(a posthumous interview)<\/em><\/p>\n Amatoritsero Ede<\/strong>: I have always wanted to have an interview with you, Mr. Clarke. I kept postponing it. I once asked Dr George Elliot Clarke, your brother from another father, I guess \u2013 since you share the same last name \u2013 if he could introduce me, which he promised to. But I never got back to the subject with him because I got distracted by one thing or the other. Unfortunately, I was not fast enough before the grim reaper knocked on your door. I did not realise he was so close by you. I apologize profusely. Fortunately, in my days as a monk in another world, I did learn some esoteric arts. I decided to use some occult knowledge to travel the astral world and meet you on the other side for this interview. Surely, you don\u2019t mind an outer-worldly, out-of-body chat do you \u2013 on earth this would be considered a posthumous interview?<\/p>\n Austin Clarke: <\/strong>Quite the opposite, Amatoritsero, I don\u2019t mind an interview in the fourth or even fifth or sixth dimension. Are we in the fifth?<\/p>\n A.E.: <\/strong>Our world\u2026 my world \u2026 is three dimensions \u2013 length, breadth and solid. Since you \u2013 your soul – has left your physical body (no one ever dies by the way), you moved out of those material dimensions and are now in a fourth and bodiless and invisible one, I believe. That is, if you have not progressed to even higher levels. Yes, you are not limited by gross matter anymore. Not by colour, by the way, come to think of it, which can be as heavy as any form of matter.<\/p>\n A.C.:<\/strong> It is why WEB DuBois correctly predicted that the problem of the 20th<\/sup> century would be the colour line. I think his brother, Alain Locke, in his New Negro,<\/em> insisted that the colour line will persist throughout the 21st<\/sup> century. Colour is indeed heavy as an unnecessarily racialized quality \u2013 heavy as a winter coat which burdens you and impedes you, even when you do need the melanin as environmental protection. This is why I was such a reluctant Canadian.<\/p>\n A.E.:<\/strong> I was going to get to the subject of your reticence in taking a Canadian citizenship. But first. How is it out here in \u2018Vaikunta\u2019; do you feel claustrophobic, not being in our world, in the great wide open plains of Canada and the large expanse of \u2013?<\/p>\n A.C:<\/strong> You make me laugh a Barbadian laugh! Your world is so tiny it is like a grain of sand on an endless sea shore. Look at all material creation, including earth and the galaxies. They are almost limitless. But the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu Scriptures, says all that material creation is like a little blot, a tiny stain, on the spiritual sky. Imagine the vastness, magnificence and infinitude of spiritual creation. Those earthly expanses you talk of \u2013 cannot be compared to the freedom of being unfettered, bodiless. \u201cPoor wordless body in its fumbling ways\u201d as the South African poet, Dennis Brutus, says. Having no body and no colour, because of which spiritually ignorant humans vilify and demonise you, is a great experience. By the way is Vaikunta not the final resting place of the soul, according to the Bhagavad Gita?<\/p>\n A.E.:<\/strong> Yes, it is. When you need not reincarnate anymore as a living entity because you have learnt all the spiritual lessons for which you needed a human body, you rise to Vaikunta as a spirit soul in pure worship of the godhead – Krishna, Christ, Allah – or any other name we humans call it\/him\/her in our usual divisive lack of understanding that the godhead maybe be many but is one and the same, no matter how we differently name the idea.<\/p>\n A.C.:<\/strong> Ah\u2026! I am not sure I want to reincarnate and come to your world anymore. Those 81 years in your world (or prison) had better be my last incarnation or is it incarceration!?. I brek-up from racism, sexism, ageism, war, injustice, especially brek-up from dispossession and lack of privilege due to my blackness \u2013<\/p>\n A.E.:<\/strong> Excuse me Mr. Clarke, sir. But you were privileged!<\/p>\n A.C.:<\/strong> Amatoritsero Ede! I think you are being a devil\u2019s advocate here. My foot biting me! You see, I was not privileged at all or rather what appears to be privilege – my success as a writer, my access to print capital, was fought for every inch of the way. I suffered lack because of it and the typical writer\u2019s poverty. Rather what I was in your world is \u201cDarkness visible,\u201d to pun the English poet John Milton. And don\u2019t call me “Clarke”; that\u2019s a human name\u2026 Call me ‘Guru Hari Das.’ I am now the servant of the servant of the servant of the godhead in these realms.<\/p>\n A.E.:<\/strong> Guru Hari Das! Okay. But for the purpose of this interview\u2026please. Yes, \u201cdarkness visible\u201d \u2026 I know of that oxymoron from Milton\u2019s paradise Lost<\/em>. It is in chapter one of that work about the fall of man.<\/p>\n A.C.:<\/strong> For argument\u2019s sake, one could say I had some empowerment towards the end. But it was that time that death came with his dark hood and sickle for me…In my old age, at the time when a valiant warrior should be enjoying the fruits of his labours. Now if I were white, at any age I \u2018d have been really privileged. My successes would have catapulted me to unimaginable places, brought incredible wealth, and so on\u2026 Imagine\u2026 at the foot of the fire, when I should be in my salad days, death comes fi me.<\/p>\n A.E:<\/strong> Would you like to reincarnate as a white man so that you could experience the privilege of whiteness?<\/p>\n A.E.:<\/strong> Beard? But you are bodiless!<\/p>\n A.C.:<\/strong> I mean by the grey heavy beard and lion mane I used to wear on earth.<\/p>\n A.E.:<\/strong> Yes, your activism in the 60s. Interviewing Malcom X for CBC and all that. Civil rights marches. That was something\u2026 Did you meet the soul of Malcom X since you arrived here?<\/p>\n A.C.:<\/strong> Blasted! Those were the days of struggle. I have not felt that soul around my soul. That jolly trouble maker on earth must be in Vaikunta already.<\/p>\n A.E.:<\/strong> What is the context when you say above that you are \u201cdarkness visible.\u201d Although, I think I get it, but for our readers, you know\u2026.?<\/p>\n A.C:<\/strong> I use it in a literal and symbolic sense. I am \u2018physically visible\u2019 because I am black and invisible within Canadian society. Ironic da! I mean my visibility made me a known corporeal category that the system makes sure to avoid, impede, hold back, keep in the ghetto, deny rights, deny opportunities, mis-educate, manipulate with \u2018Canadianspeak\u2019 (that polluted \u2018political correctness\u2019 and \u2018polite\u2019 conversation that mocks me, derides me, looks down upon me, and puts me in \u2018my place\u2019)! I am over-controlled and checked and checked again and again. The system disappears my kind. Darkness visible. I am Ralph Ellison\u2019s invisible man precisely because they look at me but do not see me. They only see darkness (i.e. nothing). They do not see me when it comes to housing opportunities, job opportunities, they impeded my kind by asking me for Canadian experience when I am just coming in from another world into theirs. And you know the greater irony? It is no one\u2019s fault. Fuh-true? Kwablema! We are multi-cultural and one great family of Canadians! All equal. But as George Orwell is my witness, all Canadian are equal but some Canadians are more equal than others. I also use \u201cdarkness visible\u201d to capture the hellish conditions which Mr. John Milton use it to describe for souls suffering in hades. It is the black or brown man or woman catching hell on earth. Please bear with me and let me quote:<\/p>\n A dungeon horrible, on all sides round Amatoritsero, in the above quote Milton is talking about the rebellious angel Lucifer (‘angel of light’) who was called \u2018Satan\u2019 after the rebellion and was cast down from heaven into the hell that the poet, Milton, so vividly paints above. When man falls he joins Satan in that hell too. Replace satan with the black man\u2026 from slavery to colonialism and the current imperial moment in humanity, the black man or woman has been demonized be-devil-ed, and satanized the better for him or her to be cast into a fire of suffering and servitude on earth. The last line above says: \u201cSuch place Eternal Justice had prepared\u201d. Replace “Eternal Justice” with ‘Eternal injustice’ against blackness and you get my drift.<\/p>\n A.E.:<\/strong> Blasted! This is all heavy! Thank you. for the elaborate explanation; I am sure our readers appreciate it.<\/p>\n A.C.:<\/strong> Blasted indeed! Colour is heavy. Sorry I had to heap it all on you like that.<\/p>\n A.E.:<\/strong> What a life of it you must have had. Must have been irritating and annoying!<\/p>\n A.C.:<\/strong> They make an awful ruka-tuk about me being black panther and all that. I was simply a freedom fighter! The 60s especially was either fight or die! If you complain you are an \u201cangry black man.\u201d<\/p>\n A.E.:<\/strong> You wrote this in your memoir, Membering<\/em> (2015): \u201cI am living \u2026 in the sixties, in the atmosphere of great physical fear, of the expectation that a policeman might shoot me \u2013 bang, bang, you\u2019re dead, dead \u2013 of being refused the renting of a basement room, or an apartment in a public building, that I would find myself standing noticeably longer than other customers at a counter in Eaton\u2019s store, at the corner of Yonge and College Streets, that I might be thrown out, sometimes physically, from a restaurant, or a nightclub, as Oscar Peterson was, and face the embarrassment of being told by a barber that he does not cut niggers\u2019 hair. This is my Toronto.\u201d Has anything changed over the years?<\/p>\n A.C.:<\/strong> The only thing that changed is that the system has developed better ways to hide racial prejudice and injustices.<\/p>\n
\nA.C.:<\/strong> By my beard! At\u2019all. No! I am not a black hat. I can\u2019t be enjoying while others suffer. This was why I was an activist.<\/p>\n
\nAs one great Furnace flam’d, yet from those flames
\nNo light, but rather darkness visible
\nServ’d onely to discover sights of woe,
\nRegions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace [ 65 ]
\nAnd rest can never dwell, hope never comes
\nThat comes to all; but torture without end
\nStill urges, and a fiery Deluge, fed
\nWith ever-burning Sulphur unconsum’d:
\nSuch place Eternal Justice had prepar’d [70]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n