{"id":28435,"date":"2021-04-21T17:19:37","date_gmt":"2021-04-21T15:19:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/?p=28435"},"modified":"2021-04-21T17:19:37","modified_gmt":"2021-04-21T15:19:37","slug":"axe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/axe\/","title":{"rendered":"Ax\u00e9"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"project":[353,795],"project_type":[743],"class_list":["post-28435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","project-online-publications","project-untranslatable","project_type-themes"],"acf":{"bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","custom_color_css_variable":"","content_type":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content_img","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":6,"img_gallery":false,"img":[28439],"img_gallery_format":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"Ax\u00e9 is a religious word that comes from West Africa. It originates in the Yoruba language, and is an important concept to the practices and beliefs of the Candombl\u00e9 and Umbanda religions. But its presence in the Brazilian conscience goes beyond these religions; Ax\u00e9 is widely used in our vernacular. Ax\u00e9 is used when desiring good things for beloved ones, cherishing opportunities, and communicating with the beyond.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nLASTING BLESSINGS\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nWhen my great-grandmother looked at my grandfather that morning\r\n\r\nIf she only knew it was his last morning on Earth, if she knew\r\n\r\nAs she was his mother, my great-grandmother, sewing dresses daily\r\n\r\nAnd it was unfair for a woman to so suddenly bury the bosom of her womb\r\n\r\nOnly if she knew that this was his last morning, his last morning on Earth\r\n\r\nBut not the very last of his presence for me, a small child listening\r\n\r\nHis lores and adventures, playing with the grandfather I never knew\r\n\r\nWhile my great-grandmother, his mother diligently sews new dresses\r\n\r\n(Now old and ancient, dusty and non-existent, four decades ago)\r\n\r\nShe probably would have had said to him Ax\u00e9 on your new path<\/em>\r\n\r\nSo much Ax\u00e9 for you on your new path, don\u2019t look back I\u2019ll join you<\/em>\r\n\r\nOnce I sew all the dresses I still have to sew, my beloved son.<\/em>\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nMy mother hugged me before I boarded the plane that flew me to Europe\r\n\r\nAnd she said Ax\u00e9<\/em> as in don\u2019t be afraid the world is big but not so big<\/em>\r\n\r\nThat you will not hear me speaking to you when you don\u2019t know<\/em>\r\n\r\nWhat to do<\/em> and I told her Ax\u00e9<\/em> as in I\u2019m sorry I\u2019ll not be with you tomorrow<\/em>\r\n\r\nAnd by tomorrow I mean the decades that I\u2019ll exist after she\u2019s gone.\r\n

. . .<\/p>\r\nIf ever one person could sing to me as honestly as the Black Forest birds\r\n\r\nWhen in afternoons of loneliness I feared the certainty of my parents\u2019 death\r\n\r\nI could assume in the heart of the pandemic that such a world is still livable\r\n\r\nEven when all had stopped: Ax\u00e9 the spirit that still looms when the world stands still<\/em>.\r\n\r\nAnd my mother will not die as she can\u2019t die as she is my mother, smoking\r\n\r\nThe coronavirus will just crown her head and steal her breath and give her fever\r\n\r\nBut my mother is too busy to die now, the silence of the Black Forest commutes.\r\n\r\nAnd after so much work my mother has the right to be a tiny old lady still smoking\r\n\r\nStill smoking and gazing, gazing at the wonders of all awfulness that was not that bad\r\n\r\nLife wasn\u2019t that bad and there is more misery to come my darlings<\/em>\r\n\r\nThere is so much more to come and the world has not even begun.<\/em>\r\n

. . .<\/p>\r\nOnce a century it seems a pandemic comes and kills the beloved ones\r\n\r\nSo all those surviving can go on forgetting them generation after generation\r\n\r\nUntil the next pandemic makes a writer remember the last pandemic\r\n\r\nAs every family from century to century produces not just bones but words.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nThe writer will come and kill the family by writing whatever wasn\u2019t spoken\r\n\r\nAll the tiny dirty little naked secrets that loomed in the dark, also smoking\r\n\r\nOr even sewing, for that matter, as I could hear in my childhood her murmur\r\n\r\nMy great-grandmother sitting at the sewing machine murmuring guilty words\r\n\r\nSaying I\u2019m sorry<\/em> from time to time saying I\u2019m so sorry<\/em> from time to time\r\n\r\nSaying I\u2019m so very sorry<\/em> from time to time I\u2019m so terribly sorry<\/em>\r\n\r\nAnd so four times she was sorry as there were four great brothers, stallions\r\n\r\nThat she lost in 1920 to the Spanish Flu, one after another in a week\u2019s span.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nWhen my great-grandmother went to her son\u2019s burial she must have thought\r\n\r\nThanks for the Ax\u00e9 of giving me the opportunity of finally burying all of them<\/em>\r\n\r\nAs I have to give back to the same land what I love the most my own son<\/em>\r\n\r\nSo my brothers understand just now what I understood as a young girl<\/em>\r\n\r\nThat you will lose love regardless so hold tight, just hold tight, tighter<\/em>\r\n\r\nBut not tight enough so your own palms are the reason for their demise.<\/em>\r\n\r\nI learned early that the soul speaks to beans, as each bean is a soul\r\n\r\nAnd a soul so bright you could even imagine that the calm temperate stars\r\n\r\nAre white beans floating over a very dark moody mushy sea\r\n\r\nSo I cooked them with care, with the utmost care, because on some days\r\n\r\nA child would be born, the son of my brother now a father, scared\r\n\r\nBecause a small enchanted piece of flesh will yell and cry for love\r\n\r\nHis love, and his love, an Ax\u00e9 hugging another Ax\u00e9, his child.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nSo many doors will be opened with the gaze of this child, I thought cooking\r\n\r\nThe beans that are soft and smooth and became even more soft and smooth\r\n\r\nBecause a kid was there rehearsing for his premiere: studying his lines,\r\n\r\nLooking at the aquatic mirror of the womb\u2019s flesh, deep swimming,\r\n\r\nAll these lines crafted and studied that he would merrily forget\r\n\r\nThe very moment he\u2019s born, so we would think he\u2019s learning from us\r\n\r\nAll that fate has already carved into his path and mind and soul.\r\n\r\n \r\n

Vinicius Jatob\u00e1<\/strong> is a Latin-American writer born in Brazil. A curator, theater director, and producer, he writes fiction and nonfiction, and for the stage. After completing residencies at Cit\u00e9 des Arts (Paris) and Akademie Schloss Solitude (Stuttgart), he is currently an artist-in-residence at Theatre Freiburg.<\/p>"}]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28435\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"project","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/project?post=28435"},{"taxonomy":"project_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/project_type?post=28435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}