Take Me to the Water

By Amari Xolá Rasin

 

Think about the consciousness and memory of water and how it mirrors  our body and attachment to memory

The waters know where to follow, where to belong and where to group atoms to each other. They know the deep oceans where man has not explored. They know the secrets to the world. They’ve seen Black bodies floating called home by Yemaya. They’ve seen different futures. Futures unkind and futures advanced and embracing. They’ll be at the corner of the earth sitting across each other at a table playing spades in a room carved out of red clay with a ceiling fan whisking around a caressing breeze on your skin.

You walk through the grass and tropical leaves toward the pathway into the house. The outside of the house is pinkish red with well cut grass and a very short white designed border that protected the gardens more than the house from the rest of the world. They must have felt very vulnerable and anxious. I take a peak from the front door, which surprisingly is just a thin pink, yellow, orange curtain. I peak my head in and hide my body from being seen. I shy away and gesture that I’d like to come in. I pretend to sound a little more confident and ask, “may I come in?” I extend my hand to shake theirs.

I see my grandmother seated in the chair facing the door, her legs crossed on top of the table with a cigar in her mouth assessing the hand she’s been dealt. She purses her lips to point at a seat across the table, motioning me to come in and sit. I look at the two older bald people to our left and our right. They look like twins or a mirror of each other. They are able to communicate images of themselves talking in my mind with out ever having to have a conversation out loud. She says,

“We have different rules here. They couldn’t shake your hand because the dead are not allowed to touch the living. that’s why I didn’t embrace you when you walked in.”

I feel even more uncomfortable as I try to sit up straight in the straw chair, hands in my lap. The two identical twins parallel to us mirror my body language.

“Be careful if you decide to play this game. Whenever you are in the ether world you are assigned a mirror and whatever you have in your soul, whatever fear, anger, anxiety will be mirrored back to you. I’ve had to do a lot of work before I could get to a place where they didn’t bother me. You have a gift Amari. You are special. You have many mirrors reminding you who you are. This means you have to constantly be checking in with yourself seeing that you are being kind and creative and loving so you don’t inflict that pain on yourself.”

My body relaxes in my seat and I slouch and sink deeper while the seat morphs into a comfortable leather chair. The twins, beautiful, dark, Black, bald, androgynous, and dressed in white, disappear into bursts of white smoke leaving two straw chairs replacing the metal.

“Amari, you can’t project your fear and insecurities onto these mirrors. It’ll leave you playing tricks on yourself and not knowing why. These beings are mirrors to your highest and lowest self.”

After, they turn into butterflies and fly out the window. The room spins and we are in a corn field. Then we are swimming in water. The table remains. . .always.

The deeper I fall into the water, the more I see the mirrors walking above us, on top of the water. Both wearing black cloaks and a mirrored face. They both take my hand, pull me up and set the table again. This time for dinner with a burgundy table cloth and white knit decorative patterns at each placement. The table morphs into a circle. My grandmother says,

“Good, you’re getting better. Believe in yourself. You are the mirror of this generation. African and Indigenous people who are Trans in all universes are mirrors to the worlds’ souls. They are the measure of empathy, magic, culture, and art that wisdom is judged against. They set the standard.

“Why were they created?” I ask.

I find us in the middle of the Arctic Ocean with the sun setting. I start to feel like I’m running out of time. She hears my thoughts and tells me I am safe. She shows me that time doesn’t exist, and explains how we can bend space toward us like dialing back a radio frequency. That’s why we are able to meet right now even though we are no longer in the same realm.

This incarnation of being alive is a difficult one. Our mission is to find our birth mother; she is searching for us, she scattered us across the earth. There is no place in this world or others where Black people aren’t there in all variations and shades. We all have to imagine the future that we want to create. Our children will be searching for us one day too. The waters run deep. They also have their own consciousness and memory.

Listen to the water and let it guide you. Thank the trees for what they provide in the community as well. Thank the universe that everything is working out for your good. Know that each generation is looking for source. To be reconnected. Tune in. We are preparing for each other to be reunited again. Love will help us remember and reconnect, imagining love, healing and joy. These are our birthrights.

 

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Amari Xolá Rasin is a 22-year-old Genderfluid Queer Afrofuturian visionary of Haitian and Syrian descent. Among other things, they are also a philosopher, storyteller, photographer, curator, and medicine maker for Black Bois. Their life focus is on creating safer spaces for Black TGNC youth to share and expand our ideas about survival, resistance, and self-love. Amari is an aspiring art conservationist and African Art history lawyer and wishes to build an organization in the future that will help African and Indigenous countries legally reclaim their artwork from their colonizers.