Alien Abroad: The American Tourist

“Turn off your Gameboy and look at the rock!” the grossly overweight, loud American tourist yelled at her son, her voice drowning out that of the tour guide on our bus. That moment, more than anything else from my first trip to Europe in 2002, remains burned into my memory. I remember the heads of European tourists turning away from the astonishing view of the Zugspitze, Germany’s highest mountain, to look at us, at the Americans, and wishing that I could just disappear, that I could shout out, “I’m not with that group! My family isn’t like that!”

My eyes weren’t always opened to how the rest of the world saw me: much like when an adolescent first begins to go through puberty and care about their reflection for the first time, spending time in Europe and seeing how other Americans were viewed made me look at my own behavior in a larger sense.

In Munich, it became immediately clear that I was in a foreign and alien environment. As I walked past the flight attendants and into the body of the terminal, it took me a moment to place just what it was that made me feel so uneasy. Then it hit me: everyone was well groomed and of a healthy weight- there were no fat Americans forcing their sausage thighs into spanks or hiding them beneath the bulk of sweatpants to be seen, here. Less apparent but just as strange was the lack of conversation to be heard, save for soft, church-like murmurs that constituted chitchat. The only time I overheard a conversation enough to understand it was when it was in English.

In Paris, if one smiled at a random passerby as was the American tendency to do, they would be looked at as though they were crazy: there were no false displays of niceness and affection to be had, here. That was reserved for people that you actually knew, people who were you friends.

In Italy, this same European focus on how one comported oneself was present. In Rome, with my Italian uncle-by- marriage, he jokingly told me that Americans were often referred to as, “brutto figura,” literally meaning bad shape. During the rest of my time exploring Procida, Venice, Florence, and Naples I heard shop owners mutter the disparaging remark under my breath more than once as they encountered Americans.

Back in America, if one comports oneself like a European would, they will often be thought of as snobbish and introverted. The importance of how one holds oneself, though, and what it means will never be lost on me. Looking back, I feel bad for the loud, overweight mom in Germany- it took me numerous trips to Europe before I finally began to get the feel for how I should act, before I could pull on a demeanor as one would a set of clothes. It goes without saying that such that such a skill is critical to blending into varying cultures.

(500)

Hoodoo: Guardian of Native American Culture

The African-American folk magic practice of hoodoo is a cultural salad bowl, in and that it has incorporated aspects from the numerous cultures it has come into contact with without destroying their identity. Passed on through families and social contracts until the recent electronic era, the just what entails hoodoo has remained largely unknown, and this obscurity has led to many of the cultural influences that make hoodoo unique being overlooked. Now that hoodoo is readily available for study, it appears as though Native American traditions were mixed into the metaphorical salad bowl that is hoodoo. Cultural exchanges between Native Americans and African Americans have immortalized aspects of Native American culture in the folk magic tradition of hoodoo, ensuring the continuation of Native American traditions through space and time in spite of the decimation of their race at large. (139)

***

One of the beauties of cultural diffusion is that, like insects surrounded by amber, it can preserve aspects of cultures that otherwise would have been lost. Native Americans are all but a dead race at this point in time, and although there may be museums and preservations dedicated to their continuation, many of their traditions are isolated and won’t be practiced actively. Hoodoo, a folk magic practice also known as root-work and conjure that began with African slaves in the American southeast, is a prolific and flourishing tradition in its respective regions that, alongside its sister practice of voodoo (which is a structured religion as opposed hoodoo) is far from in danger of dying out.

Like many magical systems, hoodoo borrowed and appropriated practices from different cultures. Perhaps due to the close similarities between Native American magical practices, (the term rootwork in and of itself hints of ties to nature, and if one knows anything about Native Americans it was that they revered nature.) hoodoo drew heavily upon Native American culture. When one looks at the spells employed by the leading practitioners of hoodoo, known as root doctors and hoodoo doctors, they will find numerous instances in which hoodoo entails the use of Native American botanical folklore in herbal formulas and magical curios. Not only that, but African and Native Americans share a belief in animism. Finding definitive links between hoodoo and Native American practices will mean that, though the mother culture of which it was a part has been destroyed, some aspects of Native American tradition will live on. (261)

***

Sources:

(Interview) “Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton: Hoodoo in New Orleans, Court Case
Spell, Madame Papaloose.” Interview by Alan Lomax.
Library of Congress Narrative. Web. 24 Oct. 2010.
.
(Newspaper) Blanchard, Kevin. "The Hoodoo Highway: Bottle Spells to Reverse Witchcraft in Lafayette, LA."
The Advocate. 3 Sept. 2004. Web. 26 Oct. 2010.
.
(Media/Song) Memphis Minnie. "Hoodoo Lady." Rec. 18 Feb. 1936. MP3.

(Book) Hurston, Zora Neale. Mules and Men. J. B. Lippincott, 1935. Reprinted,
Harper Collins, 1990.

(Autobiography) Cappick, Marie. "The Key West Story, 1818-1950" The Coral Tribune. May 1958.

(Book) Anderson, Jeffrey. Conjure in African American Society
2005; reprinted in paperback, 2007

(Book) Bird, Stephanie Rose. Sticks, Stones, Roots & Bones: Hoodoo, Mojo & Conjuring with Herbs. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 2004. Print.

(Website) Yronwode, Catherine. "Hoodoo in Theory and Practice." Lucky Mojo.
Web. 25 Oct. 2010.
http://www.luckymojo.com/hoodoo.html.

(Website) Yronwode, Catherine. “Ghostly Voices from Dixie Land.” Southern Spirits.
Web. 25 Oct. 2010
http://www.southern-spirits.com/

(Website) Amengansie, Hounon. "Hoodoo."
Web. 26 Oct. 2010.
http://www.mamiwata.com/hoodoo.html.

النرجيلة

Sphinx is, by and large, ephemeral.

A small hookah bar located near Tyson’s mall in Virginia, the mood in Sphinx changes as frequently as the perfumed smoke that swirls through the air: no two nights in Sphinx will feel the same.

There is one facet of Sphinx, however, that is immutable. It doesn’t matter whether one is Black, White, Indian, or Asian... only the bar’s Arabic patrons get the soft, cushy seats in the rear of the bar where the light is most dim.

I once crossed the line separating the bar, and immediately felt the almost psychic weight of a dozen dark eyes bearing down upon me. I didn’t stay long.

***

Mr. Rayyan is almost as changeable as the bar he runs- one moment he’ll be grinning as he brings out the glowing coals of shisha for the hookahs, and the next he’ll be glaring from the back of the bar, a cloud of smoke all but obscuring his swarthy visage.

If Sphinx is the macrocosm, Mr. Rayyan is the microcosm.

Arabic himself, Mr. Rayyan drew the invisible line that separates the restaurant in two: he’ll take your money, but in the end it comes down to his people and the rest of the world.

***

Kumbayah is a foreign concept at Sphinx.

Perfumed smoke may fill the air, and glittering lights may shine, but it’s all a facade under which the rot of racism and segregation, the truly immutable qualities of Sphinx, are hiding.

One wonders if the rest of Virginia is the same.





-253-

Vampyre, not Vampire.

Some of them drink the blood of humans.

A bizarre and fascinating offshoot of the Goth subculture, Vampyres (as opposed to Vampires) are a loosely tied group of both late adolescents and adults that fashion themselves to be vampiric in one sense or another: whether they’re modeling themselves after the vampires of pop-fiction writer Anne Rice or the classic blood-suckers found in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, those who call themselves Vampyres all have a few traits in common.

Above all else is the fixation on blood: whether they drink it or use it to initiate new members, all who fashion themselves Vampyres share the sanguine obsession. Fashion is a close second; attire is dominated by Victorian style clothing and macabre jewelry. A melancholy countenance is the salt on the rim of the Vampyre-cocktail.

With offshoots ranging from the psychics of the Kephrian Order to the pagans of the Coven of Sahjaza, the differences between those who follow the Vampyre lifestyle are almost more numerous than that which ties them together.

There's no denying that the Vampyre lifestyle is becoming for this generation what the Goth movement was for those of the 80s and 90s.


WC: 195

Abstracts

Legacy of Blood:

Native American culture has been decimated, and all of it that can be preserved must be. The blood of the Mohegan people runs through my veins by virtue of my Grandfather’s father, and alongside that legacy are a wide array of artifacts unique to the Native Americans of Connecticut, all of which have a story behind them. This study would shed light on Mohegan culture as a whole through both the oral traditions of my Grandfather and studious research of aforementioned artifacts.








God: The Archetypical Hoodoo Doctor:

The African-American folk magic of Hoodoo is about as blasphemous to Christianity as a religious practice can be. Passed on through families and social contracts until the recent electronic era, the practice of Hoodoo has remained largely unknown of- it is by no means as recognized a movement as its sister religion of Voodoo. This study would focus on defining what it is that makes Hoodoo so unique through both a study of the artifacts distinctive to the Hoodoo practice and the rituals in which they are involved.

Red sky at night, sailor's delight, Red sky at morning, sailors take warning:

For thousands of years, since the very earliest of human civilizations, predicting weather has been of the utmost importance: from the merchant about to send forth his ships on a trade excursion to the farmer about to plant his crops, if one couldn’t anticipate the twists and turns of weather then they were doomed to failure. In the time before satellites and the Weather Channel, weather lore was the guide that served in these crucial predictions. This study examines the factual basis behind weather lore through the science of meteorology.

Growing up in HoCo

HoCo.

For those who don't know, this is the slang term for Howard County, the area where I've lived my entire life. If one is a Marylander, they'll probably have a sense of the HoCo stereotype, but for those who aren't natives I'll explain just what it means to grow up in Howard county.

In 2010, Ellicott City was deemed the second best place to live out of the entire United States of America, and HoCo is enmeshed in Ellicott City. Go figure, there's always been a standard to live up to.

From as early on as preschool, my Mom has stories of how cut-throat the entire system was with regard to academics: if you didn't get your child the best of everything, they would surely fall behind and be trampled; if you got them the best, which Howard County offered to those with the balls to take it, then they could go anywhere.

If I ever needed proof as to the truth of Mom's words, all I needed to do was look to the droves of overbearing parents enrolled in PTA and the soccer moms and dads screaming at their children on the field. The screaming, more often than not, was far from encouraging.

Howard County, although it has the best textbooks and the best places to shop, eat, and hang out, is not a place where I would choose to raise my own children.