About this author: I am a poet/storyteller published Spring 2005 in Drum Voices Revue out of Southern Illinois University honoring the 70th birthday of Amiri Baraka and the 40th Anniversary of the Black Cultural Arts Movement and have been featured storyteller for the National Association of Black Storytellers.

Done

by Tureeda Mikell
January 2006

Kemet, Chem mystery = that which moves in the dark.
A missed-tree to reclaim.

It is a clear brisk spring afternoon in 1987 as I sit in front of my computer, I attempt to document and incident that took place during my college daze in a chemistry class 17 years prior. It?s a missed tree, a nerve desensitized that wishes to be found. My Body jerks as I heave in deep breaths breathing laboriously. Heart palpitates, eyes burn, questioning water flow down cheek as I try to catch my breath, my wind, my spirit and recall spirit means breath in Latin. I didn?t know my body could store pain unnoticed for 17 years. I inhale to exhale and begin to breathe deeply as I recount why the circle should have never been broken.

It?s the early 70?s. I am a single parent attending college full time and working part time to keep a roof over our heads. I have completed my license for nursing and want to further my education so I begin pre-med. courses with a minor in music. Then a curious thing begins to take place.

Some hidden passion develops and compels me to associate all subjects to a primary circle. Courses in physiology, sociology, psychology, microbiology, philosophy, music, political science or any other subject, I?d try to associate their meaning into a cohesive circle. This task was not easy given present system?s curriculum. Each subject carries its own thought within a language system, yet this organic need to connect far outweighed any logic I could find.

I began to question my sanity. ?Why am I driven to find the significance of every subject within a circle, each subject significantly relating to the other. It makes sense yet I can?t find evidence here in this school of higher education to support my theory. Then migraine headaches begin to occur quite frequently. One night while studying for 3 exams, I attempt once again to find meaning between subjects but fall asleep only to awaken at 4am with a migraine.

These migraines seem to run concurrent with every attempt to find connective meaning in subjects taken. Is my circular intellect in some covert war? Was it the death of my mother before I was 10 years old, my fathers? nervous breakdown shortly thereafter, the separation of my younger sisters and me in foster care, the separation of land, language, and culture within a society based upon linear oppression 450 plus years ago? What is it? Finally the answers come from two sources, both by way of the Motherland, Africa.

In my chemistry class there are three African brothers from the continent who always aced chemistry lab lecture test. I found it difficult to access the language and syllabus of chemistry as taught so, I got up enough nerve to ask the African brothers if I could study with them. They readily agreed. Our first meeting, I ask, "How do you master chemistry so easily?" I recall their thick West African accent as one answers: "We don't know why they make it so difficult." Another says, "Americans teach subjects in too many different languages. This creates a very weak bond and support system in life relationships." Another says. "Chemistry's grams and moles should relate to farming's pounds and ounces. In our country, life subjects are seen as whole, not in parts.

Too many parts separate and break the whole. This causes degeneration." The more I listen, the clearer it becomes why my passion for the circle is so deeply ingrained. After studying with those I now call my Familiars, I grasp chemistry with ease much better than I had previously. However when I turn in my homework, answers were correct, but the professor tells me they?re wrong. ?Why,? I ask him. He says it?s because the methods of solving the problems are wrong.? Having crossed checked with my familiars earlier I knew that was not right. ?But you didn?t mark theirs incorrect,? hoping to find restitution. Professor then tells me pointing to them, ?They?re going back where they came from, but you were born here. You need to stick to methods I teach.? A sudden shift-takes place in my psyche as my life plummets through a dark tunnel. It?s like the reoccurring dream I had as a child forced to swallow stones that got caught in my throat at the beginning of a dark tunnel. He disconnects me from my familiars? way of thinking.

Aphasia takes hold of my mind, splits my tongue from reasoning. My intellect is raped. I am unable speak or rebuke what has just been demanded of me so coldly. I am a young single parent going to school to further my education. I have no time to debate him, breakdown, cry, or go off on him. But, that must have been when I held in the pain because I was very conscious of controlling my anger. How dare you deny me my genetic legacy!! ?You mutha f**ker,? I thought to my self. Then, it hits me, the reality of enslavement is far more extensive than taught or than I could have ever imagined. Institutional slavery chains the body?s spirit and holds it captive blinding the senses, severing the consciousness, and flat-lines circular thinking. Is this why Milton said, ?They who blind the peoples eyes reproach them for their blindness?

Now I?m a young black mother on the run, in blind pursuit of an education that continually rapes my psyche, yet I am to pay, honor, and be congratulated for its intelligence. I recall a quote from James Baldwin?s 6-page letter to teachers that read, ?Any Black child being educated in this country runs the risk of becoming schizophrenic.? (Letter To Teachers, 1963)

Months later, a dear friend brings the second answer in a book entitled, Muntu. This book initiates my road to recovery. It speaks to the indigenous ways of African peoples from times of antiquity joining all life subjects into a circle. That seasons, dream time, law, birth, burial, music, art, geology, astronomy, medicine, philosophy, government, agriculture, mathematics, religion, cosmology and voudoun share the same language within the circle. However, to remove or disengage one subject from the circle, would paralyze the connections to other subjects within the circle.

Relieved, I could see my need to reconnect was correct all along. To link subjects to a circle is not only natural, it was and is the embodiment of Africans language culture and psyche. So is this why I would have migraines that would nearly paralyze me? Were the migraines due to my conscious reconnecting against the will of an oppressive culture that institutes in linear intellect?

The migraines stopped shortly there after, I have not had one since. What are the side effects of an oppressor who forces a toxic will, or ideology to be unnaturally your own? Does it takes on the form of psychological rape, an abduction of the spirit? What is the cost of survival within an institution touting linear intellect?

My body held pain I was totally unaware of for 17 years, but what makes it worse, what did I act out or project to others as a result? How many others are disconnected or paralyzed holding pain that goes unnoticed today? How many have recounted the stories of being mentally violated or disconnected from ones own method of thinking and thought nothing of it?

Consider the outcome of this violation, youth dropping out of school, asthma, mouth breathing, ADD, AHD, drug addictions, rage, depression, homicide, fratricide, high blood pressure, teen pregnancy, self-hate, self-destruction and migraines. When the circle is broken it violates life, denigrates the mind, degenerates its inhabitants, short circuits earth cycles, and thereby destroys the planet. We are the caretakers of this planet. An old African proverb says: Bit by bit the measure is made.

Teachers, instructors, professors, if your students have other methods of problem solving contrary to ascribed mainstream methodology yet attains the same answer, please allow them the privilege to use their innate thought process. You?ll create a safer, saner environment.

For this reason I recall one very poignant quote from native African writer, Ayi Kwei Armah from his book, 2000 Seasons, that reads: "Disconnectedness is destruction's keenest weapon against the soul."

May the circle be unbroken.

I am a Mother, Grandmother Sistah Womb-man. My womb trembles with the earth. May our circle be Unbroken. Ishe o?lua cudje? Bah djeo in Yoruba means ?Gods work will never be destroyed!?