Mare

Autumn started with the horses' wind. Woke everyone up blowing through the doors and windows, and laid down in the middle of the house. The marines continued coming — came the monstrous whale, came the dolphins —, but on the classroom floor I caressed the resting equine. Must've been my mare...

My mare, which is my body and is also this literary label, is ridden by a triad of entities: there's the Secretary, administrative bird of prey and pray; there's Moçaçu, lady-puma who balances our beast; and there's Egavalle, the very self.

But ialorixá (the priestess in Afro-Brazilian religions Umbanda and Candomblé), last time I was in Brazil, pointed out to me also the guidance of Iansã or Oyá, deity of the winds that precede storms: it was with her that I went, went, and went. And now I went and went and stayed; in the far I have stayed and stay.

I stay and, in the kitchen while preparing my dinner, I speak on the phone to my sister, who there remained. We speak of books we're reading — me, 'Count Zero' by William Gibson; her, 'O Livro dos Abraços' (The Book of Hugs) by Eduardo Galeano —, and we speak of happenings. Speak of the course I'm attending about the afro-religions of orixá (deities) and vodum (voodoo), via friend Angie...

And we told each other more, I to her and her to me: about the literary young girl Angie, by Gibson, whom Papa Legba, god of roads and pathways, wants for his mare; and about the visceral young boy Angie, by life, whom Omolu or Obaluaiê, deity of diseases and cures, has chosen for his horse.

To my sister, in the same occasion of my appointment two years ago, it had been pointed out the protection of Omolu over her delicate spiritual health. Now the other day, out-of-a-suddenly, visceral young boy Angie decided to pay her a visit; by chance on a night when her immune system was fragile. Angie, who only recently had his initiation in Omolu, was then suddenly, and out of his control, ridden. On my sister's living room he went to the floor. Her fever escalated radically; she waited for Omolu to get down from the horse Angie... They then said goodbye warmly, with a hug, and she went to sleep.

I told her: earlier that day I had glued to my apartment's door, outside and inside, a drawing of a taoist Bagua for protection of my just-conquered finally-home. A few hours later, the Bagua had been ripped off. I feared an imagined hostility from my neighbours; but the truth is there was a strong gale in the world, come from the hurricane in Cuba... — So Iansã took my Bagua. Will it have been because I'm not Chinese? And yet I dedicate to their nation the egg.

I've been frequenting the exhibition of korean-canadian artist Zadie Xa at the Whitechapel Gallery. I frequent it via invigilating it: it's my job. The exhibition is entirely a temple-offering, in the manner of Korean shamanism, to the household gods, the home protecting deities; and the funerary ones; and the change-triggering ones. I stand in the interior of that house (hanok), of which the outer walls are wrapped in fabric symbolising its sacrality; of which the inner walls are covered by paintings full of symbols — amongst them the killer whale... On a wooden beam inside the roof there's an earthenware (onngi) containing rice, tobacco, money. In another pot, her dog's ashes. Over the roof, sculptures of helping totems, friends. The exhibition is called 'House Gods, Animal Guides and Five Ways to Forgiveness'. The artist pays respects to her ancestral culture as a way of redemption — and reconciliation — for diasporic communities that are alienated from their roots. I stand there; evoke my elements. The audio says: At whose house shall I sleep tonight? At mine.

I also told my sister that in my first day of University this week, storytelling class, I asked someone of their favorite book and, two seconds before he'd even answered, I telepathically received the information: 'Moby Dick'. The whale who is God and Demon. Look here, Beelzebub, you don't do it.

My expatriate compatriot Domeneck writes to me, now from our mother land; we speak of the Rosian whirlwinds, of the devil in the middle of the road — in Rosa's work (in 'The Devil to Pay in the Backlands' especially, the Brazilian bible) everything is and isn't... —; my friend tells me the devil must be fought; no romanticisms. And I, from inside my diasporic home, tell myself I excuse no confusion. I've in the altar the 'I Ching', but have also the wooden parrot; and Iansã's constant gust of wind (out in the hallway of my eighth floor) protects in here: the peace of pumas.