Reading: "Daceion Ionadi" from EVENFALL OF THE HELICAL and "Daceion Ionadi" cocktail recipe (A.Glass 2022, 2023)

 

Harlem,

New York City

1984

“Memory plays...” A man of African American decent says, neatly cropped gray bead, wearing a dark brown porkpie hat, that matches his dark gray pinstripe suit. He leans forward onto his walking stick, cupping with both hands around the silver Goat head handle. “...that is both your gift and curse, but it must be paired. That is why I have been chosen to mentor you...” he says to a Fourteen year old. “...Close your eyes...” The man says, as Daceion Ionadi sitting with his legs crossed, closes his eyes.

“...Are you afraid?…,” he asks.

Ionadi shakes his head, indicating that he is not.

“...Open your eyes.”

Ionadi opens his eyes, the elderly man siting in front of him, stares at Ionadi, wearing a ceremonial Vodou skull mask, to which Ionadi stares back, his expression is of curiosity rather than fear.

“Papa Legba, ouvè pòtay la pou mwen / Atibon Legba, ouvè pòtay la pou mwen / Ouvè pòtay la pou mwen / Papa pou mwen ka pase / Lè mwen tounen mwen pral remèsye lespri yo.”

He then stands, with his right hand, he leans on his staff.

“I say, 'Father Legba, open the gate for me / Atibon Legba, open the gate for me / Open the gate for me / Father so that I may pass / When I return I will thank the spirits.' For he, of dialog and its riddles, holds the keys to both worlds...” Passing the cane to his left hand, he taps his right leg, “...My limp, is because I have one foot in the other world, the other here. You will know that your gift and curse has to be balanced, as what my ancestors taught, that all must not be revealed. That it be their prejudices, against you!”

He points the cane at Ionadi, who continues looking at the Oungan, a Vodou priest.

“Slave revolt Haiti, what year?”

“Start, Seventeen Ninety One, ended, Eighteen o Four.”

“Countries my ancestors were liberated from?”

“France and England”

The Vodou priest taps his cane on the ground beneath him.

“First Emperor of Haiti?”

“Jean-Jacques Dessalines from Eighteen o Four, when he was killed in Eighteen o Six by a revolt against him by Alexandre Sabès Pétion and Henry Christophe. Dessalines, despite being a slave himself, was a despot who actually maintained slavery and ordered the mass killings of thousands of white people who lived in Haiti after the revolution. Sabès Pétion and Christophe ensured a more liberal approach to the country, influenced by the French and American revolutions.”

“When was the atom split?”

“April Fourteen, Nineteen Thirty Two,”

“By whom?”

“John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton”

The Vodou priest, looks up at the ceiling.

“Of emotions you may lack...But, they are…” With his left hand, he lifts the wooden cane and in a semi circular motion, points in the direction of the darkening walls behind the young Ionadi. “...are the epitome of the weak. The masses, the hordes, the Zombi, easily lead, easily controlled. It is of darkness and chaos that they fear.”

“You must practice Daceion, of this practice, is to be free. Free, of the burden of life and these fears.” The priest points, with his left index finger, at the middle of his skull mask. Removing the mask with his right hand. He stares down at the young boy.

___

Reading:  "Daceion Ionadi"  from EVENFALL OF THE HELICAL (A.Glass 2022)

"Daceion Ionadi" cocktail receipe (A.Glass 2023)