Earlier this year, I started on a writing project. It’s still taking form. I’m having a lot of fun when I write, but I find that I get overwhelmed as soon as my writing goes beyond a few pages. So, I decided to start with short story—that’s both a piece of something larger and wishes to stand on its own—exploring the lifetimes we live before our birth.
English is not the best language to share our story, but due to popular demand, I’ve agreed to take on this monumental task: translating our experience into a tongue that cannot fully capture it. Thank you for your grace in knowing there are stories I simply cannot tell—stories you will have to dance along to experience, instead of read. With that, I begin, not at the beginning, but before that, in death.
I was born Ujuli (oo-HOO-lee), one who both is and carries the sun, the moon, and the one carrying the moon. Always opposed and always in sync.
Every daybreak I am reborn. Every nightfall I die. And on the full moon, I rise as I fall. In between moons, I am often carrying the weight of two suns at once; and some nights, carrying no sun at all. At moments, I cease to exist and am afforded rest. At others, I must shine so brightly as to provide everyone with light, without exhausting before it is time to exhaust.
People wonder why I cannot be as consistent as a single day sun, but I am two and must both light and carry the night sun, so I do not wonder. Though, I am constantly wandering. To stay still would be to throw off the rhythms of the milkweed and willows, the waters and bison, the clams and acorns, the winds and fire. To stay still would be to die before I am meant to die.
Before I became Ujuli, I am possibility nestled inside of my womb mother, they themself possibility nestled inside of their womb mother, my ma’mama. I dream in a language I can’t yet speak, of swirling colors and whispered emotions. I feel the rhythms of the moons and the heartbeats of the Earth, a symphony of cacophonies that reverberate my single cell. Already, I sense I’m a vessel for something beyond the ordinary.
And before that, I am vast potential and form unseen by our earth eyes, but I will start here, having chosen my womb mother. There is a high likelihood that I will be recycled before ever having become more than possibility, only an inkling of physical sensation accessible to me, yet a spiritual darkness vaster than all of creation with a melancholy that aches beneath what we can hear, beneath bones, in the ether of great grizzly bear monstres. I do not know what comes after this death that comes before I couple into ONE, but I already know fear that swallows little ones like me whole. This is all of what I know of being possibility inside of possibility.
I do not know the day my womb mother separated from their womb mother. Elders will later tell me how the fireflies lit the sky above the fire while the moon was dying. This, they will tell me, is why mother’s father named them the equivalent of Bright New Moon. And with this, they will swoon over how ma’dada’s eyes sparkled brighter than the Awakened Sun.
What I do know: this is when I learn yearn. I am now one less possibility closer to being. As vast as fear, yearn is all I can contain. Always, I am at risk of bursting through my edges and ceasing to exist. Always, I yearn to exist beyond possibility. I yearned for myself to couple, to feel satiated, to feel expansion, to feel a new kind of whole, to feel relief from the monotony of this compulsion, to experience something new, to revel in the newness of ONEness. For six and six and two Suns, I know only yearn.
Somewhere in the ecstatic stillness of time and quiet frenzy of possibility, a collision will assign me a father and a creation assignment. Future kin will tell me that a choice was made by me. I will do my best to believe them, as I have no recollection of choice. I can only tell you about fear and yearn and my obsession and single-focus to become more than possibility. I am only a QeeQeeQee (falcon) in its spiral stoop, where time suspends as I fly faster than the wheel and see only my “prey”—my other self. I’ve been in this loop for my forever, I can hardly contain myself when it’s interrupted. In fact, I can’t contain myself. I burst. I die my first death. My first familiar finds me and our yearns unite—and it’s simply too much for either of us on our own. We unite to expand, trying to contain this thundering ONEness and ecstatic relief from a forever of yearn.
I was whole until I realized I wasn’t, and then I was whole again—this is what I’ll come to learn of death.
And still, I’m only a part of my mother. Still, I’m only possibility, but now I am possibility backed by the strength of creation: I am a wellspring of eternal cell creation. I am growing, or at least I will be within a moon’s whisper—it takes a moment to recover and reorganize as my new self.
It’s said that when we unite inside of our womb mother, that we are re-uniting from a split we cannot remember. A part of us, complete on its own, chooses our mother. And another part of us, complete on its own, chooses our father. We cannot fully know what we are choosing, but it is our first lesson in commitment, one that, frankly, I’m still learning. This is the choice my future kin will remind me of later, as I threaten our social structure.
Before I know words, I know sounds, light, taste, and a fierce interoception as to the daily stretching of my forming bones, lungs, heart, liver, skin. A rise in elongation of the distance between waves and a drop from the valleys to the peaks of sounds slow the cadence of my heart; my hands release their grip on water; and I forget for the luxurious moments inside of a split second what had been preoccupying me. Before I know words, I know sounds and safety.
I am fortunate to learn the sounds of my mother’s voice and my father’s singing. I am fortunate to learn the sounds of touch and of dance and of rocking. This, I learn, is love. I’m saturated with curiosity inside the newness of every moment, every moment inviting me into expansive exploration. What am I becoming? What do I do with all that I’m creating? When will I have all of me? When will expansion become tiresome? What will feeling complete feel like? And what happens then? I am my me, yet I am still a part of my mama. Are my questions theirs? I know nothing constant until I’ve run out of room to grow, finding myself at the forgotten but familiar precipice of yearn. Mama tells me they can no longer contain me. My possibility has finally outgrown them. Mama will burst and we (who is singular and both mama and me) will die.
And so, it’s here that I die my second death. Here, I take my first breath in our breathing life in the year of the extra moon, Sanajara. Named for the guardian of fire, Sanajara’s moon brought with it fires more ravenous than any other in our elders’ memories, and they are the keeper of our ancestor’s memories. Mama Bright New Moon says I carried them to safety through the fires and childbirth. And so, the first name I earn is Ujuli—one who both is and carries the sun and moon. It’s OK that I don’t yet know what this means, for this is where our story begins.
