…So
there it lies, the greatest of all invisible forces.
Seated
in the throne of a place...keeper of the Universe
From
it all rivers flow with the waters of life, baptizing the
land,
And above
it the wind sings motivated by its infinite capacity.
In its seat
lies the answer to all things, and that is itself.
That is
its self. Breathing close to the ears of those that know
it,
It is perceptible
only to those who understand its nature.
And it blesses
those who believe in it with the grace of its revealing
music.
Shallows
are the waters in the lands of those against it.
Putrid and
foul is their condition, yet it still shines for them.
Like a dormant
sun it sits and it waits in its throne,
waiting
for the moment when they are prepared.
Waiting
for the awakening
Outside
the circle of the known lies the unknown.
Also, in
turn is the known outside the unknown.
As above
is below so is within without.
So as the
sky mirrors the earth, so does the earth mirror us, so do
we mirror the sky.
But all
of this is nothing
If the great
of all invisible forces
Does not
shine within as it does without us
Below as
it does above us
It with
us and us with it…
These are the words and this
the life of yoayar, the experience of the daemon.
A pure reflection of the overall
within itself.
In dedication to our ancestors
and to all our relations…
Chapter
1
One
long past evening in guanjama, the holy land of the gujumnoe
tribe to which we are all born, in a time and place where
the indigenous peoples still lived with nature as their
immemorial source of both learning and sustenance, we watched
proudly as my son yoayar stood in perfect balance and stillness,
gazing at the distances as himself for the last time.
As the chosen ceremonial
elders and teachers, huomono, kutetaro, bejebo and I prepared
the fire for the initiative rituals to take place, and while
doing so we all smiled within as we recalled in synchronicity
how we ourselves had reacted to our first near-death experience.
Complete trust and goodwill
we laid upon that place and that moment because we knew
from experience of the one spirit, and because we believed
in it whole-heartedly. Yet the outcome of this rite of passage
was entirely up to yoayar and his universe. It was a delicate
and dangerous procedure we were undertaking although we
knew that nothing could ever go wrong or unaccepted on the
fasalo plateau, our place of passage, for it was guarded
by the ancestral spirits of our kind.
This was to be a ritual
in which pure focus and strong intent were needed, for an
important choice between paths was to be made, and a perilous
voyage undertaken. Whatever the choice, it was correct and
it was destiny. If chosen by the spirits, yoayar would be
born again as a gujumno. If not, the plants of fasalo would
either take his sanity or his breath.
These were the laws of
cause and effect in fasalo, distorted and unusual yet holy
to us. Whatever the outcome of this ordeal it would be definite
for yoayar because one thing was for certain, regardless
of the choice, in one way or another, yoayar would now finally
break through the belief he had sustained that all things
are as perceived by the senses. He would discover that the
real world of defined objects he had been living in was
an illusion. He was to experience and grow up in a new world
built upon the ruins of his
previous one.
It was now nearing night.
The wind blew something fierce up in that plateau. Clouds
were gathering to observe and the raptors hovered above
us in solemn support, for all nature in the surrounding
area was aware that something of big spirit was coming to
pass in fasalo.
The mesa fasalo was a special
sedimentary rock extension shaped by passing time and the
natural forces that work with it. A desolate high point
de-constructed and molded round by the combining forces
of wind and water. Conditions so strong and piercing that
they only permitted the survival of certain life forms on
the fasalo plateau. It was an un-inhabitable place to most
species of plants but a specific type of weed and shrub
life.
Exceptionally, the life
that bred here was different from the life that bred elsewhere,
it had needed to in order to realize its goal of survival.
Such a natural metaphor was what gave the first gujumnoes
the urge to make this site a place of gathering and new-birth
for our kind, and it has been so for at least ten thousand
seasons.
In this place, the home
of the jaunt fruit and the sacred weed, there was nothing
of advantage but to the gujumno natives of our belief. Across
the duration of thousands of generations this area had been
and still was seen by believers as the place for separation
between regular and heightened understanding. A place the
elders before us had designated as the place where all of
our young should begin to walk our by nature given path.
To us this was an ancient and sacred place and ours were
ancient and sacred customs. Between us, we held the ideals
of the Southern ones from guanjama, the gujumnoe-lei and
the gujumnoe-pei.
As we watched him, yoayar
stood quiet and pensive facing the emptiness that now gathered
in this mind. His look was one of questioning. We heard
without words how he was beginning to fear his near future,
forgetting that all that fear would bring him was confusion,
doubt and evasive questions with no answers. The main doubt,
the thought most felt at this moment was a simple yet serious
one: was the step that he was taking one towards an amplified
comprehension towards all things or was it one of insanity.
We the elders knew that to a
common human being, ignorant or distant to the gujumnoe
ways, these were both one and the same, that we were all
insane, since a common person could not possibly understand
our reasoning, customs or ways.
But to yoayar this was not so
evident at the moment. He was becoming panic stricken. Since
the gujumnoe peoples did not abide by the standard cultural
and sociological rules set by the civilized man from the
upper North, who were by now the predominant group occupying
guanjama, this presented a great dilemma in the hearts and
minds of our young. Since following the ways of their ancient
tribe meant renouncing civilization and never giving in
to it there was great unrest and insecurity present for
them.
In the near past we had
been frequently visited by the prophets of that new-world
civilization that had invaded the land to which we were
and we had found them shallow, devious, cunning and deceptive.
As opposed to them we
did not spend our days in search of material treasures without
but rather in search of the spiritual treasure within. As
opposed to them we worked towards tuning our hearts with
the soul of the earth and ultimately to consciously merge
with the one overall. So, as gujumnoes we were righteous
ones, and as citizens of the Bantsu nation established by
the ant-people colonists from the North we were insane ones,
barbaric and backwards natives who needed to be civilized
at all costs.
So yoayar now had to decide. He would have to choose between being
part of the gujumnoe family or a citizen of the new-world
civilization. If he was to become a gujumnoe he was not
to turn back, he would live off and give to the land and
he would spend the rest of his days scorned and misunderstood
by the common ones of guanjama. If he was to choose to be
a citizen of the new-world civilization he would have to
travel to the steel and cement ant-center and become an
ant-person, to learn and adopt their ways. But since yoayar's
childhood the elders and I knew what was his decision to
be. We had always felt yoayar’s tendency towards the unseen,
it was inbred in his character and from the moment he first
asked about our ways, we knew that he would one day become
one of us.
Yoayar now sat and observed
how around him there was nothing but dry and seemingly lifeless
earth as far as he could see on this holy mesa fasalo. Only
few now knew of its importance to the gujumnoe kind since
our milliner culture was at this time endangered by extinction.
The colonists had by now arrived at the southern most point
of guanjama. They had colonized the gaupameis and had already
engulfed and corrupted the gaupi natives of the area into
their system. Only few young now followed the aged customs
brought forth to them by the elders, and to them by their
predecessors, following a path used since the initial times
of humans in the area, since the beginning of our peoples
times. With this in mind we were now ready to make use of
that sacred place.
We sat there at that chosen
spot for a long period of time, fasting in sacrifice and
purification and facing each other in sign of mutual affection
and respect. We prayed and meditated, and we contemplated
upon the beauty of the overall as was custom to the tribe
to which we were reborn.
Moments gave way to moments
and time passed on and on until huomono, present specifically
to execute and monitor yoayar’s initiation ceremony, began
the ritual. He started by staring intently into yoayar's
eyes. Huomono could see within. He was magic...
For a long time he stared
hypnotically at yoayar with a solemn expression, measuring
yoayar’s submission to his senses. Yoayar was ecstatic while
huomono was doing this, not knowing what to think yet feeling
a great strength and positive change already taking place
inside of him.
Huomono then slowly closed his
eyes and sat perfectly still for a few moments. Then he
suddenly slid over to where yoayar was sitting. He slid
real close to yoayar and whispered the basic principles
of a gujumno into his ear. His words were inaudible to my
ears but I sensed the importance for I recognized their
meaning, I could smell it in the air.
In such an instance the chosen
elder would only direct his words to his subject of initiation,
since all attention was necessarily focused towards making
the moment an awakening for yoayar. Huomono placed his hand
on yoayar’s forehead and channeled something so powerful
that it subdued yoayar's ego and dispelled it, leaving yoayar
uncovered to the lessons that were meant to enter into him.
Yoayar heard huomono’s silent words in his head at that
moment and he turned towards the night and began to walk
the mesa fasalo by himself. He walked until he reached what
he intuitively felt was the right spot and he stopped, searching
for the signs to appear. A jaunt fruit of journey and a
rock of his given choice was all he needed. He took the
rock with which he would symbolically bury himself, then
he picked the jaunt fruit and began his task.
He sat, he ate the plant's leaves,
buds and fruit and then left towards an expected chaos for
he was without the filter of ego.
In a fit of convulsions
it all began. Yoayar fell over and rolled on the ground,
grasping and squeezing at his stomach in agony and kicking
at the invisible pain that seemed to claw at him from all
sides. His eyes had rolled back in their sockets revealing
a bloodshot tarnished white and tears ran from them down
his face as he gritted his teeth fiercely causing himself
to sever his tongue and bleed from his mouth. He jolted
and jerked in agony and occasionally we heard an intense
scream running from his throat and out to the wilderness,
escaping the pain. There was thunder, and lightning lit
the events. More spirits than we had ever witnessed together
came down to see the unfolding of yoayar.
He now held his chosen
rock tightly against his chest. His hands bled, he had chosen
a sharply edged rock and had cut himself in the process,
but that made no difference to him, it was a minor pain
in relation to the worst pain of all, to the mental hell.
The attack of the archetypal demons was in effect.
Images which could not be interpreted
by the rational mind were now before him and he could not
even begin to comprehend their significance, but he could
feel them, his private hell culminating only when he felt
the worst and most savage of his fears become visible and
felt his death approaching from the distances.
And at that moment yoayar
died as a man, and his spirit was released from his body,
glad to be rid of such chaos and pain. Gladly yoayar had
resigned to his death, and he was prepared to fly towards
the unknown when suddenly a sign of comfort came from his
body. There was a light to be seen shining from within his
lifeless shell. It was a powerful sign that all present
could see. And from the center of the ravaged and contorted
vehicle he was leaving behind, rose one beautiful image
of intense revelation. There was a ball of light hovering
above the body and there was music rising from it. It was
inconprehensible yet beautiful. None of us there had ever
seen anything like it. And because of that vision yoayar
came back to us.
When yoayar next opened
his eyes we recognized that he had seen the overall and
had felt a state known only to the gujumnoe and he looked
content.
He awoke calm but in shock, and wiped his face from the sand and
dust that had stuck there and created the mask of dirt and
grit that he was now wearing. We giggled for he looked amusing.
The earth had painted his face like that of a warrior fallen
facedown in the battlefield. Stunned, while sitting up he
grinned back, holding his aching head. He too found the
moment humorous and he did feel like a fallen warrior. Like
one that had died and was now empty. Now he felt a real
insignificance, now that he was no one...
“What I’ve seen in the
past, is not at all what it truly is,” he mumbled as he
gazed down at the sand, “now I know that nothing was really
true and truth was really nothing to me. The world is not
what I see outside me but what I project from within. With
these eyes I see what I have created for myself. With these
hands I touch what I am in all things. That is why life
has always seemed barren to me. Because I am alone inside
here, and I will always be alone here until I find my daemon,
the wisdom, the capacity to acknowledge the One. That part
of me that no longer creates illusions for itself but simply
reflects the true self that is within. Only then will I
cease to be alone. I must truthfully find myself if I am
to ever have myself as a companion on this walk of life.
My dreams are my life and my imagination and thoughts are
only of my own world, I am sick of that, I was sick from
that...
Before I was stagnating potential,
unaware that I was dead to life,but now I walk aware, to
the day when I become one with the overall...”
Huomono stood up and
with a glint in his eyes laid his wrinkled hands on yoayar´s
shoulders. The elders and I all knew well of yoayars pain,
I had watched yoayar grow through a turbulent childhood,
and they had watched it through me. We knew the confusion
that was now running through yoayar's mind. So huomono turned
to face yoayar and spoke thus...
“...Pay no mind to the
discrepancy of your own ways and actions to this day, for
they were nothing but symptoms of your own evolution. Pay
attention to what had no discrepancy in you for it defines
your true character. What you have felt now in your heart
was the awakening of your daemon. You will now begin to
leave the demons behind, you are now on your way to becoming
a wise man, a gujumno, but it will be a long walk for you.
In you, the potential is great, in you are the seeds that
will make you an example.
A true sample of the creator
you are, so as your daemon finds consciousness in itself
you will hopefully become it and eventually be given the
ultimate choice that is presented before every gujumnoe
wise man or woman. To die and be reborn as a piece of the
ever transitory overall, in other words to continue the
cycle of life and death, or to go to that place for which
there are no other words to describe but home... ”
Yoayar's complexion had
now turned into one of calmness and understanding. He acknowledged
to himself that he had now started to walk his own individual
path towards the light. He sat down on the ground and finalized the initiation ritual by drawing
his personal symbol with his own blood onto the sharp flattened
rock that had accompanied him through his personal descent
to hell, and then proceeding to bury it in the same spot
where he had suffered for so long. He was symbolically burying
himself, his old self, in the grave of yoayar the common
man.
As a new self reared towards visions of wisdom and
knowledge, yoayar's first step was to structure and follow
a new dogma with which to substitute his old and obsolete
one, a set of beliefs that only he should accept without
reason. Now he would begin to evolve and obey a doctrine
for himself, his own set of principles that would be based
upon only on what basic rules and principles were taught
to him by his elders, and whatever wisdom he gathered from
his own experiences. He would begin to study the ancient
ideology of his gujumno forefathers and create his own unique,
idiosyncratic way to coexist. He would set his roots into
the earth and finally begin to be nurtured by it.
He now acknowledged that our very own lives are insignificant
to most others, and of minimal importance to any but ourselves
and those close to us. The poison had shown him of our frail
and confused disposition as a common one and of our deficiency
to be of dedicated service to anything greater than our
own comprehension. The poison showed yoayar of the moral
incompatibility of the gujumnoe with that of the people
of the new world civilization. Through the authentic agony
of chaos yoayar learnt about faith and will. He would now
begin to transcend his mental limitations and reformulate
his reasoning towards the eternal and the void, into one
of intuitive knowledge and of humble acceptance.
With this in mind he again smiled at us. Love was radiating
from his smile, and with that playful grin of his, he took
the dried sacred weed that he had gathered in the fasalo
plains on his way to the initiation and shared the herb
with us, for yoayar was considerate that we too had been
through that revealing agony once before and had also had
to bury our old self and turn our backs to our old world.
He was thankful and respectful for the wisdom and help of
the present elders and in quiet admiration he beheld their
serene and munificent manner as he rested his numb and close
to senseless body against mine.
This rebirth and the emotional aura it had spread
upon us was one of deep inspiration. It brought forth a
sense of comfort and unity to all five in the group. All
laying down comfortably around the fire we exchanged stories
and humour. Little by little, one by one, the elders dozed
off. It had been a tiring night filled with intensity. Embraced
by a silence rarely known to these parts we rested by yoayar's
grave. Again nature had responded to the moment and now
everything was quiet. There was no more storm for the night.
Having realized how appropriate it is to become a king in
your own world rather than a servant in another’s, yoayar
laid on his side staring at the night. With this thought
in mind he rested his head and he slept...
The night continued in its peaceful flow up on the
fasalo plateau. The stars were so many up there in the sky.
They hung from the heavens to bring light to darkness. Excited
by the good fate of my son I lay awake throughout most of
the night dwelling and thinking about the changes in his
life and in prayer and thanksgiving.
Prior to his rebirth, I had always found yoayar a peculiar
young man. To me his eyes often harboured a solitary calmness,
and I had gathered that his was a mind enveloped in sadness.
As most others of his generation he had been enveloped by
hatred and despise for much of his life. All this due to
the hardships of the times for those born to our kind. The
young had grown up with decadence and decay all around them,
and many were doomed to lead their lives along those lines.
If not saved by choice to leave and pursue the ancient gujumnoe
ways, they would come to age in an unjust existence of slavery
and servitude.
In my encounters with yoayar in the past I would often
read his cynical and critical thoughts about this predicament.
I could sense the negative in the opinions that birthed
from his inexperienced and tormented mind. Whenever we crossed
paths and discussed life I could see that he was being accompanied
by demons that would one day make him or break him. This
he was borne to face.
In the past I could read in his face awareness of the bitter
taste of a hard life which was in turn reflected on his
tense posture, but that night, at that moment, in that darkness,
at that stage, his form was a completely different one,
it was one of strong resolve towards finding the beauty
in life.
This newly awakened quality of yoayar's, to quickly change
and look ahead was a definite reminiscent trace from his
mother, wanea. Wanea Ans-ul, in life, had been a woman that
had found a balance between the bliss of peace with the
world, and the misery of war within herself. A woman living
with an interior struggle against destiny so strong that
it led her to her voluntary death as soon as she had gave
birth to yoayar. Yoayar was the offspring of an unusually
distinct relationship between myself and wanea, the wetlands
woman.
I had met wanea one day close to the end of one particular rain season as
I was following along the isles that compose the Shinke
estuary to the South-east of the mesa fasalo. At the time
I was a young and studious one, lover of observation and
learning.
I had traveled on my own down the river because I
was interested in that abstract follow of water that flowed
so capaciously down from the fasalo-lei mountains at this
time of year, and I wanted to study the behaviour of the
animals dependent on it. To me they were art in motion.
I walked along, meditating on the fragile balance in the
ecosystem of life and death, and counting on submerging
myself in the melancholic feeling of that reality until
the beginning of the dry season. It was my plan to then
be on my way, aiming towards a retirement in the great galleries
of rockpaintings that had been made over sixty thousand
generations back by the early inhabitants of the Dab-Shi
coast who had come to the area from the kaikune deserts.
These galleries were situated in hidden caves under
the brush by the oceans of Dab-Shi. They were a well kept
secret of our kind for if they were found by the ant-people
these would surely destroy their spiritual meaning with
their well known green schemes.
I was heading towards the caves to paint my own feelings on their walls
but I did not make it for on that day I encountered a goddess.
I had been initiated and had declared myself a gujumnoe-lei
no more than a few thousand days back when I first saw her.
I was astonished by the sheer vision of her, a woman that
had emitted such an immaculate and pure meaning of the word
of love through the gleam and glitter of her eyes when she
first looked at me that I was immediately hers. That initial
sight of her made me believe that all the beauty present
around me was but a consequence of her proximity, a consequence
of her existence. An aboriginal woman of night, earth and
sand to whom I immediately, at first sight developed a worship
and an intense love for. It was only because of this overwhelming
feeling of belonging to her that I was later capable of
understanding and accepting her decision to leave me for
death without a moment of judgment or doubt.
To me, definitely the most beautiful and enigmatic
being on earth and beyond. Slim and firmly shaped, full
of life, familiarly attuned was the alignment of her mind,
body and soul. She
was wise as all life and full of wonder. Wanea lived alone
and had built herself a home up in one of the thick malanbhatho
trees that hung above one of the rivers.
She had lived alone since an early age. Leaving the
uselessness of her previous life to undertake a dedicated
pursuit for wisdom and impeccability, which she had found
through the teachings of an elder gujumnoe-laman that had
taken her from the misery of her family life and taught
her all that he knew. Wanea had become a dream creature
and a vident at an early age.
Dream creatures and vidents were peoples that lived
in a content situation in between the realms of the native
wise-ones and the gujumnoe-lamans. They had developed a
skill in which time and space had assumed different proportions
to the common ones and a greater insight into the past and
future were achieved. As most would live a day, they could
live either a second or a year at choice.
When we first met, she confessed as if guilt ridden and relieved
that when she saw me afar, she observed what her dream gods
had meant when they had described me to her, and that at
that moment she knew that she would have to dedicate herself
to the dedication in myself, for the seed was in me. She
was my first mentor and aided me in many great achievements
and many great conclusions.
We lived together as family, friends and lovers for
as long as I had lived as a gujumno until then.
Up in that malanbhatho tree we spent most of our days watching nature and
advancing in our way. We had plenty time to sit and watch
the animals and the plants, and to think about things. We
would feel, I would talk and she would listen and then give
me more to talk about and develop for her, this was how
she taught me, this was how she tested me. She did not speak
much, she preferred to channel her feelings through me and
let me verbalize them. In special times we would sit tight
and while she would arrange my hair and beard knots, wanea
would explain certain things to me, or she would chant song
cycles that she had learned in dreamstate for my knowing.
It was in one of these moments that she revealed to me a
key to the gujumno’s harmony with the environment. With
that divine voice I seldom heard, wanea explained that we
gujumno are of the small numbers of conscious humans to
acknowledge the importance of the nature world. She recounted
why we believed that fire, water, air and earth, are everlasting...
...The elements are one in our mind and in our heart. We can feel
this if we are to compare the humans mind's, especially
the ant-people's with the trees. Both have roots that are
firm in the soil and go down deep. We all grow up towards
the light. We live for the light but we are stuck to the
ground. The ground is the society man and woman are part
of and have helped create for themselves. The tree, with
its roots buried deep into the ground extracts the necessary
matters from it in order to grow taller towards the light
but, if the soil is poisoned the tree will not grow but
wither instead. Most humans poison the very soil they need
to exist, they poison themselves without realizing the repercussions
that will be reflected on their cycle of life as whole.
When they die, they leave behind enough fire, water, air
and earth to be born again, but they leave very little fertile
ground behind, not enough to grow more than another weak
and hopeless tree. They do not learn that they can be much
more than one sole tree and that to do so, their first need
is to stop poisoning the soil they live on so they can bear
fruit and expand themselves. If their fruit drops on fertile
ground it may be born and grow, if it drops on poisoned
ground it will not even begin to live.
Now, I am to explain us, the gujumnos. Think of this
malanbhatho tree we live in as one in the field of your
mind. You as a gujumno are a field of trees, each tree containing
fruit. Each tree was once a fruit and now is a tree with
fruit. Each idea is a fruit with seed. Each fruit is a conjecture
of seed and enough matter to feed it in its birth. Well,
if you are the ground in which the fruit falls when it is
heavy enough and you are fertile enough to keep the seed
alive and growing after its birth, then you will be making
yourself a field of wisdom filled with a growing, increasing
knowledge. If such a knowledge in itself generates more
and higher knowledge then I could say that you are heading
towards an awakening. The light has always been there for
us all but as a field and not an individual tree, we are
better equipped to soak in more light for our area of span
is much greater. Such is our state, such is the state of
the trees. We both grow old and die, but this is not the
end, We are soon born again from the decomposition of our
old-self. The decomposition back to water, our time, and
earth our substance, back to air our place, and fire our
intent. They will bring us all life again, yet there is
more chance of birth in the regeneration of a field than
of a simple tree.
Now imagine this field as your full mind, this malanbhatho
tree as a growing part of your knowledge and the river that
runs by it as the time that feeds both the field and the
tree. This river runs constant, it is all the moments in
the universe, each drop of time in it is flowing without
halt. The time in your life is the amount of water that
seeped into the ground of your field and onto the roots
of your malanbhatho tree put together. That water is the
moments of your life. As you free these moments after your
death, they return to be as moments of the universe again
flowing without halt, the river running constant again.
The malanbhatho tree and the field need water to
develop. Your mind and your knowledge need time to develop.
A human being has the ability to administer the water intake
and where it is sent to, not realizing that by sending water
to one tree alone it runs chances of leaving the rest of
the field dry and loosing many of the trees it may have
ignored or forgotten to consider. A common human normally
channels and directs all the water to one tree limiting
his field because of a belief that growth of a single tree
is advantageous. A gujumno is conscious of the importance
of the totality of the field and all the trees harbored
by it, a gujumno does not control and administer the water
as rigorously as other humans would, but let's it seep freely
in all directions, not pointing to any one particular tree.
Such a mistake was made by the brothers nhu-ater and nuh-terur
which you will read about in your future. The wise gujumno
simply waits for the recollection of new fruits and trees
to reappear to him or her, knowing that the field is developing
in the shadow of a former field bathed by the same river
but different drops of time.
We, the gujumnos respect all that is natural for
it is the same as us, be it what it may. We will never purposely
damage this chain of life that we are part of. If the tiniest
of beings is unimportant, then the largest of beings is
unimportant. We will live here in harmony causing no harm,
spending our time and living in respect for our brethren...
I knew this to be true and felt sad that not all of mankind could
feel the same esteem and admiration for nature and the world.
In that way we the gujumno were alone at that time, yet
between us there was enough goodwill for the earth to continue
prospering for it does not require much.
Wanea and I consumed a large portion of our days inventing,
shaping and building whatever was necessary for our home
and for ourselves. We did this with the power of those who
had been entrusted with a mission. Most of the time we would
work without words, but being a very communicative sort
of gujumno I often felt the need to verbalize, and whenever
the chance arose to ask wanea something, I would. I would
because I loved to hear her voice. Yet no matter how much
I asked about it she would never speak willingly of her
past before her gujumnoe-lamanic learning's, and she would
refuse to mention it at all times. She would discard it
by saying that she had been someone else that was of no
importance just as I had been someone else of no importance,
that whatever life she had led before could not and should
not interfere with our union, and then she would cry as
if I had just uncovered a painful memory meant to remain
hidden.
So I have never discovered which lineage of the gujumnoe
knowledge wanea was perpetuating but, I suspect that wanea
could be of one of the gujumno-pei dynasties that originate
from the fasalo-pei hills. Maybe of the dynasty that originated
in the buantchama estuary. After all, wanea was a wetlands
woman of dark skin, a trait of Southern guanjama. But none
of that mattered to me at the time. Until the very day of
yoayar’s conception nobody else but wanea was present in
my mind, and I was happy that way.
It came one night while wanea and I coiled around each
other. At first a thunder so loud that it awoke our survival
instincts. Still locked together in loving embrace we looked
up in time to see the lightning descend from the heavens
and strike a neighboring malanbhato tree which was immediately
split in half and engulfed in flames. In the center of the
split we could see a violet-blue fireball hovering. It was
a sign. Yoayar was coming.
…We ran away like poets after the glow,
Stumbling upon sparkles
At twilight between heaven and earth
We rested
And around us nature echoed
Day was eventually slain by night
So we lit a fire to keep comfort
And I fell asleep
Thus from thin air dew gathered on the leaves
Giving birth to frail water drops
Hard enough to break rock
From silence the ideas arose within her
And then they gathered as concepts
Strong enough to break the mind
At that moment we were cacophony and silence
Bound together by something greater
Than even themselves
By nothing
In nothing is everything
I remember the fire and how it spoke
Like the water and air, like the earth,
It droned continuous
Like the universe
It spoke to us
Like words are to the mouth
Related and from the same source
And it said:
This glow that you search
Is the glint in your very eyes
It is the feeling
And it is within you.
An owl then sent words of wisdom from the dark
It did so for countless times
Intuition finally awoke me
Seconds before she took the spark
That hovered within my chest
And threw it into the big ocean
For what reasons I do not know
But I already knew
I jumped in after it
And found myself underwater
I thought to myself
The heart is where the mind lays rest
If home is where the head lays rest
And from then on I now do not know what happened to me
But I am assured by the legends that I will later…
When he finished the poem, he stared me in the eyes
and smiled. He and I were one and the same. I realized that
I would soon be without her and I woke up to witness wanea
die.
As I awoke from this deepest of sleeps wanea was
delivering yoayar. All night she had been trying in silence
so as not to wake me, and now the time was near. Wanea could
not last much longer, and she cried out for the medicine
pouch we kept in our home. I knew what she would do, yet
I brought it to her and wanea took a deadly dosage of the
jaunt fruit. Her survival was of no importance in comparison
to her son's and that dosage of the jaunt fruit was the
only power capable of assisting wanea in this delivery.
It was either wanea or yoayar. She gave him her life. I
was crying for I knew she would soon go. But the signs had
been evident, we were to be split apart by the fireball,
yoayar.
Our son came to this world and his life demanded more life force than one
small body could generate so wanea gave him hers to take
and flourish with.
As wanea faded she introduced me to our newly-born
sibling, yoayar, and then gave me instructions that I must
find a group of indigenous women that were part of a nearby
tribe inhabiting the lower shinke rivers, and hand yoayar
to them. They would teach yoayar in the ways of the regular
guanjamo folk. Wanea instructed me that I that must not
teach him of the gujumno ways until he reached manhood for
he would not understand them and could possibly develop
an aversion to them and rebel. Wanea explained that these
women were widowed and alone of men and would teach yoayar
as pure and as well as if he were their own child. They
would teach him of the subsistence supported by the life
of occupational pluralism, of the tribal society.
Having contacts of trade and barter with many other
tribes, the conditions for growth and expansion of awareness
were perfect for yoayar. It would be in these encounters
with others that yoayar would learn about the general topics
in the life of the common guanjama peoples. As yoayar would
grow toward manhood he would assimilate the simplistic ideas
that these women upheld about what was an ideal life of
happiness and satisfaction.
He would grow accustomed to imported ideas and theories
and be influenced by the knowledgeable contacts and company
of those wise who crossed that fertile land. By the partition
of the wisdom of others he would develop a notion of life
which he would later have to dissipate, yet he would grow
up to assimilate the honorable customs of those based on
goodwill, kindness and respect.
Wanea, As the elders and I, knew what yoayar was
to choose to be in the future. This she had dreamt. Wanea
was good with dreams, her dreams had revealed the world
to her and I.
To this day I do not understand how I could adore this
woman with such a passion that her very presence I can still
feel strongly at any given moment. She is still very much
in me and her constant presence is branded into my mind.