Twin Cities Daily Planet (https://www.tcdailyplanet.net/author/louis-alemayehu/page/3/)
December 21-25 — If Cincinnati and Los Angeles gave birth to an African metropolis with hills and palm trees it could be this place. Until now, the only places I have been outside of the United States are Mexico and Canada. In my mind this beautiful and complex location has more in common with Mexico than with Canada. Continue Reading
In 1972 across a crowded room I saw a young Ethiopian woman and felt a roaring flame in the middle of my chest. It terrified me and I almost immediately doused the fire with rationality and with the comforting thought that I wouldn’t have to see her again. Fate often has other plans in store. One day I stopped to see an Eritrean friend who had a shop on Lake & Hennepin, The Ethiopian Exquisite. I walked in one day and she eagerly introduced me to her cousin, the very young woman I was trying to avoid. Continue Reading
Remembering my encounter with Kifle Selassie, I am hearing whispering waters from an ancient African well. It’s full of a history and cultural wisdom from deep in the Earth. Its waters are those which the African Diaspora is urgently and, too often unconsciously, hungry for and of which the larger Western world is oblivious, contemptuous or covetous. It’s a water whose element connects all the human species… another kind of “Holy Water” sometimes full of fire, ultimately healing… come to the river. The best of who we are is often manifested in those waters. That is where our souls touch in that blinding universal force and we kiss the sky and water all at once, full moon and countless constellations shimmering, swirling and turning. Come to the river people. Continue Reading
Tuesday(?), December 17th 2013 – ADDIS ABABA — It is night in Addis Ababa. I have NO idea what time it is, but I must logically assume we are moving toward sunrise on Tuesday. When I arrived here Monday, which I must assume was yesterday, I was coming to the end of a rather arduous journey with delights I embraced and frustrations I was happy to let go of and be open to what was next. Continue Reading
When I was three years old, my Grand Uncle Daniel, a jack-leg or circuit preacher came up to visit for Thanksgiving from rural northeast Arkansas. All the aunts, uncles and cousins were gathered at Aunt Emma’s house. The windows were steamed, the table was overflowing, food-incense filled the inner city apartment. In the middle of the living room, a gas heater hissed, popped and glowed and the children played on the floor. Continue Reading
In mainstream culture, trance state is likely to be categorized as pathology rather than a gift. For me the creative process requires the presence of a certain kind of energy that possesses the body. For instance, I feel a buzz in my head or feel a ring of heat around my forehead and temples. There may be a fire in my chest and trembling all over that is ever so subtle. So from the age of 7 and onwards, one of the things I would do when those feelings came over me was to write or sing or do something very intensely so that people would wonder: Why is this child acting so strange? I also played baseball and football in the alley with other boys or be just as content playing in the yard with the girls in their world. Rather than being looked at and judged, there was always the delicious solitude that I could fill with books, music from the family record player or my own wild and random thoughts. “Hey! What you doin’ Louie?” “Oh, just thinking.” My mother told me that when I was 8 or 9 years old I announced to her one day out of the clear blue that “everything was related to everything else”. I have NO idea where that came from. Once puberty hit those feelings intensified. For a while, nothing could channel those fires and vibrations. Continue Reading
In 1949 and 50, I felt like an only child when the others were off at school, while I stayed at home with Mom. God knows she couldn’t watch me every minute as my attention took me from an ant, to a flower, to a butterfly, out of sight, out of mind and on to infinity. So Nature spirits watched and guided me as I wandered in the open, urban fields of my far Southside neighborhood in Chicago. They talked to me and taught me through my senses of sight, sound, touch, taste, smell. Can you imagine, from the ages of 2 to 5 my Mother referred to me as her “Wandering Jew”. Periodically throughout my life, people who knew nothing of my childhood, have with affection and exasperation pinned that archetypal tag on me. Continue Reading
My last name means “I see the world.” It’s an Ethiopian name I took as a young man during the Black Arts movment, when a lot of us were dropping family names that were reflective of our captivity t Continue Reading