Some time ago I read and liked the wonderful story by Rasufelle "This Isn't What I Wanted" and the author's opinion after it. However, a phrase in that opinion - "the fetish and non-fetish elements of the community" - stuck to my mind. Is this community limited to these? Who is part of it and who is not?

And how do you describe what is swimming for you to dolphins? How to help them understand what it is for a dryland creature?...

The African Masks

Imagine that some day you start collecting African wooden masks. It brings you calmness and tranquility in this turbulent life. You frequent the souvenir shops, seeking and buying masks you don't have yet. You put them on the walls of your home, touch them with care and contemplate with pleasure. A small refuge away from the everyday problems and worries, full with peace and serenity.

But the contemplation is pregnant with curiosity. By themselves, the masks are just pieces of wood. Keeping your attention takes more. Whom they depict? What they mean?... Each answer brings new questions. Why The Leopard is smiling? Why The Earth is made from red wood?... You read and learn, observe and deduce, recognize and understand. Every glint you notice casts light on places and things you never suspected to exist. Gradually your refuge grows into a small universe, alluring with secrets, waiting to be explored, inviting you in.

You discover an Africa that Stanley never saw and Livingstone never knew. Mountains by which you can climb on the moon. Abysses leading to The World Below. Talking animals who are the forebears of this or that people. Spirits of rivers and trees, places and species. Heroes who can turn into anything, create volcanoes by a wish and drink the ocean on a bet. Savannas that nobody has crossed to the end to see and tell if they have one. Stars that not only smile at you from the sky, but come down to sit at your fire and tell you stories, or counsel you in dire need...

Where this world came from?! Your imagination has always been overactive, but could never produce it without the African masks... You delve into their secret and soon see it. Human hands, skilled and weary, sculpted in the timber their feelings, dreams and hopes. You hold pieces not of wood, but of personalities and souls. Dressed into matter, striving to be shared, inviting you into the inner sanctum of their creators. Helping you to see how huge, rich and diverse it is.

Who the creators are? For all you know - some Africans, thousands of miles away. Poor tribesmen, primitive and simple, miserable and wretched. So most people around you say. Dumb niggers, some add. But after having seen that universe, you can't believe these voices. Can be poor those who created such a treasure? Aren't they wealthier and more prosperous than most people around you, at least on the inside? The only way to answer that is to know them. Not from outside, from encyclopedias and newspapers, but from inside, from what they share through their art.

And you immerse in it, trying to touch and feel their essence. It is not easy, but the number of the masks you have collected and the knowledge about them you have amassed helps. Bit by bit the initial tiny flashes of realization merge into fireworks, then into star showers and finally in floods of light. Your collection has turned into a set of magic keystones, weakening the barrier between the realities, turning it stretchy and semi-transparent, and finally tearing an opening in it. And through that opening, squeezing slowly and laboriously, you enter the universe of the African masks.

It is like nothing you have been in before, coming as if from the cradle of all beginnings. White as a desert sun and black as a jungle night, so unlike your dull gray existence. Spanning spaces beyond your scale, living life you never knew before, erupting emotions you never thought possible. A world of animals and spirits, stories and myths, where life and legend are one. So different, contrary and polarly opposite to everything you have seen. A place not of concrete and steel, cold machines and cold reason, but of soil and leaves, warm breezes and warm feelings.

You step ahead, feeling the red earth between your toes. The trees above rustle a welcome to you, the antelopes running nearby call a name you hear for a first time, and yet know that it is yours. Taking a look around, you breathe in the dazzling whirl of colors, forms, sounds and feelings, and wish to be able to fly and see all at once. The morning wind touches your shoulders and they spurt wings, you turn into a hawk and take off, raising to the sky with a jubilating screech. A vast space spans below, lush green interspersing with warm brown, and a leopard smiles friendly, walking along a crystal-clear river. A group of dark-skinned women wave arms to you with the greeting of your tribe. The entire world brims with life and sings with happiness, and you join its song and feel one with it...

After a moment or aeons you again sit in your room, stare at the masks on the walls and think of their world, startled and scared by the strength of its attraction. Are you losing your mind for a fantasy, a myth? Of course the reality is nothing like this. Spirits don't exist, animals don't talk, archers don't launch clouds or snakes. And most of all, you know that the real life of the African mask makers is very, very different. Living in poverty, lacking education, far from the civilization achievements, their crops killed by the droughts, they desperately cut the random pieces of deadwood into masks to earn a penny. Yes, they are just wretched tribesmen, everybody around is right. That is the fact.

But it is just a small part of a larger truth, one that contains also the universe of the masks. And after you have witnessed it, joining the two is so easy. A modern man would dream of taking a plane - the "backwards" people are who know that flying as a bird feels more natural. The educated people want computers and TVs - the "savages" are who dream of seeing and feeling all yourself, of unlocking this power by touching an inner spirit. The rich desire exclusive clubs, commanding positions and posh life - the "dirt-poor" are who imagine a life of overfilling joy and emotion, of being one with both the tallest mountains and the tiniest bugs. Said to be wretched, apparently poor, it is these Africans who have much more, give much more and know much more than your people and your "real" world.

... Days pass, but the wave of joy returns every time you enter that universe. It fills your heart with warmth and happiness. After a long and tiring day you can't wait to go there and relax your soul, like the body relaxes in a warm bath. You sometimes even skip real-life events - what happens in that other universe is so much more interesting! It never repeats, it always grabs and swings you into losing breath and trembling with anticipation for more.

But you also notice this change. And a thought slowly crystallizes, cold and sharp as a midwinter icicle. Could you actually not be the one you always thought you are? Could you actually be on the inside one of _them_? Is your life a lie, and your true essence African? Is your true place with the makers of these masks?... And the imaginary quests in this new universe are dwarfed by a very real one - a quest for your true identity.

You look through the window. The snow-covered bushes framing the neat sidewalk, the neon signs and the ski shop against your window are your dear neighborhood - the hot dusty streets of an African village would be so alien in their place. The pale Northern sky, the dark green pines and the long winter nights are where you feel at home. And the tang of chimney smoke in the cold air is the aroma of your childhood. This world, this city, this existence are your true place. Where you belong. Where you want to always be. You feel it in your heart.

But in the universe of the masks your village streets are hot and dusty, and alien would be the snow and the neon. The sky is deep blue, the sun is scorching, the jungle green bright and alive. The air is warm and wet with the incoming rain, clean like the ringing of a tinkerbell, intoxicating like a strong wine. The moon is not a celestial body, has never been one - it is the slipper of Tsagi, thrown and stuck on the sky while he stalked Yogo, back when humans, animals and everything else were one. And in some strange way that is also your place and you belong there too.

You take a look around. You can't imagine a life without the subway, the gray plastic of your work cubicle and the screen of your computer, and don't want to. Without the heater on the wall, the fridge in the kitchen, the car in the garage. Tomorrow at work you will present the progress on your project, and the evening will be dedicated to a romantic dinner with your darling. In the summer you will take a leave and will go visit some tourist place, snapping photos to share with your friends. This is the life you like, want and feel truly yours.

But in that other universe you can't imagine a life without talking to the spirits of the Night and the Tree, the Stone and the Grass. A life without your spear and amulet, the wise words of the elephants, the councils of your tribe and the glances of the future you see in the sacred fire. Tomorrow you will speak with The Guardian of the River, whose help you need to save your friends from The White Hyena. And you will get there not in the subway, for one never has and never will exist there, but stretching your wings and crossing the African sky, riding and breathing its winds.

You look in the mirror. The blue-eyed face under a mop of blonde hair there is you. Had you seen there dark skin and black eyes, this would be someone else, and the change would be horrifying, one you can probably never accept even if you want to. What you see is your true face, the one you feel to be you, the one you want to have. You are the same on the outside and the inside, and that you is the only real. Your heart, your dreams and wishes are Nordic, your imagination is built on and fueled by the Eddas and the Bible, you wouldn't abandon your Viking ancestry for any other. That is whom you truly are and will always be.

But there beyond you are dark-skinned and black-eyed, and don't need to accept it - you simply are, have always been and are happy to be. Turning into animals and talking with spirits is as ordinary as having arms and legs, tracking trails and throwing spears is as natural as breathing. Everything there feels as normal as everything here, and you can't understand why should only one of these lives be true. The real-life horror of being African is suddenly childish - naive, amusing, even making you smile with warmth. You are different there because that _there_ is different. Isn't this the only way to truly remain yourself, to be in both places the real you? And isn't the Nordic ancestry eventually African, back enough?

This in turn scares you further. Are you suffering from multiple personality in addition to the uncertainty who you are?... Happily, this is easier to answer and carries the answer to the other question too. You are under a spell - the powerful, incredible, engulfing spell called art.

You are into books and movies since you remember yourself. You love immersing in the worlds they describe, living them, being their characters. You submerged in the ocean with Nautilus and flew through the space on Enterprise, crawled through the Tombs of Atuan and crouched in the Trojan Horse. You cracked the whip of Indiana Jones and sat on the throne of Cleopatra, wore the gown of Jane Eyre and the spacesuit of David Bowman. You were American as Ishmael, Italian as Enrico Bottini, Chinese as Number Ten Ox, Barrayarian as Miles Vorkosigan, big insect as Gregor Zamza, extraterrestrial super-being as Dr. Who... None of these appeared a single bit strange or embarrassing to you. Who should do it being an African?

You take a breath with an indescribable relief. Being an African is just a make-believe, created by the power of art. You can calm down, your identity is not in danger. You are whom you always believed to be. Everything is okay. You are yourself, not anyone else. Relax and smile. The doubt is over. You are not changed and will not change. Don't worry. Be happy.

Still shaken, you cannot assuage yourself so easily, This universe is built upon pieces of wood, crudely shaped by illiterate tribesmen, immeasurably far from the talent of Shakespeare and the professionalism of the Star Wars team. Why it appears to you far richer, truer and closer to your heart than most masterpieces of genius and skill? Doesn't this mean that you have lost your mind on it?

Answering this is already easy. It is the "illiterate tribesmen" who do not mass-manufacture disposable items, but build their selves into their creations. When many of them pool not simply work but creativity and sincerity, it is only natural to create an universe surpassing the masterpieces that embody the creativity of only few, even if talented people. A world hidden behind the mockery of everybody around you, but still open for everyone who has the eyes to see it. A wonderful reward for those who overcome the bigotry and stupidity. You haven't lost your mind - those who don't understand this beauty have.

Having beaten the fears, you visit again and again the universe of the masks, cherish the touch with it, dive in its freshness and happiness. You know that it is and forever will be imaginary, but its vibrancy helps you bear the burden of the reality. The scarce minutes spent in it are brighter and sharper than the long dull gray days in your world, they are shorter by the clock but longer by the life lived during them. You learn to stay in touch with the reality but also enjoy the world there beyond, to balance them and take the best from both.

You sometimes think where all this will take you. Here and there you are as different and mutually exclusive as the night and the day, but both sides also complement each other to a larger whole, exactly like the night and the day do. In the reality everything that you are screams against being a part of this invented universe and turning into one of its inhabitants, but also sadly agrees that the existence there is much happier, much fuller and maybe even just a bit truer. And the you beyond there happily accepts being unreal and invented, much to your surprise, and looks at the real you with amazing warmth, care, sympathy and understanding. Invented maybe, but undoubtedly better and wiser... Looks like these sides of you will always be different and incompatible, but at the same time happier and more complete together. For both illusions and life become real after if you infuse them with enough gist and purpose. And hasn't everything real around you started as a dream in some mind?

Like in the real world, you find friends in that universe too - the people who created it. Those who cut the masks, those who encouraged them, those who helped their creations reach you. In the reality they don't even know of your existence, but in that other universe you meet them every day. There they are powerful wizards, mighty warriors, beautiful princesses, smart traders, weathered sailors... There are no ordinary, easily replaceable human bolts and nuts - everyone there has distinct, unique and own powers and value. You too, and maybe this is what attracts you there.

You know their names. Yes, they often are something like Woodpecker, Shadow Cutter or Mask Master. But does it matter if Woodpecker's birth certificate states him as John Kebede? If he was a Tom or Jane instead, would he be better or worse at wood carving than now, or as a human being? Or if he was a Gunnar Rolvsson, for that matter?... And which of his names reflects his true essence? Is he a Thomas Anderson or a Neo? For the true name is what gives one power over oneself...

Even back in the real world you continue to feel these people as close and dear as your best friends and closest relatives. You know that they actually are poor and wretched, miserable and desperate, and the glorious faces you see in their universe are just masks. But isn't a mask the true face of the wearer? Why people go to masquerades if not to take down their masks?... Wretched these people might be, but it is due to their _there_. Were they living in your nice northern town instead, they would be exactly like you. And in the universe of the masks, they truly are the heroes you see.

You often consider seeking friendship with some of them, but almost never dare to - and not only because you are painfully shy. In the real life they will probably never accept it. You don't bow to their gods or talk with the spirits they believe in. You never passed their rites, sat around their fires, shared their superstitions, felt their hunger and pains, cried with their losses. You don't really know their suffering, disappointments, frustrations - so much of these caused to them by people with your appearance, maybe your countrymen or even relatives. You have never been through what they have, and what unites them... The most knowledgeable, strongest and wisest among them might be friendly, but even they might be too hurt or suspicious for a sincere friendship.

You understand them. This tortured world contains too many rifts, too many walls and too many torn and walled souls. Bleeding and hurting, they hide behind the rifts and the walls, away from everyone but those who stand on the same tiny patch of ground, trusting only them. They don't mean harm to anyone, just protect themselves. You want to heal them, but not by being the Judge who farts "Bring down the wall!"... And you don't want to subject yourself to hostility and rejection. Naively and childishly you believe in having self-esteem, in deserving better than being ostracized, rejected or locked out. So much like they do... Maybe you are just not enough mature, strong and supportive as you dream and want to be, as you must be. Surely you should put effort into growing up, getting stronger and better. Achieving it might take some time and efforts, but if you strive for it, it will come.

Until then you don't open yourself to them. You visit them secretly, watching from afar, hidden under a cloak of silence and anonymity. You listen to their talks and feel their joys and griefs like your own. You learn about saving crops from drought, building homes from next to nothing, cutting wood into masks... And sometimes of yielding spear and tracking trails, talking with spirits and seeing the future in the sacred fire. So different from the universe you love, but so true - because it is actually the same thing, coming from the same source, moved by the same memories and dreams.

You never paid attention before if there are Africans in your town. Now you notice them. Back before all would look the same to you. Now you see in them greater diversity than in your own people. Some are the African genetics incarnated, in all its glory. Others, apparently of mixed blood, are even more interesting. A man who looks like an Aryan in blackface: perfect European features under tar-black skin. A girl with skin almost as light as yours, but with big Afro hair and the inhumanly perfect body and natural grace that only these people have... A dazzling array of traits, each one varying all the way from Scandinavian to Equatorial, freely combined in all possible ways. A diversity and richness that puts to shame what you are used to, and shows you what a shame is to not know and not accept it.

You have always dreamed of a society where everyone can work what they really like. Now you ask yourself - isn't even more important to be whom you really feel, or even just want to? If you have to survive in Africa, due to an unexpected fate turn or just as a vacation, wouldn't you do better as an African? Also, you cannot even imagine starting to like it, but should the unbelievable happen, wouldn't be better if you can become and stay one? Why should a race be a privilege only to those born into it? And where is the sense in having to prove that you deserve the change, or in being limited to one change only? Isn't that as stupid as having to prove that you deserve other clothes in order to don them? For a body is just a cloth to our essence... Isn't this freedom of choice and ability to change important to everyone, even those who don't intend to? When Alzheimer or a terminal cancer comes, wouldn't everyone be happy with a new and healthy body, even if it is from another race? Or even in just a very old age?... This is only the beginning of what the Africans can teach the willing to learn. For all these abilities will come some day, and it depends on our open-mindedness whether we will be able to accept them and benefit from them.

And most of all you watch their masks, hanging on the walls of your home. Their true faces, what they are on the inside - for porn stars bare and show their bodies only, but creators of art bare and show their very souls. These masks tell everything about them, of their fears and hopes, wishes and dreams. Maybe more than even they know, their own true selves hidden from them behind their own long gray days. You realize that to understand means to accept, value and care for. And when you go into that other universe, you carry with yourself their reality. Not to taint and spoil their true beauty and glory, but to merge all pieces of their larger truth into an inseparable whole.

You do for them the little that they would accept. You continue buying their masks, despite that you don't need them anymore - their universe will always be with you. You check the news about them, unable and unwilling to stay indifferent to their problems. You support their initiatives, tell the people around you the truth about them, check where you can help them with something. Sometimes you even risk trying to befriend one of them, often get rejected, but always remind yourself that probably the problem is in you, that probably you just weren't tolerant and sensitive enough. That you can always learn and improve further, despite that you will never be really one of them...

Because despite all logic and against any reason, driven by sympathy, understanding and compassion, in a strange but heart-warming way you feel one of them.