These Wilds Beyond Our Fences

by Bayo Akomolafe

  But constructionism was a halfway home: there was something missing in its explanation for reality—something I did not have a name for, but often imagined to be really old … too old for the fashion of names. Too old to be bothered. So I lingered at the perimeters of my blind spots to catch a glimpse of this ancient one, this barnacled rock, this swerving giant mass of a monster that lived in the interstices between ideas and things, between story and objects, between epistemology and ontology.

  Like Job of old, that biblical character whose unfortunate circumstances were prompted by disruptive immortals trying to prove a point about human frailty or loyalty, I was confronted with questions I had no answer to. Things that were too much to handle. Things that could not be encircled. In the Book of Job, when the eponymous protagonist angrily protests his treatment in the hands of a deity he had presumably been faithful to, God finally approaches him—after what seems like a period of silence—and provides puzzling non sequiturs that feel tone-deaf and irrelevant (at least to a large swath of modern readers) to the matters at hand. He asks the man with sore boils over his body if he was there when he laid the earth’s foundations or when he shut up the seas behind doors. He boasts about the chains of Pleiades and Orion’s belt, ostrich wings and ostrich eggs, the strength of horses, the obstinacy of an ox, the glory of a hawk in flight, mountain goats giving birth, and the spontaneity of rain. By the time he asks Job to “consider Leviathan,” describing the oak-thick limbs and valley-rumbling movements of this unidentified monster that will not be culled or encircled or tamed, it is clear that God has no direct answer to the damning charges brought against him. He has something better.

  The thing is, we live in a world that is largely populated by nonhumans, whose material effects are yet to be fully appreciated. That we understand the world through story, via discourse, does not foreclose the possibility of a material world that stretches beyond it—or, to put it in less tensile terms, a world that includes discourse as part of its material becoming. If we have no access to the so-called world-as-it-is, the colorless, silent realms outside the mediation of discourse (or if there isn’t a world there, just an “in here” or “what we make of it”), and if we must continue to depend on these representations to mirror a mysterious nonworld hopelessly far away from us, then the Cartesian structure that social constructionism set out to dismantle remains still. It means reality is bereft, torn into factions that will never truly meet, binary ontological orders of mind and matter. This is a big deal, dear: home is either the taut, leathery staunchness of a slave-master’s whip—and we must find our place in a predetermined hierarchy of things by giving our backs and dignity to the benevolence of tyranny—or it is a labyrinth of mirrors and, for all intents and purposes, we are starkly alone with ourselves, caught in the nuances of our own images, fundamentally estranged from the profound other.

  If the world were merely a story or a complex of stories—just ideas rubbing against other ideas—then how do we explain the emergence of things that do not fit into our syntaxes? How is it that some events simply escape our sense-making, power-distributing, identity-perpetuating linguistic practices? What do we say about tsunamis and the devastation of floods? Can our story-sanctuaries accommodate the toxic prolificacy of radioactive shit, the resistance of errant winds and weather, the real and abiding effects of colonialism and rape on torn bodies, the fastidiousness of micro-critters breaching cell membranes?

  It seems there is much more at work than our plots make space for—much more than can be beaten into the gauntness of alphabets. It seems the world also does things, also resists, also initiates, also produces and speculates and throws tantrums—and that narrative dynamics aren’t the only things we must take into account as contributory factors in the world’s emergence.

  Untangling from the project of returning to Eden, or living with the Fall, means we have to rethink everything. Because modernism cannot account for the role of discourse in shaping the seen, and constructionism cements this bifurcation by positing that language is the stuff of the world, we need to meet the universe halfway—a way of bringing the world back in, without reducing it to dead matter, and a way of acknowledging the contributions of culture as well. Yes, we are still talking about “middles,” or as Rebekah Sheldon puts it, “a critical modesty from out of which [we may] seek to generate a realistic ethics attentive to the impact of human culture and also to the vivacity, vulnerability, and sometimes the surly intransigence of nature.”3

  One thing feels sure: we cannot pose the question of home without accounting for the manner in which we are beings among beings. We must consider Leviathan—forgotten beyond our fences.

  Through the shrubs we catch a glimpse of the powerful monster partially submerged in water. In meeting his ferocity, in examining his dimensions, his breathing, his brooding aloofness, and his utter otherness, the faint wisdoms of God’s response to Job begins to leak through: what could be better than an answer to a question? The gift of bewilderment. The incoming rush of something foreign to the linear logic of the inquiry. New air sucked into the nostrils and lungs. The terrain breaching the neatness of the map. Confusion—or better yet, con-fusion: a mixing together, a messy mangling of things. The motif of becoming generously lost.

  After I dress up, still quite shaken from the watery monster I have just experienced, I sit down for a while—picking up the blasted pieces of my body-soul. Geetha offers me tea. I haven’t quite gotten myself together so I say thank you, wobble my head a bit, and smile. She seems to understand. I am hungry, but I want to go home. I can’t wait to see you and Mama to tell you all about this crazy trip.

  Kutti is done ironing his dress—the same one he wore yesterday. He folds the compact ironing board and slips it back into the tiny space between the two dilapidated Godrej cupboards in the room, just as Nandini stirs awake. Last night, the children had said they weren’t going to school today, and Kutti feigned surprise—looking at me to contribute my own gesture of pretend astonishment to the emerging game.

  Once he is done dressing up, he takes me out again, toward the water tankers, where he meets a friend and introduces me to him. The friend invites me into his tanker. I climb up the huge tires, first on its bolts, and then place my foot in the space between the tire and the rusting chassis, and then pull myself into a tiny space. The whole compartment has been modified so that there is a wooden plank behind the driver’s seat. Kutti tells me, his teeth reddened with paan, that the driver’s assistant lives inside this tanker, and this—the plank I sit on—is his bed.

  Soon, we are moving through the city, passing motorists while honking a loud horn. We arrive at an estate for military personnel, stop at an underground tank a few meters from the guarded gates, and lower a green hose into the tank through an opening a few feet above the ground. I help the young boy pull out the hose when the tank is full, and—moments later—we are racing through the city again, scaring off smaller cars, making an old man walking his dog turn in fright.

  We return to Kutti’s neighborhood. I thank the driver for showing me a view of the city of Chennai I had not known. It is when we return to Kutti’s shack that I find—just near a neat pile of pots and pans—two dark critters, sneaking past without a sound. Could it be? Kutti doesn’t seem to notice as he walks straight past them and into his home to get the keys to his rickshaw so he can drop me off at home, as he had promised to do. He calls out to me from inside the house, momentarily distracting me. I answer that I’ll be with him shortly. When I turn my head back to the twin shadows, they are no longer where I first noticed them. Dashing forward, I pick up a short stubby stick and poke gently at the pots—one-two-three taps. Four tightly spaced sighs. Then … one-two … there. The charcoal black slug-like things, no bigger than tiny mice, push out from behind the pots into full view. Hushes! Two of them, for that matter.

  I look around me, suddenly conscious of my surroundings again. A young girl down the narrow walkway is standing out of a doorway, staring at
me without expression. My hands trembling, I wave to her and whisper a “hello” only I can possibly hear. Then I turn to the hushes again. They are still there, but they could slip away if I don’t do the prayers. So I place one nondescript piece of wood and a little steel container on both sides of the hushes. This is it.

  I kneel down a respectable distance from the abominable things. Bàbá didn’t exactly leave me with instructions about what to do next but, kneeling there, looking at their slimy rippling movement, I suddenly know what to do. My skin crawls as I consider it, while my heart, obviously in disagreement with what must now happen, threatens to tear through my paper-thin chest to kill me. Heart! You will only kill yourself in the same way. We must do this together. You made a promise to Alethea. She needs her father now. I stretch out my finger to touch the body of the first hush. It sluggishly recoils, folding into itself as it secretes droplets of a transparent viscous stuff along the length of its body. I touch the thing, and put the stuff on my tongue—squeezing my eyes as I taste the rank, disgustingly acidic thing go down my throat. While I am overwhelmed by a desire to vomit, I quickly do the same thing again—touching the second hush, causing it to recoil, taking a drop of its stuff on the tip of my finger, and touching my tongue. Don’t ask why I did this. It just felt like the right thing to do.

  The prayer is complete. At least with these two hushes. There are eight more to find.

  I look up to find Kutti staring at me, just like that nameless girl had done a few minutes ago. I am not sure how much he has seen. Thankfully there are no other persons around. I offer an awkward smile as I walk toward him … a smile and a tap on his shoulder … anything to ease back into sane relations with another human being, who has most probably witnessed his guest perform the most outrageous thing ever. The slimy remnants and bitter-eggy taste of the hush secretions are lingering in my mouth as I say “let’s go home.” “Come,” he replies through his teeth, his jaw locked up and gently moving at the insistence of paan.

  Mornings have become my favorite time of day … waking up to find you and your dad lying on the bed in a weird yin and yang curl. You somehow manage to snuggle your way into him, and fit perfectly in whatever pattern his body makes. You two have a relationship that makes me jealous.

  But the best part of my morning is when you open those beautiful eyes, spring off the bed with the most beautiful smile, and run out of the bedroom, leaving your partner (since, a month ago, you decided to marry him and declared to all that I was now his girlfriend and you, his wife!) who is still asleep. You run right into the hall searching for me, and hug and kiss me when you find me … as if you’ve been waiting to do this all night.

  We then greet each other, and I ask you if you’ve had any dreams.

  As a child I was a dreamer, always waking up in the morning with stories to tell about my dreams—which my mother would patiently interpret for me. From Chinese women riding giant mosquitoes to rivers taking the form of men to cross the street, my weird dreams always found a home in the careful embrace of my mother’s wisdoms. When we greet each other in the morning, I always ask you about your own dreams.

  These small morning moments that we spend alone are like my morning shot of coffee: they get my day going. But this morning is different. I wake up shortly before you jump up from the bed in sobs, and hold me tight. Tears are rolling down your eyes. I hold you, feeling your deep pain, wondering about what is disturbing you. As I rock you back and forth, embracing you in my arms, I ask you what the matter is, and you say—in between sobs—that you had a dream. “A bad dream,” you add.

  I'm shocked and upset that I did not protect you from your dream—as if I could. I tell you that I’m there and all is well and you try to tell me what happened.

  You say you were in a forest and you were playing with a bunch of monkeys, climbing trees and hanging from them. When you and the animals got tired, the monkeys became hungry and went to get something to eat. Your head still buried in my chest, I keep rocking you gently and you look up at me and say, “Don’t monkeys eat bananas, ma?” I say yes, and your eyes fill with tears again. You tell me you tried to tell your dreamy friends that monkeys eat bananas, not apples. But the monkeys, perverse, unnatural, monstrous, eat apples instead.

  You are distraught. You say you tried to stop them but they kept eating apples and making fun of you in spite what you said.

  I am confused. Part of me wants to laugh, the other part recalls the lingering memories of my own mother’s gentle reassurances. But it’s just a bad dream, right? Monkeys eating apples? So what? Could your three-year-old mind be forming figurative images of being different in a country where difference is a charged concept? Did some of your straight-haired Indian friends tease you about your curly hair, your darker skin? Am I a good enough mother to you?

  I hold you tighter, offering no explanation for monkeys and their eating apples. Just a knowing silence. The kind that knows that the world often makes no sense. One day you will learn to live in a world where things don’t add up neatly. A world constantly asking us to come to our senses, to new senses. To the unimaginable. I kiss your forehead gently, as your father, oblivious and lost, snores out what I imagine to be his agreement.

  Letter 3

  Hugging Monsters

  Not to transcend this body, but to reclaim it …

  —Adrienne Rich

  Dear Alethea,

  Through the window on our left, the Pacific Ocean appeared in her turquoise gray glory, like the mysterious lady of the house—lately gowned—slowly come down a flight of stairs to greet her slack-jawed guests. I sighed. She was dazzlingly beautiful! Expansive and enthralling. A roar of nature.

  I love the ocean. Maybe I love mountain peaks and mountain ranges more. Those often look like snow-bearded elders in conversation, seated with arms around folded knees. I marvel at the lithic intelligence of a mountain anytime I come across one. But primal bodies of water make my nostrils tremble and my chest expand. They look like eternity. This is why I elected that we meet here for these letters, for you are a creature of the depths too.

  This ocean. Not only was she likely the most majestic stretch of water I had ever seen, but the way she beat against the edges of rocks and cliff confirmed her a vixen. Gorgeous and terrifying all at once—the embodied fury of things in their ongoing becoming. Her frothing defiance sent up huge milky waves against the coastal mudstone cliffs as we drove down West Cliff Drive in Santa Cruz, California. Beholding the statesmanlike eminence of those serrated cliffs, the bangs of green flora that fell down their foreheads, and the silence of the irregular black rocks that dotted the undulating pocket beaches, I couldn’t help but imagine both ocean and cliff as testy lovers whose spirited quarrels had shaped the majestic coastline. If you listened carefully, if you were silent for a little while, you might have heard the gentle spray of applause distilled in the electric air around us—as if appreciating the performance of sedimented rock and shifting water, thanking the titans for the spectacle of their tragic love affair.

  Above her flat eternal spread, silhouetted against sun and azure sky, a bokeh of bright colors floated in the distance—barely noticeable.

  “Paragliders and surfers, right? Must be a lot of fun,” I noted. My friend Doug, driving, asked me if I wanted him to stop so I could take a picture. A mysterious fog was just ahead of us, and I, born, bred, and “buttered” in Lagos, Nigeria—having never been enveloped by a fog before—wanted to greet it, to be engulfed in the twilight of its passing, to perhaps eavesdrop on the whisperings of the ancestors within who straddled the line between being and nonbeing, and to say thank-you for the inexpressible gift I had just received from the elder Doug took me to. I considered Doug’s offer a while, but I already knew my answer. “Let’s keep going, brother,” I replied. My heart was full. He nodded his agreement, his face stretching into a grin as the wind waltzed with his close cropped hair.

  A day before, I had asked him to drive me to Santa Cruz to meet the elder, wh
ose call came to me quite suddenly after I had finished giving a speech at a gathering of permaculture practitioners in Hopland, almost two hundred miles north of Santa Cruz. On this Wednesday morning, Doug had picked me up from the Bay Area after I had hitched a ride on a truck with a young man about my age, whose love for and knowledge of the cliffs was spellbinding. A Thai restaurant later, along with a soft education on the industrial economy of California, and many discussions about African music legend Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Doug and I pulled up to her home. It wasn’t his plan to take me all the way to Santa Cruz where she lived, but I didn’t know my way around the state or have enough money in my pocket. I was lost without his help.

  The elder’s home was just like she described it in the email she sent me: “Our house is midway down the block on the left, a turquoise (light blue) house between a red house and a yellow house.” I felt like a kid arriving at the home of his idol. Was I appropriately dressed? What would I say to her or tell her that she hadn’t already divined in the dark chambers of her sacred craft? Would she notice how smart I was as well, or would I need to speak with my jalopy American accent to appear “smart enough”? Gridlocked in the wide-open space between my waning self-confidence and my excitement at meeting this elder, I lingered in the walkway outside her home pretending to wait for Doug to alight from his black SUV. Then I marched up to the door, dragging the last morsel of esteem I had, and pressed the doorbell … wait! I can’t be sure if I actually knocked the door (you know, three taps and all) or pressed a doorbell. Whatever. Remembering is hardly a matter of recalling facts as it is about embellishing traces of an inkling with bits of the plausible.