Waters of March
Muse: Ynez Castillo (OC)
Track: Waters of March (Aguas de Março)
Artist: David Byrne + Marisa Monte
Album: Red Hot + Rio
One year later
The first thing I remember is waking up in a bright white room. The ceiling was way up there, very far away, and I could hear distant voices. My father was sitting in a chair by my bed, his head in his hands. That confused me.
“Papi,” I said, “what are you doing here?”
He looked terrible. At least ten years older than the last time I saw him. He laughed that little laugh of his that says, ‘this isn’t funny,’ and said, “You’ve asked me that question the last four times you woke up.”
“Oh.” That was news to me.
“What happened?”
What happened? Wouldn’t we all like an answer to that one? It’s an all-purpose question to cover every event imaginable (and some that are not).
What happened?
A year ago today, I died for a little while. I don’t remember it at all. I don’t remember anything about the day of the accident. The week preceding it is pretty spotty, too. Some of you know that I got hit in the head with my surfboard while I was surfing (of course, who gets hit in the head with a surfboard when they’re not surfing? Well, I could probably figure out a way, but never mind.)
I drowned. I’m glad I don’t remember that part. The surfers who pulled me out of the water gave me the kiss of life. I don’t remember this either. Sometimes I have dreams where I’m looking down on my wet still body, but I think my brain just makes this up for reasons of its own. (If I knew half the reasons why my brain does the things it does, I’d be much happier. Crazy dreams about seeing my own corpse are nothing in the scheme of things, take my word for it.)
When I woke up for good, I was in the hospital in Oaxaca. My hip was broken, as was my tibia, and my ankle was in pieces. An ankle is generally in pieces anyway, but I ended up with lots more than usual, a box of brightly-colored Legos thrown across the room, can we figure out how to put them together again?
The doctors did their best. I spent a number of weeks in a wheelchair at my father’s house, making both myself and everyone else around me miserable. Most of the people who called themselves my friends at that time walked away from me and haven't looked back once.
Small loss, in the long run.
This is the part I don’t talk about, or haven’t here yet. Don’t know why today. Why not?
I fractured my skull and survived what the medical professionals laughingly refer to as traumatic brain injury. Between being hit in the head and the subsequent oxygen starvation when I drowned, well…
Well.
It’s been a year.
I haven’t written about it like this before and I don’t know why I am now, except maybe to mark the anniversary.
What happened?
It didn’t stop there, even though maybe it should have.
There was a story in the New York Times this past week that made me cry and cry. There’s nothing unusual about that these days. I cry about most things if I pay attention to them for too long. Television commercials are surprisingly disturbing to me.
But the story in the Times was special. It deserved tears. It was the story of a married couple that was buried alive together in the earthquake in China, trapped in a space so close that they had to take turns breathing, first him, then her, for 28 hours. That was all they could do. Breathe and tell each other why they had to stay alive.
And they did stay alive. Not unscathed, but alive. The wife lost her arm because it had been trapped under him for so long that it turned gangrenous. I don’t think the man has been able to speak yet. Who knows if he ever will?
Those stories always imply that surviving is its own reward somehow, that when one or two miraculous survivors emerge from the rubble of so many thousands dead, so many other lives destroyed, their crazy refusal to lie down and die seems heroic.
I’m not saying it’s not. Some people are too stubborn to die, that’s all. Whether that’s heroic or not isn’t for me to say. Sometimes, though, carrying on puts more of a burden on the people around the survivors than their death would. This couple’s daughter is going to spend the rest of her life knowing that they survived because they told each other that she needed them to take care of her. And in their completely understandable array of post-burial-alive twitches and spasms (that syndrome the medical professionals so arrogantly label PTSD, as though that conveyed anything meaningful about the terror and misery that colors the lives of anyone who survives a disaster) they will cripple her and cripple themselves and live on in the final insult of being an inspiration to us all. (At least until we forget them altogether, which, given the news cycle, will take place in approximately thirteen hours).
Perhaps I’m wrong. The fact of their survival together is remarkable. The fact of their literal rebirth from what would have been their burial site is fraught, at the very least, with striking symbolism. The fact that they clung to life so tenaciously means that you’d think that it must matter that they did.
All I’m saying is that the story - describing the catastrophe for them when they’re both still too shocked to do more than stop breathing in unison - isn’t that couple’s truth. They have to build a life in the truth now, whatever that turns out to be, one-armed, nervous, homeless, destroyed. The story implies now that having lived through this, they can rely on each other forever and ever amen. That makes the happy ending. That’s what made me cry. The story has no idea what it feels like to be inside the catastrophe and still have to go on living somehow. The story doesn’t want to know and it doesn’t want you to know, either.
I’m sure they’ll spend the rest of their lives asking “What happened?”
I wouldn’t have made it through this past year without Darius. He’s put up with me when nobody else would, and whether that makes him a fool or a saint isn’t for me to say (mostly because I keep changing my mind). I wish there were some way for me to observe his kindness and patience, to make people see the credit he deserves for living with my erratic behavior. I know that there have been times when he’s been trapped asking himself not “What will make this better?” but “What will make this worse?” just so he can try to avert the next explosion, the next misunderstanding, the next fight.
What happened?
We have been reduced to trying to keep from making things worse. It’s a terrible way to live.
What happened?
He has refused to give up hope. I suppose I have too, in some pale imitation of what I wish I could genuinely feel. There is so much I used to be able to do that seems lost forever. I am a collection of nervous tics and forgetful habits. I never know how many times a day I check to make sure the front door is locked, but I can tell by the look he gets on his face sometimes that it’s been too many.
What happened?
I lost my life. I lost my friends. And I lost my mind. God alone knows what I’ll put back together out of this wreckage. I have no intention of being an inspiration to anyone. All I want to do is try to figure out how to live with both loyalty and disappointment that I didn’t look for and don’t deserve.
Someone once said that the scary part of looking into the void is when it looks back at you. I know now that more frightening still is when you realize that the void is breathing in time with you and will never stop.
******
Waters of March (Aguas de Março) (Mediafire link)
original song and lyrics by Antonio Carlos Jobim
David Byrne/Marisa Monte version
Click to viewA stick, a stone, it's the end of the road
É um resto de toco, it's a little alone
It's a sliver of glass, it's a life, it's the sun
It is night, it is death, it's a trap it's a gun
É peroba no campo, é um nó na madeira
Cangá, candeia, é Matita Pereira
É madeira de vento, tombo na ribanceira
É um mistério profundo, é um queria ou não queira
É um vento ventando, é o fim da ladeira
É a vida, é o vão, festa da cumeeira
É a chuva chuvendo, é conversa ribeira
Das águas de março, é o fim da canseira
The foot, the ground, the flesh and the bone
Passarinho na mão, pedra de atiradeira
É uma ave no céu, é uma ave no chão
É o regato, é uma fonte, é um pedaço de pão
É o fundo do poço, é o fim do caminho
No rosto o desgosto, é um pouco sozinho
A spear, spike, point, nail
Drip, drop, the end of the tale
É um peixe, é um gesto, é uma prata brilhando
É a luz da manhã, é o tijolo chegando
A mile, é o dia, a thrust, a bump
It's a girl, it's a rhyme, it's a cold, it's the mumps
É o projeto da casa, é o corpo na cama
É o carro enguiçado, é a lama, é a lama
A drift, ponte, flight, rã, resto, quail
Promise of spring
And the riverbank talks (São as águas de março)
Of the waters of March, (Fechando o verão)
It's the promise of life (É promessa de vida,)
It's the joy in your heart (No meu coração)
A stick, a stone,
It's the end of the road
É um resto de toco,
É um pouco sozinho
It's a sliver of glass,
It's a life, it's the sun,
É a noite, é a morte,
É o laço, é o anzol
It's the plan of the house,
It's the body in bed,
It's the car that got stuck,
It's the blood, it's the mud
É o projeto da casa,
É o corpo na cama
É o carro enguiçado,
É a lama, é a lama
São as águas de março fechando o verão
É a promessa de vida no meu coração
And the riverbanks talk
Of the waters of March,
It's the end of all strain,
It's the joy in your heart.