 The
magic stick
June 25, 2003
The Iranian
They say that when General Sherman arrived in the
American South he torched
all the southern cities to demoralize the citizens, even though
each one of
them had surrendered to his army. The town fathers of Savannah,
Georgia
decided to meet him before his arrival to the city and to convince
him not
to burn Savannah down. The beauty of the city was irresistible
and Sherman
decided against arson. Instead, he sent Savannah to President Lincoln
as a
Christmas gift in 1864.
President Lincoln received the following
dispatch
from General Sherman, "I beg to present you as a Christmas
gift the city of
Savannah with 150 heavy guns & plenty of ammunition & also
about 25000 bales
of cotton."
Paranormal societies consistently vote Savannah "The
most
haunted city" in the world. One has to wonder to what extent
the "haunting" ghosts are the ghosts of
slavery and the civil war -- But the gravestones, too, reflect
a haunting that one notes in the oddness of the life
spans.
Some folks live to be 200 years old. Others die even
before they are born.
The townsfolk say that the gravestones in the haunted colonial
cemetery in
the center of Savannah's historic district have each been altered
by
Sherman's bored troops who changed the times and birth and death,
changing
with the change in script, their life histories and their relations
to the
stars.
But if cities and graveyards are haunted, so too
are photographs and bodies
that carry the burden of our histories.
Sitting in a café waiting
for the
rain to stop in the old healer's capital of the Appalachians, Asheville,
North Carolina, I was paging through Bahman Jalali's Ganj-i
Peyda (Visible
Treasure) and noticing the ways that the old black and white photographs
of
Iran in the mid to late 19th Century carry the weight of history.
Kids pose
in traditional Iranian costumes before the photographer. They sit
in ornate
French chairs on top of kelims.
Court eunuchs look into the lens
while
leaning onto tables loaded down with leather bound books. Almost
exclusively, the background matte which is a made-for-studio-European-garden
landscape with marble pillars and gargoyles, suggests the haunting
presence
of old Europe in the Persian court of the 19th C.
Other photographs
of the
servants of the andarun, imply somehow that photography was
seen as an
opportunity of becoming other-- not of capturing the spirit
or the ghost as
some clerics had thought-- but of creating other histories,
other lives.
The court servants and eunuchs put on costumes, and odd hats,
and making
themselves look like women, hedgehogs and flowerpots.
Having just walked out of the mystic chiropractor's
office in Asheville, one
frame in particular grabbed me in this book. The image caption
reads "Moshir ol-Hokama (later titled Hakim ol-Molk) examining
a patient".
In the
photo, the "patient" is down prone on an ornate Persian
rug. He is
surrounded by nine men, one of whom is blocked by the "assistant's" hat.
Another haunts the frame with a booted presence
along the right edge of the
image. If this is the site of an examination, I think to myself,
it is a
strange one. The tubes balancing on the patient's stomach look
plastic to
my eyes. The helpers casually hold wrenches and screwdrivers
in the
hands--odd!-- and the background, a frame within a frame, is
the pillared
British garden once again, now mounted on an interior wall in
the Persian
court. A curious smile and a trickster gesture-- one finger of
a hand to
the edge of the mouth and another open and pointing at the patient--
interprets the image for us where the contemporary caption fails.
I wonder if our bodies, projections of a modern
life and instilled with its
traumas, its flashes, its rhythms and jerks, aren't themselves
capable of
telling us what's going on from the inside out? From within the
frame that
is like that trickster's knowing smile. More so, really, than our
friends
and our therapists who merely caption us, interpreting our histories
and our
repeated obsessions in ways that only mass productions and mass
consumption
can overlook-- Bipolar, Depression, ADD, obsessive compulsive,
manic, passive
aggressive, whatnot…We may be simple, but do these labels
frame us at all?
Let me stop and touch you on either end of your
spine, like my mystic
chiropractor, a network spinal analyst, did to me in the small
town of
Asheville and let's see what your involuntary movements may tell
us about
the histories that haunt you. A gentle touch of a magical wand
and Madame
Bayaz steps away. What stories will your body tell you now?
Farvardin: Aries
Rolling your head forward you constrict your throat and throwing
your head
back you release a sigh. You've walked around with a protective
wall around
all that's you. Finally you're opening up to the world and letting
it in.
Simple isn't it?
Ordibehesht: Taurus
A jerk of the shoulder moves your shoulder bones down your back.
Your arms
extend up and out like wings and gently lift you up and then
down. You've
been nesting all your life. Time to fly!
Khordad: Gemini
You lay still after I touch you, but only to the untrained eye.
As I lift my
forefinger and thumb from the back of your neck, the neck muscles
move and
adjust themselves as if swimming to my touch. An uncontrollable
sob and
then, release. You don't need to know what happened and never
you mind. It
all just walked away.
Tir: Cancer
Your hip lifts and falls and swings from side to side. -- A crack
in your
sacrum and a sigh. Finally peace and wisdom has entered your
life and this
time you're the keeper.
Mordad: Leo
Turning your head from one side to the other, your feet twitch
like the
quivering song of the blue birds in the summer night. Three books
and a
brilliant career, which you've shrouded all along. Something
about the
quiver tells me, it's your turn now. The searchlight always looks
for the
slightest movements in the dark!
Shahrivar: Virgo
The upper back twists and turns again and again. You've kept
it there for
years. The anger. The hopelessness. The lack of confidence. The
lies. Your
father's wrath. Let yourself go. You're finally ridding yourself
of a
century of anger. And a baby's in the forecast.
Mehr: Libra
An aimless kick, kick, kick and your tail finally releases. Did
you know you
were a donkey in another life? It's time to take on human form,
my friend.
Aban: Scorpio
Your elbows bend and your body pulls the shoulder blades down
and away from
your ears as you rise and fall to the rhythm of the waves. Is
this a longing
for the Caspian or a surrender to the lapping shores of the beloved
in Acre?
Azar: Sagittarius
You compress the back of your neck as I lift my finger from your
lower
spine. You lift your head to compress down again between you
shoulder bones
and stretch as if I was pulling you forward and jerking you long
from the
back of your neck. Your creative soul is blocked right there.
Imagine what
the world would be like if you dared to let the muse out once
and for all!
Life would be color!
Dey: Capricorn
You’ve given up all your obsessions: your coffee drinking,
your smoking,
your long nights out at the club. What's missing is the open heart ….
That heavy breathing…. your lungs are stretching your ribs
to make room.
Bahman: Aquarius
I've never seen you move with such joyful ease. Such calm. Such
gentle
passion. As if hearing the tune of the beloved, your body curves
and turns
to one side and then another -- you're a content baby aren't
you? Just
remember that old traumas die last. Watch for that ghost, as
you arch and
curve your back like a black cat on all fours. But be confident
that it too
will have to move on.
Esfand: Pisces
The sweet wave of your spine, as you rise and fall to my magic
stick, tells me that everything is all right. Never has life
been more gentle to the
Pisces. Keep swimming against the stream you slippery eel. You do it with
such grace.
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