Hilario Davila's Dream

Hilario Dávila went to the house of Ifá and Orunmila made osode for him. Orula told him that he was a very romantic person; he had to be careful whenever he had feelings for a woman because she could manipulate him, just like the female dove could hurt the male dove. And it was in his nature to prosper in business, but people would always get envious of him, forcing him to move. Therefore, he would always wander, just like Asojuano, and it's not a coincidence that when ever you move Asojuano, you have to sing to him: O foro foro / Asojano o foro foro / Mina Yawe / Mina Yawe / Mina Yawe. It was really important that Hilario Dávila get close to Asojuano. He didn't know it yet, but his whole future was wrapped up with this beautiful old man.

Later, the orishas told Hilario Dávila many things. Obatalá was his ultimate authority, but Shangó would always overcome his enemies, no matter what. Oyá
would would keep him on the straight and narrow laid out by his itá.

One night, Juan Gutierrez Boza came to Hilario Dávila in a dream. Contrary to Juan's virtuosity as a singer and teacher in life, he was now silent. He held up a painting to Hilario Dávila and looked at him with the most sincere expression on his leathery face, as if to say, "this one here is going to help you, but you also have to help him." In life, Juan had been important to Hilario Dávila. Juan was the Mokongo of a famous Abakuá lodge and, not coincidentally, was a son of Shangó and Siete Rayos.

For days, Hilario Dávila racked his brains to reproduce the painting from the dream. He came up with an approximation; not bad. For years it cast its reflection through a goblet of water on a beautiful white table.

One day, Eleguá took out a sign for Hilario Dávila that had a lot to do with illness, journeys, and healing. It was here that Obatalá set out to another land to visit and cure the Anai people. It was here that the Lucumí kicked Asojuano out of their kingdom and he had to make the journey to the neighboring Arará country, where he would be crowned king. The Lucumí mocked him, saying that he never paid them what he owed them. "I'll tell you what," he replied, "I've already given all of you payback, because I'm leaving you full of illness." And then he started out. Appropriately enough, Eshú Afrá, Asojuano's companion, is born in the sign Eleguá took out for Hilario Dávila and his job was to fight all of the witches who would make his movement difficult. One of the things Hilario Dávila always remembered about Asojuano's journey was that Shangó looked out for the old man, now a pilgrim. Shangó took Ogún's dogs and gave them to Asojuano to give him comfort on his way to the Arará country. Hilario Dávila knew a little about the Arará, but Eleguá told him on this day that among his most important allies would be people from the Arará country. Hilario Dávila started to feel like Asojuano's journey was a little like his own.

Over time, Hilario Dávila learned a few things about the man in the painting Juan Gutierrez Boza had shown him in the dream. The man would enable Hilario Dávila to help people and to help himself. He wasn't always around, but when it was important, he would give Hilario Dávila just the right ebó to fix a situation. For example, the man permitted Hilario Dávila to tell a besieged woman that she had to have Oshosi at her door to protect her from the criminals in the house across the street.

Pretty soon, Hilario Dávila learned that the man would show him the truth, the way things really were and were meant to be. He would tell him what needed to be done. No one else could see these things, but the man was very generous and let Hilario Dávila see things he would never have seen on his own.

One day, a son of Asojuano from the Arará country took Hilario Dávila to an old house just as Asojuano was about to begin some important ceremonies. The room was big and everything about Asojuano was so beautiful, because there he was, a king on his throne. Hilario Dávila made moforibale to Asojuano, touching his head to the feet of the king. Boom. It was like a soft but powerful explosion and it blew Hilario Dávila out of the house and onto the porch. He fell asleep for a long time and for a while he didn't really know where he was.

Hilario Dávila wanted to stay close to Asojuano. He knew there was something important about touching his head to Asojuano, but he was a little bit scared that the same thing would happen again that happened in the old house. So he thought about it and he remembered something impressive that he witnessed one time when the Arará people let him see the ceremonies of a man being consecrated to Asojuano. But it took the man in the painting put it all together for Hilario Dávila, including something that Hilario Dávila's godfather had always said about the power of otí, a strong rum that invigorates the head and that Asojuano likes a lot.

Hilario Dávila prayed hard to Asojuano, naming as many of his ancestors as came into his head. There were so many that the moyuba prayer lasted more than twenty minutes. Then the man told Hilario Dávila to kneel very close to Asojuano with his head right over Asojuano's pot and pour a bottle of otí over his head so that the strong cane rum fell directly onto Asojuano. Hilario Dávila quivered from head to toe. It lasted a long time and then everything became very tranquil. Hilario Dávila wasn't knocked out of the house. Instead, it was just like a movie.

A well traveled dirt road curved up around a cul-de-sac like a big floppy 'U'. The cul-de-sac sat on a hill and on the hill was a palace with a veranda. The earth was very red, but it was moist and it crumbled when someone went by. On the veranda of the palace was a throne and on the throne sat Shangó. He was resplendent in his dyed and beaded robes, which were beautiful against his dark skin, which bore not a wrinkle. He was ageless and his face was beaming. Hilario Dávila wanted to know what he should do, but Shangó was silent. He didn't say anything. He just made Hilario Dávila feel like he was under the protection of this great presence and nothing would ever go wrong.

Just then an old man passed by. He was dressed in earthy clothes and had a shock of gray hair. It was funny. Here was Shangó's palace that looked like it was in Africa and here was this mulato who looked like an old campesino from the farmlands in the middle of Cuba. And as old as he was, he had a spring in his step and moved with such forward determination. Hilario Dávila looked at the old man and then looked at Shangó. Shangó still didn't say anything, but he was smiling incandescently.

All of a suddent the man in the painting reminded Hilario Dávila all about the odu Oshe Bara. "You can have a long life if you purify." In order to realize your creativity, intelligence, and grace, control your tongue and exert discretion; respect your elders; remember who and where you are; stay focused; put down all of that heavy ancestral baggage; keep moving forward; and so much more.

The tongue is the body's whip.
He who talks a lot makes a lot of mistakes.
A difficult child is like a thorny forest.
The drunk thinks one thing and the bartender another.
Sweep out what doesn't work.
The needle carries the thread.

There was so much to remember and so much to do.

Without even thinking Hilario Dávila knew for sure who the man on the road was. His name was Jose Franco Trinidad Menocal. He knew him intimately as if they were blood. Born in 1846 to a freed mulato landholder, he went to Havana when he was only eighteen, but by the time he breezed by Shangó's palace, he was already seventy-seven years old. He was a priest of Towosí, the Arará deity who is compared to Yewá, the Lucumí goddess of the fosa within the cemetery.

As inspired as he was by Jose Franco Trinidad, Hilario Dávila began to worry. One day, Jose was so tired that the spring in his step had given out and he faltered, so much so that Asojuano had to carry him. But Asojuano, as old as he was himself, was also getting tired.

Hilario Dávila looked desperately to Shangó, but he offered no spoken answer. Still, the wise king reached behind his throne and took out an osain. He placed it on the ground and gave it a little push forward, as one nudges a toy sailboat out onto the water. It came to Hilario Dávila that the king wanted to be reforzado and to have an osain made for him so that Jose Franco Trinidad Menocal could at least walk again. But Shangó himself knew that Hilario Dávila was going to have to do some really strong work to get Jose Franco Trinidad moving again.

Soon it got dark. Hilario Dávila's heart nearly sunk when Asojuano opened a creaky old wood door and, in the candle light, there was Jose Franco Trinidad Menocal bound to a wood chair with thick leather straps. He couldn't move. It seemed hopeless.

For the first time, Hilario Dávila saw Shangó's face grow concerned. Even Shangó needed help. Shangó called out for his old rival Ogún, a great warrior. But Ogún was far away, deep in the monte. Shangó motíoned to Hilario Dávila, bringing his hand up to his mouth as if he wanted to eat; he reminded Hilario Dávila of the odu in which Shangó and Ogún eat akukó together. A ha!, thought Hilario Dávila. Ogún will certainly come out of the monte if he can eat together with Shangó. Satisfied that Hilario Dávila understood exactly what he had to do, he gave Hilario Dávila the "thumbs up" sign. So, there was a solution after all.

Hilario Dávila fed akukó meyi pupuá to Shangó and Ogún and consecrated the refuerzo of Shangó.

Soon, Jose Franco Trinidad Menocal was back on the road, with a spring in his step, moving along like never before. He whistled a tune: O foro foro / Asojano o foro foro / Mina Yawe / Mina Yawe / Mina Yawe.

Before Hilario Dávila knew it, December sixteenth was upon him once again. It was the eve of Asojuano's feast day, when everyone went to the ilé, a throne of cundiamor was built, and a big awan was made to clean everyone.

Only ten days before, the old man in the painting had revealed to Hilario Dávila that he had been a Congo in life and that he needed a prenda of Siete Rayos in order to work, just as Hilario Dávila was told years before in the itá of his santo. For the first time, the man told Hilario Dávila that his name was Moises Samuel Fernández Brito, that he was born in 1897 and that he died in 1967. Hilario Dávila hoped that Moises Samuel would be present at the awan and tell him what he had to do.

At the ceremony Asojuano talked long into the night to everyone and offered great comfort to Hilario Dávila. Asojuano hugged him for a long time and rubbed his heart. Asojuano knew all about the suffering that Oshún had told Hilario Dávila about many years before when she spoke in his itá of santo. Then, a flood of ideas and images came into his head. Hilario Dávila quickly got a pen and paper and began writing as fast as he could right there on the terracotta tile floor. By the time he finished, he knew almost everything there was to know about the prenda, including all of its ingredients, how it was to be painted, and how the firma looked. Moises Samuel wasn't the unassuming man in the painting any longer. He showed himself dressed in full regalia, with a machete in his belt, a painted fajín around his waist, and crosses drawn in chalk on his chest, hands, and feet. He danced endlessly while holding a kiyumba on his head.

Still, Hilario Dávila was new to all this. He had a pocket full of shiny coins but didn't know how to spend them. His ilé was soon going to give a misa, but Hilario Dávila couldn't make it. He lamented that he might not learn how to make the prenda that Moises Samuel wanted.

It was a Saturday afternoon and the misa had already started. But Hilario Dávila had to work. A car pulled up and some people came into his botanica. They saluted the santos and just like that one of the people told him that he was a tata of Regla de Congo. Hilario Dávila respectfully asked the tata if he would teach him how to mount the prenda and enact the pacto espiritual that Moises Samuel told him he would have to make. Hilario Dávila had spent the week asking everyone he trusted about the task before him, but each person had strong opinions; indeed, he felt that even though these were people he trusted, they all wanted him to do it their way. This tata was different. He looked at Hilario Dávila and then slowly and patiently explained everything he would have to do, including how he had to make the pacto espiritual. On the very day he had to miss the misa, Hilario Dávila got all the information he needed. The tata even promised to come and help him. Hilario Dávila didn't go to the misa; the misa had come to him.

The succeeding weeks were a swirl of activity. Hilario Dávila went to the crossroads, the monte, the cemetery, the hill, the river, and the ocean, collecting everything he needed. He got it all together faster than Moises Samuel himself could have way back then, because Hilario Dávila was able to find so many things on the internet.

Hilario Dávila made Siete Rayos a beautiful red and white pot and built him his own little house in the back yard. Every time he found something else he needed, he put it in the shed, which he locked up tight.

As soon as he can get the fresh plants he needs, Hilario Dávila is going to enact the pacto espiritual and build the prenda so that Siete Rayos, along with all of his other allies, will help him keep moving forward.

The prenda is not yet finished, but just today, Hilario Dávila realized perhaps the most important thing, something his itá of santo had already told him. An egun would come to him and tell him how to build his prenda espiritual. Jose Franco Trinidad Menocal was Hilario Dávila's sign of his own forward movement on his path and Asojuano his enabler, giving Hilario Dávila access to revelation. Juan Gutierrez Boza's Shangó loved Hilario Dávila so much that when he appeared in the dream, he bequeathed to Hilario Dávila Juan's own personal muerto in order to help him. When Moises Samuel comes to Hilario Dávila, he knows things he could never know otherwise. Finally Moises Samuel will have his own house and his prenda. Hilario Dávila hopes that Moises Samuel Fernández Brito will be with him for a long time.

O foro foro / Asojano o foro foro / Mina Yawe / Mina Yawe / Mina Yawe.

Growing up with Clinton Douglas Pollen II: The Crash

The purring silver Maserati slipped up our suburban driveway on a Friday afternoon in the summer of 1970. Dr. Pollen had come to pick me up for a weekend with Clinton. We were having a double sleep over and went by to pick up my classmate Mark Kobasz for the drive down to Colt's Neck from Edison. With Mark in the leather passenger seat, I lay prone on the long ledge under the sloping rear window. My head was nearly between the two bucket seats. The Maserati was so low to the ground that I felt as if the asphalt was rolling up into my face as we sped along at 80 miles per hour. As many times as I'd stayed over the weekend, this one was definitely different as soon as we pulled in the driveway. There was Clinton looking over his new black 1953 Studebaker with its classic bubble rear window and endless bench seats. It was made for the road but now it was going to turn twelve rural New Jersey acres into an amusement park. We were thirteen.


Some of his friends were tinkering with the engine so we waited expectantly until Saturday afternoon to try it out: Clinton in the driver's seat, David in the passenger seat, Mark behind Clinton, and the rotund family friend John Arnold behind me. We didn't know much about the shift knob on the steering column but we knew a lot about the gas pedal. Clinton was fond of accelerating fast on the unpaved road around the property and spinning the steering wheel so the car would fishtail in the dirt, coming to a sudden stop in a haze of dust. We didn't know much about the shift knob on the steering column but we knew a lot about the gas pedal.

No car in 1970 was complete without it's eight-track player. We had one. But we had only one of those big cumbersome cassettes with the weird loose brown ribbon running through it: the Beatles' White Album, which came out in 1968. It was just about the best thing we had ever heard and we endlessly debated what the best songs were and couldn't get enough of the rumor that the white cover had censored the original photograph of John and Yoko nude. We must have listened to the whole thing through about a hundred times. Curtis loved "Rocky Racoon," but our favorites were "Birthday" and "Helter Skelter," the perfect rock-and-roll driving music.


All of us took a try at driving but Clinton did the best fishtails. So we let him. It was late afternoon and he got us up to about 60 on the straightaway, which was all the car would do. The "Birthday" was blaring and for the first time I had a bad feeling. We were going fast, really fast. The trees were whipping by and the dust was high up over us on both sides. Clinton whipped the steering wheel to the left and the car seemed to float up on two wheels. Everyone says it. Everything starts to slow down, way down. "We're gonna crash," I yelled. We leaned, and leaned, and leaned and the car flipped. It must have rolled two and a half times, because it ended up on its right side. I can't say it was eerily quiet, because Birthday was still playing as loud as ever. Mark was freaked and cried out, "David," but luckily he had been cushioned by the enormous bulk of John Arnold, his own side air bag. Nothing had happened to us. Clinton and I just stepped out of the huge gaping hole where the front windshield used to be; Mark and John climbed out of what was now the top. We just stood there, the four of us, gawking at the smoking wreck. It seemed to be in agony as hot black oil gushed down the chassis. But we were o.k. and there wasn't anything else to talk about. We just walked together back up the dusty road toward the house. That was the end of the 1953 Studebaker. Somehow it had lost half its guts on that road, because as we walked, there were little engine parts and tools and all sorts of things from the trunk leading back about a half mile.


We practically forgot about the whole thing, or wanted to, because out parents would probably never let us sleep over at Clinton's again. Anyway, that night Curtis's rock band was making its big debut at a girl's party on the next farm. We arrived at dusk, just before the show. The band didn't seem too ready. In fact, despite all the hype, it didn't seem like they could play at all. What seemed like an eternity was that the drummer kept asking for a towel to put around his neck for the big drum solo he had to play for their cover of Iron Butterfly's "In the Garden of Eden."

We hadn't heard more than the opening vamp when Dr. Pollen drove up. He had learned about the big crash and came to check us over. He sat each of us down on a bench and gave us a pretty good orthopedic check up. Being satisfied, he left. But we didn't visit Clinton for about a year.

I never got tired of The White Album, though to this day, I still can't stand In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.

Growing up with Clinton Douglas Pollen I

It was recess at Menlo Park Elementary School in Edison, New Jersey. Clinton Douglas Pollen and I were hanging out, as much as one could really hang out on the black top in second grade in 1963. I kept kneeling down and polishing his jet black "featherweights," those pointed leather shoes worn only by the coolest of the cool. Clinton kept reminding me that I would inherit them from him, so I was doing my best to keep them We had sleep-overs a lot, mostly at his house.  I was Jewish, short and slight, with thick black hair and thick black glasses, I was already a follower and had no illusions about leading, or being other than vicariously cool. And that was pretty cool for me until I got on the bus and got my daily beating from the neighborhood kids, a ritual I was pretty much used to. In the 1960s they used to call that "just growing up." It didn't become "ritual abuse" until about thirty years later. This is my earliest memory of my friendship with Clinton.

He was always "Clinton Douglas" to his mother, Bobby Pollen, a rough daughter of the South who could swear like a farm boy. Bobby was a handsome woman who never stopped moving around and waving her arms. I think she loved me because I was such a good kid, perhaps a moderating influence on her son. In her eyes, I think, Clinton always seemed to get it wrong. For Clinton's part, I think he valued me as a friend not only because he needed a loyal acolyte. Despite the his high jinks and borderline delinquency, he was actually a pretty sweet kid somewhere inside. There was always a little sadness in him and somehow Mr. and Mrs. Brown, my parents, offered him a glimpse of belonging to a normal family where people would tell him what to do and he would gladly follow.

We had lots of sleep overs, but it was essential that I went there. My first memory is pretending we were rabbits, robbing a whole head of iceberg lettuce from the Fridge, and devouring it in his room. That same night, Mrs. Pollen had prepared the freshly killed pheasant his father had just dressed and brought home. It tasted delicious, except that I had never picked so many tiny lead balls out of my mouth. Besides the bones, we all had greasy piles of buckshot on our plates.

For me, it was paradise. No rules. No bedtime. No supervision. Virtually no parents at all. I have several memories of that first place of excitement, mystery, and complete freedom. One evening, Bobby was cooking up a huge pork roast. We raided the kitchen in our pajamas, loaded up our arms with that greasy trayf deliciousness, which was forbidden in my kosher home, and dumped it in his underwear drawer to feast on all night long.

Clinton dazzled me with all sorts of stories. Deep down in the their dark basement, where I would never dare to venture, his father kept a jar with John Dillinger's testicles in formaldehyde. Dr. Pollen a successful orthopedist who worked in Perth Amboy, did all kinds of things like that. So that night, because we were both afraid that John Dillinger was going to come up from the basement and kill us, we securely locked the basement door. The next morning Clinton got the beating of his life because we had locked his parents down there all night.

After second grade, the Pollens moved to Colonia, one town over, for a couple of years. Dr. Pollen was, apparently, doing very well, because they bought a nice house with its own lake surrounded by Weeping Willow trees. We climbed the Weeping Willows over the river. We ordered tons of Chicken Delight and pizza, stayed up nearly all night, drifting off to sleep in the wee hours. In the morning, breakfast picked up with the leftover chicken and pizza from the night before. We played endlessly with our battalion of GI Joes in the little creeks all around the house. Muddy from head to toe, we got right into the bathtub and the GI Joes went in the sink. Some of them were black soldiers. Mrs. Pollen came in and yelled at Clinton to "get the niggers out of the sink."

The greatest thing ever was when they moved to Colt's Neck, about 40 minutes southwest in what then was all farmland. The huge ranch sat on Five Points Road just off of Rt. 537 on twelve acres of tall grassland. Beyond that were just woods and more woods that stretched all the way down south, until Route 18 was plowed through in the early 1970s. Colt's Neck made Colonia look like prison. They had faux cow skin living room sofas and cool curvy 1970s cocktail tables, a bar, a pool, and motorcycles.

All the kids had their own rooms. Valerie, the oldest, painted her room black and had a pet monkey in a cage. She'd spend all day in bed, so there were half-filled cereal bowls within the covers and you had to tiptoe around because Rontoo, the perpetually abused dog, left poop on her floor. She left the monkey in its cage for so long that its legs atrophied and it never walked again.

Curtis, the middle child, was a fast talking, fast-driving teenage hipster who wore wide bell-bottoms. He had long hair, played guitar in a band, and had a blond girlfriend. He had a big closet in his paneled room plastered with Playboy centerfolds. Best of all he drove 100 miles an hour at all times in his souped up GTX. At night, we went out with Curtis. Clinton and I wouldn't get in the back seat without putting on crash helmets. On the sleepy one-lane local roads in pitch blackness, Curtis would rev the GTX right up to the rear bumper of some old geezer in a Rambler. When the opposite lane was apparently clear, he'd hit the gas, power shift, and and shoot around the old guy, careening back into our lane just in time to miss an oncoming car and then slow down to 90.

Clinton's room was cool. He had toys on top of toys, and a gun rack. But we didn't spent too much time in there. There was too much to do. With twelve acres and untold more to play in you could stay out there all day and forget about what time it was.

Occasionally, we'd see his parents. His father had a brand new silver Maserati supposedly so he could commute easily back and forth to Perth Amboy. It could do way over 140 when, according to Clinton, the state police closed down the Garden State Parkway for the Doctor so he could test it out. I had an idea why his father was never home. Days would go by and we wouldn't see his mother.

But I do remember big breakfasts at the long wood table by the glass doors looking out onto the pool. She was a great cook. The kitchen table was a pharmacy. You had to have one if your father was a doctor. There were diet pills, uppers, downers, muscle relaxers; I didn't know what else. I just can't shake the image of pill bottles and table ware.

Clinton had a red Honda 100 dirt bike. Being older and more experienced, Curtis had a green Kawasaki 250. He was much better at jumping and fishtailing out. Late one night we rode together on Curtis' 250 out to the huge haunted factory. We couldn't see anything when we arrived and I was a little scared out there in the middle of nowhere at night. Clinton assured me that I shouldn't worry and proved it to me when he pulled his blue steel automatic pistol from his jeans. I got a little queasy, but it was all part of the adventure.


We loved the twelve acres, but, for some reason, Clinton liked the road better. He could get places and it was much more rebellious to ride out into traffic at 13 years old without a license than just turn up a bunch of dirt in the back yard. Clinton was a kind of embryonic Jack Kerouac, evil doctor, and criminal mind all rolled into one. I think he was a genius. He just kept getting into trouble. One day, with me hanging onto the back for dear life, we shot out onto 537, passing in front of the police station like nothing mattered. We were just on our way over to see his friends whose family owned the Andirons bar on Route 79. They were always doing something cool. The bike whined so loudly that I couldn't hear a thing. Clinton could see in the rear view mirrors that a police car was coming up on us all lighted up and sirens blaring. He turned his head and yelled something to me but I had no idea what was going on. Suddenly, we were in midair and then bumping and rocking as he shot us across a nearly full-grown cornfield. I think I thought that what he had said to me was that we were just going to take a little short cut. After climbing a hill, we were careening around in circles in the enclosed back yard of some rural one-story factory. I still had no idea what was going on but rudely woke up when we came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the grass. Everything was quiet except that lots of police were yelling at us to freeze. They were all hunkered down behind their open cruiser doors with their guns pointed at us.

The next thing I knew, we were handcuffed in the back of a police car. The officer turned around and said, "I pulled out behind you because I was going to stop you for not wearing eye protection. But then I saw you had no license plates." We pleaded with him that we didn't do anything, but he said, "boys, you could have just robbed a store and when you didn't stop for us, we really went after you."

Back at the police station on Route 537, a tow truck that had picked up Clinton's new Honda 100 pulled up with the bike strapped to the back. The gas tank was all dented and we were indignant. Inside the station it was green cinder block, florescent lights, gray metal desks, and brown wood chairs. All I could think of was my one phone call, really. I closed my eyes and fantasized about calling information and asking for the Wilentz, Goldman and Spitzer law firm where my father worked. That would get us out of this because the cops would be scared.

Time seemed stopped until Bobby Pollen and Valerie pulled up in the biggest station wagon you ever saw. Mrs. Pollen was cursing at Clinton in her endearing southern accent and apologizing profusely to the police about her worthless son. Valerie let loose on him such a string of profanity that I didn't understand a word she said. When we pulled into their giant garage on the twelve acres, there was a torn out piece of notebook paper taped to the garage door to the house. The lines on the paper were bars and there were two stick figures behind them. That was us, except the face of one of them was colored in. Clinton was the "nigger," his mother said.

To be continued...

Personal Photography 1980-present

Personal Orisha Artwork by Eguin Kolade

Cuba Photographs: 1986 to 2005

Among the Babalawos: Fieldwork in Cuba I

Somehow my godfather convinced me that he was going to lead me down the garden path.

It was June 1986. He was wise, articulate, and of many years in Ifa, the fraternity of Yoruba diviners in Cuba. I was an enthusiastic graduate student commencing the first phase of my doctoral fieldwork.

Across his wrought iron desk piled high with dog-eared papers and exotic divination equipment, he demonstrated his command of Lucumi, the Yoruba ritual language in Cuba. I think it was his earnest performance of the leader and healer that got me. "I am a senior babalawo, diviner of the Ifa oracle. My mission is to help people. Look around me; this is a poor house. I work with Orunmila to save humanity and have no interest in enriching myself."

In fact, Hermes Valera Ramirez Otura Sa, who fought for Fidel and hid from Batista's agents for many years, committed himself to my research, guiding me in my questions and introducing me to the eldest and most knowledgeable babalawos in Cuba. He had worked with all of them since at least 1963, when he was initiated in the lineage of the great Bernardo Rojas Irete Untedi of Marianao.

Hermes was a bulldog of a man: short, tough, and a chain-smoker. He barked at such a fast clip that no few Cubans could understand him at all. With him I learned some of my best Cuban Spanish, including precious laconic phrases that I often had to translate to my friends: hay mucha mentira en esa casa; ese tipo era asi: siempre se comio la plata; hay mucha pena en tanta' cosa'. He ended virtually every proposition with the machine-gunned words, y otra serie de cuestiones (and a whole series of other issues), as if he could talk for four more hours on the subject "but we don't have time now and you wouldn't understand anyway."

For days on end we drove in my battered rental Nissan to every little corner of greater Havana to meet the best of the best surviving babalawos. So that I knew where we were going, I had to keep my diminutive co-pilot in cigarettes and coffee, lest he nod off in the passenger seat and bump his head on the dashboard. No one uses seat belts in Cuba.

During several weeks in 1991, we scoured Cayo Hueso, Central Havana, Vedado, Marianao, La Lisa, Coco Solo, Pogolotti, Buena Vista, El Cerro, Lawton, Luyano, 10 de Octubre, Mantilla, and Parraga, sometimes spending hours on end with babalawos whom Hermes hadn't seen in years.


As I gained research contacts, he got to renew old acquaintances and, not least, demonstrate his good fortune in being chauffered around by a turista. He would gladhand his old friends, chat them up, and introduce me as "the great researcher from the University of Atlanta." Sometimes I felt like Edward Gibbon, a hard act to follow.

Professor David Brown wants to research our great tradition of Ifa. We're not talking about revealing any secrets but showing the world the great achievements of luminaries like Adechina, Ifa Omi, Kainde, Bernardo Rojas and everything they bequeathed to us. Everyone knows about Caesar and Napolean because many books have been written about them. But no one knows about their forefathers in Ifa. We have to teach the young babalawos about their heritage, because most of them honor their ancestors but have no idea who they were. So Professor Brown would like to interview you about your biography, your lineage, your memories, and a whole series of other issues.

Before I could get a word out, he'd then start chatting up his old friend for twenty minutes while coffee, water, and, sometimes, rum and cigars, were served by dutiful wives and housekeepers.

He'd then turn to me and ask me if I had any questions for his friend. However, if he was tired or had not had enough coffee, he'd say, "so, are you ready to go?" before I could get down when and where the babalawo was born. Still, on other occasions, we worked intensively for three or four days with a single babalawo, interviewing him on tape, collecting dozens of stories, photographing old documents and pictures, and taking portraits.


This was hard work, and invariably I'd treat him to a two-hour killer meal that most Cubans couldn't afford with two or three months' salary. The elegant colonnaded Casona 17 in Vedado was our favorite hangout and we ensconced ourselves in a private sideroom beneath a huge air conditioner blasting frigid air.

There we'd knock back a few beers or weeskies, go over our interviews, plan the following days' work. Occasionally Hermes would propose to me a few ideas of his own, and other series of other issues...

Art Collection

My Tranquil Seaside Neighborhood

Ocean Township relishes its diversity, its felicitous range of class, ethnicity, and housing stock. On Ocean Avenue the old Victorian mansions of generations past jostle with the geometric modern cliches and bombastic Versailles-like manors. Deal was a summer getaway for presidents (e.g., Garfield) and the W.A.S.P. rich, and the Deal Country Club prohibited Jewish members. The Jews bought land from the WASPs and founded their own Hollywood Country Club next door at the turn of the last century. Tradesmen, who served the rich, built modest bungalows and craftsman jewels next to the railroad tracks. Meanwhile, two little towns popped up nearby: Interlaken and Wanamassa, named after an extinct Native American tribe. The tracks divide Interlaken and Wanamassa too, and when you cross Wikapeko Avenue going west from the Loch Arbor and Interlaken beaches, housing prices drop two to three times at least.

We live in Wanamassa, which, it is apparent, was settled by Irish, Italian, and Greek tradesman who found economic opportunities and home ownership. Even today you can bilk the rich in Deal for 10-20% more for any job.

Unique to the area is a confluence of Jewish denominations and sub-ethnic enclaves and their concomitant rivalries. The Ashenazis from West, Central, and Eastern Europe were followed by, and, in many cases, pushed out by, the Sephardic Syrian Jews, who now dominate New York's Garment District, the richest swaths of Brooklyn domestic real estate, and Deal's gorgeous leafy multi-million dollar properties. The ubiquitous eruv practically surrounds the entire town; you can dine on Glatt Kosher sushi and Chinese, and Jerusalem Pizza is a top hangout. The eruv is a tightly strung cord surrounding blocks and properties, which permits the symbolic extension of the home outdoors, so that one can push baby carriages and carry money on the sabbath. The summer sees Brooklyn take over the town, which practically becomes a parking lot of Mercedes, BMWs, Ferraris, and Porches. The temples rival Hearst Castle and mikvahs dot the commercial thoroughfares. No one drives on the Sabbath. Deal is a graveyard in the winter when the crowds return to Brooklyn.

As Ocean Township, formerly forest and farm, spread westward, it offered new enclaves for Egyptian Sephardics, who built their own synagogues because they could not pray with the Syrians. There are more than ten synagogues in the area. Not least, Williamsburg and Crown Heights have their satellites. Hasidic Yeshivas are everywhere, as are sable shtreimels, long beards, young male Yeshiva-bochers in black and white, with their dangling tzizit, cigarettes, cellphones, and baseball gloves. All the houses around the Yeshiva at the edge of my neighborhood are dorms for the rebbes and their restless teenage students, whohave cut a path from their brick school to the 7-Eleven to the baseball diamond across the street.

Wanamassa. The other side of the tracks. I bought a modified "high ranch," a version of the Cape salt boxes that dot the entire neighborhood like the shelves of a warehouse. The properties are so small, some without adequate driveways, that cars and work vans line both sides of the street. On the leafy upper-middle-class streets just several blocks north, the streets are clean of cars and no one would dare to park a van anywhere. Some folks cherish their vans for lack of garage space.


Who would guess that an overwhelming diversity graces this former oasis of Irish Catholic Wanamassa. A gay male couple with a rainbow flag lives across the street. A whorehouse and former drug mart sits next door. An FBI special agent whose wife homeschools their four kids guards our little corner. I'm a Yale Ph.D. refugee from the academy who is a santero.

Nowadays, with quality-of-life statutes and norms in New York City, you can walk down the street and not be attacked. In sleepy Wanamassa, by contrast, you can witness dramatic events seen only on reality shows. One morning last summer, heavily-armed SWAT team took out the brothel next door and carted away the mini-drug-kingpin with the shaved chest and bold tattoos. Last week two drunken neighbors fought each other in the street with baseball bats. One Saturday evening, I drove around the corner to deposit cash in our Wachovia ATM. While writing out the deposit slip, the car behind me started honking and the bozo behind the wheel yelling for me to move it. When I raised both arms in quizzical surprise, he gunned up alongside me and commenced a river of obscenities. When I told him gently to get the fuck out of here, he popped his buff body out of his black compact as his wife clawed at him to stay in the car. The air filled with music as "faggot," "pussy," "motherfucker,"and "asshole" issued from the mouth of this local opera singer with the shaved head. Pumped up and rocking back and forth like a dynamo, this raging bull drenched my passenger-side window with a cascade of spit, which I later had to wash off with a high-powered hose. Perhaps fearful, but actually more astonished, I called 911, having closed the windows to avoid the deluge. "Pussy, faggot! He's calling his mother," the troll yelled in between ever-bigger lugies. And then, just as suddenly as he had arrived, he got back into his car and pealed out. I'm sure his wife was relieved.

Meanwhile, the monster pickup behind me pulled up next to me. The muscular driver, who had witnessed the whole thing, leaned out the window and asked me, "so, how long are you going to be at the ATM?" I guess this was simply a normal event to him. "I'm on the line with 911; didn't you see what just happened?" I asked. "Well, I'll just let you get on with your business," and he drove off.

Soon, a squad car showed up. The young professional officer, still with pimples, told me there was nothing he could do as he had not witnessed the incident.

So, I was left to return home and wash the car. Just another day in Wanamassa.

Existence of Boneheads Proved by Science

"Bonehead" is a term of popular parlance, an epithet used to refer to particularly thick persons. Still, until recently, "bonehead" was thought to have merely cultural and/or educational connotations. Now the existence of boneheads--the person who drives too fast on your block, makes a turn without a signal, rashly picks a fight instead of rationally talking it out, parades his ignorance and racism like a badge of courage--has been proved scientifically.

The attached photograph, from the New York Times, shows an X-Ray taken of Patrick Lawler's head. He left his building job one day feeling a bit out of sorts, wondering about his headache and nasal discomfort. This went on for a few days. It probably wasn't anything, but he figured he needed to see a doctor.

I showed the attached photograph to my friend and contractor, Nick, a marine hulk of a man with a genius for building and design. He was quick to add that "half of the guys living around here and working for me suffer from this affliction."

Orisha Dance in Cuba: A Video by David H. Brown

Orisha Dance from Cuba was videotaped live by David Brown in La Casa de Africa in 1992, in Havana, Vieja. It is a performance presented by an extremely talented dance group. It features the dances of:

El Baile de los Orishas de Cuba fue filmado por David Brown en La Casa de Africa in 1992, in Havana, Vieja. Es una actuación por un grupo de bailarines talentosos. Se presentan los bailes de:

Elegba: 5:44
Ogún: 4:12
Oshún: 4:58
Yemayá: 7:07
Oyá: 5:09
Babalú Ayé: 6:11
Shangó: 8:47

Video is available at www.folkcuba.com in the Music Store.

Ladainha of Capoeira Angola: God is Immense and I am Small but in the Roda I Achieve Greatness

Ladainha
Iê!
Maior é deus,
Maior é deus,
Pequeno sou eu,
Tudo que eu tenho foi deus que me deu,
Tudo que eu tenho foi deus que me deu,
Na roda da capoeira,
Grande pequeno sou eu, camara...

Iê viva meu deus,
Iê viva meu mestre,
Iê viva todos mestres,
Iê como o mundo deu,
Iê como o mundo da,
Iê volta do mundo...

God is great,
God is great,
I am small,
Everything I have, God gave me,
Everything I have, God gave me,
But in the Capoeira Roda,
Though small, I too, become great, my brother...

-- Ladainha de Mestre Vicente Pastinha da capoeira angola da Sao Salvador, Bahia, Brazil

Ladainha of Capoeira Angola: You Think You Know Everything

Ladainha
Você pensa que sabe tudo,
Você pensa que sabe tudo,
Lagartixa sabe mais,
Ela sobe nas paredes,
Coisa que não faz você, camara...

Iê viva o meu deus,
Iê viva ao todos mestres,
Iê viva o meu mestre,
Iê que me ensinou,
Iê a capoeira,
Iê volta do mundo,
Iê que o mundo deu
Iê que o mundo da...

You think you know everything,
You think you know everything,
The Chameleon knows more,
She can climb up walls,
Something you can't do, my brother...
Iê, long live God,
Iê,long live my master,
Iê, the one who taught me
Iê, Capoeira,
Iê, around the world,
Iê, the world comes,
Iê, the world goes...

Ladainha of Capoeira Angola: The World is Dangerous and Things Aren't What They Seem

Ladainha
Estava em minha casa,
Estava em minha casa,
Sem pensar nem imaginar,
Delegado no momento,
Já mandou foi me intimar.
É verdade meu colega
Com toda diplomacia,
Prenderam Pedro Minheiro,
Dentro da delegacia,
Para dar depoimento,
Daquilo que não savia, camara...

Iê viva meu deus
Iê viva meu mestre
Iê viva todos mestres
Iê como o mundo deu
Iê como o mundo da
Iê volta do mundo...

I was in my house,
I was in my house,
And I hadn't the slightest idea,
That they were sent to interrogate me.
It's true my brother,
With total ease,
They caught Pedro Minhiero,
Inside the very police department,
When he went to give a simple interview,
But he had no idea...

Ladainha da tradição da capoeira angola da Sao Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.

"Bring Me a Shrubbery": No Reflection on the Bush Legacy

This appeared today in an article on the "Question of Bush's Legacy" in the New York Times by Steven Lee Meyers today:

Legacy is a word over which Mr. Bush's aides profess not to dwell, and the president himself seems averse to reflection. "The president does not have second thoughts," his press secretary, Dana Perino, once said.

Photograph by David H. Brown. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. The huge billboard, one of several, stands outside the United States Interests Section in Havana. The zone has become a forum for criticism of U.S. policy toward Cuba. For political effect, the billboard presents a fictional drama called "The Assassin," starring Luis Posada Carilles and George W. Bush. The CIA-trained anti-Castro Cuban Posada Carilles is wanted in the 1976 bombing of a Cubana Airlines plane that killed 73 people. Cuba accuses the U.S. of protecting a terrorist against extradition to Venezuela for trial, as Venezuelans were among the passengers killed on the flight. The United States is opposed to the politics of Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, particularly his close relationship with Cuba.

We Learn to Cope when We're Ten

Manny and his friends Joey Appio and Marck Evangelista were in my car.

I asked Marck how his mother was because I knew she had pneumonia.

He said, "she's good."

I said, "but Marck, doesn't she have pneumonia?"

He had no answer and was a little spaced out.

Then I asked, rhetorically, "so if your mother had her leg chopped off, would you say she was 'good'"?

Joey chimed in from the back, "we learn to get past that."

Dianism: Diana Anne is a Low Key Genius

My friend Diana Anne is a Low Key Genius from Singapore with a penchant for the ironic. Diana Anne is a darling. Watch out!

She offers a poetic warning to potential internet suitors:

Dun bother with the MSN,
Dun have the EQ to do small talk,
Dun have the IQ to engage in intellectual conversations,
Dun have the AQ to counter broken hearts,
Dun bother with the sweet nothings, I'm desensitised.

Also, dun bother if your profile is faceless. Not interested in men with sub-zero self esteem.

No matter how well you know me, you will never know me well enough coz I'm an oxymoronic chronic pathological liar with acute syndromes. I am - simply complicated.

Bad Behavior Credits

It came to me in that crucible of epiphanies, the shower.

How could I explain the enduring paradox that nine and ten year olds invariably misbehave worse after they've just been praised and rewarded for prior good behavior?

Inchoate as it was, my prior explanation revolved around their erroneous sense of entitlement and freedom from restraint, after having bitten the bullet all week in order to win praise and goods for their good behavior.

I can now define the phenomenon more precisely, having recently heard an NPR story on the controversial practice of pollution credits:

Pollution Credit: An amount of pollutants that a given industrial firm, utility, or state that can be deposited into the atmosphere within a given year.

Pollution credits are bought and sold on the international market. Critics fear the practice, instead of providing incentives to reduce pollution, is a cynical move that will backfire.

I now believe that the system of disciplining nine and ten year-olds has backfired, creating imagined bad behavior credits.

Nine and ten year-olds believe that, once they have been praised and rewarded for good behavior, including that PS2 game they've been wishing for, they have also won bad behavior credits, a kind of surplus reward: the license to behave badly for a determinate period--observation determines about 24 hours.

What is to be done?
Will that be answered tomorrow night in the shower?

by D. Hilary Brown

Out of the Mouths of Babes Come Gems: "Jockey Girls"

Manny, who is 10 years old, was telling to me about his favorite sweetheart in school.

He had dreamed that he she had taken a ride with him in his Corvette, but then agreed that taking a walk on the beach might make for better conversation.

"She's not a cheerleader and she's not a jockey girl."

"What's a jockey girl?" I asked.

"It's a girl that wants to be with big buff guys. She's not like that."

In fact, at 10, she's already something of an accomplished ballet, jazz, and modern dance student. She's also an A student.

I have known about "jockey girls" for at least 22 years, since the first time I went to Cuba, 12 years before Manny was born there.

In Cuba, "jineteras" are the young women, actually, teenagers, who ply tourists for rides, meals, and clothes in return for sexual favors. In Cuba, the male tourist is king.

"Ai, como me gusta los Yuma," moans a popular Reggaeton song ("Ai, I just love those [American] tourists"], this refrain crooned by a female singer.

"Jinetera" literally means "jockey," and the "horse," is the alluring male tourist brimming with "dollars." It's not coincidental that in the popular religion known as Osha or Santeria, the "horse" is the human body that is possessed by a orisha (deity) in sacred drumming ceremonies. The horse may be powerful, but the orisha drives him.

I always knew what the term "jinetera" meant, but never could quite put it just as Manny put it this morning, "jockey girls."

Having been in the United States for almost four years, he claims he doesn't remember "jinetera."

- Out of the Mouths of Babes Come Gems -

Manny's Tall Tale: Global Warming

You might have never heard about Manny, but today I will tell you about his greatness. So listen closely.

When Manny was born, his first words were, “doctor, don’t make me cry.” Then everyone stopped and looked at the new baby. They were amazed. From that day on no doctor ever made a baby cry.

When Manny was two years old he discovered he had the ability to change the minds of people and animals.

One day he saw his mom and his dog fighting over a biscuit. He made them break the biscuit in half so that each would be happy.

When Manny was twelve he saw his dad and the cat fighting over the litter box. So he told his dad to go up to the bathroom and the cat to use the litter box.

On the night of Manny’s twenty-first birthday—that night something powerful came and made him stronger than ever. The next day Manny was walking to the bank and he saw a robbery taking place. He stopped the robbery, made the men put the money back in the vault, and went home. Everyone was happy to know that they were safe. From that day on, whenever anyone had a boo-boo the men who were the robbers kissed it and made it go away.

When Manny was sixty years old, even though he still had his powers, one thing he didn’t have was health insurance. So he made the president give it to him and to everyone else in the world. Everyone was happy from then on until global warming melted the earth. Too bad; Manny was not as strong as he thought he was. This was too big a project for him to take care of by himself.

THE END


“Manny’s Tall Tale”
by
Enmanuel Padrón Penalva (b. 3.6.1998)
1.22.08

Happy New Year!
(c) Copyright David H. Brown and Enmanuel Padron 2008