Part 1: Dayglow Prose & Misanthrope Tomes
By Tabari Diriki
Reed & Pigment writer Tabari Diriki’s Angelic Possession and the Price of Prophecy is a limited series based on real events.
Prelude
Angelic Possession is a little disappointing.
My days, nights, and the witching hours in between were spent toiling; all for a job that only left me short-tempered and demoralized. Young me would’ve done something. But now, I lay counting every 9-minute snooze to postpone the eventuality of death by a thousand cuts. I do what I must to fend off the horrific anxiety that pending homelessness tends to engender.
What some would label a mental health crisis, we here classify as a time-honored tradition of American living, one that I unceremoniously packed on my hip overseas like a rusty scout knife. The agony of pent-up pressures and trauma is a sharp object stowed in the overhead. The blade launches into action with brisk shallow plunges into the white meat, just above the bladder, then further to the dagger hilt. Never mind that smooth blood-soaked velvet slowly sliding down the thighs. Those secondhand socks can be tossed, and the emperor will still have no clothes.
A shallow captivity at the hands of deceptive condescending children, greedy progeny wounded by bygone reveries and stunted agency – the sour fruit in a nutshell. The calculated omissions during playground games and student government elections live forever in infamy on suppressed psych evals, the patients run this asylum. This perverse brood views micromanaging as a sexual proclivity primed for hashtags, the such-and-suches that backpedal like intellectually disabled circus bears in stained vests and dented felt hats also clumsily tame lions (for now).
Oh the gleeful musings of buckets of red rain drenching the quadruped prom queen – wide-eyed wonder with an outstretched digit spotlighting the debacle on stage – the prom king gets hit with the bucket.
Heart palpitations accompanied each notification, every unnecessary text a vile onerous advance into my personal space. The lazy tongue posture with thick malodorous spittle was the ever-present precursor to a barrage of nonsensical queries and incessant rhetorical interrogations over the price of tea in China. Even the tone of the written communication consistently reopened the aforementioned stomach wound to expose the Ascaris lumbricoides. These parasites feed on joy.
Three hundred words to illustrate the state of mind that would drop a certified skeptic at the feet of angelic possession. When in doubt, cop a medium.
Disclaimer: I refute no claims without direct evidence to the contrary. From a man not prone to fancy that did actually cohabitate with two ghosts (and an occasional crackhead) between college stints…I’ve seen some dung. However, I’m immediately skeptical ’cause fools be lying. When I know I know, and when I don’t – I go to a remote mountainside abode and talk to angels.
Unsweetened Flavor Aid
I married into a family of Traditional African Faith Healers (full stop). The faith elicits terror and is known to render the uninitiated frozen like Medusa’s onlookers, the keepers of the giant snake. In fact, as I pen this noteworthy tome, my own free will may be under attack. I was informed by third hand commentary that I am the unwitting victim of a love spell that binds me to the eldest daughter – my beautiful and bewitching wife.
But, back to the Angelic Possession…
Frequent visits to the family’s healing and worship center and an international pilgrimage to Mbarara appeared to be good clean church fun as I knew it. The pious spoke in tongues, wriggled, and constricted under the sheer hypnotic force of days of drumming, unified song, and a blaring PA. The meaning of the songs escaped me linguistically, but the collective energy of the devotees spoke the same language as the “holiness” churches of the American South.
Ye ole glossolalia stirred nary a novel emotion. There’s an icebox where my heart used to be.
Sidenote: Doctrine of the faith states that we each have a Guardian Angel that helps guide and enrich our paths when we nurture the relationship through prayer and Bible-based teachings. Similar to the teachings of certain Catholic, Christian, Islamic, and New Age subsects – the focus on angelic guidance is fundamental. However, like Spiritualism and some New Age movements, angels can be contacted and channeled directly by gifted human mediums.
Valley of the Dream Scenes
After some deliberation with my better half – who is now able to fling the closet doors wide open on her “secret” family history – I was promptly left-side shotgun, bouncing down a winding country road toward the unknown. The mission was to find a well-respected medium known for clear, truthful, and inspired prophecies disclosed as the mouthpiece for heavenly hosts, somewhere “out there”. I, the Jack of All Trades needed some direction, and we…needed some directions.
To summon some long lost peace of mind and fully exorcise my preoccupation with staging a personal Carrie reboot, I’m shotgun like a Bristol bloke with one of my 15 new uncles dodging craters on a glorified bridle path. My resurrection in the backseat with his T. Jones, and we’re off to see the wizard.
The rocking, bouncing, and hypnotic swirls of the terracotta dust devils that frame the roll with a surreal dreamlike quality invariably drag all attention inward. “I LIVE IN AFRICA!” is always the launching pad for telescopic gazes into one of the thousand lush green hillsides that flank this terraced equatorial dreamscape. I contemplate the sandaled feet that trek effortlessly up the gravity defying sienna trails, dutifully snaking past hunter green seas of matoke and coffee beans to the scattered mudbrick homesteads perched high atop.
Nestled in the Albertine Rift below the sun-drenched cerulean firmament, the regal proletariat decorate the panorama like multicolored ornaments on an imperishable Christmas tree. From vibrant primary shades arranged in geometric shapes to earthtone palettes fashioned into abstract patterns, the resilient inhabitants of the hills and valleys are the gifts that carry this land into the future.
Like a time traveler in a distant simulation, the partially ajar car windows supply flickering peeks into a biosphere where precolonial Africa collides with Drill music at roadside alimentation shops with grilled meats and cold drinks. Shapely espresso brown entrepreneurs sell locally grown bananas and nuts from open baskets balanced ably atop covered heads, while clean-cut gentlemen in slacks and button-down shirts with Bluetooth earbuds, iPhones and designer backpacks power walk to eager motos.
What always was will ever be, and what shall become is already.
REED & PIGMENT 