coming of age as a mermaid: death, grief, zombies, why i became a pirate, & seeing the ocean in everything by sienna kwami



*Please note that numbers and text in blue are links*


i.
coming of age is an awe-inspiring thing. coming of age is a phrase that means: growing into and with time. time, as ocean, as god, is never fixed and is never one thing or another. coming of age, then, is as eternal as time as we know it. we can never stop coming of age as much as we try.

if awe is terror and delight (not terror or delight alone but both in an inseparable dance of one trying to devour the other) then it follows that coming of age is terrifying. coming of age is delightful.

ii.
i wrote a poem in january where the final line is “it is not so scary to visit your grave” [1]

coming of age is visiting your grave, again and again. terrifying, no? your grave is inescapable. wherever you are, there it is.

coming of age is dying, again and again.


iii.
a mermaid can see the ocean in everything
transformed, death by death
a mermaid can
see
hear
taste
touch
feel
the ocean in everything

iv.
“The living world is a constant conversion of one thing into another, leading to inexorable new growth” [2]


in astrology, the study of cancer–the sign that represents how we feel and how we can intuit our destinies and live a life that is most our own–is clear:
cancer has, by derivative, a scorpio fifth house


the fifth house is, as astrologer Maeg Kane [2] writes,
where we dismember ourselves in pleasure
where our bodies seem to shapeshift in joy
where we feel ourselves come apart
in creative acts, in desire,
and then come back together as
something different, something changed

“When we want and crave and long, and enjoy and take pleasure in what delights us for its own sake — we are in collaboration with others, human and the more-than-human. Together, we become life’s leaven.” [2]


cancer’s scorpio fifth house as described by Alice Sparkly Kat: cancer falls “into pleasure deeply and madly. Scorpio in the fifth house is a placement that forces Cancer [risings] to submit to pleasure and joy. As artists, Cancer [risings] are relentless about prioritizing their creative flow over everything else.” [3]

Ace also writes, in another meditation on cancer, “God, Cancers are feared. They are feared. They are so powerfully and candidly messy. They demand humiliation, chasing catharsis. They build pleasure in self unraveling. They take themselves apart with an agility that suggests that they will also know how to take you apart. This is true. Cancers are bewilderingly empathetic and empathy is one of the most terrifying things out there simply because it asks so much of us.” [4]

v.
my pleasure often resides in the water trine


cancer: the pleasure of birthing, nourishing, creating, changing, influencing, imagining, feeling and what those feelings birth, create, change, influence, imagine

scorpio: the pleasure of dying, transforming, transmuting, alchemizing, changing

pisces: the pleasure of being the ocean, being god, being time, oneness, relationality, seeing the ocean in everything

i love the way that cancer takes pleasure in cycles [5]
cycles of birthing, being, dying
dying, being, birthing
being, birthing, dying
dying, birthing, being


minding cycles is one way
to have intimacy with time [6]
intimacy with time is intimacy with self
intimacy with self is intimacy with time
time is every[]
every[] is time
in Eʋe cosmology, god are twins
and we are made in god’s image
all that we can see in the daylight is twinned
with what we cannot see in the night
our twin, is called “destiny”
destiny is you as time
all that we see in the daylight
is twinned with the unseen, the night

Thich Nhat Hahn says it simply: "she has come from the ocean and she will go back to the ocean. she has both her wave body and her ocean body. she is not only a wave; she is also the ocean. the wave does not need to look for a separate ocean body. because she is in this very moment both her wave body and her ocean body" [7]


vi.
coming of age is delightful, no?

vii.
for my birthday, about ten months ago, i went to see an astrologer. [8] towards the end of our session, she asked me if i had any interest in death and grief work.

with time, i saw how interested i’ve always been with the dying and grieving that is called “coming of age.” in learning to find pleasure in this dying. in seeing coming of age as a mirror of the death that we can all see with our eyes. the death that inspires a fear so strong that entire societies are shaped from it.

coming of age teaches me that grief is how many mermaids see the ocean in everything. because it is most often where we interface with death and transformation. it literally transforms our sight to see beyond our wave body and begin to see the ocean we’re in.


but, pleasure? nothing in my socialization led me to associate death with pleasure. in the end, pleasure was the only thing that could illuminate my interest in death and grief, beyond any fear and resistance. pleasure was the only thing that could illuminate my interest in aliveness.

viii.

"Until we know that death is as good as life, and that it always comes at just the right time, we're going to take on the role of God without the awareness of it, and it's going to hurt." – Byron Katie


ix.
during the threshold of the 2022 winter solstice, the veil between worlds thinning, the dreamworld walking in broad daylight, i reflected:

i've been thinking about how i feel it is a popular disposition to be afraid of death. often because it is regarded as an unknown. what happens after death? but this past week made me feel that "literal" death (without including the cause of death which creates a different set of fears) is not unknown. because we literally know that it's 1) going to happen and 2) what it looks like as in we know the body is emptied of our current consciousness and no longer functions. it decomposes and returns to the earth.


i've been thinking about how a fear of death appears in the dominant culture. and how it shapes people to be averse to/afraid of change. the fear of the unknown is the fear of metaphorical death. but to die all the metaphorical deaths you can die is scary. what will your life look like if everything changes? what happens after you go through those changes? what happens when you release your fixed identity? when you stop worrying about what you "should" do or who you "should" be obligated to or what anything in your life "should" look like? what happens when you only reflect the moment? if the nature of reality is change then the nature of reality is death. you can die many times, if willing. though most people resist, their fear of the death they cannot see projected onto the one death they can see.

i will have to keep dying to make even more of the things i want to be true true. and every resonant part of my life right now came from my willingness to die for it.


x.



[9]

xi.
when Simone shared the prompts for this happening, immediately i felt drawn to the exploration of mermaids who reside in places we don’t normally consider the ocean. places like the desert, the forest, the mountains…

excitedly, i said ‘i’m a forest mermaid!’ because of the liquid love affair between trees and i. because of the way trees already embody the oceanic wisdom that humans must learn. that mycorrhizal network shit? amazing. we try so hard to do what they do with ease. in forests i feel a similar feeling to being submerged in a body of water. i feel connected. i feel really connected. and in its most innocent state, my spirit desires to connect and to feel connected. with trees and i, there’s an unparalleled sense of safety and belonging. i often wonder if i’ve been a tree before. i feel at peace with trees in a way that’s hard to describe. or maybe, in a society that majorly invests in the abuse of innocence, it just feels nice to hang out in the tree society where everyone, innocently, is just trying to connect. it’s probably both and more.


xii.
as time went on, i realized there was another kind of mermaid hidden in plain sight: one piece’s conception of pirates 🏴‍☠️

one piece is a show about staking your life on the gamble of being yourself in a world that would rather you be something else. it’s a show about staking your life on your life!! on whatever you feel your destiny to be. and finding friends along the way. a lot of anime has this kind of message but one piece is so queer about it. and it’s just so silly and goofy while being very forreal about the core values that make up the warp and weft the protagonists are weaving into.

there’s this one scene in the show that really delights me. [10] i don’t know the whole backstory since i started watching one piece about three days before they took the first season off netflix lol. but the flashback goes like this: one of the main pirate crew members, chopper (a reindeer and the ship’s doctor), has a flashback to something that influenced his life philosophy and path as a doctor. in the flashback, his mentor and friend, dr.hiriluk, shares why he created his own pirate flag. in the world of this show, the pirates are the ones queering up the world in favor of following their own destiny and saying fuck you to the government a lot. they sail the sea because they see the ocean in everything. just like mermaids!! they’d rather stake their lives on being true to themselves and try their luck. they choose to live in alignment with the nature of reality (time/ocean/god) over living by the rigid (and impermanent) structure of a pretty cruel and violent world government. so, pirate flags are a bit of a radical emblem to raise proudly and they are a symbol that can quickly ostracize you.

regardless, dr. hiriluk raises his own flag as a doctor in defense of his belief that no disease is incurable. he tells chopper that raising the flag is a symbol of the belief that nothing is impossible. and that by raising the flag, he’ll fight for the possibilities he believes in, just like pirates do.

he doesn’t have to be a pirate to see the ocean he’s sailing in. he doesn’t have to be a pirate to recognize he’s alive and that he can decide what he wants to do about it. he doesn’t have to be a pirate to stake that aliveness on what he wants to do about it!!

xiii.



[11]

xiv.
during a recent weekend, my friend Ruthie shared an episode of Finding Your Way hosted by Prentis Hemphill with guest Sista Docta Alexis Pailine Gumbs [12]. at one point, Alexis talks about what freedom is to her: “understanding that my life is not this small thing, it’s not this—however many decades this form gets to exist, it’s not what my life is. what can you do capitalism? what can you do?!! if i don’t believe that? this is what the Black Panthers were saying, this is what it means for Fred Hampton to say ‘you can kill a revolutionary but you can’t kill a revolution.’ this is what it meant for Huey Newton to say ‘prison, where is thy victory? you cannot hold my spirit’ and that is a freedom—and you hear this across our history, you hear Ida B. Wells say it: ‘you can shoot me, ima fall forward 5 feet towards justice’ or however tall she was. you can hear Fannie Lou Hamer saying it: this is not about me trying to protect this one scarce thing called one human life unit, if it was, there’s not freedom in that. where i see freedom is the expansiveness of what love is teaching us: that we are so connected, we cannot be destroyed. we cannot. we are being transformed. and for me that’s true freedom.”



xv.
to be a zombie
is to be a supremacist

supremacists cannot see the ocean in everything
supremacists cannot even see the night
they believe it should be daytime all of time

that is the curse of zombification:
the illusion that it is always day
the illusion that there is no rest
the illusion of either-or

the ocean is of the night
as much as it is of the day
tell me, where is the sun
when you walk to ocean floor?

supremacists fear the night
your eyes are of little use to you there
the creatures there
can speak with no mouth
and see with no eyes
taste with no tongue
listen with no ears
feel the unseen

what then of supremacy’s power?
if the night alives the understanding 
that your eyes can deceive you?

love makes you want to unravel your sense of self
for thy neighbor

but, zombies become numb to love
and demons, who are consciously supremacists,
demons cannot allow love to pass
   seeing the obvious power of the sun
   they cast the illusion of separation
   they cast the illusion of a day with no night
   they tell the zombies

    “if you can see it, you can believe it”
      and the zombies follow
     eating empty calories at the demons’ call
     stirring chaos in the night they cannot see

love makes you want to unravel yourself
for thy neighbor

it is the night that unravels the day
it is the day that unravels the night


xvi.
of course, after watching one piece, i wanted to become a pirate. or rather, i realized a pirate is the kind of mermaid i am. i too am against the world government's attempts to zombify the people with cruel and violent rituals. i too dream of sailing the seas as exactly myself and connecting with everyone who i’m meant to connect with along the way. and, if i’m lucky, leaving behind a pleasant presence that blooms into more and more joy of aliveness. i too just wanna go from island to island returning/receiving collateral blessings, always returning to the ocean as my home. i too wouldn’t mind a crew of friends who are following their own destinies and happen to be heading the same way.


xvii.
in another timeline, intertwined with my pirate initiation, i was beginning imagining the world of my cosmythology in a more foundational, narratively tangible way. this is a cosmythology i’ve been building since i was ten or eleven years old!! i wanted to translate what it was like to be exactly myself, at least from the perspective of my spiritual process. from my perspective as an ocean-seer. from my perspective as a mermaid.

i came to the word lunenègès. inspired by the word wanganègès [13] in Haitian creole. inspired by my and my destiny’s natal path. on the journey to this word, three iterations were made, lunenègès being the daylight invoking the others in the unseen.

the terms are all originally in Haitian Creole and their exact definitions (and my intended definitions) do not cleanly translate into English. but the magic of what is lost in translation transforms them into a poem:


moonlight
the language
sea nymph

xviii.
interpreting the google translate oracle’s riddle, i contemplated what this poem reflected back to me:

moonlight a nocturnal human, i am called to balance the night with the day. the wisdom of the night is the wisdom of the day. i have been blessed to be like the night: to see without my eyes and to speak without my mouth. a child of the moon, i often learn and act through the polyrhythmic and cyclical aspect of time’s nature. with intention, i explore the mystery and give form to intuition, choosing what to bring from the night into the light of day. with shining reverence for my choice. [14]

the language blessed by the water trine—the crab, the scorpion, and the double-bodied fish—jupiter the philosopher-mystic, and mercury the shaman, i am a lover (and steward) of language and communication in all forms and their influential power. blessed by the Dionysian fifth house, i see language and communication as a fun way of seeding, growing, and giving life to the natural abundance of pleasure.

sea nymph i am able see the ocean in everything. i am the ocean and i am everything. the greeks called water spirits that represented all that is beautiful and kind about the sea nymphs or “nereids.” there are always calm parts of the sea. not just whirlpools, tsunamis, disturbance. i often feel called to be a steward of the all that is beautiful and kind about the sea.

xix.

the Bwa Kayiman was a ceremony held in 1791 to launch the revolution of those enslaved by the french on the island that would become Ayiti. the principles of the Bwa Kayiman are as follows (and as proposed by the research of Professor Pierre Michel Chery [15]). in one interpretation, they are a study of natural law:

12 Prensip Bwa Kayiman

  1. Tout moun se moun. Pa gen moun pase moun. All people are human. No person is better than another (or is more human than another).
  2. Tout moun gen plas yo anba syèl ble a. Everyone has their place under the blue sky.
  3. Si gen pou youn gen pou de. If there is enough for one, there is enough for two.
  4. Chak moun gen fason pa li pou li lapriyè. Respekte fason chak moun lapriyè… Everyone has their own way to pray. Respect how everyone prays.
  5. Sa nou pa konnen pi gran pase nou. What we do not know is greater than us.
  6. Nan pwen anyen nan lavi a ki pa gen regleman. Se regleman ki bay lavi a ekilib. There is nothing in life without a law. Law gives life balance.
  7. Pa defèt ekilib lavi a san rezon. Moun, ki mal deplase eleman yo, ap rale malè sou tout moun. Do not displace life’s balance without reason.
  8. Tank n ap aprann, se tank n ap konnen kòman pou nou respekte ekilib lavi a. The more we learn, the more we will understand how to respect life’s balance.
  9. Pa janm manje manje bliye. Never forget things easily.
  10. Toujou sonje: fè koupe fè; dèyè mòn gen mòn; pa fè san inosan koule; pa lage chay nan men manfouben. Always remember: no matter how tough you are, there is always someone tougher; there are more mountains behind mountains; do not shed the blood of innocents; do not have careless people bear responsibility.
  11. Veye! Lènmi Bwa Kayiman ap vin sou tout kalite non, ak tout kalite rechany pou yo tire revany. Watch out! The Bwa Kayiman’s enemies will come under all types of names, in all types of clothing for revenge.
  12. Malè yon eritye ki bliye esklav fè Bwa Kayiman pou moun k ap sèvi Bondye pa lote moun nan mitan bèt. Shame on the heir who forgets that slaves made Bwa Kayiman so that people who are serving God may never again be put in packs among animals.

[alternate translation]

xx.
in my own study of natural law,
romance is the natural law that beauty saves [16]

romance resensitizes, resensualizes, and rehumanizes. romance, like magic like medicine, as magic as medicine, a healing salve, a kind of rest, a balancing reminder that earthly sorrows exist in as much abundance as earthly delights. romance remunds us that time offers us both sorrow and delight in abundance.

a romantic balances sorrow and delight. a romantic knows the vibratory and immediate effect their choices have on their environment. and in this knowing a romantic chooses to grow beauty in a society where many humans are deeply invested in an imbalance of sorrow.


xxi.
“Part of being a revolutionary is creating a vision that is more humane. That is more fun, too. That is more loving. It's really working to create something beautiful.– Assata Shakur

“People think this exploration of self is self-centered and selfish, but I notice that whenever I clear up something for myself it quickly affects everyone around me, as if it were a psychic liberation which in turn affects others' conflicts. My change of mood affects shopkeepers, bus drivers, policemen, cleaners, messenger boys, besides those close to me. It is like the distribution of a positive current. It is more powerful than the self-sacrifice of the so-called selfless ones, for inevitably sacrifice brings some kind of inner depletion and all the gold vibrations are extinguished." - Anaïs Nin

“I can't always tell you the reasons for things but I do know that the way human beings try their best to love each other - or to even understand what love is - is a thing of great beauty.” – Xenia Viray [17]

“There is love and truth radiating out of every chapter of history. Along with the brutality. and we have the capacity to offer the good, as much of it, to our full extent.” – Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg

“Hózhó is the joy of being a part of the beauty of all creation” - Lyla June [18]

“Even if the world changes, there are things that’ll continue to last like time and a loving heart.” - Makoto Azuma [19]

xxii.



[text “re: kakegurui”]

xxiii.
eventually, i named my ship bon bon spirale. a name that i feel is super cute and sweet, michevious and curious and playful, a name like a dessert shop, a spell and a prayer for moving with romance on this journey though time.

i’m raising my flag, setting sail, staking my life on this:

the only way to have your cake is to eat it too.
live free or die, believe in your chances, take them, and do what you can to make sure the people who are being oppressed out of their chances get more!! may we have bon chans in the spiral.
i set sail under my flag as a fuck you to supremacy
because saying fuck you to supremacy–living for all the possibilties beyond supremacy–makes me feel most alive :p

xxiv.
“Girl don’t you know yet that you don’t never give up on love? Don’t you know you has in you the pulse of winds? The noise of dragonflies?”– Sonia Sanchez, Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems

𓆟𓆟࿐ೃ˙𖦹 ⋆꙳ ໑ ᮫࣭ ꩜ ｡⋆༄

if you’re interested, follow along my navigator’s log:
twitter.com/bonbonspirale
are.na/bon-bon-spirale

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[1] "people of color have always theorized . . . and i am inclined to say that our theorizing (and i intentionally use the verb rather than the noun) is often in narrative forms, in the stories we create, in riddles and in proverbs, in the play with language, since dynamic rather than fixed ideas seem more to our liking."

✧˖° barbara christian




sienna kwami's (they/them) practice contemplates becoming through active theorizing [1]. they are fascinated with human evolution through spiritual processes and our ability to deeply know ourselves or ‘PUT MEAT ON MY SOUL’ as sonia sanchez writes. their work aims to express their perpetual awe of being alive and their gratitude to be a part of the history of humanity.

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