Back Of Book Scripts / No. 44 - A Bit of Hoodoo in Our Bit of Harlem

What I knew: My close friend Anni had dived head-first into a variety of Africanist practices and rituals. What I did not know: the residuals of those rituals might soon find their way into my apartment.

She had come to my home to work on a creative project, and as she opened the suitcase she brought with her, out they scurried. A flurry of baby spiders.

At first, I just stared. My mind immediately jumped to a story about a bird offering gone wrong. Anni had mentioned a “pest problem” earlier, but suddenly it all made sense. I jumped into action stamping the few spiders that were making their way to home in my house.

I ran through a few questions in my head:

• Was it safe to visit Anni?

• Should she ever come visit me again?

• Could I shake myself hard enough so as to get off whatever else was crawling around her house?

• And most importantly, how do we understand the repercussions of rituals? What are we actually choosing to bring into our lives—consciously or not?

You see, it was inevitable: the scent of palm oil always reminded me of the conch shell sitting within a red stool at the door of our apartment in Central Harlem. I imagine in other homes there might have been a cross on the door, or even the blue iris eye. But, in our home, a home in which our mother did her darnedest to tap into the Africanalities she could access, there sat the conch. Less the traditional pink or yellow color, it was more shades of charcoal gray and white. Plated with three cowrie shells within its body—two of the shells situated as eyes, and one placed horizontally as if it were a mouth; a bit of hoodoo in our bit of Harlem, I’d agree.

It sat there for a number of years, and I grew to find little surprise in the unusual. Certainly, the unusual seems to be where comfort has found me.

Periodically, Mommy would clean the conch with palm oil. While she did that, I’d remember, in smelling the fragrant reddish oil, the way my tummy would flop a little if she ever made her okra dish with the oil. She would then surround the conch with peppermints and candies.

What I didn’t know until I was more of a teenager was that the conch was a symbol of Elegba—a deity from the Yoruba pantheon, known as the trickster, the gatekeeper, and the one who presides over crossroads. Elegba was the one who could open or close doors of opportunity, who shaped the flow of energy between worlds.

While I do not know what initially inspired my mother to place the Elegba by our door, she was very much internally invested in Africa and many things African. When asked where she was from, for example, she would decide with a smirk that she was from Zimbabwe that day or perhaps Sierra Leone or no, the Gambia. “I am an African,” she’d say triumphantly. Concordantly, though, if Momma was indeed from these places, then in fact she was pulling in and tapping on a wide mix and variety and inherent clash of cultures and traditions. Did she know that conducting certain rituals may inspire the exact opposite of what she desired for herself, for her family?

Elegba may be known to you, or to storytellers in your family, as Anansi, or Brer Rabbit, or Mr. Fox. And though I might not have known what Mommy was attending to, or whether she knew what she was attending to herself, I did know Anansi.

I had once won a storytelling contest in junior high school and went on unsuccessfully to compete in the district-wide contest as a public school student at PS 99. While I knew the story back and forth, left and right, I froze for a full minute while completing the recitation about Anansi and his desire to partake in a pot of beans. To this day, I don’t know why. I was simply lost in thought.

Insofar as this story illustrates how we can learn lessons from trickster figures, we must not be beguiled into thinking these figures hold more significance than they truly do. As a lover of games and yes, rule-breaking and deceit, Elegba is also a figure and a concept at which to draw pause, and consider that that which is before you is who you perceive that thing or person to be. Elegba, as a trickster, in some respects similar to that of a djinn, can be playful and dangerous, shifting shape to suit his own needs, not necessarily your own.

The gesture of a hug and how I personally give it equally brings Elegba to mind, or, at the very least, the idea of the jester. I will at times put a twist at the end of a hug. I crumble my fingers into a half-open fist and real quick-like leave off a gentle tug on the person’s back. With its dual purpose—to convey warmth and to emphasize elation—embraces and the common greetings we offer signal the start of a friendship, a conversation. These small actions convocate our many connections.

In its own way, my curled pat is Elegba. This deity, also known as an orisha, that bridges gaps, acting as connective tissue between divinity and humanity. With my hug gesture, I am attempting a gentle awakening of a dormant spirit, stating, “I am here,” and asking, “Are you here? Can we gather? Can we make play? Is there a where beneath there? A who beneath you?”

The way I ended my hugs especially delighted the photographer Jim Belfon, whom I worked with in New Orleans. It was during my time in the Gulf Crescent City that Jim requested my support on a few events, me providing photo coverage. At one point, I found myself directing an interview between Jim and the journalist Lolis Elie. After Katrina, Jim spent the latter part of his life in New Orleans living in the Treme.

As many had lost their family albums to the storm’s devastation, Jim sought to rebuild these collections by taking free photographs for families. He always lent me a camera to use for the sessions that we worked together, never concerned that I would not use it properly, or worse, that I might drop it.

Of the things I found amusing about Jim—of which there were many—was his fascination with the tuggy hugs I often gave. They charmed him. And if, by chance, I left the tug off—if I left the hug open and unclosed—he would be sure to let me know. At first, I thought, “What is he talking about?” I didn’t consciously recognize what I was doing until he, clearly fascinated, pointed it out. What is this tugging I do? Was I just greeting Jim? Or was I recognizing an aspect of him, something beneath the skin? In some other way, was the curled pat an inquiry at a crossing, a type of Elegba?

Such an unexpected voice of inquiry boomed at me the other day. I was staring for a moment at the sunflowers in an outdoor flower shop on my way into work. Suddenly, a voice, distinct with invitation, offered me a “Good morning,” with a question at its end. The voice was that of the shopkeeper, and he actually startled me because I had never been acknowledged on this passageway I’ve walked for over two years now. At first, I did not recognize him.

The shopkeeper’s greeting was akin to receiving a deliciously wide hug, and as I walked away, I realized that we had gotten coffee in the shop together the previous week. His greeting had taken me briefly back to the streets of the Treme where to greet your neighbor is to chorus with the morning’s lyric, the beginning song of a clear day.

To a great degree, we can often lack the full context of the God or gods we serve. Momma and I, and our family, may have been tapping into rituals unknowingly and without context. Were we bringing to life something more than ourselves? Were we, in feeding this Elegba figure, raising an energy alive that was more than we could handle?

When did I first become aware of Elegba’s presence? And even if I didn’t notice it consciously, was the essence of Elegba activated? Was this Elegba figure keeping out unwanted influences? More than anything, learning about the orisha, and living with the Elegba figure, has helped me to understand life in the way of concepts and essence, energies and gesture.

When I began this piece, I really had not concretized and complicated the Elegba figure in my life or in my family. Today I take pause and wonder how much context did we have fully to integrate and to embrace aspects of cultures and religions which we were not born, of which we held little lineage within. In diving into this growing belief, I am certainly putting my own foundations into question. Further, I have to wonder what exactly is or was this peculiar hug that I have continued to give? Why was I curling my fingers over into a pat? Was it my hand serving as a sort of mask, a distancing between myself and another?

I could have been saying with this curled pat that this extension of me, this antenna reaching out, is just an aspect of my true self, but it is a self that will meet you first; this sort of strange roving antenna is what you will meet first. The idea that Elegba is also antennal makes me see or think of the orisha as somewhat of a defense mechanism against that which is truest in ourselves, that which is realist in ourselves.

By placing this the conch by the door Momma may have been asking and seeking recognition as well, seeking to be seen maybe not as who she was but as who she could be if you tried her. Was she saying to those stepping across the threshold of her home that not only was there something beneath her skin but that there was something beneath the skin of us all. You could if you wanted to f#$k around and find out.

Tagged under: elegba, jim belfon, memory, ritual

Why, Back of Book? or…BOBs 😏

The name "Back of Book Scripts" holds personal significance. It's a combination of my college professor's advice to put useful information in one’s “back-pocket,” as well as my mother's (and now my own) habit of jotting down numbers, notes and all the things on the backs of envelopes, books, etc. These scribbles of import, or SOI for short, contain so many ranges of helpful notes and things to remember.

These scripts are a chronicle of community & relationship, and how we show up in the world. They touch on various topics, experiences, day-to-day and literary notes.

This is a list of scripts of the inspiring sort.