Black-Necked Stilt
She tried to explain the pieces of her childhood—the pieces she remembered now.
After she was diagnosed — her entire adulthood felt like one big cancer. That’s what she said to her therapist. It felt like every relationship, every job, every grocery store excursion was in place to help me die.
There was a time when she ran barefoot in a boatyard scanning for rusty nails along hot pavement. A time when air smelled like salt water, clams and saw dust. A time when the counting of nature was loud and meditative. When they arrived and the car window slid down—pieces of her slid up and out. The sound of water slapping wood, wind whooshing past belled buoys— her eyelids lifted, her nostrils broadened. She was being opened wider than children were supposed to open.
A time when old wooden boats were scattered across the rocky edges of neverending harbors. A time when hidden coves were a destination—no one in the world could find you. A time when seaweed dangled like lost umbilical cords and the sun left squiggly trails of white dust across the tundra of skin. She’d lick her shoulders and smile at the tangy brackishness of it. When they got back to the docks after the first swim—she ran differently, there was a wildness to it. Carelessly stubbing her toes in the ridges of pressure treated pine, memorizing the names of boats as she went. The Real Thing, Sweet Serenity, Sea Scribe. She repeated them over and over until they lost their recognition and became beats for her to move to—boom boom blop, bam blao pop. Boom boom blop, blam blao pop.
A time when she counted large bubbles of that cordovan looking seaweed waiting for the eels to gather under the old rope bridge—belly down against hot slabs, hinges shaking with the rising tides as people stepped over her child, not knowing the depth that lay beneath. A time when she went up and down every floating dock counting the jellyfish like a sacristan of water. Herding the majestical movers so they could all meet where the dock ended and invent worlds together.
A child’s church involves all the creatures—boundless worlds where little people walk on water and jellyfish talk in twang. Eventually she’d learn to row the rubber dingy and float between the boats speaking in whispers, measuring the rising intonations of her own muzzled sounds. The way a whisper resonates inside a mind might be confusing to a child—whispers, said to be quiet, sound eerily loud on the inside. How is a child supposed to calibrate it?
Back then her insides were unscathed and moist like a hidden acre amidst millions of other acres eventually unraveling into a country of natural formations and unexplored oceans. She’d float until she got so far it seemed impossible to get back. She’d look to see the distance required for land to be out of sight. A place where the wind had nothing to slap against. A place where all the energy contained in those invisible forces would circle around her until there was nothing left of self. What would it sound like when there were no objects left to collide with? Would she hear the jellyfish then? What larger entities lay that far from the docks—away from the clacks of feet and the creeks of wooden boards?
A time when nature was deafening and alive like the eels that collected below. A time when whispers contained the force of breath and silence was all the way at the bottom.
Maybe it’s the invisibility of these thoughts that have created a duality for me.
What kind of duality?
The kind that means I live in the physical and in the cerebral and both hold equal importance.
I’m sure there are a lot of people who feel that way.
I’m sure there are.
When did you start realizing this.
I think I always knew it but when I got diagnosed with cancer I started to feel dead in the physical world and so I began to realize how important the cerebral one was.
What do you mean by the cerebral?
I’m not sure a woman’s mind is known the way it could be known.
So, is the cerebral connected to your womanhood?
No. Cerebral is just a word people use. The imagination, although the most important aspect of human existence, has become cliche. It either has childlike connotations or it's used to market and sell. So, I just used cerebral instead.
Transmissions 2020
Birds-Eye-View Spotlight Artist
If you want more from The Birds — Check out Kala and the Lost Tribe— Arianna "Kala" Brame is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer, poet and MC based in Brooklyn, NY. Trained in classical and jazz piano at Westminster Conservatory and Sarah Lawrence College, Kala is also a student of percussion, West African and Afro Latin drumming. Kala and The Lost Tribe, has performed on stages in the NYC metropolitan area at venues including Baby's Alright, The Silent Barn, Don Pedro's, The Bowery Electric, National Sawdust and had the esteemed honor of playing Blue Note's Late Night Groove Series.
The Lost Tribe is the host of ancestors and spirit allies that walk with and guide us –artistically and practically- in day-to-day life. The Lost Tribe is an acknowledgement, invocation, and celebration of ancestral presence and support. In numerous cosmologies from around the world, it is believed that these pantheons of deities are our ancestors, once living members of our communities. With this awareness, we – living ancestors of future generations- are also members of The Lost Tribe. May we remember the shoulders we stand on, the responsibility we have as individuals in a community, and the cycle we will fulfill in the future when it is our turn and privilege to give back to those who have inherited our legacy.
