Para-Meta Subjectivity: Post-Shock/Renewed Black Awakening

PARA-META SUBJECTIVITY: POST-SHOCK/RENEWED BLACK AWAKENING

By Kofi Forson

Essence of livelihood as a human person, or the tradition and origin of one's existence as para-exemplar begins with orientation on matters pertaining to identity, family dystopia, and culture, traditional and transnational. 

Once given into forms of spirituality, assuming the role of ghost, claiming the highest self or with parameters broadened towards the acceptance of God as guide and principal ruler, one's para-existence is channeled.

The ghost persona is deliverable when one lives beyond the means of the human equivalent. That is when the conscience is pulled beyond what it's capable of ascertaining. The body then reaches a limit. Life hereafter assumes an experiencing of the body afloat, hence the spirit manages all that is felt and sensed. 

Future assumption that one is alone in the world is void of any truth or reality, since, firstly, we are made of human flesh and blood through the union of two physical beings. Thus, the psychic and psychological references to the mother or father figure are examples of a fury of instinctual responses and reactions which determine prosperities for a fuller life, a quagmire which is reflected upon and adds to the complexities of living.

Our recognized gender identity prepares for the impressions and interpretations one makes during the life experience. These are the masculine and feminine prioritizations which determine what is felt, acted upon, imagined and rendered cancelable or embraceable.

Citing of a Trans or queer identity is with relevance to what is familiarized with the human subjectivity. Perhaps societal acceptance is not without rejection. Hyper-supposing a given speculation of self-origin.  

Who or what determines such a conclusion, rejection of one's gender at birth, transforming into a preferred gender?

Is the trouble with love; relentless power granted the human being as a sexual animal? 

Love as a demon renders the sex act hellish. More so, the human person's ability to imagine, further suppose the role of animal, rather lover, a human element which allows for absolute enhancement of the act becoming the dynamo that meets a measure of death.

The French interpretation of the orgasm as "little death". 

Our para-selves are relevant to the ordered physical human being only if one thinks beyond the physical rendering.

The human body as a physical specimen is susceptible to violence, that of a fallen world, but without determination there are psychical probabilities when a person is traumatized, an occasion when the para-subjectivity of oneself is under torture. The experience doesn't border physical violence, rather it is interpreted through examples of panic or psychic attacks, moments when the body and its mind break down from extreme stress.

Another example of para-subjectivity is para-sexuality. A transient experience when the body and its mind are overwhelmed and under the governance of a spirit or ghost. There's a mild suggestion of rape. Not an actual physical rape but the inability to resist as the mind is fixated on an unwanted sexual advance and the body sways and swerves to a sexual rhythm.

The psychical breakdown of the human mind and the effect it has on the body can be referenced to psychiatry. An informal interpretation would suggest chemistry, much as the biochemistry of an individual determines their ability to adjust to the environment, be it natural or disordered psychology, the concept of what is chemical is of a normalized human manifestation where one feels, emotes, releases endorphins, or becomes perplexed when under stress.

The prefix "para" therefore assumes an entity or spirit or ghost. The soul of the human body as it travels through lived human experiences and takes on a life of its own.

Points of reference are dictated in warrior personas and those who serve as essential and eternal gifts to human lives.

Blessed in the spiritual community is the realm of the Holy Spirit.

The abundance of humility it requires to absorb this realm and come to an understanding of forgiveness; most importantly allow this spirit to enter the body. A process which requires trips through darkness, hopefully resolved moments when the Holy Spirit enters the body, are all means of reclaiming the body in its non-physical, eternal self.

In keeping with the truth, we are not alone, is the work done to accept and respect order within the universe. This presents one with multiple interpretations of God.

That there is a God is a message that frees the human body from self-torture. To say, there is a power greater than me; I turn to this power at times of uncertainty, responds to one's humility and willingness to transport whatever trouble one feels to a superior entity.

Much as prayer and meditation helps with the balancing of call and response between the human person and the God reference, there are many forms of behavior that allow for such frequency, yoga for example, which recalls the idea of seeing beyond the physical self.

The behavior of being in the moment yet allowing the spirit to exist on another plain helps enhance the para-existence.

Endurance in the living process comes with an acquired experience. Knowing one's prowess or power of the chi isn't asserted as a power play. With regard for experience, it comes only in the living and not the imagined. We may exist in our minds but once we dare to put our beliefs to the test we are living beyond our human self.

Gaming is an example of the fantasy world being a blueprint for actual life battles.

This is where our meta-selves break with tradition and become full-fledged entities of absolute power.

Given one's imagination, much can be said for the athlete's confidence overcoming the experience of another. And yet experience begets confidence. Only difference being confidence is a natural drug.

The most courageous are those who know no limits to their power.

The manic as a depressive knows defeat. Both sides to this coin are necessary to acquire the power which makes one meta-sensed.

Many speak of absolute power usually with a weapon in hand. The operative metal object only stands to reveal the absolute fear one feels and thus merits possession of the weapon.

To reach the status of meta, one has to come from defeat, see into the beyond, know about the life damage endured, prepare for the trials and tribulations in reclaiming the self.

The transcendence, the mind being put to the test, reveals the original threat to the human body. The overcoming of this threat is victory only very few are able to experience.

The para-meta self therefore is an example of the baby leaving the womb. We experience this once. Resolve with which the para-meta human deals with trauma or professed defeat to level the forces of fear and triumph reveals notion of self-referencing the self as a mirror copy.  

The para-meta being then looks into that mirrored-self and sees a spiritual being beyond the very self.

This is the notion of para-meta: power granted thee doesn't belong to you.

In the face of absolute power, how does one promote free will and encourage a living process where one allows for that spiritual being beyond the very self to work in accord with our vulnerability and humility to bring about our exceptional self, a persona, ethic which is revolutionary in its imagined existence.

The cycle of work, rest, repeat is method for any life.

There are those who work portions of the cycle in extremes.

The manic spends time expressing mania. End result is downfall of depression.

The cycle is lived moments at a time.

The most exaggerated examples are that of years lived under extreme measures. Best way to interpret this is the Shakespearean three acts of a play, or the simplified "birth, work, death".

With utmost extreme measure of living or working for years, it results in another several to many years experiencing deathly means.

This is the body at a crash or burn out.

What this certifies is our post, post-post realms.

To live a traumatic experience and survive brings with it many years to a lifetime of continuous trauma.

The term what doesn't kill you makes you stronger is relative if and when, conclusively, it is made known what doesn't kill you also shocks you, which essentially becomes the post shock realm.

The post-shock realm places the individual in a form of existence whereby his conscience is under attack from the prior experiences of shock.

These are trending prospects for a lifetime undergoing moments when the mind is traceable back to points when the mind and body endured trauma.

PTSD of a veteran or soldier from war is a good example. A person having endured acts of violence perhaps physical or psychical whether it's in a prison setting or family household.

Best defined the mind at rest experiences forms of awareness. These are impressions given of one's sensitivity and vulnerability. Without defiance or a shield to protect, the sensitive mind undergoes extreme measures which may be dealt with at face value, meaning without help or protection.

Rawness of the human body experiencing trauma recalls moments of fear. Lived fear repeating itself, or an impression of fear being experienced for the first time.

Fear is the base root of every conscience. It is important to know what the body rejects in order to possess the ability to overcome it. In some cases, the mind and body are triggered not by an experience, more so, the culprit or person who is the cause of the experience.

Living in the post-shock realm one has to prioritize a safety net. Fear becomes intensified as paranoia. Shock from the experience permeates the conscience in a hot and cool mode creating a fog-like perception of the living experience.

Jungian or Freudian psychoanalysis is a form of self-mirroring when the patient or client can subject the mind and body to the lived experience of shock and as per guidance from a therapist, the probable notion of fighting back as a past-post cause enables clarity from the points of shock.

Micro aggression, psychical shock, experienced as stress and anxiety, forms a linear pattern to post-white shock.

The black mind central to its origin of thought and knowingness is predominantly triggered by a colonized history. Our post-colonial history symbolizes that constant bell ringing to remind us that our minds are subjected to triggers from a past shared history, slavery as a common reality, but also examples of displacement in our modern history.

Post-white shock commonly represents the black person's resistance from white influence. This form of revolt in the black person sharpens the cause of the shock felt from the prior lived history with white people. These moments of psychic shock are felt at any given point when the black person becomes overwhelmed due to a trigger from a white person.

In philosophical terms post-white shock is viewed as a narrative. More than just a trigger, it becomes a conditioned means for existing when the black person builds resistance to the original sins of slavery or acts of colonization of the black mind. In doing so the black person is engaging in meta-notion of looking defiantly at fear, managing rules for change.

Modernized black activism is a meta-stance.

The reshaping of the black mind as a hyper-verse recognizes the white construct of denial. The exact moment now where acts of self-delivery from reverberations due to centuries of violence, colonization and death must be engaged through self-education, work done at the university, or stages of personal growth.

The renewed black conscience is occurring at a time now of the Covid-19 pandemic. When a black female justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has been voted into the nation's Supreme Court. A time when societal violence, along with the politicization of our conscience are forms of a post-post modernity defined by white nationalism/black revolt.

The pandemic is referential to all the elements of the para-meta existence and the shock of post trauma.

These are times of "death and birth, birth and death".

Our post-conscious minds are under torment of a post-post conscience.

We are living the examples of the selves we forecasted or hoped to be.

There's no looking back.

The time is now.

Black Dispiritedness: Glamorization of the Black Model/White-Colonization of the Black Mind

BLACK DISPIRITEDNESS: GLAMORIZATION OF THE BLACK MODEL/WHITE-COLONIZATION OF THE BLACK MIND

By Kofi Forson

In the upcoming February 2022 issue of British Vogue, photographer Rafael Pavorotti gathers a group of African models for the cover portrait.

The stark image of glamorous African women on the cover of British Vogue refrains from the normal acceleration of white beauty generated by the all-too familiar sight representing what is sold to the world as naturalness, or what essentially has been recognized through-out art history, cinema and yes, fashion, as to what the ultimate sense and characterization of beauty is:

tall and thin Caucasian woman with blond hair and blue eyes; be it she is curvaceous or brunette, her essence is in the skin's whiteness, pink formation; what the artist would highlight with the combination of titanium white and ocher.

Very important to note this past week the famed editor at large at Vogue Andre Leon Talley passed.

In a poem I wrote and later performed as a lead-in poem during the Great Weather for Media Ten Minute Feature, I made a request:

"Andre Leon Talley, pardon moi monsieur, introduce me to that country place of Von Herrs".

Andre Leon Talley, in the poem, is shown a regard for preeminence. The application of his knowing the appreciation for wealth and prosperity is heightened by my suggestion that he might know the Von Herrs; a name that would suggest affluence.

Once again the progress and ascension of a black person with an erudite manner must navigate a white-accelerated "scene".

Much the clever circumstance for Edward Enninful, British Vogue editor-in-chief, to allow for such a marking and detailing necessary for the furtherance of what must be recognized also as commercial beauty, and that is blackness and the African woman.

What is important here, more than just appreciation for black beauty, is the regard for Africanness and the female.

Perception here would be what is beauty in the African American woman and how has that been ushered into the world's conscience, and what is beauty in the African woman, with all the prejudices showed against the immigrant?

How then is this exceptional cover of British Vogue specifically curating an article on beauty, or does it become renowned in proclaiming outrightly what once was beautiful in its original form and has been historically canceled, can once again be claimed as beautiful, if not rendered eternal?

There's a contra-speculation that brings up the "elephant-in-the-room" concept of non-togetherness within the black diaspora.

Furthermore, it creates a supernova of complexities that highlights hatred, jealousy and absurdities in how we as black people interact or fail to render commonality within the black race.

States in America, more so neighborhoods, each has a representation of vernacular which differs from neighborhood to neighborhood.

Imagine the controversy of how people fight, disagree, communicate to "get along" or to protect the diversity of what makes black people unique.

Back to the assertion of black beauty, this British Vogue cover is a pronouncement not only of black beauty but a lesser regarded notion of how beauty is marketed to populations in Africa, which in essence calls to the Europeanization of the African woman; a post-colonial reality which pulls from the majesty of the Queen of England to the model Twiggy.

Black women as an image on the cover of British Vogue references the Afro-futurist movement, or the quiet call to Black awareness or "wokeness" in politics, culture and entertainment.

Remarkably, it is Enninful, a man with a Ghanaian heritage working as an editor-in-chief of British Vogue, who is seemingly in a perfect position to highlight beauty in the African woman.

Whereas the African American woman has graced the movie screen, cover of popular records and albums, theater stages, television, music videos and so much more, there is little conditioned knowledge of who the African woman is and what she looks like.

Certainly, actress Lupita Nyong'o has created a world-wide ambition for the grace and beauty of the African woman.

History will prove that the model Iman heralded into the conscience of the fashion world the uniqueness of the Somalian woman's physicality and moreover her attractiveness.

Alek Wek followed with a celebration and charm from a Sudanese woman.

Ghanaian women were definitive of my early upbringing on the notion of familial love as well as budding sexuality.

All these were evident in the establishment of home-life represented among the young women from the villages of Takoradi and Kumasi and elsewhere who were brought into the city to live with and help raise the children of middle to upper class families.

Such women were present when my parents lived in an urban neighborhood called the Nyaniba Estates, and helped to raise me and my younger brother.

It was a traditional family with a home, an outdoor space with plants that decorated the front of the house, a tree and a cesspool were positioned far off and a gate which kept everything enclosed. We had a dog named Hope who was later euthanized for being sick. I soon showed signs of fear of art and music.

On the wall in the living room was a painting of a Northern tribe called the Dagomba. In the painting they wore masks and raffia skirts, carried spears and appeared to be dancing. The colors within the painting were dazzling and brilliantly displayed. 

I feared this painting. There was something horrific about it. Not sure what about the painting made me afraid but revelry, dancing especially while masked, and the sight of spears all added to the notion of terror which was later exemplified among the Kakamotobe, a bunch of men on stilts who sauntered into neighborhoods during the holiday season.

I also cried when I heard the song "A Rose in Spanish Harlem".

This was where I experienced my first Ghanaian maid.

Without much recollection, I have a vague memory of a plump fair-skinned woman who bathed me, clothed me, fed me and helped me go to sleep.

When my parents moved further into the city, in a neighborhood called the Airport Residential Flats, I was raised by a young dark-skinned woman named Akua.

She was in her late teens and usually bathed me. Unusually, she was also naked. She watched me while I splattered water all around me, and with soap and sponge, she washed me clean.

The image of Akua as a young, nude woman brings to mind paintings of bathers by Mary Cassatt.

I was alarmed by the darkness of Akua's skin, almost as dark as charcoal. With beads of water over her body and washed over as well with light reflecting over it, she appeared precious.

Akua often sat with me and showed me pictures from a book. Times when she was very playful with me and she brought joy out of me.

There were other maids. One in particular was more feminine and mature. Her name was Efua.

She had a dominant persona and was very mothering. Times when she joined in on the activities in the kitchen to make fufu. A coordinated process whereby she sat with a wooden pot before her while a gentleman stood up holding a long wooden stick. With an up and down motion the gentleman pounded cooked yams and plantains within the pot and systematically, Efua used her hand to turn the yams and plantains around in the pot, until they became firm and shapely.

Efua was stylish and displayed a sexual identity. Moments when she had affairs with the men in the neighborhood. One afternoon I caught her making love to a houseboy. In a room with mosquito netting guarding a window, she lay on a bed while the houseboy performed on her. Outside the window, I stood on a bookshelf and I could see everything. Days later, she got into a dispute with the man. Efua cried and cried and was visibly shaken with her eyes red with tears.

There was another called Abena, a tall skinny woman with dry burnt umber-colored skin. She was sarcastic and often told jokes. Despite her slim build and potential elegance, she wasn't very feminine. It wasn't until she was joined by another maid, Koko, a shy unassuming woman, who stood with her arms folded and kept her gaze looking downward. Together they discovered makeup and lipstick, and casually wore pretty dresses during the day. Koko was later to join me and my mother and brothers on our way to the United States to live in New York City with my father. Before then we lived in a house on my grandmother's compound. During this time I was overcome by a sexual charge which was inspired by the girls who lived in the building of the Airport residential Flats, girls at the Royal Preparatory where I attended classes and friends of my cousins who came to visit when we lived with my grandmother.

When I was living in New York City with my father and the rest of the family, Koko discovered drawings I had made of nude women taken from adult magazines. It was a strange time of sexual self-discovery. My mother promptly enrolled me in classes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art where I discovered the nude art figure. These nude portraits were different from the orgiastic visions of women in the adult magazines. Overall, they were also images of white women. Much like the girls I studied with at a Catholic grammar school, I felt a strange attraction.

I had been quietly having psychological issues such as anorexia. I also experienced a psychosis of losing my sense of blackness when I literally felt blackness being pulled away from my conscience. During this time I had a strong hatred for Koko since I felt she was interfering with my upbringing. It resulted in me refusing to look at certain images of black people on television. The white-colonization of my mind had begun, fueled mostly by the notion of a whitened art history and heavy metal and rock and roll music. I survived the early hip hop craze peripherally, as I lived it voyeuristically through cable television and my brothers.

Black women were a nonentity in my life since I spent four years studying at an all-boys Jesuit high-school. Only black women I encountered were my mother's African friends from work who came to visit her. One such visit was from a daughter of one of her friends. She had come to get fitted for a dress. I made it a mission to woo her. It took ten years of an off and on long distance relationship that eventually made her my lover. She later died of  a brain aneurysm.

The hyper-intervention of my white-colonized mind came when I sought housing and ended up living in a group program for some of the most disturbed people living in New York City. The nine years spent living this dangerous life experience, I was monitored by mostly female counselors. Living with black men and getting counseled by black women were my first intimate and detailed encounters with mostly African American men and women. More or less baptism by fire, I was introduced to street culture with its dynamic of drugs and violence.

The black female counselors shaped my notion of the African American woman. Someone I had seen mostly in hip hop videos, urban soul and crime movies or haphazardly met in passing on the streets.

I lived this reality of a reinstitution of the black female identity within my conscience and embracing of the black female as an added attraction to my masculinity as a black body.

Point of survival was knowing that I, too, was damaged, albeit as a matter of psychology due to racial transformation, and as a black body, there was no need to pretend.

As a sheep among wolves, I enabled a visibility of what it meant to be black; the awareness of history, both personal and cultural; vulnerability, acceptance of this as a weakness as well as a sign of strength; how to build on survival tactics particular to one's unique identity.

The counselors in this regard were less mothering as the maids. The counselors were more detailed in the psycho-social attempt to help me garner a sense of positive living and more so a healthy livelihood.

The black women at once glamorous on the cover of a magazine brought me back to the discipline of the love I had for black women. How the danger of a supremacist culture can damage the mind.

What it takes to recover a sense of blackness.

Realizing, once damaged from a system where the black conscience is altered from aggressive processing of white images, there's no-entry-way back to normalcy.

The world turns as the mind bends.