Original Sin
“The Good Ship
Jesus”
brought the first African slaves
to the West Indies.
The year was
1562.
Sir John Hawkins,
a deeply religious Christian,
captained the vessel.
The ship, built in
Germany, laid down
the first pathway
to the new world.
The path was a
“desire line,”
an improvised
course from point A
to point B.
Efficiency was key
to the whole operation.
Once the “desire line”
was created
it became a
model for the many
that would follow.
These ancestral pathways
are like aboriginal song-lines.
Many feet travelled
by local “Creator-beings,”
mapping the course
for generations.
The sea also has
“desire lines,”
the shortest distance between
freedom
and bondage.
Thank you, “Jesus,”
for leading the way.
—–
Desire is the source of
all suffering.
—–
When new buildings rise,
someone must decide
where sidewalks are
best placed.
Wise architects put up
structures and wait for
foot traffic to create the most
desired paths.
That’s where they’ll locate
the sidewalks.
—–
Desire is history,
forged by practicality,
necessity, greed
and shame.
—–
A brain
filled with shame
cannot learn
a new path.
—–
No surprise, then,
that “Desire” was the first
American-made slave ship
setting sail in 1637
from
Marblehead, Massachusetts.
She left for
the British West Indies,
pregnant with
with leg irons,
and Pequots,
our first slaves.
Baptists quaintly named these
Native Americans
“Adam’s degenerate seed,”
and as their numbers
declined from slaughter
and disease,
African cargo increased.
Seven months later,
less time than
it takes to create
a new life,
“Desire” returned with bales
of cotton, tobacco
and enslaved Africans.
Good merchandise all.
—–
The lust for fortune
was the “Desire Line”
compass-setting
to the new world.
—–
Desire acted upon
determines the future.
—–
What’s in a name,
you might ask?
Those who followed “Desire”
were called:
“Fortune,”
“Treasurer,”
“Grace of God,”
“Angel,”
and “Lord.”
Gold and God
in flagrante delicto.
—–
Creating a “Desire Line”
is called
wayfinding,
and the new world
found the way
to riches beyond imagining
and an exceptional country
was birthed
in the ecstasy of desire.
