“So many things are evoked by African
women whose stillness moves across the unseen landscape of the imagination, and
the memories of the graceful walks of the mothers back home. None of us
remember any part of Africa before the whites visited. We remember what was
recorded in books, and our bones. We remember what is precious to the memories
of the depth of our relationships to the creation of the rudiments of
education, civilization, family values, study, morality, sacred scores of music
ancient to the past, the mysterious scope of the spiritual value of the deities
we served. In the Diaspora the ideal of African femininity is enhanced by our
need to feel a part of what is vast, and larger than the battered identity of
our struggles outside of the indigenous, and corporate structure of the
villages our ancestors lived in ancient Africa.
Seeing a dark skinned African woman whose
stillness is reminiscent of our former glory is implied by the suggestion in
her posture of how she would walk should she stand up, and walk towards us, or
away from us.” © Gregory E. Woods 10.10.12
 |
| dark skinned African woman sitting very still |
“I don’t fully understand how it works, but
there is a distinct quality living within an African woman raised anywhere in
Africa that copulates with a Black man’s spiritual essence. Enhanced by living
abroad, or mixing bloodlines the central essence, or core of "African
spirituality" or "Africaness" is the shimmering within the
stirred pot of the Alchemist mixing the ingredients of the range of the
progenitor text we all come from that distinguished us, long ago, from
untutored people who needed to be broadened, and expanded to absorb the higher
mysteries afforded to the educated minds, developed bodies, and the crystalline
spirits of initiated women and men in the countless spiritual clans through the
Land of the Blacks!” © Gregory E. Woods 10.10.12
