1969 I Am Lucky to Be Me

Copyright © 2012 by Kwame Anthony Copeland.

a.k.a. Antonio Tony Copeland

a.k.a. Nana Kwame Baakan Osunwole-Toprah

Cover: Osram Ne Nsoromma (Adrinka Symbol)

The moon returns to the North Star like two entangled and faithful lovers.

Back cover—Nana Aba Nson Yaa Osunyomi

DTP: ifagroup.info

@serendipnana

Poems © kac

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-5252-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-5253-7 (ebk)

iUniverse rev. date: 10/02/2012

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1 The Best de-Copeland

Chapter 2 Hazel I. Best (1909-2003)

Chapter 3 Rites of Passage

Chapter 4 Sweet Poison

Chapter 5 Fort Jackson, South Carolina

Chapter 6 My Favorite Things

Chapter 7 The Cambodian Campaigns

Chapter 8 Resistance

Chapter 9 The World

Chapter 10 Needing a Home

Chapter 11 A Tragedy

Chapter 12 Raymond: Not Just a Name

Part II Introspection

Chapter 13 Serendipity

For We Are Good Mythmakers: Science and Religion

Twenty-First Century

Notes

Further Reading

Dedicated to those whose death lifted my consciousness,¹

especially Fred Hampton and Nana Aba; my beloved grandmother, Maude Best de Copeland; my mother,

Joyce Beverly Best-Copeland; and my second mother,

Auntie Hazel Ida Girlie Best.

Also dedicated to my loyal partner, Claudette Culver,

Iya Coco Eni-osun, of Bedford-Stuyvesant, New York;

and to all my relationships and ancestors!

Some people are your relatives but others are your ancestors, and you choose the ones you want to have as ancestors. You create yourself out of those values.

Ralph Ellison

Preface

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If we don’t bear suffering that will fill a basket,

We will not receive kindness that will fill a cup.

Baba Salako, 1800-1965

(If 25956.jpg / 25958.jpg rì 25960.jpg à traditional saying)²

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Who is American?

It is my belief that when you refer to Americans, you are talking about the people of an entire hemisphere, not just the citizens of the United States. When the minister El-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, or Malcolm X, referred to Afro-Americans, he was speaking of all the people of African descent in the Western Hemisphere. He based this reference on their history of struggling for a new democracy since the days of American slavery:

So when you count the number of dark-skinned people in the western hemisphere you can see that there are probably over one hundred million . . . And this hundred million on the inside of the power structure today is what is causing a great deal of concern for the power structure itself. Not a great deal for all white people, but a great deal of concern for most white people.

The Last Message of Malcolm X,

February 14, 1964

Our great leaders have always been in the forefront of building a new world. The first known organized slave rebellion took place on April 22, 1526; further proven by a carbon dated skelton of around 1500. In the first half of the 1600s, African slaves in Brazil attempted to create the first democratic society in the Western Hemisphere, the Republic of Palmares. Led by Chief Zumbi, they set up a confederation of quilombos, or free communities, which ultimately were crushed by the Portuguese in 1697. (Brazil finally established a Chief Zumbi Day on November 20, 2007.) In 1791, the first Negro republic was founded in Haiti, under the leadership of Toussaint L’Ouverture. This struggle for self-determination and democracy by the darker-skinned humans on this hemisphere has been continuous, both paralleling and shaped by the development of the European-style republic—especially the United States of America, which didn’t become a true republic until after the American Civil War in 1865.

Since the United States’ victory in the Spanish-American War of 1898, the development of an economically interdependent Western Hemisphere has gone unnoticed by many of its citizens. And now, because of the success of the global market and the rise of regionalism, we are faced with two questions: Who is American, and who are the stewards of our planet?

I fell in love with the blues and jazz at an early age. Since I have the melancholy mind-set of a poet and a passion for magical realism, I was first attracted to the romantic, although now I lean more toward realism, as did my conservative ancestors on my grandfather’s side in St. Thomas, Jamaica. While I have returned to wisdom, I still love the poetic myths of warriors and sages who lived a life outside the customs of the status quo, almost as mystical wanderers. I still see the role of a human as that of an idealist, albeit a little more gritty and real now. Magic and awe are at the core of our reality, no matter how technocratic we become.

My totem includes a tiger, a warrior, and now a divine vulture, symbols that reflect my life. The concept came to me by serendipity—such an interesting word, which I first heard on the radio, WNYC. It took me time to learn to pronounce it—I still mess it up—yet I realized that my life seemed built upon it. This realization came to me late in my life, after the birth of my sixth and seventh children, my twins. I started thinking of certain African and Asian proverbs, songs, and stories, tales that have never left me since high school, which focus on the magic of the animal in their protagonists and their divine characters. I also recalled books like Maryse Condi’s Children of Seugu, a thrilling confirmation of how magic was used in storytelling. And then there was the great Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol! The tiger is my adventurous, daring side; the vulture is the symbol of my spiritual mother, an avatar/òrìşà a of divine sagacity and sorcery; and of course there is the unblinking warrior who dies for an ideal beyond I, for common justice and peace.

I have studied deeply and with perseverance those countries steeped in what is referred to as the Afro-blues tradition: Nigeria, the Republic of Benin, Togo, Ghana, Brazil, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, the United States, Venezuela, Panama, and Peru. If mindfulness is a conscious creation, then in my humble opinion, the Africans and the hyphenated Afros have a significant body work, a strong tradition for consciousness building, both standard and improvised.

There are lively debates about consciousness. We know today that many human behaviors we consider to be conscious are actually products of the unconscious, etchings of the mind, impressions formed by deeds and success, habits and adaptations that evolved over time. Biology underlies all our rituals, unique characteristics, and idiosyncrasies. True consciousness is a whole different ballgame; many say it is the divine, the sacred, or the quark. Research has shown that there is a nearly hundred-millisecond pause before we act, a time when our minds process our decision, and that even babies have a primitive notion of right and wrong.

In this sacred space we improvise on riffed standards. In this pause, we find the initial values for our own moral reasoning. Is that the pause referred to in the saying that a revelation can come in a minute, even in the midst of despair, or that empathy can change a petrified being? The body of knowledge called epistemology has grown exponentially since mind reading has been enhanced by the speedy delivery of information; today it is called the theory of the mind, and technocracies are using computers to read the scripts of the brain’s mind. What we call divine consciousness, however, is still mysterious.

Cervantes’s La Machina is a masterpiece not about spinning wheels in utopia, but about conversations and kindness, which matter more in this journey called life. For what would we be without dreams but animals or automatons?

July 27, 2010

Sun has risen

Phase of a full moon ended

Son plays Shadow and Light

Sitting at a window

Mother buried

Next to Grandma in the land of birth

Auntie left older than both

Nana Aba left youngest

The Mothers are gone now

Four gliding in Orun

Son left on Aye’ playing

Shadow and Light

[Orun = heaven; Aye’ = earth]

Previous page: Hazel Ida Best (top), Joyce Beverly Best-Copeland (center), and Maude Best de-Copeland (bottom).

Chapter 1

The Best de-Copeland

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"Will there become understanding . . . What will tomorrow bring?"

Abbey Lincoln

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We create many myths for ourselves, for they help us make sense of the infinite creations in this finite human life. Much of what we call history is based on myths; the present is history, as Dr. John Henrik Clarke would say. Magic (imho) is when an idea or something willed becomes a reality, whether through chance or intentional craftsmanship. Its final form or timing is often unbeknownst to the creator. Magic was the original state of being, when something was birthed from nothingness.

Ruminations and memories do color the thinking of even the brightest of us. That is natural for our species. In this study of religion, myths, and philosophy, I’ll begin with what I now consider givens.

Life is an art as well as a science. The artist in each of us is alone, with unique characteristics. Our decisions are paramount, and good ones are what we should pray for daily. An old African proverb says, Communal joy makes us human and divine.

In June 2010, I traveled to Trinidad for a wake; by serendipity, while I was there I was told of an Ifá/ òrìşà conference. About a month later, my mother passed in Panama City, prompting me to finish this book for myself and my mothers. I dislike loose ends; plus, there have been so many changes in our notions and theories of metaphysics that my loss inspired a sense of renewal in me. The ironic thing is that it also made me look