the mix.

The folklore goes like this: A whole village was taken from Madagascar by slave pirates. This village was led by a mystic shaman named Ugoma. That may or may not be his real name but I know he was real because I’m real. The richness of my life is a direct result of his wealth, his inheritance...

So when the barbaric slave traders came to this village, which we’ll call the village of Nur, Ugoma negotiated with the barbarians himself. This culture lived in the subconscious, so Ugoma had already seen in night visions (precognition) the horrible intentions that these people had for the village of Nur, who were under his care. He saw through their lies and promises of

wealth in some westward, far away land. This was a very sophisticated people and the slave trade was foreign to

Overture

(excerpt from The Elixir of Ponyo)

Overture

If consciousness is a timeline, what then, is the theology of time? Why does infinity flirt with temporality?

Could one dance outside and inside of time? Could one dance inside and outside human and divine? Why the dividing line? Maybe there is no line, could it all be in our minds?

Eternity forcefully penetrated my concept of temporality in my seventh initiatory year in the Science of Universal Awe.

Now I know there are real live men and women existing outside time, operating in a fashion some call divine. Flesh, blood, bones, and mind.

The Great Halijee is one such man. He is my master. Not a slave master, but a master of circumstance, a master of life, now a master of death whose life is lived solely to give life. Heard of him before I don’t suspect, but its possible, maybe you’ve be elected...

History has no need for him yet he can claim direct responsibility for many climatic shifts in global culture this past century. He’s been the starry star in many a dream...

All cosmogonic myths, folklore, fables, and fairy tales, hieroglyphics and Holy Scriptures have whispered about such mysteries, which sound like fantasy in present reality. Still we all are actors in this drama.

The writers, producers and directors in the drama are called Lightholders. They are the light of the worlds. They are the matriarchal marrow of existence. They can easily look back 100,000 years and forward 25,000 years as present as they are now, there.

They can communicate effortlessly across continents with thousands of persons at once while eating dinner (when they decide to eat). I know this sounds fantastical, but such fantasy, for me, has become reality. We call this reality “Universal Awe”.

My name is Tabriz. I will be your host for this magical mystery tour, this quest for the Holy Grail: the elixir which sanctifies existence.

Me? I’m just a wild-mannered barbarian, a ruffian. I jest. Actually I’m quite a cosmopolitan cat. The entirety of my brief life has been an exploration of the above mentioned themes.