i, cannibal . . .

there is the practice of eating the other. cannibalism has gone down in history as the physical act of eating people - a violent and disgusting choice made aesthetically popular in american iconic cinema in the film 'silence of the lambs', as well as within the countless anthropological and historical texts of discovery written (usually) by white men in contact with people of color.

in my studies under an amazing literary theorist, zita nunes, however, i was instructed to consider cannibalism aka the act of eating the other as an act of cultural integration. i was also asked to consider this process and the psychic function of releasing that which is unnecessary after the act of survival and incorporation ends . . . this final act, of course, is parallel to the bodily function of releasing remaining toxins and that which lacks nutritional value, creating excrement . . . piss and shit.

if one considers eating the enemy a valuable act in a world populated by oppressive forces toward the goal of rendering said enemy meaningless, one must also consider what happens to self upon ingestion, and what happens to the waste left over. it remains, regardless. still, the possibility to eating the poison and rendering it harmless and somehow a friendly part of one's being can be a particularly empowered position, especially for people of color in a space that seems hell-bent on marking one's position as limited and imprisoned.

i may be doubling back and creating a mess here (necessary and human, still), but i am wondering if we can eat the enemy, somehow. and i am wondering if in this act of eating, we can anesthetize its danger and build upon its power for the advancement of all, somehow maintaining our people's intense compassion and communal responsibility as an active agent of change within our psychological, imaginative, and emotional space of being so that the enemy within becomes an asset instead of an internalized danger to our being (and the beings of others).

this, of course, leads me to a ripe space of discovery for lola vs. aunty sam as she concludes her journey inside the psychic terrain and collective memory of gutta beautiful.

i can't wait to write the ending . . . but if i write it, how will it ever end?