"Ulenahida". The Lost One.

Somewhere within the safety and warmth of the primordial ooze of my mother's womb, I could hear the Eve Tree calling me. It yelled my name, but not the name my parents gave me. I heard other voices too, but they were garbled, as humanity marched and milled around my unborn amniotic sac.

The name the tree shouted was "Ulenahida." I did not know then what it meant, it sounded so strange. When I became born, I learned that it was the Cherokee name for "lost". Why, I asked the wind, am I descended from a Native American bloodline. Although, somewhere deep in my soul, I have always felt a deep yearning and kinship with the thinking and way of life of these unique and beautiful people.

I am of Caribbean Indian descent, so why not hear the voice of Lokono, the language of the Arawak Indian people, particularly the Taíno subgroup, the original inhabitants of Jamaica, known for their peaceful lifestyle, agriculture, and rich cultural practices.

But who am I to question the voices of the mystic ones. I will become who I will become.

As I matured I heard the voices, not in words, but in dreams. My dreams and nightmares were plagued with being lost. Lost in great wooded forests, lost at sea, lost trying to find my way to other people...lost.

Please, Eve Tree...Let me emerge somewhere...anywhere but being alone in years of dreams, running through the loneliness. All the while surrounded by a world filled with nine billion people.

"Ulenahida." Answered the wind gently. "You must find your own way to the Tree. She will be waiting". Great, thanks a lot. But I knew then that life's journey is really a lonely one. There will be many a kind and helpful family, friend or professional who may assist, try to point you on the right pathway. But in the end, it all comes down to who you wish to become, deep down inside your soul. Alone, one must find their own path.

There are many versions to the roads we traverse. Which to choose. Travel, adventure, science, fame, fantasy. I fear my head was filled with fantasy, making it hard to chart a straight course.

I was not born into means or the lap of luxury. So being lost was like a double edged sword. I would have to claw my way forward, through the unhelpful dreams, cleaving a niche by whatever means necessary.

And so the years passed as I dreamed clawed and fumbled my way into life. I did love to read and I dabbled in writing. Maybe somewhere in the in- between I could become someone literary, hoping not to be dubbed 'The worst Writer or Poet", like Scottish William.

William McGonagall (March 1825 – 29 September 1902) was a Scottish poet and public performer. He gained notoriety as an extremely bad poet who exhibited no recognition of, or concern for, his peers' opinions of his work.

Yes...I could become famous for being myself.

In my mid life, I dreamed my last lost dream. This dream was different though...The voice shouted a name again.

"Osdatlegi". The Cherokee word for "found". Yet, why did I still feel partially whole...still un-found, even though I had, in the dream, finally crossed the first hurdle. I found my way out, emerging from the forest, onto a long newly asphalted road. I could see it stretching for miles in both direction, with only trees and green flourishing on either side. No people, no houses...only the birds chirping overhead.

Now supposedly found, but still alone. OK then. I am now on the road to the discovery of myself.

I decided to embrace my first name...Ulenahida. For life is a confused and wonderful conglomeration of different and distinct parts, all grouped together. I must wade through this human ooze to find my own way.

I shall not bore anyone with the mundane paths by which I travelled, it is but a non-romantic journey of little successes and some very devastating abject failures...all pointing me towards the Eve Tree of divine and hopeful explanations.

Beyond dreams...beyond Nightmares.

There is that framing of the self - where I am made up of a pie chart life in stages of thirds. The first third is past, with me poised in the final act of the second third...a poetic refrain. It evokes a reaching arc - the descent, the reckoning, and the return. Now I shape this reflection like a ritual of storytelling, honoring each phase with its own tone and truth.

🌑 The First Third was the The Initiation.

Pain and Loss:

The ache of climbing into the becoming - childhood wounds, identity fractured crises, the quiet griefs that shape a personality.

Losses that felt like disappearances: people, places, versions of myself that dissolved before they could be named.

The confusion of early mirrored reflections...how others saw me, how I tried to see myself...how the image kept slipping. My Successes and Victories blending with Survival as a sacred triumph.

Moments of clarity, rebellion, or creation that cracked open the shell.

All were first sparks of forming myself into life's poetry, a drawing, a joke that felt like it laughed with me, and not at me..

🌘

Second Third: The Descent and Discovery.

My life's second act is well under way.

I'm in the final act of this now - the part where the hero and or villain - for I have been both...having wandered through the underworld, begins to gather the pieces.

Pain and Loss were the cost of deepening relationships that couldn’t hold my devolution and evolution, dreams that had to die so others could live.

The weight of evolving, the reckoning with choices, the slow burn of transformation. The paradox of success - how it can isolate, how it demands reinvention.

Successes and Victories interchange: they unfold, discourage, encourage, manipulate and triumph.

The building of my framework became surreal humor, poetic mastery, collaborative creation. Turning wounds into talismans, shadows into comic strips, longing into luminous rituals...a sanctuary for others - through story, laughter, and the invitation to co-create.

🌔

What’s Emerging when comes The Final Third

Not yet arrived, but already beckoning.

- A return, not to what was, but to what’s been forged in fire.

A life lived as art, as mystic wonder, as a mirror - Perhaps even a legacy - not in monuments, but in the worlds I hope that I have helped others imagine.

In this final act, the falling of the curtain, I believe this is where the Eve Tree and I, will finally collide. It has been guiding me towards itself...yet the harder I tried to embrace its promise of enlightenment - the farther it seemed to recede.

But I understand now. It is not my temporary refuge.

It was an epiphany...James Baldwin echoing in my head:

"The very time I thought I was lost, my dungeon shook and my chains fell off".

The Eve Tree is my final destination.

Now I can finally smile and be content. I now wait patiently...hoping to not arrive there for a long time to come.