Jalisco
I don’t have my usual stories for you because I don’t have language. My conversations here are bodily, or sensory. I smile or nod or shrug or wave, or turn my shoulder and look down. I touch and feel and brush against, sometimes dive or lean into. I am learning to be quiet for a change. I am learning not to describe my experience to myself even as I have it. It’s a habit see, I do this because I want to tell you all about it. I do this thinking my words will help me remember what my eyes see or how the different textures of ground turn and work my hips.
But now at this age I have finally learned what you already know: That the eyes remember, the feet do, the lips. Like the way the skin on my forearm remembers the hand that steadied me on the last step and recalls the man – younger of course – concerned I might need counter-balance since the lowest bus tread is still high, and the stones below it are rounded.
My eyes remember vultures circling in the distance like cinders in reverse, the sharp green hill their bonfire, birds slowly drifting down. The eyes’ memory pumps through my neck into my heart which for a moment relives its grief at the thought of something dying. The heart contracts and sends a torrent to my head which considers death for a moment and winces - this before sending to my inner ear the memory of being under water: Blue-green water which, once emerged from, faces open sea to the north and a little arc of sand to the south, sand that is not dirty but rather a mix of black and tan that might make it appear so. And my calves remember: Kicking and resistance. And my soles remember: The coolness and density, then heat and yielding, of the sand.
The small of my back remembers turning toward the north where the shore is now and the waves break. My chin remembers turning over my shoulder and my shoulder remembers this too, because right then it lifted up my arm and waved good-bye to the sea. And my arm remembers: The slight breeze of locomotion passing over it, then heat pressing into it because the legs are working so hard to carry me up the hill; heat the arm feels beneath the tingling memory of the hand that squeezed it upon arriving here; the hand that sought to keep it safe, and did.
But now at this age I have finally learned what you already know: That the eyes remember, the feet do, the lips. Like the way the skin on my forearm remembers the hand that steadied me on the last step and recalls the man – younger of course – concerned I might need counter-balance since the lowest bus tread is still high, and the stones below it are rounded.
My eyes remember vultures circling in the distance like cinders in reverse, the sharp green hill their bonfire, birds slowly drifting down. The eyes’ memory pumps through my neck into my heart which for a moment relives its grief at the thought of something dying. The heart contracts and sends a torrent to my head which considers death for a moment and winces - this before sending to my inner ear the memory of being under water: Blue-green water which, once emerged from, faces open sea to the north and a little arc of sand to the south, sand that is not dirty but rather a mix of black and tan that might make it appear so. And my calves remember: Kicking and resistance. And my soles remember: The coolness and density, then heat and yielding, of the sand.
The small of my back remembers turning toward the north where the shore is now and the waves break. My chin remembers turning over my shoulder and my shoulder remembers this too, because right then it lifted up my arm and waved good-bye to the sea. And my arm remembers: The slight breeze of locomotion passing over it, then heat pressing into it because the legs are working so hard to carry me up the hill; heat the arm feels beneath the tingling memory of the hand that squeezed it upon arriving here; the hand that sought to keep it safe, and did.
