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Defy the Helmsman Upon the Lake of Fire by way of Cooling. Saudade Toxosi

Saudade Toxosi is an Atlanta-based interdisciplinarity artist and image curator working in painting, charcoal drawings, mixed media and assemblage. For more than two decades, Toxosi has engaged in a meditative curatorial process of selecting and organizing found images that explore and articulate her thoughts about the “New Indigenous African” experience in the United States as well as all people of color around the world.

© photo Michelle Alexander
There is a myth from the bantu, kongo a creation story
that speaks to the formations of the earth through fire.
A fire that emerged from nothing and became a force
so strong that it’s vitality was understood as a principle
of change. However, this fire forming mass cooled and
gave birth to something new; the earth...
It has been days, weeks of deep anxiety in relationship to
my presuppositions and borrowed allegories concerning
the injustices among non-white peoples. While
searching for ancestral metaphysical intelligences towards
inner vision with an intent of producing safe spaces and
places that support a world village which contributes to a
collective technique. Nevertheless, I contend with the
reality that provides a great consensus concerning social
and political agreements (borrowed or stolen) that has
provided a proliferation of infinite regression and or wishful
thinking ; promoting cognitive dissonance and is expressed
in conflict. a conflict that is non-constructive and energy
wasting. The result is deep communal sadness and/or
collective rage. In our present reality within the states as
well as abroad there is an alignment with a compound
truth shared. A truth in that resides in our personal,
geographical and virtual environments. This truth is that
this planet - Earth- is a slave ship and white supremacy is
it’s helmsman. With this awareness we can no longer
resist the markings of dissonance, injustice, malice, deceit
and skillful violence all over the world nor it’s designer
white supremacy.
It seems quite ridiculous to estimate or deduce our
numerical confinement when we are born on a planet
as perpetual prisoners unto death, placed into world
subjugation, slave narratives and reductionist intent.
In these weeks, I asked myself how is it that we survive? Is
it because of our God’s or our Ancestors who saved some of
us by way of proper seduction and learned degrees by way of
instilling white principles in broken dialects? Or is it our swag
and persuasion combined by the ability to create with the
scraps from the master’s table?
Even, in these conditions there is a unique quality within
non-white peoples that speak as pride, agency and
determination in the eyes of the onlooker’s demise. Our
predicament is a fire within that burns by perpetually
asking the helmsman to produce a doorway for justice
and correctness; when he enjoys fanning the fire. Across
generations we cloud our visions of freedom with equality
thus, propelling us into a continued rotation of searching
preemptive texts filled with omissions concerning our
humanity/equality that renders us as only servants
prisoners which does not support our lasting dis-ease.
All over the world we are hitting the streets enraged and
controlled by our collective inner fires and rage creating
asymptomatic apologetics that are dependent upon the
need for justice and the desire for cradling in the arms of
the sons and daughters of Odin. The Norse god of war
and death that loves to look at blood and suffering as a
sport.
We mustn’t allow our petitions and problems to solidify.
We must not allow our collective dependencies to spoil
our ability to envision a day when our internal fires
become transmutations and remove the impurities from
our traumatic dwellings upon the Earth. We must begin to
identify our problems correctly that we may find the
proper antidotes.
The misappropriation is the value of ourselves and is our
stalemate towards change that is festering within our
genetic codes . Our bodies and our mental framework are
decaying from countless centuries of resilience and
dysfunction. Our internal and external actions are
perpetually at the crossroads towards inner peace and
wholeness. By grasping this, we will find that our “flight
from wholeness” is based upon the cumulative trappings
of a violent past and bathed in incorrectness of the current
difficulty while worrying about our futures as we surrender
ourselves to regimes and ruthless interconnecting
networks.
Currently, the “the roaring fire burns to the right the roaring
fire burns to the left” and the streets are burning the
villages are burning our souls are burning in a cycle of
misdirected inner fire; in need of proper channeling onto a
road towards productive change. As the fires cleanse
upon the earth we too, cleanse within.; as the fires
burn, we share the earth’s need for change in our
bodies, our minds and our hearts .
Alice Walker writes …"in t hose long periods when
something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding
its breath, unsure about what the next step should be,
eventually become the periods we wait for, for it is in
those periods that we realize that we are being prepared
for the next phase of our life and that, in all probability, a
new level of the personality is about to be revealed.”
2020: a year of great transmutation and the beginning
of the end of all illusions alongside, a change within
humanity that is required to shift our thinking, what we
consume, our
communities, our attachments and those that
rule. Moreover, it is a time of searching,
questioning and “balancing opposing but
complementary forces to bring forth harmony
between the realms of existence”.
In ancient African spirit systems fire is
associated with transformation and our
ability to vision the future. Water is
associated with amniotic fluid and our
memories of the past. The need to align and
balance our mental and physical spaces is
imperative for our own will to acquire a
choosing that promotes healing from a shared
trauma (in varying degrees). The fires of
creation symbolize a masculine powerful
force within all of humanity and are joined by
cooling waters that speak to the divine
feminine principle that brings regeneration.
The concept of cooling has been a great part of our
language in the states. In which we speak mostly
concerning an external behavior or a way of dress.
The cooling in which i speak of is the cooling of
the head that houses four major perceptions that
encompasses the principles of Ifá. Ifá is a West
African philosophy that encompasses oral
traditions, medicines and cosmology. Ifá stretches
from it’s conception in Nigeria, Benin(AFA) and
Togo out into the known world. This healing
system eliminates self imposed obstacles and
negative energies that settles in mind and
emotions. One of the ways in which this healing
system helps the individual and their community
is by the concept of cooling. Cooling refers to an
absence of conflicting a state of balance and
harmony. It sustains, protects, relaxes and offers
rest from mental distortions and brings one into
alignment with one's spirit and one's community
where decisions or strategies towards right action
can take place. The idea of cooling is in
accordance with four perceptions. These
perceptions are based upon four distinct areas.
"how we think about our internal experience
(identify emotions), we acknowledge our
relationship with other people and things
(evaluate levels of trust and empathy), we
examine the past (access memory) and we
envision the future (activate imagination)."
It is imperative to understand that one can not cool white
supremacy or their community without cooling oneself.
Working towards eliminating a system of oppression one
must have a plan. A plan that is not reactionary or
matching the intensity and or rage of one's opponent. It
takes skill and precision and most of all patience. Cooling
refers to balance and harmony. In the states most
non-white communities do not have time or the means to
care or seek out healing. For this purpose it is mandatory
that we no longer allow others or ourselves to fan our fires
without proper direction. All things in existence have an
impact on each other and cooling will imbue self and
communal transformation leading into a gradual evolution
restoring the mind and the emotions thus healing the
body. Cooling is the internal reservoir that will change our
current position by strategic and correct movements
forward. Then, we like our ancestors (collective
consciousness) will shape a generation of skilled warriors,
lovers of all life, healers and sustainers of the earth.
Author: Saudade Toxosi
Works Cited:
Ancestral Voices. Spirit is Eternal Dalian Y Adolfo. 2016
The United Compensatory Code/ System/ Concept. Neely Fuller Jr. 1984
Preparation For Initiation. Fatumbi
Roots of Coolness: Ancient Yoruba Aesthetics in the New World. Scott Ainslie 2013
African Cosmology of the Bantu Kongo. Kimbwandende Kia Bunseki Fu-Kiau, Ph.D 1980
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