by Rita Wong
undercurrent
undercurrent
rita wong
with drawings by cindy mochizuki
2015
Copyright © Rita Wong, 2015
all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, www.accesscopyright.ca, [email protected].
Nightwood Editions
P.O. Box 1779, Gibsons, BC, V0N 1V0, Canada
www.nightwoodeditions.com
typesetting & cover design: Carleton Wilson
cover art: Marika Swan • interior drawings: Cindy Mochizuki
Nightwood Editions acknowledges financial support from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and from the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council and the Book Publisher’s Tax Credit.
This book has been produced on 100% post-consumer recycled, ancient-forest-free paper, processed chlorine-free and printed with vegetable-based dyes.
Printed and bound in Canada.
library and archives canada cataloguing in publication
Wong, Rita, 1968-, author
Undercurrent / Rita Wong ; with drawings by Cindy Mochizuki.
Poems.
“A blewointment book”.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-0-88971-308-6 (pbk.).--ISBN 978-0-88971-045-0 (pdf)
I. Title.
PS8595.O5975U54 2015 C811’.54 C2015-901130-2
C2015-901131-0
“We do not own the water. The water owns itself.”
– Lee Maracle
The water belongs to itself.
“Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. That water can flow, or it can crash. Be water my friend.”
– Bruce Lee
我
很
感
謝
這
裡
的
原
住
民
–黃錦兒
pacific flow
water has a syntax i am still learning
a middle voice pivots where it is porous
foraminifera punctuate ocean floors
salmon streams double as human & bear lifelines
an underlying platform marine reclaims its own
from trough to crest hypersea rolls through meme
tidal rhythm sings convoluta roscoffensis
silica circuits iodine invokes thyroid
saltiness grows over eons plankton provide half our oxygen
what we cannot see matters as kin
fever speeds us up churns soluble toxins, insoluble plastics
strikes gulls spikes trawls
choppy waves warn hazardous passages
abound from city sewage
mess amasses dissonant grammar
wail overfished bluefins tune
benthic beholds watches & weights
learning curves gurgles to the surface
borrowed waters: the sea around us, the sea within us
the great pacific garbage patch is not just a mass of floating plastic junk the size of ontario, jostling about with jellyfish and starving squids in the ocean, but a dead albatross mirrors us back to ourselves. it is a manmade network, toxic magic in the making, branching into your bathroom with its plastic shampoo bottles & toothbrushes, into local plastic factories, into the fast food restaurants that sing the convenient song & inconvenient truth of disposable forks & styrofoam containers, into the plastic beverage bottles belched out by nestle, coca-cola, pepsi, visible tip of the corporate iceberg. it is embedded in mutual funds & stock investments. it is soap dish & lawn chair, eyeglasses & twist ties, hospital food trays & squeezable honey bottles, lighters & lipstick tubes, all bobbing & decomposing in a great big salty home. it is formidable & humble, far away & intimate, outside & inside, all at once.
both the ferned & the furry, the herbaceous & the human, can call the ocean our ancestor. our blood plasma sings the composition of seawater. roughly half a billion years ago, ocean reshaped some of its currents into fungi, flora & fauna that left their marine homes & learned to exchange bodily fluids on land. spreading like succulents & stinging nettles, our salty-wet bodies refilled their fluids through an eating that is also always drinking. hypersea is a story of how we rearrange our oceanic selves on land. we are liquid matrix, streaming & recombining through ingesting one another, as a child swallows a juicy plum, as a beaver chews on tree, as a hare inhales a patch of moist, dewy clover. what do we return to the ocean that let us loose on land? we are animals moving extracted & excreted minerals into the ocean without plan or precaution, making dead zones though we are capable of life.
mongo mondo
midday at midway, sun glares plastic trashed, beached, busted
bottle caps, broken lighters, brittle shreds in feathered corpses
heralded by the hula hoop & the frisbee, this funky plastic age
spins out unplanned aftermath, ongoing agony
mostly unseen, brilliant in the midst of daylight
polestar shines on, guiding proper motion
tortoise, albatross, crab & dolphin pod
brace against onslaught: how
long will it take the clan to learn?
convenience not worth cancer’s
long soft leak into lungs, brains, bellies
distended, grotesque imitations of feeding
hidden hunger can’t be satisfied by junk tossed
after one use, to be carried by wind & waves
into random access memory through online photographs
into inhaled weather, ingesting hormone scrambling seafood
trapped in massive ghost nets, angry flails are human, yet won’t get us out
concerted cutting, strategic to the source, might avert our own disposal
the wonders of being several
belt a bivocal ditty to honour the micro & the macro
as symbiotic bacteria outnumber our juicy cells ten to one
surrounded & surrounding, we persevere
through this episode called industrialization
among microbiome evolved with skin & lips, maw & gullet
bacteria buddies swim throughout
adapting & absorbing
wiggling & digesting
sugar, protein, fat
the yummy stuff
but furbished with furans
they kick up a fuss
break rank, revoke immunity
broken lines get parsed back into a cycle where
the big eat the small but the small eventually eat the big
humble ends become modest beginnings
thank the great decomposers
quiet multitudes within
as unsettlers excavate like there’s no tomorrow
so much short-term gold, long-term arsenic
short-term bitumen, long-term cancer
short-term packaging, long-term polyethylene
for germs to reorganize
declaration of intent
let the colonial borders be seen for the pretensions that they are
i hereby honour what the flow of water teaches us
the beauty of enough, the path of peace to be savoured
before the extremes of drought and flood overwhelm the careless
water is a sacred bond, embedded in our plump, moist cells
in our breaths that transpire to return to the clouds that gave us life through rain
in the rivers & aquifers that we & our neighbours drink
in the oceans that our foremothers came from
a watershed teaches not only humbleness but climate fluency
the languages we need to interpret the sea’s rising voice
water connects us to salmon & cedar, whales & workers
its currents bearing the plastic from our fridges & closets
a gyre of karma recirculates, burgeoning body burden
i hereby invoke fluid wisdom to guide us through the toxic muck
i will apprentice myself to creeks & tributaries, groundwater & glaciers
listen for the salty pulse within, the blood that recognizes marine ancestry
in its chemical composition & intuitive pull
i will learn through immersion, flotation & transformation
as water expands & contracts, i will fit myself to its ever-changing dimensions
molecular & spectacular, water will return what we give it, be that
arrogance & poison, reverence & light, ambivalence & respect
let our societies be revived as watersheds
because i am part of the problem i can also become part of the solution
although i am part of the problem i can also become part of the solution
where i am part of the problem i need to be part of the solution
while i am part of the problem i can also be part of the solution
one part silt one part clear running water one part blood love sweat
not tar but tears, e inserts a listening, witnessing, quickening eye
broken but rebinding, token but reminding, vocal buck unwinding
the machine’s gears rust in rain, moss & lichen slowly creep life back
the rate of reclamation is humble while the rate of destruction blasts fast
because we are part of the problem we can also become part of the solution
Who are we? We are the beings who need clean water in order to live a life of dignity, joy and good relation. Maybe you are part of “us” without even knowing that you are. Maybe we are the ones who are too often taken for granted or ignored, the quiet witnesses to atrocities, greed, mean-spirited hierarchies, hostages of capitalism. Maybe we are remembering what it means to respect water, because doing so is to respect ourselves, our shared, fluid vulnerability, our funny contradictions, our stumbling, dancing, crying, laughing, eating, drinking, pissing, working, playing, burping, farting, messy selves. Maybe we are the thunderstorms that precipitate when too much has been repressed, the weeds that refuse to stop, the coyotes, the grandmothers, the yet unborn. Maybe we are flash floods, demoralized workers, the hospitalized, the angry entitled children who don’t even remember to thank the water that keeps them alive. Maybe we are system change as well as climate change. Dripping & spitting, we rise.
fresh ancient ground
“Since 1978, over 14 billion dollars
have been taken out of our traditional territory.
Yet my family still goes without running water.”
— Melina Laboucan Massimo, Lubicon Cree woman
“When you can’t trust the water, it’s terrifying”
— James Cameron visiting the tar sands
can the water trust us?
chasing temporary jobs that evaporate
like so much acid rain drifting into Saskatchewan
“overburden removal” leaves poisonous polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, pah
the pahs stink – swallow them and die a slow cancerous death
those who don’t respect the magic of ice
are doomed to melt it for their descendants
as miles of living medicines made by rivers over millennia
are unceremoniously eradicated, annihilated, wasted
everything leaking everywhere it wasn’t meant to go
rainbow in the sky or on slick oil
held captive by toxic water, undrinkable yet thinkable,
blistering fish inside out, thirsty children sickened
caribou killed by omnibus rampage, eliminating water
from legislation in the federal abdication of responsibility
what is the language of decay & how can we not afford to learn that dialect?
350, 398, 400, 450 as the outer count changes the inner one
we walk for healing the scar sands, in a living pact with the bears, the eagles,
the muzzled scientists, the beavers who’ve built dams you can see from outer space
step by step, we conduct ceremony for those who don’t know any better or don’t care, broken whole, waiting for our sisters & brothers to catch up with wind, sun & water
From 2010 to 2013, I committed to participate in the Healing Walk for the Tar Sands, as well as a fifth year helping to organize a solidarity healing walk in Montreal. I have no words big enough for the horror I feel when I see and smell the tar sands. Bearing witness to the devastation is one of the hardest things I have ever done. Alone, I would have curled into a fetal ball and sobbed for what has been lost and destroyed. Even now, when I think about the land up north, let myself feel the brutality that has been normalized through massive industry, my throat stops and my eyes fill with tears. In the company of the healing walkers, led by indomitable Cree and Dene elders and everyday people, determined Keepers of the Athabasca, mothers, fathers, aunties, uncles, concerned citizens, we reassert human responsibilities to land, water, life.
These responsibilities can be fostered or ignored by the cultures we are raised in, but the responsibilities and relationships remain regardless of how we are socialized. They are embedded in each breath we take, each sip of water we swallow, each bite of food provided by the land, no matter how much humans manipulate, redirect, reshape or try to control what the earth provides.
Whether or not we were taught these responsibilities by our families and education systems, we can still learn how to address them. We can remember that dignity and meaning comes from keeping the earth healthy for future generations for all living creatures, plants and animals, not just humans. We can look frankly at what is not going well—the destruction of natural habitat, the dangers posed by global warming, the inequities and violence in our own cultures—and do better. We are capable of it, if we care to try.
journey to the west 西遊記
canoe journeyers are
coast protecting itself
where ocean meets rock is home
when ocean meets oil is poison
one container crash turns
fresh sea urchin breakfast
to wretched carcinogen
if nothing ever spills, leaks or collides
(implausible & impossible)
the burn itself still bankrupts children’s lives
forecloses futures
earth monkey, girl spirit, one of millions
whose parents migrated to turtle island
on this journey to the west
modestly does what the coast calls us to do
to protect future monkeys
even a future for corporations
depends on guardians
protecting the coastal home
that we are part of
home in the big sense
ancient as basic stone
In spring 2014, canoeing in the gentle River of Golden Dreams near Whistler, BC, I fell in when we snagged on a branch and suddenly tipped over
. The shock of cold water awoke me into vigilance. Wearing a lifejacket did not eliminate the fear I felt as the river enveloped me completely, reminded me of its power.
Ironically, I cannot swim, though I have taken lessons over the years, and continue to try learning in an on-again, off-again way, as skin and health permit. Having addressed barriers to swimming in the city one by one – finding an ozone-purified pool instead of a chlorinated one, getting prescription goggles, practising kicks, etc. I have improved but still find myself woefully clumsy and tense in the water, as it conducts so much sound and stimulus, thicker than air. How can someone write a book with and for water, and not swim? Very humbly and respectfully, I would say. It’s not so much that I fear the water, as I fear my own inability to manoeuvre in it, based in part on my reluctance to relax, the resistance to submit to the water’s own dynamics for more than a few breaths. This is partly what I mean when I say that I am still learning water’s syntax. I mean that in a much larger way too, though. One water body flows together with other water bodies, a whole greater than its parts: “What you cannot do alone, you will do together.”
Thanks to the river’s prompting, I will return to the swim lessons when the time and conditions are right. In the meantime, even for those of us who don’t swim, water rules! Our cities and lifestyles are built upon it, whether we know it or not. Try going a day, or three, without water. Water gives us life. What do we give back to water?
In summer 2014, I was honoured to read one of Chief Dan George’s poems at the Salish Seas Festival, hosted by the Tsleil-Waututh Sacred Trust. In “Words to a Grandchild,” he writes, “Each day brings an hour of magic. Listen to it!”
That day, I felt the hour of magic while joining the canoe ceremony held by the Tsleil-Waututh in Burrard Inlet. As poets, we were invited along, and I was excited to participate. I was also terrified because I can’t swim. What if I tipped the canoe by accident? What if I didn’t pull my weight? As I entered the canoe, I said my name out loud in Cantonese and English, then put my fears aside and focused on paddling, trying to keep time with the dozen or so paddlers on the large ceremonial canoe. The fear was still there, lodged in my body, but I did not give it strength. Instead I paddled hard with my right side, prayed for the water and tried to follow instructions as best I could. The ceremony was mind-blowing, body-tiring, heart-opening and spirit-lifting.