Andamese Teaching: From Kill or Be Killed to Communicate or Be Killed

Talking History - A Lakota Storyteller

"Myths and legends were told...usually at night around the village fire and the telling was reserved to the "dreamers" or medicine-men, the Oko-jumu...There were three ways a man, and much more rarely a woman, could become an Oko-jumu. One was by "dying" and then coming back to life, for example by fainting or by having an epileptic fit and then recovering. Another way was to be "kept" in the jungle by spirits: if a person showed no fear of spirits, it was believed that they would refrain from killing but they could still keep their victim in the jungle for a while. Yet another way was by talking to the spirits in a dream. The spirits were the dead and any contact with them either killed a person or made him or her into an Oko-jumu." George Weber. The Andamese. Chapter 23: Myths and Legends.

This study, originally from A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, is especially pertinent to the study of rites of initiation, where the primary function of this social form of belonging, not only within the human group, but with humankind's higher spiritual faculties in cohesion with subtle ecological presence. This gives us insight into the source of human knowledge, as an intergenerational narrative, and even represents the role of conflict transformation and the relegation of the aggressive principle in human nature from a kill or be killed to a communicate or be killed.

For a comparative study between the Lakota and Andamese peoples with relation to the role of dreams in the making of traditional storytellers, read From Social function to Pedagogical Function on Mythic Dreams.

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Tramping through the corridor of my grandparents in the Hampton hills of New York, the beige linoleum lies dirtied with a score of recent visitors, and the angel light of the winter’s day breathes with an icicle heart onto the feet of the whitened doorstop. With a running muck of puppies, my father swings the door open and shoots me out into the dizzying cacophony of wild dogs, huge and menacing. Their growling eyes bear down with starving, cannibalistic teeth.

Ceremonial Orgies by Dog-eaters by Anonymous

As my father quickens back through the warm house, the slow-motion snow gathers under my frosted eyelids, as I work myself back up to my feet in the subzero temperatures, at eye-level with a host of swarming canines, wild and diseased. I notice the back leg of one dog’s been bitten clean to the bone. Their wounded sting of necessity chokes my well-wishing brain into a heady daze of a feral calling.

Gypsy dog-killers by Anonymous

And in the mind of my love, a dream of lightening news props up our necks to an after-life view. Our grandfather, recently deceased, visits us. He’s traveled hundreds and hundreds of miles away across the entire scope of the prairies, a young man of excellent hue, whose eyes invigorate the humble walls of our sleepy apartment. Again in his prime, he offers a blessing of material coordination with our passionate, creative hearts. An ingeniously crafted wooden box, shaped of his exceptional Norwegian whittling hand I presume, is handed over, as a gift, to us.

The Willow flute by Christian Skredsvig

Within the glorious arboreal artwork, two handcrafted wooden flutes of a celestial order are presented hearteningly. They appear as long bamboo flutes, however with a sound equal to a half-Shakuhachi, half-recorder timbre. We play them with delight, and upon sounding the first note, the golden presence of our late grandfather vanishes in a heartbeat of silence; a gift from the prime centre of our earliest known life.

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Drift of a fist to the sky
In the activist’s pause
Before standing unannounced
At the gates of eternal misery
Where strife finds embittered ground
And the inglorious suffering breeds childless offspring
Mourning for ancestral greed
Sprouting from a native gourd
With cracked shell
Lying abandoned and weakened at the skin
With taught shell-string clacking
With fortune’s boisterous western noise
Shrinking into the mist
Without echo
From musician’s deep sleep
Over the ancient soundscapes passing
Through electric wilderness
To heart

excerpt from "Ancient Soundscapes, Scholarly Jazzdoms"

Kieran of Ireland and the Sainthood of Dream History

Detail of a stained glass window depicting Saint Kieran
(St. Brendan's Church, Ireland - Photography by Andreas F. Borchert)

"Kieran of Saighir was the first saint born in Ireland...Before she conceived Kieran in her womb his mother had a dream: as it were a star that fell into her mouth; which dream she related to the magicians and to the knowledgeable ones of the time, and they said to her: “thou wilt bear a son whose fame and whose virtues shall to the world’s latter end be great [i.e. notorious].” Afterwards that holy son Kieran was born..." Life of S. Kieran of Saighir. at Celtic Literature Collective

Strangely familiar to the origin stories for Buddha, I first read about this aspect of Irish history in Joseph Campbell's Occidental Mythology. Reflecting, I see similarities to Mexico's Virgin de Guadalupe, who was seen in a vision (see also my post: The Imperial Ethereality of the Christian Cross), to incite the mask of christian history over the indigenous face. I wonder, was the story more brutal, covered up by fables of dream and superstition, to align with dominant perspectives on native irrationality.

See related posts: The Mother of Buddha Had A Dream & To Dream Is To Conceive An Other

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In the penthouse suite version of my tiny apartment, I cavort around the fine art, baby grand piano, clear glass tables and impeccable wood floors with my mother. She is youthful and gay, enjoying the space with matchless ardor. As I look into her face, I begin to call out for my wife. “Where is she?” I ask pleadingly. Strangely, the stars shine clearly outside, entering our dimly lit space through the window. We are high above the smog and pollution, high above the human world of earthly obligation.

Cupid and Psyche in the natural bower by Hugh Douglas Hamilton

As I step down, to visit my grandparents in their New York home, I wait, fixed in place within the center of a foyer condensed by the continuous movement of relatives up and down the stairs. The air is heavy. I embrace each family member longingly, and with a strength characteristic of my waking need. Our grandfather is dying.

Interior by William Gerard Barry

Later that night, my wife and I decide to cross a high river. Our kayaks soon tip in the rushing torrent, flooded with murky water. We swim earnestly to the edge, where my wife quits on me as I gather strength enough to submerge in a second-hand craft to retrieve one of our vessels caught in the shoreline brush. Sitting in a sinking vessel, with only a dilapidated, half-worn paddle, a family of ducks begins attacking with an incessant hunger for my pruned, sore fingers.  

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Where am I falling?
Who do I call?
I have fallen, I am getting small.

- excerpt from "I Have Fallen"

The Achuar and the Meaning of an Indigenous Map

“For many years these Achuar communities have dreamt of introducing themselves, their way of life and the beauty of their ancestral lands to the rest of the country and the world. For the Achuar, a dream is not simply a passing, nocturnal illusion without relation to one’s waking life. On the contrary, dreams are gateways allowing communication with the spirits of their ancestors, who come to visit and talk to the living, giving them advice and a vision of their future so that they can tread a clear path in life.” (Source)

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North America on a map, tangled in intercalated diagrammatic linearity. A pale shade of red loosely emboldens Native lands. The patchy splotches of coloration on the otherwise black and white delineation of national-political boundary displaces geography with a time-bound worshipping, a cultural veil of truancy, a wakeful respite from truth. Looking at the seemingly random collection of red area follow my eyes as my eyes follow easterly into the heart of New England, my mind is inundated with a series of educational videos on sexual abuse in reserve/reservation communities. Homoerotic visuals tear my stare into blurry remorse for the heady desperation and wasteful racism, looking away from the natural history, the undeserved step over fellow men. As I contemplate the madness of the contemporary imagery presented to me, I turn a corner atop a towering butte in the skyscraping mountainous land, hiking through a valley pass, immersed in the cold sky air, unobstructed by not but stone and hair. 

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Map

"To dream of a map, or studying one, denotes a change will be contemplated in your business. Some disappointing thing swill occur, but much profit also will follow the change...To dream of following a map means you are going in the right direction in a real life situation. It also symbolizes emotional and spiritual growth...A confusing chart may indicate that you lack a clear sense of direction in your everyday life or are in the midst of changing long term plans." (iDream)

________

to the racist, sexist and conservative religious wine,
intoxicating the West
with a throat climbing upwards
to vomit the female's adam apple,
now so dry, shriveled with frost,
cracked and permanently wasted,
not a thought to re-cycle,
only the Mother (Mater/Matter) abuse,
to forgive latent mindreaders
stating new thought dictionary entries

new, with fresh ink over the staircase travelogue,
leading yet leaderless,
wading in the warm bathwater
fresh and awash with the purest feeling,
drinking earth and swaying so slightly
atop family trees brushing neatly
along the skin-touched pages
leafing soundly into a freed paradigm
lonesome with radical imagination,
to resist the sufferer's cold throne and sleep
instead in the deadly fog of oblivion,
away from the driven masses
who prepare to wake
...
who failed to swear an addiction into existence
over the creator's blue telephone,
hushing the musical light from beyond
into anonymity,
whose authoritarian drug was fixed by the word,
and now silent to the punch,
a subtle dream

slaking the thirst for lucidity to be
in modern consciousness,
say

"it is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a sick society" (J. Krishnamurti)

...

a healthy wave reaches sky's peopled shores,
wherein all are recognized within the womb,
unborn demigods come to that awareness,
giving lush expressions to instantaneous action,
rousing impassioned need to flow with an artistic palette,
swimming above extinction in winter's unprepared lulls,
choking the urge toward movement within,
a mental pride

singing zealous
while sad, and diving earnestly
into depression's darkest ignorance

shadow's dust so remote
now only found in greed, sick corners
within a Southerly, Global hate,
trading laws with resistance,
scheming out of natural dependence,
realizing childish humility, and finally
forgiving the precious sources of Love,
kneeling before forests,
swamps, wetlands, rains, fogs,
winds, grasses, bushes, trees,
soils, shores, stones, and all measure of fungal being
as barefoot sleepers,
smiling at the unknown,
unknowingly

- excerpts from "truth, judgment or unknowns"

Borges and The Ancestral Mirror of World Literacy

"Childhood passed away and the tigers and my passion for them grew old, but still they are in my dreams. At that submerged, or chaotic level they keep prevailing. And so, as I sleep some dream beguiles and suddenly I know I’m dreaming, then I think: this is a dream, a pure diversion of my will and now that I have unlimited power I am going to cause a tiger.

Oh incompetence, my dreams never manage to breed forth a longed for beast.”

[From “Dreamtigers”]

Narrator

"Borges dream world extended from the house in Palermo to the city around it and out into the endless continuity of the pampas. Here in the open country he discovered another aspect of Argentina’s mythology. The land where his ancestors had fought, the vast sky and the gauchos..." 

From “Jorge Luis Borges: The Mirror Man” 

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The dark forest leads under a storm-cast flood of opaque black cloud above the dimly lit cabin, barely in sight. Leaves, burnt by the frozen winds crumple with delicacy under our unforgiving step. Sense-deprived, we share the hollow bitterness of the cold mystery ahead. With Mexican friends, we enter the home of the recluse. Maps of Metis land and the intriguing sizzle of wild game invite us onto the weathered upholstery of inspired comfort. Indrawn, yet tempting, the host’s gaze is untamed, always welcoming. As friends and I sit around the country table, the food begins with due presentation, decadent meats and thick bean dishes melt in a haze of tantalizing scents. Conversation ensues. Drink follows. I’m ridiculed for my lack of Spanish. Dejected, I comb the ghastly wilderness, alone under the silent, new moon. Pitch darkness swallows me in a mutual fight with my emotional vacuum, self-trust extinguished with each step upon the unknown forest ground. I walk until dawn. On my own, I know the comfort of the empty sky, the abandoned railways, and graffiti concrete beside shallow streams. All are mere steps towards the final return, to where I used to be.

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Dark

"A dream of the dark is never a good aspected omen as after such a dream you are in danger of losing control of your temper and causing yourself a lot of hardships and losses. If you dream that dark is falling while you are traveling it is an ill omen for any business you try to conduct unless the journey is finished before it gets dark." (iDream)

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I revere my Jewish ancestors over the Hebrew G-D,
that is to say:
the personal history and presence of my ancestors are closer to me in bond
and in the formation of my living human identity
than are the laws prescribed in Hebrew society,
for we are of a greater human community

- excerpt from "Jewish ancestors"