STORIES

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

When Love Wraps Itself Around Desire: An Excerpt

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I knew from the moment my tiny body freed itself from my mother’s home I would make this journey. The sun hit the silver bank near the river’s edge where the imagination lives. It shot warm heat through water as our many numbers nudged, bumped and scrambled for a place in the crook of the river bank where momma had built our mud home. It was shallow, crowded and slightly noisy. We barely had time to recognize each other, identify the family markings separating us from other minnows, before we all headed out to sea.

From this place of the imagination is born our images of the journey ahead. The enthusiasm for the open sea swells inside, pricking at the feeling of trepidation, drowning it with the prospect of excitement. It happens a moment at a time. Image after image of the river is shown to us, the excitement inside is swallowed. The downstream swim is illuminated and met with eager anticipation. As the old light of previous ancestral swims shines on the images inside, the courage to try is coded into the very blood of my body. The burbling sound of so many of us brings up a mix of melancholy and wonderment. The awesomeness of all of us having come from the same couple, the very knowing that both of them killed themselves for this moment, this us is humbling. They did so knowing they would never see us all together like this, scrambling for the sea, jiggling inside, enthusiasm for the journey battling the twinges of fear of the open sea. They died knowing most of us would not make it. They left behind this amazing steel thread of willingness to try.

“...the journey continues to be a mystery.”

I know from the moment we begin, most of us won’t return. I look at each one of us. I have to. It goes against all my logical smarts to look at as many of my siblings as I can, commit them to memory, but the looking is not about logic. It is the only time I will see us all together like this. They look like me, scared, excited, knowing the end as well as the beginning, and committed, committed to the greatest swim, this journey against the very direction of the sea, the river and the rain. To make this journey we must buck the roil of the tide, its storm swells pushing up our will, fan our own fire inside and strengthen our musculature. The very message of the cold sea against hot muscle births awesome desire, desire for victory, desire for challenge, desire for procreation so big we will take on the sea. Minnows are the only sea children who are capable and committed enough to take on natural power.

“I knew I would make the connection with her.” Photo: PSF

We all know what will inspire us to do so too. Passion. Romance, my Meer’ah.  Sleek, spirited, elegant Meer’ah. I had no idea when I would make the connection with her, but I knew I would. In the moments before I left, my imagination called her up, dreamt her, imaged up her being that I might recognize her even through the dark layers of the sea.

I know this river, every eddy, every safe spot, rest area, fall, rapid, and cold spot. I know where the sun always rests its warming light. I know where river himself captures log and debris in dangerous tangled webs of deadwood about to explode.  I know where the water lies too still, becomes stagnant, its bottom weighted with things who were not meant to live there. Things you name cadmium, mercury, aluminium, tailings, waste, garbage, toxic chemicals. We have no name for them, we just know to avoid those places at all costs: filtering water such as that through our gills weakens the body. I know I require a strong body. 

Minnows are born knowing they are incredibly capable. We are capable of living outside of motherhood. No parenting marks our beginning.  From birth I challenged this river, then I headed for the open sea to take it on. We are born with our eyes open, our minds sharp, our consciousness complete, our journey set. By the time the journey downstream is complete, the map to our sector of the ocean is already clear.

There is no quarrelling with ourselves about direction, destiny or duty. We find our freedom within the context we were handed with grace and dignity. It is how we are siem.

*"When Love Wraps Itself Around Desire” was originally published by One Reel Press and University of Washington Press. We use this excerpt with permission of the author.