+ father’s day.

+ to understand me fully means to catch glimpse of the men who complete my family tree. see, the presentation you see here is a derivative of those men. some, i knew personally during this lifetime of mine & some in spirit. individually, i am direct lineage & my character comes from all of these men.

i come from kings, doctors, engineers, inventors, builders, musicians, artists, revolutionaries, general laborers, teachers, farmers & slaves. every grain of mental sand that brushes against my intellectual hand represents a story, an experience & a block from past lives cemented for me to build upon for the next generation.

many african societies divide humans into categories : those still alive on earth, the sasha & the zamani. the recently departed whose time on earth overlapped w/ people still here are the sasha or the living-dead. they are not wholly dead, for they still live in the memories of the living; who can call them to mind, create their likeness in art & bring them to life in anecdote.

when the last person to know an ancestor dies, that ancestor leaves the sasha for the zamani or the dead. as generalized ancestors, the zamani are not forgotten but revered. many can be recalled by name but they are not the living-dead.

i am the sum of the great men who dropped the seeds of life to create me. i am my father, my uncles, my grandfathers & their fathers, the completeness of each father & heavenly father. i am they as they are me. what you see from me either virtually or physically represented is in honor of them, the fathers of my family sasha & zamani. asante sana, namaste & happy fathers day.

+ family portraits

“fathers are a cornerstone in the transition from young boys to men”