Ancestor Worship

Inside every family’s universal black hole is a main room and altar for dead relatives with candles, fresh fruit, burning incense spirit food and black and white or color images.

This reminded me of the village artist where I rode a mountain bike across green hills, up and down dirt roads, seeing butterflies mate in dust, old people threshing rice in fields, a woman lugging piles of white cauliflower to market in her rush-woven baskets suspended on a bamboo poles ...

sailing down long dirt paths past athletic shoe sweat shops - long brick room factories filled with morose sterile girls and one child mothers hunched over clacking Butterfly machines stitching uppers, lowers, tongues and seamless survival wages - until I reached a narrow street to enjoy excellent green tea with a seller.

I bought bags of Grade-A compressed leaves.

Uphill from tea man were small red wooden slat shops with faulty appliances, market stalls, cheap street food and butchers flaying meat and gristle.

In a small brick room was an artist. He drew dead people. A relative brought him a black and white image artifact The image was used for residence, work, and school. The three iron rice bowls.

A guaranteed living space, guaranteed work unit and guaranteed rice rations. It was a great deal. Everyone was treated the same, wore the same uniform, said the same thing and followed the leader like kids playing a game.

Stay in line, yelled a leader, and shut your face! 

The artist accepted a photo from a grieving relative and set up his easel. He used a magnifying glass to illuminate the face. A #2 pencil created an 8x10 portrait.

On the chipped plaster walls was his work. Farmers, aunts, uncles, husbands, and wives.

One for all and all for one.

Today he sketched an old stoic woman. She’d suffered at the hands of Emperors, Nationalists, Communists and new economic revolutionaries disguised as kind caring officials. She’d suffered the indignities of old age wearing a yoke called Fate.

A battered three-string musical instrument hung near abstract red streaks. A black fly on the artist’s left shoulder rubbed its feelers together.

Lord of the Flies said, Tasty. Let’s eat, said the spider to the fly.

An old man with a skeleton face and paper-thin arms opened a bag of tea. He poured compressed leaves into his bony right hand before fluttering them into an old chipped stained blue pot. He added water from a red thermos. We shared tea watching the artist work. The tea was a blend of gentle hospitality. The portrait was exact.

These images decorate Asian family altars. They sleep on altars in city temples. Death and ancestor worship is a big deal. Survivors are afraid of hungry ghosts.

Do all the ancestors hear, understand and acknowledge humans yelling? Can ancestors request peace and quiet?

On anniversary death days they meet other ancestors inside the narrow maze of alleys where piss, drain water, used cooking oil, daily slop and language liquids flow down narrow passageways into small holes where voices become discordant echoes.

Revived, vilified and deified, the dead form a rubber stamp committee addressing this family community - Ha Noise.

It’s come to our attention dear comrades, beloved family and friends  ... that we have a communication volume issue here.

Silence! We command you. Shut your face. We are trying to sleep. The long peaceful and restful sleep of dreamers. Leave us be.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged