The After Party: Dispatch from Fantasy Island
Editor’s note: As promised, once a month I will be handing over the keys to this newsletter. These special editions, which I am calling The After Party, will be available to everyone.
This week, your host is Tracy Assing.
(Paid subscribers will get another email from me this week. Think of it as having dessert first.)
Dispatch from Fantasy Island
Forecast: 14 days of rain
Climate: Changed
The rain can be a jackhammer.
Endlessly wearing down the hard things,
Tearing at the soft wounds,
Spreading the cracks.
The full moon comes in like a flood.
Overwhelmed and transfixed as she swells and subsides in her own time, I watch.
My eyes shine.
My hands cannot contain the deluge.
My heart leaps at the lightning.
The river banks melt under her will to widen.
Naked in the magic light I still yearn, learning how.
Boundaries stretch, forms appear fluid in her wake.
I find that I can still see. Perhaps even more clearly.
Still,
sometimes all you can do is rest under her watchful gaze. Close your eyes and pull the covers tighter.
until the roar becomes a gentle pitter patter and gives way to dreaming.
until your chest settles from the heaving.
until your hands settle from the weaving.
Rest restores.
Awash. Sometimes no traces can be found of the night’s downpour.
The rain drops upcycle back to the sky and ocean.
Get kissed by the waves that lap the shore, subsumed into the sea.
Press yourself against the trees, listen as the breeze rustles the leaves.
Dig in the dirt,
return to earth.
WHO
If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive. - Audre Lorde
Mad, bad and dangerous to know.
In Trinidad and Tobago, our indigenous history and story of survival has not been documented consistently or comprehensively. For decades school textbooks referred to “war-like Caribs” and “farming Arawaks”.
At school they told me we were dead.
How do you know you are indigenous?
When people asked: did your ancestors eat people? I would proudly show off my pointy incisors.
My father returned from the forest with flowers. We ate them on the front step. I still love the taste of flowers.
Flowers tended for this moment. Even now, the day reminds me of their sweetness and the softness of pink and red petals at my fingertips. This set a whole thing in motion inside of me.
Oh, I was savage.
Learned their language.
I could shapeshift.
~~~~~~
WHAT
I survey my collection of things: emerald forest leaves, small rocks transparent as ice, the jewel colored wings of a dragonfly, hundreds of magical red beads, the feathers of mystical birds and try to imagine which would best survive the post.
I
I island.
My land.
My island.
Island in the sun.
The rock.
Goes around comes around.
Terra nullus postcards peddle paradise with snapshots of the landscape.
I could send a cure but the plant will not survive the journey.
What will make the crossing?
~~~~~~
WHERE
Where, the creole settler state has a double approach to indigenous groups: a cultural embrace alongside policies that maintain their economic and political marginalization.
Where, I had to resist. Be present.
Where, in the yard was a large pommerac tree, a governor plum tree and a mango Julie tree. A lime tree and a short hibiscus hedge. Zaboca, soursop, mango John, a coconut tree, a breadfruit tree and a plumrose with a tyre swing. There were herbs growing all around. Herbs for food. Herbs for healing. Herbs for sight. Some of these only tell their secrets to the wind now because we forgot their language.
Where, we remember how to say exactly how we feel, without words.
Where, we can be. Be. Be.
~~~~~~~
WHEN
~~~~~~~~
WHY
All the reasons.
Why?
We were closer to One World without borders.
Can you hear me now that I have used your words?
Now that we have grown past the distractions, I won’t ask you to defend your actions.
My eyes wizened beyond the horizon.
Traveller, the wheels are still turning.
I am still learning.