All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. Toni Morrison
Water, what it is and my relationship with it, has been a focus of recent attention and reflection. Unlike the very real, on the ground, drought and ‘abnormally dry’ conditions we’re currently experiencing here the valley, water has been present in my dreams, my prayers (for blessed moisture to fall), in what I’ve read and watched, and in what emerges when my pen meets the blank page of my journal many mornings.
Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink. I think of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner feeling as if I’m swimming in questions that when an answer comes, yet another question arises. Curiosity. Wonder. A sense of change within and without. A thirst not quenched.
Why water? I wonder as I write. Water covers more than 70 percent of Mother Earth’s surface, just as our bodies are 60-70 percent (or more according to some) water. We mirror each other. We ARE each other. There’s no ‘me’ over here and ‘it’ over there. How can I more deeply kindle this truth in me? What will help us remember?
A couple days ago, I read Morrison’s words above twice within a couple hours. Each time quoted by different writers in contexts that were both different and the same. Neither author offered information on the origin which I learned was a talk given at the New York Public Library in 1986 [As I side note, I observe that I’m encountering a number of very resonant pieces from the 80’s … hmmm…] in which Morrison says,
You know, they straightened out the Mississippi River in places, to make room for hourse and livable acreage. Occasionally the river floods these places. "Floods" is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering. Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. Writers are like that: remembering where we were, that valley we ran through, what the banks were like, the light that was there and the route back to our original place. It is emotional memory--what the nerves and the skin remember as well as how it appeared. And a rush of imagination is our "flooding”. Toni Morrison
Why water? How do the words we create to describe what water may do hold us in the illusion that we are separate? What am I remembering as I walk my path of exploration? What are we remembering?
Could it be that water is guiding us to remember who we are? To step into our memory not just that ‘water is Life’, but the unity of all Life? To know that we are water and water is us?
I think of my second encounter with Morrison’s words, Natalie Diaz narrative poem, The First Body Is The Water:
We carry the river, its body of water, in our body. I do not mean to invoke the Droste effect—this is not a picture of a river within a picture of a river.
I mean river as a verb. A happening. It is moving within me right now.
This is not juxtaposition. Body and water are not two unlike things—they are more than close together or side by side. They are same—body, being, energy, prayer, current, motion, medicine.
The body is beyond six senses. Is sensual. An ecstatic state of energy, always on the verge of praying, or entering any river of movement.
Energy is a moving river moving my moving body. …
Ending with Morrison’s words and:
Back to the body of earth, of flesh, back to the mouth, the throat, back to the womb, back to the heart, to its blood, back to our grief, back back back.
Will we remember from where we’ve come? The water.
And once remembered, will we return to that first water, and in doing so return to ourselves, to each other?
Do you think the water will forget what we have done, what we continue to do?
What is water inviting us to remember? How will we answer Her call?
[Natalie Diaz is a Mojave / Akimel O’odham poet, language activist, educator, and former professional basketball player.]
