Context, Thought, and Learning: ShiraDest publications Offers Project Do BetterIdeas on Ethics and Last Words?
Over twenty years ago, a friend asked me to write a book about ethics for non-theists. At the time, I was still trying to be a theist, so his request really took my by surprise. I think we’d been discussing MZB’s Darkover series and the idea that no one can be “the Keeper of your conscience.” I’d been toying with some ideas on justifying compassionate and empathetic behavior without having to have recourse to a set of religious ideas, and he pointed out that this would be of interest to many people, in his opinion. At the time, I was studying the Hebrew Bible, and so I wrote up a set of ideas as a new Ten Utterances for agnostics and atheists, but that work was a bit cumbersome, and I also wanted to believe in something more connective to other people, so it got dropped as soon as I posted it, pretty much (on my LiveJournal, I believe, and then I seem to recall reposting it just over ten years ago here on my blog, but it gets lost in the more important set of posts about free educational resources, which I always prioritize). Now, as I look at some of my old research on the Tsalagi culture, based on my mother’s order to find our Cherokee/Tsalagi (based on rumors that Hayes Wheeler Mayo was…) ancestors, I recall my writing of a first cut of my own Death Song, which it seems that the Tsalagi, (I recall reading an account years ago of how Moytoy of Tellico, during a 1730 visit to England with Sir Alexander Cuming, sang his upon reaching the shores, and the Brits thought his singing was atrocious until they learned that it was his Death Song…) and maybe also the Mohawk, originally called the Haudenosaunee, both nations being Iroquoian, apparently share. That gives me pause, as an interesting contrast to the usual confessions of faith from the big Three Abrahamic religions (the Sh’ma, the Shahada, and the various Christian confessions of faith upon the death bed…), the Tsalagi person formulates his (or her) own recital of a life well lived, and sings that Death Song upon realization that the final moment has come, just as the Jewish person recites the Shema/Sh’ma, or the Muslim person recites the Shahada. But one’s Death Song is intensely personal, meant to recount one’s accomplishments in life during the final confrontation with death. Whether my grandparents were Tsalagi or not is never going to be settled via documentation, especially given my grandmother’s constant insistence that “we are Black” during her lifetime every time I asked why I was being called “a little wild Indian” by the other kids (the 1970s were not a good time to be an Indian, or to look like one…) as they jumped me, when I would explain to them that I was not White, and not mixed, but Black, or Colored, as Grandma Marie would say. So, my curiosity for that part of my family led me to explore the Tsalagi religious ideas as documented by Mooney, Lt. Timberlake, and others as close to the de Soto expedition as possible. Knowing that these guys would not write nice things about them, especially de Soto, given that further south, his buddies were telling the Spanish monarchs that all of the indigenous of the Americas were cannibals so that they’d have permission to torture and enslave them, I took the early writings with a grain of salt. Later guys like Mooney, though, missed most of the post-colonial contact changes, so it’s hard to really know much. I did, however, feel a compelling connection with this idea of composing my own Death Song, as part of my reflections upon the point of living, and where to live and what to do with my life. But that was about ten years ago, or more. I’d forgotten about this idea until I was awakened last night, Friday night, unable to breathe, sinuses clogged, chest hurting, and hearing that familiar pounding in my right ear that forebodes yet another ear infection, despite having my charcoal-activated air purifier running in the room. Adding the other air purifier from my other room did no good, so I ended up putting a mask on while I waited for the particles in the air from my smoking or vaping or bong using neighbors to clear, and at 2am, this poem came to me:
Death Song
I have stood my ground
In harm’s way
Protecting another
Even though unknown, Even though unknown.
I have done my duty
Learned
Taught
Fought, Fought.
For the right
For hope
For testimony
For duty, For duty.
My work
at last
Fully committed
Is finally done. Is finally done.
D. Anto. Jones, aka, Nia,
or, Ni.
***
(The original handwritten image of this poem/Song is attached to my review of the book Isabel Moctezuma, by Eugenio Aguirre…)
More important than last words, for me, are my last works. I hope that the works of my hands, and mind, will help to build bridges and tools for the betterment of the condition of all mankind, starting with the kids served by non-profit Bright Beginnings in DC, via both The Project Do Better by shiraDest Publications Fund, via the GWCF, and also via the free ideas presented for building upon in the first edition of free book Project Do Better: Enough for All in Four Phases, aka the Do Better manifesto/manual.
Injustice Delenda Est
#familyhistory #myPoetry #poem #poetry #tsalagi
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