Re: The Philosophies of Ayi Kwei Armah
"And yet it happens that the beginnings of creation are hard to tell apart from mere destruction. This too should not escape our rememberance: the way is not an old road ready for consumers to travel on; the way is a call to creation. Easy it is to fall into the trap of loneliness if we forget that our people are not just of the present, not just the walking multitudes of murdered souls and zombis around us, but many, many more gone and many many more to come. Because it is useless to locate hope in the already destroyed; it is a method of the lazy hypocritical soul, courting despair so as to spare itself the necessity of action. As reasonable it would be to visit cemeteries, there to wait upon the dead to rise to our conversation. Yes, there are many whose semblance of life is all trapped within the present death. But what are we if their numbers alone, should depress us into immobility? What are we if we see nothing beyond the present, hear nothing from the ages of our flowing, and in all our existence can utter no necessary preparation for the future?
Certain it is decay runs exulting through our people, certain we have fallen into a grotesque dance of death, the dance of whites and kings and princes and other worms and parasites. But shall we call Idawa foolish urging us to remember even mortal bodies can destroy the lice infesting them? That our people will live, and will necessarily destroy the white destroyers infesting us together with their helpers and parasites?"
Armah
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