Publication: Oceania
Publication Date: 01-JUL-06
Delivery: Immediate Online Access
Author: Mimica, Jadran
Article Excerpt
GAMBLING AND THE LIFE-DEATH FLOW
In the first instalment I examined Tilm's (woman) and QANG's (man) un/conscious dynamics of their 'internal object-relations', specifically their contra-sexual self-circuity. (1) During his first initiation (nose-piercing) QANG's phallic generativity became restructured and determined as the contra-sexual relation to his 'internal' feminine object constituted within his pre-Oedipal maternal matrix (Mimica, 2006:44-52). As we shall presently see, his feminine self-circuity, the primary narcissistic core of his egoity, has a critical significance in his pursuit of gambling (laki). This recently introduced practice is a vital sector of the sphere of male generative activity in general. Through the exploration of the vicissitudes of QANG's soul to maintain his grip on this elusive domain I will illuminate both its cosmo-ontological constitution within the bounds of the Yagwoia life-world and the specificities of the psycho-dynamics of QANG's 'inner' feminine object relatedness.
Yagwoia men are avid cards and dice players. (2) Outwardly the Yagwoia pursuit of these two kinds of chance games has a striking compulsive obsessional veneer. I am always impressed at the sight of a group of some 20-odd men and children forming a tight double circle, the outer standing up, the inner squatted, all immobile in the pouring rain, eyes glued to the narrow space where the cards or dice and money are moving around, changing hands and fortune. The severity of the elements won't make them budge unless there is a sense that the succession of rounds has either exhausted itself or is indecisive enough as to which way the winning 'number' will go so that the game can be interrupted without any sense of rupture within the flow. But if a round is in the train of an already well set vector of fortune so that somebody is definitely on the winning trajectory, or the persistent loser is hoping that the next round is likely to be his break, to interrupt the flow just because of such an external contingency as a downpour is like meddling with a finely tuned gravitational field which must be preserved no matter what. Any suggestion of getting away from the rain is angrily shouted down and the game is relentlessly continued even if most of the encircling onlookers may be moved to run for cover when the sheets of rain start literally pelting on them. If anything, the players will place over their heads a bark-cape, towels, or a piece of plastic but primarily to protect the space where the cards and money are doing their run; as for their bodies they are literally abstracted out of the situation. The game and its flow are like a gravitational pull of the force emanating from the egoities of the players themselves.
Indeed, the force dynamics of these games depends on the egoic experiences and investments that all Yagwoia players continuously articulate through their self-projections and, most importantly, dreams. Playing 'laki', as gambling is called in Tok Pisin, is outwardly a cultural form within the Yagwoia life-world of the most recent external derivation. (3) It was introduced by the returned indentured labourers from coastal plantations. Traditionally there were no 'games of luck' but, by the same token, what is termed 'luck' cannot be taken for granted. It can be meaningfully approached solely in terms of the intra-cultural understanding of how the human egoic self understands and interacts with the experiential horizons of its existential umwelt. From this perspective, the Yagwoia games of laki pertain to the same egoic habitus of traditional pursuits such as sexuality, hunting, warfare, and acquisition of wealth. All subsist upon the global flow of life-and- death within the world-body (the libido-mortido flux) which as such simultaneously generates and sustains human egoic selves and their corporeality. In the Yagwoia life-world laki is not a blind chance within a field of human actions such as a game of cards or dice but an indeterminate potential of such activities to work in favour of an ego in so far as his soul can be exposed to the right kind of vision pertaining to the activity of gambling. In this regard gambling as a human action in the world is no different from any other actions; hunting, war, wanting to have sex, planting a new garden, making salt or bark-capes, etc. Not all Yagwoia human actions depend on the use of such wish-directing and commanding activities as spell incantations which are accompanied by the handling of various substances (ordinarily known in the anthropological universe of meaning as 'magical' practices) but many of them do. All of them are subject to presentiment as to how they may turn out if one would carry them through. This is what dreams articulate all the time. In fact there is no aspect of egoic existence which does not invoke some kind of presentiment, and dreams, because they are not immediately transparent, may easily cast the ego into a self-perplexing mode which solicits a momentary sense of dislodgment from the horizon of familiar and taken for granted to the horizon of unfamiliarity with one's own experience. Accordingly the Yagwoia have a fully fledged knowledge of typified dream images, scenarios, and actions which are used for making sense out of dream showings. Many of these demand decisive action precisely because, no matter how illusory a dream may be, as an experience it is always real and involves the dreamer's and other people's souls, and virtually always spirits.
In this regard the games of laki are fully integrated into the oneiric knowledge of Yagwoia self and its actions. Playing laki is to act in the mode of Yagwoia interactions with the world, and fundamentally in terms of their desires and cravings. Accordingly, laki itself is generated by the psychosexual matrix of their selves within the Yagwoia ontological parameters of existence. There is a definite yet wide enough range of typical dream imagery and situations that show the dreamer whether he will attract the card/dice number and money to himself and therefore can be self-assured that he'll win if he plays. It is of singular importance to play as soon as possible after such a dream-showing or else this momentary empowerment of the soul will pass him by. It is the same with hunting, fighting, adulterous sexual exploits, or some other undertakings.
For instance in hunting, the likelihood of finding a wild fowl's nest with eggs, and more so a cassowary's nest and eggs, is less than of encountering a marsupial and catching it. This is why the Yagwoia are definite that unless a man has dreamt about finding a wild fowl's or cassowary's nest there is no way that he will be able to do that on his own. Therefore when one has had such a dream he should waste no time; first thing in the morning, at the crack of dawn, he must shoot off into the forest because in the dream his soul has shown him the outcome of the undertaking. In the dream the conjunction between the person's soul and a particular thing has already occurred. Therefore one mustn't hesitate; to act in the wakeful world is to bring this showing into a complete actualisation. Unlike dream-showings which can lead to the permanent empowerment of the soul, such as in the development of shamanistic powers, hunting and other similar showings are impermanent. Nevertheless one can have a soul which has a well primed disposition for one or several recurrent showings of certain thematic visions which means that such a person has a soul which will seldom go amiss. (4) For instance one can be renowned for the frequency of finding wild fowl and/or cassowary eggs; he does so precisely because he has regular dreams pertaining to this activity. Accordingly, his soul has the power. But he can lose it; he stops dreaming altogether or only rarely gets to have the typical dream.
Likewise with laki which, in terms of its oneiro-poesis, is articulated through virtually the same dream scenarios that traditionally pertain to sexuality, hunting, warfare, and the acquisition of wealth. To be sure, the theme of sexuality is immanent in all other activities. This also allows for multiple possibilities of interpretation conditioned by contexts. However, there are some dream motifs and scenarios which are thematically fairly restricted. A man may have one portentous dream pertaining to gambling or recurrent dreams on this thematic complex and accordingly will be enticed to play wherever he has it. But he may play regardless of such motivation hoping that, all the same, sooner or later he'll attract the cards/dice numbers and, by the same token, experience if only fleetingly his power over other men. He has managed to extract their wealth (money) from them which is nothing less then the loss of a certain amount of their own embodied flow. Given this fully developed oneiro-poetic and libidinal-aggressive dimension of playing laki (5) the only aspect that hasn't been yet articulated is the use of spells. The imaginal-noetic conditions for it are fully ripe and there are individuals who secretly use powerful relics when they play. For instance one man kept a couple of his wife's deceased father's (actually her FB's) teeth. He extracted them from his skull following the decomposition of the body and kept it attached to his necklace. He would secretly call the deceased's name (i.e., calling his spirit) to help him win. He would never do this overtly fearing that other players would get cross with him for calling on such invisible assistance. The man averred that this particular power object had helped him win many times.
THE HIGHS AND LOWS OF QANG'S SOUL'S LAKI-POWER
The Yagwoia laki, like all other transmissions of bodily substances qua things and wealth, is also a means for the global excorporative and incorporative circulation of countless currents of the ceaselessly totalising life-and-death flow that circulates simultaneously in so many human corpuscles and in their absolute embodiment, the macro-cosmic world-body. As so many of his fellow Yagwoia QANG is also an avid cards and dice player. As mentioned in the first part of this study (Mimica, 2006:38), he won on laki the money for his third and favourite wife while working as a government interpreter in Mrw. And their conjoined flow produced him no less than five living daughters, which in turn brought in more 'flooding water' (aalye wa:le), a metaphoric expression for bride-price shells/money, which in turn yielded their respective children. Now there was a period in QANG's life, mainly during the seventies and into the eighties, when he was winning money on cards/dice so frequently that this became his characteristic attribute, a man who knows to win money on cards. This was really due to his soul-power which as such was sustained through a recurrent dream. There were other thematically related dreams, but the recurrent one (Dream 3) crucially determined his laki complex.
Dream 3.
I used to see in a dream a wild fowl's nest and eggs (cilpaye-mne). I used to see thus: in the forest I see wild fowl's nest, a mound of fallen leaves rubbish that the wild fowl heaped up, made its house (aane = nest). The mother (female wild fowl) was sitting on the top. And I went to the nest and the wild fowl mother would fly away. Flew away now, I threw off all the leaf-trash and uncover the eggs in the nest. There were many of them in the wild fowl's house (there is a sense of them being inexhaustible). I would then spread a towel or bark-cape or my shirt on the ground and proceed to put the eggs from the nest onto it (the impromptu carry-bag). I would pile up the eggs until I couldn't put any more. Then I would take the top (corner-sides) of the cape (or towel) with my teeth and lift them with my both hands from underneath and carry them away. They were truly heavy. And I thought (in the dream)--I am carrying real wild fowl's eggs. No! I got up (woke up) shaken up. I dreamt. This is what I dreamt, all the time.
After such a dream QANG would go to play cards and he would inevitably win. His way was to...
NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.
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