Nineteenth Century Noggins Lead the Way

Saturday's New York Times brought the following news:

The Netherlands: Ghana Asks for Return of King's Head

The severed head of King Badu Bonsu II is going home to Ghana, about 170 years after it was hacked off in retaliation for the killings of two Dutch emissaries, whose skulls were hung from the tribal leader’s throne. A Dutch author discovered Bonsu’s head in a jar of formaldehyde last year at the Leiden University Medical Center’s anatomical collection. Ghana asked for it to be returned, with Eric Odoi-Anim, an official at Ghana’s embassy, saying, “Without burial of the head, the deceased will be hunted in the afterlife.” The Dutch government asked the hospital to cooperate, and the hospital said in a statement Friday that it was in talks with the embassy “to carefully prepare for the return of King Badu Bonsu II’s head.”

I’m always on the lookout for intriguing curatorial tales, and this one brought up a number of questions. For one thing, how on earth did this grisly artifact of Dutch colonialism wind up in a hospital anatomy collection? Well, apparently some 19th century craniologist wanted to see "whether the indigenous African was, indeed, of equal humanity with the Western European."

And what about this author -- what was he doing poking around the dusty specimen shelves? Arthur Japin, it turns out, was researching his first novel, The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi, about an Ashanti prince educated in Europe who finds that he fits in nowhere. (According to Japin, the head has "a little ring beard," and "his eyes are closed as if he's sleeping." As the hospital has refused to release any photographs of the head “out of respect for bodily remains,” this is probably as close as any of us are going to get to seeing it.)

Finally, will the spectacle of a 170-year-old head being given a lavish state funeral bring some kind of closure to the whole Dutch colonial era in Ghana -- or at least this one unfortunate tri-cephalic incident -- or is it more likely to stir up bad feelings all around? The jury’s still out on this one: see Dr. Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr.’s treatise, "Please, Keep the Head and Let's Move On With Our Lives!" (Dr. Okoampa-Ahoofe isn’t at all sure that burying the head will even lay the monarch himself to rest. It’s possible that the “reigning forces of the afterlife” will reject the “culturally contaminated and 'formaldehyded' noggin,” and the king will go on being hunted in the afterlife forever.)

The other 19th century head that’s come to my attention lately is the one on these billboards I’ve been seeing everywhere. This may be just another hipster-cryptic version of the mossy “oats are good for you” message, but I love the suggestion that somebody up there is rooting for us -- whether it’s a benevolent Big Brother, a corporate shill, or (as Gael posits) aliens who hate commas.

It gets weirder, though: Lexi tells me that one of our own Friends was paid $500 to talk to the Quaker Company about Quakerism, because they wanted to go “back to their roots” with a new ad campaign. Could this be the result? Is “go humans go” somehow meant to echo George Fox’s notion that there is “that of God in every one”? Is this smiling man in a funny hat encouraging us not only to buy & eat more oatmeal, but to live simply, end injustice, speak truth to power, and stop the war?

So you can see I had a lot on my mind when I headed downtown Sunday in search of jeans. (For those of you following the jeans saga, I was dismayed to discover that Levi’s seems to have drunk the Kool-Aid and now only offers women’s jeans that fall off your butt unless you wear them so tight you can’t bend your knees. Fortunately a sympathetic salesman sent me upstairs to Men’s, where -- thank God -- there are still jeans available for people who want blood to circulate through their lower limbs. And no, Lexi, there will not be pictures.)

When I stepped out of the Levi’s store into the bright sun at 6th and Pine, I found myself confronted by, in quick succession: a white teenager in a wheelchair seeking spare change (“Sorry, man.”), an elderly gentleman handing out religious tracts (“No thank you.”), a young black man who asked if he could write a poem for me (“No thanks, sorry.”) and my dentist and his son, stepping up onto the curb next to me.

When I was done chatting up my dentist (a remarkable person who deserves a much fuller description than this someday), I walked half a block before realizing that someone had just offered to write me a poem -- and I had said no. This seemed like a mistake. I had a little time to spare, so I turned around and went back.

You see, I had remembered that experiment where someone arranged for Joshua Bell, one of the world’s premiere violinists, to play as an anonymous busker in a D.C. subway station -- and thousands of busy commuters walked right by him & his Stradivarius without a second glance. (Really. Watch the video.)

Not that I was expecting the poet of 6th & Pine to be Sharon Olds in disguise or Czeslaw Milosz reincarnated. But he could have been Shakespeare’s fracking ghost for all we know, because when I got back to the intersection, he was gone.

I briefly considered rewriting the end of this story, Atonement-style, describing the guy’s pleased, surprised expression when I turned up in front of him again and asked, “Is it too late to get that poem you offered me?” and then making up the poem he would have written. But of course I have no idea what he would have written.

I hung around hopefully for a few minutes before heading back toward where I’d parked the car (way over by Seattle U -- don’t ask). I felt a little unsettled by the whole thing, frankly -- I just kept remembering the way the guy's face fell when I said “No thanks.” And yes, the poem was almost certainly a panhandling gimmick, but it was also a writer offering up his art, and it bugged me that I’d said no without thinking -- and also that he’d never know I had changed my mind.

Kind of like the time two Mormons knocked on my door late one afternoon, years ago. As soon as I saw them standing there in their dark suits, I went into get-these-people-off-my-porch-ASAP mode. They were on their mission, they explained politely, and they were in our neighborhood giving help to anyone who needed it. “Oh, no thanks, we’re fine,” I said, starting to close the door before they had even finished talking. “Bye! Good luck!”

Almost as soon as they were gone the enormity of what I had done began to dawn on me. Here I was, with a puking toddler upstairs and a screaming baby downstairs, sink piled high with dishes, laundry up to my eyeballs, and no idea what we were having for dinner. No thanks, we’re fine? Was I out of my mind? Why didn’t I invite them in and ask them to clean the bathroom? (I know they totally would have done it, too, because I found out later that these two boys had helped my friend Jenn and her pals carry a truckload of furniture into her new house that night, cheerfully wrestling a queen-sized mattress up her narrow staircase, either ignoring or oblivious to the fact that they were surrounded by lesbians.)

I’ve always wished I could let those boys know the profound effect they had on the smug, harried woman who turned them away so brusquely. That in fact they cracked my heart wide open and showed me how desperately I needed help, and what a gift it would be to let somebody give me some. Mission accomplished! If only they knew.

As I hiked over First Hill slowly reconciling myself to the opportunity I had missed, I thought about how to salvage something out of the experience. I stopped in at the Chapel of St. Ignatius to light a candle, hoping to send a message of encouragement and thanks that might somehow reach a discouraged poet -- and the Mormon boys too, wherever they are.

Then I found my car and drove home, feeling thankful for many things: for men’s jeans and dentists out of context, for Ashanti kings and curious Dutch novelists, for penniless poets and missionary Mormons, for the great pacifist patriarch cheering us on from billboards all over the country.

And for my lingering regret, which had by now evolved into a renewed vigilance, a determination to keep an eye peeled for poets, a promise to say yes to the next one who comes along. I made a further vow to actively seek out gifts from unexpected quarters -- and if that's a contradiction in terms, then I'll just have to find a way to remain astonished by things even when I set out to find them. (This strikes me as a pretty good way to head into Spring. Especially this freezing, fitful Seattle Spring, with all its uncertainties.)

It occurred to me that I had been thinking of King Badu Bonsu’s hunted spirit as a tormented creature: exhausted & hungry, angry & scared, desperate for a place to rest after 170 years on the run. But what if after all that time he’d made his own restless peace with the reigning forces of the afterlife? What if he had accepted his fate, embraced the endless journey as his new kingdom? Go humans go indeed. Let's not forget that even the well-fed, self-satisfied Quaker on the billboard would have called himself a Seeker.