“This is what accounts for the strange and characteristic mythology of the zombi. Everything is zombi. Be watchful, be suspicious of everything. Their charming or reassuring forms? A snare! A trap! Beware the crab limping down the street, the rabbit making off in the night, the over-friendly and over-seductive woman: zombi, zombi, I tell you! Recognize that humanity and animality and the whole of nature is conspiring against you.
Don’t confuse it with the vulgar ghost that has become a zombi through abuse of language. Equally, don’t confuse it with the Haitian zombi, that docile and conscientious robot, that compliant living dead. The Martiniquan phenomenon is brutal in another way. You are afraid. You are suspicious. Of what? Of everything. Of evil affirming itself, like the evil that disguises itself. Beware of being; but at the same time beware of appearance…”
— Rene Menil and Aime cesaire
La di doo
If I had a Destination:Anywhere ticket in my hand RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE, then it’ll be bound for Haiti, because this obsession of mine over zombies has reached a boiling point. Martiniquan folklore is a melancholic alcoholic! Three more pages of Carribean culture and poetry, please, and no salt on mine, thanks very much !
Listening to: Duke Ellington, imported especially from my unassuming friend’s studio. Gah! Gah! Gah! Gah! Gah!
