The Mother/Son Fascination
From Disowning the Self to Self-Proclamation
There is a grave process society propels in undermining the emotional and mental growth of people. The most informal way occurs through pop culture as not every one is initiated in universities and colleges. The idea of schooling is a notion governed by loans and is not merely inspired by the will to learn. That element has much more to do with upbringing within the familial construct of mother, father or the rearing of the child through what one would call a "village."
Living in the city of Accra, country of Ghana where I was born and raised, both my parents were professionals. I went through the traditional process of studying at grade schools and eventually the Royal Preparatory School which was more or less like an academy. We studied under the tutelage of teachers who wore white shirts with ties and tailored slacks along with polished dress shoes. Our uniforms were orange shirts and khaki shorts for the boys and red starched cotton dresses for the girls. We were often met by a headmaster at assembly each morning. Those who came in late were whipped with a cane. This very brutal act was common among the teachers in various classes of study.
I wasn't enamored by a varying culture separate from my notion of home, maids who took care of me, neighbors at our established flat, extended family and relatives, life as a student at the Royal Preparatory, whereby we were picked up after school, my cousins and I, by a bus called Neoplan which had a rather psychedelic design, multicolored, modern, almost futuristic in its display. This gave us a certain advantage above everybody else, classmates who came to class barefoot, exchanged afro combs, misbehaved in class, illustrating images of (soccer) football players in a game of football, our intramural games on the compound and the particular girls I fantasized about, two tall African girls I remember so well and a fair skinned girl named Cecilia.
It was at a time when I was too young and certainly too shy to have approached these girls. Alternatively I lived on my grandmother's compound with my male and female cousins and my uncles. Any notion of sexuality I had was instigated by a neighbor at the flats who had a thing for me and acted promiscuously when she saw me, removing her underwear at one point when my mother and I came passing by. I spent several months living on my grandmother's compound before me, my brothers and mother were to leave for New York. So my cousins were able to have an influence on me. We slept in the same room and the same sheets. There were often moments of sexual arousal as we lay together and groped. These activities were accentuated when they would bring me into my grandmother's closet and spread their wombs for me to look at. It was here then I noticed that pungent particualr smell of the uterus.
This means of symbiosis was also accentuated by the relationship I had with my mother. I accompanied her every where. She introduced me to organized religion by bringing me to church and she often drove me to the market and to school. In retrospect I feel my mother possessed me. It's a circumstance where two innately attractive people have foresight and intelligence, their beauty is a sign of strength and power. I feel my mother and me have a similar conscientious view of life made up of darkness and light. This very combination overwhelms our disposition to the point of amazing creativity.
Having moved to New York and living here in the late seventies as a young boy, the dynamics of the female object circumstantially in my life had to do with my mother as a psuedo-housewife and professional, an uneducated maid we brought along and the first caucasian female I had feelings for. My mother impeded my growth emotionally with girls because I honored her, she was the most beautiful woman I had ever known and I was her first born child. We shared a conscience of love, beauty and death, a philosophical determination which would be explored later in her nocturnal dreams and my propensity for French literatuire and entry into a dark depression. I had a talent for drawing nude figures inspired by my father's adult magazines. The maid interfered with my behavior and kept me from enjoying this fantasy. It was also the advent of cable pornography and mother on several occasions promptly kept me from watching these late night televison programs.
At this point I had lost the emotional and intellectual compatability with the black female. I had left Ghana and here in New York City my conscience was manifesting through a web of sexual images with white females and my female classmates in school were white. It made me grossly dislike the maid. I found her to be dispicable, her uneven dark skin, bushy afro and musculature. It was all because society had subconsciously influenced me to dislike the black female and choose the white female.
I went on to sudy at an all boys parochial high-school where I once met a black girl at a dance. What started off as casual flirting on the telephone and would lead to dating all came to an end when I once saw her after school and I didn't know how to react. I casually walked her by in confusion not knowing was it because she was black or was it my awkwardness with girls. There was another circumstance when I was with a black girl in a group alongside a friend and his girlfriend at her house. The black girl and I were alone but soon afterwards I became uncomfortable, once again not knowing if this behavior was because she was black or if I didn't know how to play the game with girls.
I lost my virginity during college to an Italian girl from Milano. It began a continuous cycle where I befriended or had affiars with caucasian girls. It was steeped in my conscience and love for music, art, drama, television and pop culture in general. My friends were all caucasian. The only notion I had of my black self was through my family. Three circumstances that changed me were meeting a Kenyan girl whose beauty floored me, falling in love with a Ghanaian girl and befriending a Ghanaian artist.
Othere than that the complex of being different from Black Americans was always apparent. I lived in transitional housing among other blacks for ten years. It was a neccesary intevention. I have also recently done a social experiment on my myself, writing poetry with an internal black voice. There always is the dichotomy of being able to write from a black perspective but lacking the ability to perform the work with a black conscience. This has always been my complex of being an eduacted black African having spent time living among uneducated blacks.
Living in a black neighborhood I have grown to encourage a black conscience along with my philosophical thought. I have a black friend and another indigenous female acquaintance. I am able to shield myself from the influx of a caucasian influence in my psychology and intellect. Although I am not a militant black person I have found a balance between living a life as an African and as a profound thinker of multiple philosophical languages in the virtual sense and as a prolific speaker of the Ga, African language, making me well-rounded and not broken as a black person but matured with integrity.
