“Blood & Breath” & First Brothers’ Wisdom
Image from and story published at New England Review; cover by Ralph Lazar.
Poem: Blood & Breath
Rising from a deep, earthen darkness, Sebastián Hasani Páramo’s poem “Blood & Breath” published in the New England Review worms its way from memory into elegy, and through elegy, towards an ode to the remembered, and redefined, self.
“All I know is we are here loving &
forgetting until one of us dies
by chance. I must risk it all then,
so I can make some small impression.
Like the first brothers who were or were
not there.”
“Somewhere, years ago,” the narrator says, “I ate dirt. Somehow I forgot this dark,” and, from this point of remembrance, the poem moves through memory towards a familiar inevitability: “We become ruins, dust—oblivion.” Between memory and dust, though, the poem lingers on knowing, asking how animals know right and wrong, north from south, if worms understand the light, and, through implication, the dark. How do animals learn, it implies, and how do we? The poem also recalls a first brother to whom the narrator compares himself, eventually asking his brother’s recalled memory “What am I capable of, brother?” to which the narrator answers himself with all he remembers: “we are here loving [and] / forgetting…”
In an essay published at Iron Horse Literary Review titled “The Edge: On Joy,” Páramo ruminates on the elegy and the ode alongside joy, saying, in the description of his father’s pursuit (and eventual success) in crossing the border from Mexico into the United States, that an “attempt [is] a trial in the pursuit of joy;” that we “mourn people and things we’ve lost by conjuring them through elegy,” and that in the “Ode we celebrate the present, continuous living thing.” These statements, concise and plangent within the essay, present a path towards understanding, joy, and celebrating the self—even redefining the self—and only falls short in connecting them, which (to be fair) wasn’t the objective of the piece. But, when held together with “Blood & Breath,” they provide a framework for redefining the self through a memory by making a decisive connection, one that is valuable in a time of uncertainty and doubt, that moves from the inchoate towards the reified through memory. More specifically, through the act of forgetting and remembering; of being forgotten and re-remembered.
“When it rains, I pray it will wash off.
But the sun continues to rise &
stories return & return us to dirt.
We squint at the familiar unfamiliar.”
At its beginning, the narrator begins in the darkness having forgotten himself, but, in remembering, calls his voice to life and himself from that darkness to retrace the path that led him to forgetting: the inevitability of death and dissolution, oblivion. Perhaps even self-dissolution. But, now, he has remembered himself, and in doing is resurrected and brought to life. The narrator then remembers his brother who, at first, is a shade to us—a line of description, a recalled act of violence—before materializing as more substantial, and alive, when the narrator speaks to his brother before answering his own question about purpose: “What am I capable of, dear brother?”
This is the point in the poem when it turns into an ode to the self: having conjured the self to life through remembering—through elegy—the narrator then celebrates himself, in an ode, as a continuous thing that is “loving [and] / forgetting until one of us dies / by chance.” This is the “attempt…in the pursuit of joy” Páramo investigates in his essay. The trial was remembering and resurrecting the self through elegy; through the elegy, the self is made present and continuous; and, as a present, continuous thing, celebrated in ode. This implies that joy is an act of memory—of remembering—in which the past is recalled into life and celebrated. But not celebrated merely for being remembered but because it has passed, because it is gone. The subtle distinction sits in Páramo’s word choice: the “attempt [is] a trial in the pursuit of joy” (emphasis mine).
Joy is an active movement, a choosing; living life and not just being alive. Like landmarks along the travelled road, memories are forgotten, swallowed in the distance or dark of night as we move forward in the pursuit of joy, which is never a single place or moment but a connection between then and now; between memory and the rememberer. “There was an understanding that the world was frail and we must honor and praise it before it leaves us,” Páramo says in “The Edge: On Joy,” and what greater honor is there than remembering what we’ve lost, or has been taken from us, during our trials in pursuit of joy, and how recalling them from that past and into the present is a celebration of both what is gone and what is present.
Páramo’s “Blood & Breath” invites us to remember the self, to mourn what isn’t, but to also celebrate what is and has been left behind in the pursuit of your joy, and to move towards it. It’s that movement towards joy through the resurrection of a memory in elegy and into ode; through ode into celebration; and through celebration into joy that is the necessary arc of life: joy is a product of memory, and memory is a product of living. To choose life—to choose to live life as an action, a process of becoming again and again—and the uncertain path ahead is to create new moments that, in their passing, in their loss, become memorable—rememberable. To choose otherwise—the calcified life, the worn path, the familiar—is to live the same memories over and over again; you cannot hold an elegy for something that is not dead or will not pass. And an ode loses its pursuit of joy when the same ode is celebrated frequently; there is no joy in the often, nothing to celebrate in the everyday and common functions of life. This is the fading of joy, the loss of light and warmth, a deep forgetting; this is a darkness even an elegy cannot celebrate until it’s risen from and left behind. Because even darkness can be joyous when we escape it.
Cocktail: First Brothers’ Wisdom
“We become ruins, dust—oblivion.
The first brothers’ wisdom was to kill.
Soil the ground with blood. First breath
taken. Is this blood a curse? I ate it.”
It’s true that alcohol alters our senses, our feelings, and, at eventual levels, our memories. We can even forget ourselves in the deep dive of inebriation, remember ourselves in the morning as a loathsome, headachy-mess that’s late for work. Or worse. Though not all drinking leads to this morning memory (nor must it), even a few drinks can winnow the veil and make thin the circumstances of time and place now passed—sometimes, you forget when you’re drunk.
Don’t take this as a preach, dear reader! This blog is built upon, and will carry through, with alcohol consumption as its left hand. But, sometimes, a little less while still having more is alright; you can have your cocktail, with less alcohol, and drink it, too.
To this end, this week’s cocktail is First Brothers’ Wisdom, a fiery and earthy non-alcoholic cocktail built with lime and beet juice, a stock made from figs and cherries and walnuts, and elevated to cocktail status using Ritual Zero Proof’s distilled Tequila Alternative. Ritual Zero Proof has three marques (as of January 2021) that include non-alcoholic alternatives to Gin, Whiskey, and Tequila. The tequila replacement is vegetal—with hints of agave, red bell pepper, and a slight smokiness—and spicy, reminiscent of mezcal. In fact, without adding it to a drink, you’ll find the spice absolutely overwhelming, but the spirits’ vegetal profile plays well with the earthiness of beets, and the spice is tamped through the fig stock while lime lifts the entire drink to celebratory heights. Sip it with dinner, or for brunch, or sitting outside at night (fire optional), remembering where you’ve been and how far you’ve come.
Recipe: First Brothers’ Wisdom
2oz Ritual Zero Proof Tequila Replacement*
1oz Beet Juice
1oz Fig, Cherry, Walnut Stock**
0.5oz Lime Juice
Optional: 0.5oz Agave Syrup
Add all of the ingredients in a tin with ice and shake briefly for 3-5s.
Strain into a coupe or other glass and express a lemon peel over the top.
Try to recall something about yourself you’ve forgotten—something you enjoyed doing and don’t, some goal you once had—and celebrate that memory for having gotten you to where you are now in the same way you will celebrate this moment later for leading you onward.