And feeds the minds
Dropping wisdom-in-the-schism
To heal the blind . . . .
19.
9:00 PM. Shift ending. Moon asked him to update the Falcon blog with a new reading list.
“Me?”
“Yeah, you, why not?”
“You’re the one who’s read, like, a million books—”
Brother Moon chuckled. “So? You’ve read a hundred thousand.”
“But I—”
“You don’t get more gold by burying it, young bruh, you get it—”
“—by sharing it. Yeah, I know . . . . ”
Logging in, he thought about what he’d been learning, what’d been transforming him and the Falcons recently.
He summoned seven deep breaths to relax his mind, as Moon’d taught him.
Hm . . . what was today’s Alchemy? July 7 . . . seventh day of the seventh month . . . . Interesting. How much, recently, he’d been sevening or at least trying to seven.
Replace-Elevate.
The titles started coming, books from the library or Moon’s own vast collection he’d finished or was part way through, and a couple ’Noot’d recommended. And every new one he got, he slotted it alphabetically . . . .
Ishmael Beah
Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
Octavia Butler
Parable of the Sower
Wangari Maathai
Unbowed: My Autobiography
Monique Maddy
Learning to Love Africa: My Journey from Africa to Harvard Business School and Back
Njabulo Ndebele
Fools and Other Stories
Mongane Serote
To Every Birth Its Blood
Bobby Seal
Seize the Time
Ivan Van Sertima
Blacks in Science
Impressed at his list, and with himself. Making this list: it was a promotion.
Made a note to go back and annotate the blog with his own comments about why he chose each book and how each book was about sevening.
20.
Raptor wasn’t headed out for any parties. Didn’t like em. Wasn’t up to stepping out Saturday night-style, not even to hang with Jackal or Senwusret or . . . .
Well . . . ’Noot, maybe, but it was night and that girl was muhajabah. She was at home. And was gonna stay like that.
Told Moon he was clocking out and then went upstairs, to what he secretly called the Palace of the Moon.
For over a year he’d been returning to the Hyper-Market which was literally right next door to the store where someone had almost turned his skull into cherry pie. And for six months he’d been living and sleeping and eating just above it.
Wasn’t there something . . . strange about that?
Yeah, sure, he couldn’t control where Moon lived and worked, but from what he learned in Psych 20, wasn’t he supposed to have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or something?
Climbed the stairs. Knees like putty. Hands like sponges. Throat like a boa was crushing it.
Why, for a year, had he not cared that he had brought himself back daily to Ground Zero?
Key-hand kept missing the lock: Clicketty-tinketty-clacketty . . . .
Steadied it. Entered shadows.
Didn’t matter why he’d been okay before. Denial, or whatever. And if denial’d helped him function all that time, denial was a good thing.
But at that exact moment he felt it all, smelled the burnt-meat stench of hunters, tasted them waiting for him somewhere in the gathering darkness, felt them like slime sliding over his crotch, heard the echoing screams while from the chaos came men with murderous knives, and fingers cruel.
21.
At Moon’s PC, Raptor checked the blog for comments on his booklist, but there weren’t any yet, so he cross-posted the list onto his Facebook page, then checked his email where he found a message from Maãhotep.
Nub-Wmet-Ãnkh,
Br. Raptor,
I’ve been thinking a great deal about your situation since this afternoon. I strongly urge you to cope with the stress by developing your gold-minding powers.
If you’d like help, I’d be happy to guide you. Professor X recruited me as his deputy instructor of gold-minding, and I helped Br. Moon through some difficult times with those skills.
Tonight, try gold-minding with the following in mind.
1. I’ve FTPed you an extra-low-frequency drone track. The drone will guide your brain into a theta-wave frequency: simply put, it’ll keep your brain from racing. It’s my own track, so you’ll hear my voice.
2. Focus on Replace-Elevate. Inside the cave, every time khetiuta arise from the water, visualise grasping Master Jehu’s golden chain.
3. If that doesn’t work, breathe more deeply, use the power-word focus, and visualise any beautiful, happy experience you can, with as much detail as you can, and alternate with the power-words “I am free.”
4. What about when you’re on the street and feel afraid? Breathe deeply, close your eyes if it’s safe, and use both repeat-phrases until you’re calm again.
5. If you can’t keep khetiuta out of your mind, visualise your body falling into the Swamps of Death, but picture yourself as your own ka, standing on the shore. Sigh with patient amusement at yourself and say the words, “How did It fall in the Swamps again? I just hauled It out of there!” Calling yourself “It” will help you detach from your destructive emotions and thus break the destructive positive-feedback loop.
6. If all else fails, play Tetris (or any video game). Trauma research shows that playing Tetris right after a disturbing experience helps divert the brain from ruminating on the it, which lessens future trauma. And nobody ever ODed on Tetris.
7. Finally, check out the links below before you try gold-minding tonight, in the order I gave them. Focus on what Malcolm said about prisoners, and remember that Hru lived in the South and the North, too.
Nub-Wmet-Ãnkh,
Sbai Maãhotep
22.
No doubt, he was intrigued.
The first link led him to a Malcolm X YouTube video. Since entering the Golden Fortress, he’d seen plenty of Malcolm X videos that Brother Moon recommended. But this one was new to him.
Malcolm X. Slim. Tall. Short haircut. A sharp suit like something Brother Maã would wear (or maybe his own dad), punctuating every sentence with his sword-finger:
You and I have never seen democracy. All we've seen is hypocrisy . . . . If you go to jail, so what? If you’re Black, you were born in jail. If you’re Black, you were born in jail, in the North as well as the South.
Born in jail.
Why’d Brother Maã want him to reflect on that?
The second link: trailer for a documentary. Some hoity-toity British woman:
Why couldn’t a prison cell be just like a monk’s cell? Sister Elaine was very keen to help prisoners meditate.
An elderly White woman in black. Stooping, adjusting a White prisoner’s hands. The con was sitting on the floor in one of those Buddhist postures.
A Jamaican brother. Must’ve been a prisoner, too—dressed just like the meditating White man. Him, nodding:
I guess she saw the need . . . maybe out of her divine inspiration, because it really helps. This is like the only sane moment in prison.
This old White lady was really teaching prisoners to meditate?
Some English guy:
It’s a gift that can not only get them through their time of incarceration, and allow them to see it for what it is, but you’re giving them something to take out into life afterwards.
She’s a Catholic nun. She’s also a musician. And she’s also a Zen master. So she crosses religions completely.
Finally an old woman’s voice—the nun’s?—soft as the wind:
Your spirituality is what you do with the fires that burn within.
Clicked off the video, played a few levels of Serious Sam, then went to bed. Put his headphones on. Clicked on Maã’s drone.<
br />
Hadn’t been much good at gold-minding. His mind was practically a NASCAR track.
But Maã was a smart brother, so . . . .
Lights off.
Slowed his breathing. Inhaling as deeply as he could until his lungs wanted to burst.
Then slowly . . . let . . . it . . . out . . . .
And again . . . and again . . . .
Turned on his mp3 player.
The drone . . . . echoing inside his skull, distant and near like thunder.
Continued his breathing and descent into the cave.
Maã’s voice in his ears:
I am creating a more golden mind than I ever have before . . . .
Relaxed . . . completely at ease . . . .
My body is soft, supple, like water . . . my head is soft . . . my eyes are soft . . . my jaw is soft. . .
The Voice told him to repeat internally:
I am at peace . . . .
I am relaxed and confident . . . .
I am protected by people who love me . . . .
I am strong . . . .
I know how to help myself, and how to ask for and accept help . . . .
I am balanced and at one with the universe . . . .
Whenever I need strength, I repeat my power-words, “I am free,” and suddenly I am refreshed, at ease, and more powerful than I was before . . . .
Back from the cave. Past 11 PM. He’d been down an hour.
He’d never been able to last more than three minutes before without distractions blasting him right out.
Stunning: when the Voice told him to, he’d visualised himself, down to the last detail, on a perfect day: confident, relaxed, happy, even charming. While visualising, he felt his cheek muscles bunching up wider and wider every minute. And whenever threat-thoughts arose, he followed Maã’s instructions: visualise something that made him happy.
’Noot. Smiling at him.
Slid softly into luxurious sleep.
He pierced the sky, flew past the Moon, past Mars and the asteroids and flung himself far out to Jupiter. Gazed at its ancient hurricane, bigger than three Earths.
Hovering above it while Jupiter’s moons whirled past him, the massive world’s rings glittering like frost on a Christmas Eve window.
To him, the Great Red Spot looked nothing like a hurricane. It was calm. Wise. Reassuring.
It looked just like the Ujat.
The Eye of Hru.
23.
Sunday morning. After Daily Alchemy with Moon. Biking to Senwusret’s place in Highlands to make beats with Sen and Jackal.
Sen’d Facebooked him: just got a whole new set of MIDI kora patches. Sen was on a mission to Africanise hip hop into something he was calling Imhotep-hop.
“Whole thing is, Rap,” he’d said on the phone, “you got brothers in Senegal and Kenya and whatever making hip hop, but it all sounds American. They gotta do like Thomas Mapfumo. You hearda him?”
“Yeah, he—”
“Yeah, his whole thing was—in Zimbabwe, right?—to use traditional instruments, like the thumb piano, the mbira, in modern music—” (Couldn’t stop Brother Sen when he got like that.) “—cuz before that he’d been doing Beatles songs and shit, and then he brought back the mbira to make spirit music, revolutionary music. Chimurenga!”
“Yeah, I heard about—”
“So I’m getting every kinda MIDI patch I can for African instruments: mbira, balafon, kora, jembe, begena, banjo—”
“Banjo? Seriously?”
“Oh, yeah! Came from West Africa, originally—”
Halfway to Sen’s place he saw a pickup truck in front of a beautifully-maintained house in Norwood. Two bumper stickers: “War? How’s that Workin’ For Ya?” and “Justice or Just Us?”
Immediately hopped the curb and jumped off his bike so he could ring the bell and tell Maã all about gold-minding down in the cave—
The door opened. A tall brother stood there. Plush white bathrobe hanging open. Man had a hairless, chiseled chest, like a male-model’s. Silk pajama bottoms draped over his feet to touch the tiled floor.
Man’s left ear: a small diamond sparkling. A coffee mug hummed steam in his hand. Way behind him, a breakfast table brimming with food.
“Can I help you?”
“Oh, sorry. Wrong house. I saw, uh, my friend’s truck—”
Sounds of a sink running, then stopping, and a door closing. And then coming out of the hallway, another man in a matching plush robe.
Maãhotep.
He saw Raptor, started to say hello, but the teen backed up, almost fell down the front porch, jumped on his bike and jetted.
Didn’t look back at the sound of Maã calling his name down the block, didn’t look to see if Maã’s bathrobe was flapping in the warm Sunday morning breeze.
24.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” said Raptor. “Didn’t you hear what I just said?”
Senwusret’s basement recording studio. Dark. A single blade of light knifed through the curtains.
’Noot and Jackal stood staring back at him. Brother Sen sat in front of the computer with Fruity Loops open on the screen.
“Well, whole thing is,” said Sen, “you sure you saw what you said you saw?”
“Yes! You ever know me to exaggerate?”
Nobody said anything to that.
Jackal went back to chewing an Egg McMuffin he’d enhanced with three cheese slices of his own. The cramped studio reeked from teen sweat and McGrease.
“Well?”
“Just sayin, is all,” said Sen. “Cuz, y’know, could it’ve been his brother?”
Raptor pfffed.
“Well . . . damn . . . . Sbai Maãhotep? I’ont even wanna think about that.”
“What about you two?”
Jackal and ’Noot glanced at each other, waiting for the other one to start. When neither did, Raptor snapped, “You’re both Muslims!”
“So?” said ’Noot.
“‘So’? It’s against your religion! Doesn’t that make him a hypocrite?”
“Well, for one, Sbai Maãhotep is a Sufi,” said ’Noot, “and Sufis always do things their own way. They also have a reputation for being kinda ‘out there,’ but they’re usually pretty smart—”
“What about you, Jackal?”
Jackal saw Noot’s reaction: eyes and nostrils flaring. Jackal, sighing, shoulders stooped. Waiting for someone else.
“Dude, it’s a big world,” he said at last. “My whole country fell apart. Yours too.” Corrected himself at the first sight of Raptor getting even angrier. “Both of yours.”
Jackal was the only person who ever remembered that his best friend was half Somali.
“Nunna my business, fuh real,” said Jackal. “Yours neither. And don’we got bigger fish to batter?” Bit off and gobbled down some more of his extra-cheesy McMuffin, then crumpled up the wrapper.
“You gotta keep eating that disgusting McShit? You’re stinking up the whole studio!”
Jackal. A raised eyebrow, just like Moon would do. “Bruh, I can see you’re upset, so I’ma let that one go. But you are seriously acting like an asshole right now.”
Glanced at ’Noot, but she wouldn’t even look at him. Felt a tumour in his chest. Completely different from the burn. A rigid, serated mutant mass, gutting him from the inside.
Shook his head, then checked Senwusret.
“Look, my whole thing is, don’t get me wrong, I don’agree with gayness, and the Qur’an forbids it. But like, on the everyday? So long as they don’mess with me, I don’t mess with them.”
“Sen, if something’s wrong, people gotta take a stand—”
“There’s this one hadith, Rap, where the Prophet, peace-be-upon-him, says if you find a dog dying of thirst, you should dip your shoe in the well to give him water. I mean, thing is, most Muslims think dogs are impure, and shoes are so impure you can’t even be praying in em. So—”
’Noot: “Who are you to judge Brother Maã?”
“And he’s your teacher, and he’s been an Alchemist longer than you’ve been alive!”
Ignored her, looked at Jackal. “It’s like you’re not even surprised!”
“Dude, I’m surprised that you’re surprised. Just figured you knew. Brother Maã’s so sharp. Always sharp . . . the haircut, the suits. He’s slim. I mean, that’s like a whole thing on Seinfeld.”
“I can’t believe you!”
“Dude, why you always be running and throwing yourself in the Swamps?”
“I’m out!”
Senwusret: “Rap, c’mon, now—”
“Dude, what about rehearsal? Kush Party’s in a week!”
He turned dramatically. “Then today, you three are on your own.”
Someone gasped, but he was already out the door.
The Alchemists of Kush Page 29