Rainforests of Rememory

Watching the Water of our Want Break the Stone of Empire

Detail of Sam Gilliam, Double Merge (1968). Image: Ben Davis. Image Description: The canvas is pinned to the wall creating a sky of blue, pink, red and purple paint in contrast to a white wall and hardwood floors.

The minutes trickle. Your full-time job is staring at your longing now, you hold your gaze and watch a new leaf appear in real time. What shall we call the space in between answered prayers and unmet desire? It feels sacred so why am I rushing it? There is surrender, there is holding, there is intimacy, there is the gift of slowness.  Edging to the edges of my longing, running my fingers through its stems, gripping its fruit the shape of blessings in the meantime. I know it’s love language is playlists, I’ve watched it bend towards the light of wild ambience. This love affair with my longing is my longest relationship yet. I ask, “how much longer?” as their vines wrap around the stalk of my waist, they whisper “where are you rushing off to?” in that familiar tenor, the sound of geological time.

We’re slow dancing amidst the dew of desire, the seconds can be massaged down from the air, it’s water collected in the palm of my hands. The choreography unfolds over centuries and I remember this rainforest of rememory has everything I need. In this space between answered prayers and unmet desire, spellcasting becomes an atmospheric science. Precipitation is any product of the condensation of atmospheric water vapor that falls from clouds due to gravitational pull. Here our longing creates the clouds and waters our memory, nurturing our action. In this rainforest, the wanting produces water which produces possibility. Suddenly we can move through the storm of rage, suddenly we can dance in the mud of grief, suddenly we can drink from the sky as our heart breaks. 

As we watched Usher wrap around the waist of Alicia Keys for a stadium of 61,629, at least 67 Palestinians were killed in Israeli air and sea attacks on Rafah early on Monday, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza¹. Israel’s attacks on Gaza have killed at least 28,340 Palestinians and wounded 67,984 others since October 7th. As I sat on the couch with my family, I watched two different choreographies of the same empire play out, one on the football field with strobe lights, another with the lights of bombardment in Rafah — holding some 1.3 million civilians, one of the most densely populated places on earth, teeming with children and families. 

There’s longing on the individual scale and there’s longing on the collective scale. How does our erotic desire for liberation help us hold our gaze and our power? How might edging towards the end of empire help us sustain? In this rainforest of rememory indigenous liberation is the sky, the soil, the trees and everything in between. 

How do we make it real?

How do we make it stop?

Where are we rushing off to?

Nowhere. We stay here, right here. Making protest posters. Never looking away. Ushering in new worlds with our pens. Never looking away. Making playlists for our freedom dreams. Never looking away. Holding it’s waist and dancing until the very end, praying for our water to pierce stone. 

1. Published on Al Jazeera: “Israel’s war on Gaza live: Rafah bombarded as Israel plans ground assault” by Lyndal Rowlands, Alastair McCready, Umut Uras, Nils Adler and Tamila Varshalomidze on February 12, 2024