Soft as Water

Reflections on water symbolism, Harmonia Rosales, and African Diaspora mythic traditions.

I’m making peace with crying. I am deeply sensitive, which is a part of my personality that I learned to resent along the way. I do not have thick skin, I am attuned to suffering, and I will cry. 

I do not pray often but when I do it’s usually to beg for strength as tears fight for their rightful place on my face. How do I stay soft and withstand the maelstrom of sorrow in the world? Every cultural impulse demands that I harden, close myself off to survive, look away. Too soft, too much vulnerability and I cannot imagine staying here. Too hard, too much calcification and I cannot be moved. I’m learning to hold the two in balance.

Coming to terms with that crying instinct has led me to the water, literally and symbolically. I do my best to soak in a hot bath weekly, with lots of salt and scented oil. It’s one of the easiest ways for me to drop back into my body and make room for tears when anxiety is negging me, so it’s obvious when I’m not diligent about that spiritual practice. I also moved to Los Angeles in 2020, bringing me in closer contact with the ocean – and drunken days at the beach – than I’d ever been previously. A revelation!

Symbolically, water and I have become close. Below is a revised excerpt from a recent course assignment where I discussed Yorùbá cosmology in three paintings by Harmonia Rosales: “Birth of Oshun”, “Asé”, and “Migration of the Gods”. I chose those images because I wanted to learn more about the òrişa Oşun (deity of sweet waters), but as I was writing the paper, I noticed that Yemayá (òrişa of the sea) was in all the paintings I chose. The excerpt below is what came of that realization.

Harmonia Rosales, “Creation of God”, 2017.

Harmonia Rosales’ art first caught my attention when her piece Creation of God went viral in 2017. The piece reimagines the fresco Michelangelo painted in the Sistine Chapel by depicting both the divine creator and the first human being as Black women. At Pacifica we bask in the world’s art, literature, and wisdom traditions to heal ourselves and the soul of the world. I arrived at Pacifica in the throes of a life-threatening depression, seeking answers and enchantment. Rosales’ work reminds me – the only Black student in my cohort and one of only two on campus – that there is a place for Black folks, a place for me, in the study of myth, even and especially if we have to shake the table to make room for ourselves.

Me (far left) with some of the coolest people I know: my classmates and professor.

Interestingly, I didn’t notice until after an in-class group presentation for the African and African Diaspora Traditions course that each image I chose to share included a depiction of Yemayá. That was not an intentional choice, and it’s ironic because I grew up in the Bible Belt in a place that has no direct contact with the ocean. My first job was at a swimming pool (as a cashier) but I cannot swim, I don’t believe my parents can swim either, yet another legacy of slavery and Jim Crow¹.  Still, the water is beckoning. 

Since 2020, I’ve been gestating an interest in the metaphysical and spiritual connections that Black folks have with water, and that interest has deepened during my journey as a Pacifica student. Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred set me on this path when Dana Franklin saved a terrible drowning boy from a river after being snatched back in history to the plantation in Eastern Maryland from which her mother’s family descended. Then in 2020, during the first wave of COVID I read both The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates and The Deep by Rivers Solomon - stories that illustrate Toni Morrison’s proclamation about the mnemonic qualities of water². Later that year I considered enrolling in swim lessons after reading Undrowned, Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ musings on marine mammals as human ancestors and guides; every line felt like a sermon that my soul was desperate to hear. I recommended it to anyone who would listen and have never stopped thinking of it as a sacred text.

After finally granting myself the freedom to go back to school, I was sitting in a lecture on Jungian psychology, and the way Gustavo Beck spoke about the structure of psyche reminded me of Toni Morrison again, so I read Beloved and wrote about the water motifs in the novel. I tried to change tack for the cinema course, but Moonlight (Miami) led me to Beasts of the Southern Wild (Gulf Coast Louisiana) which led me to Daughters of the Dust (Gullah Coast South Carolina), which showed me that Toni wasn’t done with me, so I gave a presentation on archetypal imagery and Ancient Greek cosmology in the film version of Beloved. Now here I am, contemplating whether I am ready to sit at Mother Yemayá’s feet. It seems like she’s waiting for me.

1. N, et al. “Racial History of American Swimming Pools.” NPR, 6 May 2008. NPR, https://www.npr.org/2008/05/06/90213675/racial-history-of-american-swimming-pools

2. Brown, Monica. “The Site of Memory.” Marginalia, 4 Mar. 2013, https://blogs.colum.edu/marginalia/2013/03/04/the-site-of-memory/