Fern Ridge (Safla Rama) Digest

Last week, in my lecture for the course Literature and Politics, I read the poem “Different Histories” to the 50 plus students. It was an important poem I had written when I was an undergraduate student, just learning to write and the thoughts that went into the poem have become more real to as I explained the return to the place of my birth in the month of January, 2019. Uncle Thomas Pomala, Michael Fischer, Thorsten Trimmpop, and Daniel Hui @ Songo in Forest, Ulighembi 2019 I made an unplanned visit to the forest place in the Prince Alexander Mountain range where my umbilical cord lies buried. On a fine day, the 8 th of January 2019 I drove up to Ulighembi Village in a hired 5 doors Toyota Landcruiser.   Accompanying me were three friends who flew all the way from the USA and Singapore. Thorsten Trimpop, the award winning filmmaker based in Chicago, the anthropologist, Michael Fischer based in Boston, Massachusetts, and the Singaporean filmmaker Daniel Hui, arriv...

The forest world I was born into has given me the poetic sensibilities. On my return early in January 2019 to Ulighembi village to film the forest world I was awakened to those sensibilities by the birds that welcomed me along the forest walk. It was not a retrace of my journey out of the forest world, but spiritual connection I needed to make with the divided self I have burned myself with for 55 years of my life. I am divided in diametrically opposed ways and yet remain fragmented in different angles.   What could be a disaster was averted because I maintain one foot in the culture and tradition of my people and the other foot in the western world I have accepted as I journeyed out of the forest world. Much to the deepest part of me I found myself coming alive as we entered the forest. I took in the sound, the smell, the sight, and the light and dark of the forest. It was a treasure of emotional blessing to be born in a forest world. I relished every footstep taken and e...