North Carolina Miscellany
The water let him hold me; the water kept still. terrified me, even back when I loved him. He’d hold me down for a little too long until I started punching at his arm to let me up. The water let him hold me; the water kept still. The first few times I screamed at him after, but I learned quickly this would make the rest of my day unlivable. I told myself I didn’t really like to be underwater anyways, which put me in his line of sight for that terrifying game, and started instead to float on top of the waves stretched out like a sea star. I always had my eyes on him. Sometimes I thought too hard about how it felt to be surrounded by a vast sea contaminated with his cruelty, and I would have to swim over to the rocks to throw up. I told him the sun made me nauseous. In the island of Chiloé, off the Southern coast of Chile, where there is very little sun, the rin is danced by two couples forming a square. Chiloé is cut off from the mainland by a violently cold ocean, sparsely populated only by communities of fishermen and their families. The culture of the island is rich and insular and ancient. The mythology is fervently believed and carefully guarded in the indigenous enclaves that have attempted to preserve their memory in the face of encroaching cultural extinction. Most of the music and dance of the rin has died out, but I was raised listening to the remaining compositions, many written by the mid-century folk singer Violeta Parra. Rin del Angelito was one of the last she ever wrote. It was released in 1966, one year before she ended her own life. It was written to be played at the funerals of babies and toddlers, who died so young and so pure, it was believed, that they became angels upon the moment of their deaths. Parra sings that the soul of the baby, restless with youth, seeks life in all its places – it becomes a fish, a bird on the heights, a rose blooming in the spring. My parents played it for me in the car when I was young and told me gravely there was nothing worse than losing a child. The butterflies will flutter quietly around his crib, Parra sang. The rain will wash his face in the morning.
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There’s a moment where my arms are interlocked with Yasmine’s and Grant and Anna are beside us and we’re walking up to the edge of the cliff and suddenly everyone cries out. Below us is a cove deep in cliffs hundreds of feet high and rushing with fields of blue-green foam. We collapse. It feels like maybe there’s never been anything more beautiful, more dangerous, more visceral than this. And maybe it’s the exhaustion and maybe it’s the pouring rain, but I know now that I’m somewhere on the edge, some kind of gateway. Yasmine and I clutch each other on the ground, crying out loud, laughing hard. Mud on my jeans, mud on my face. I think if I just threw a stone fast enough I could hit the next world. I don’t know how to hold it all in my body, the enormity of this moment and my terror and my overwhelming love. Fear so great it becomes joy.
In the Distance (oil on canvas, 40x30) by Doris Barahona