fences

“My first years here, in this place people call Canada, were really hard. As I was trying to navigate the immigration track for family sponsorship, I had  a recurrent dream where I was thrown against a barbed-wire fence over and over again. The sharp blades slashed my skin exposing my flesh in extremely painful ways. I  tried to show it to the people who benefitted from the fence and they refused to acknowledge it. They felt sorry for the wounds, but would not recognize their investments that kept the fence in place. This hurt more than the exposed flesh. In every dream, I kept insisting on them seeing the flesh, the blood and their “nails” in the fence, but there was no response apart from pity. I became more and more frustrated and wanted to keep the wounds open in the hope that they would eventually see how much the fence was hurting other people. It felt like if I allowed my wounds to scar I would be betraying those who were also hurt by the fence.  The wounds got infected with anger, the chronic pain started to drive my existence, and joy began to be a rare occurrence for me and my family (and when it occurred it made me feel guilty because it felt like deception).

Then something different happened. In one dream, there was a song. And the song entered my flesh and moved me to dance (in a “voguing” way). And as I danced, the density of my body changed and, as I was thrown back to the barbed wire, it could no longer slash my body. I passed through it, back and forth, without being affected. The song moved the wounds to turn into scars and the scars made the singing and the dancing more exuberant. As I learned to sing and to dance in that frequency, those who refused to acknowledge the source of the wounds got interested in what I was doing. As I looked closer, I realized they too were wounded by barbed wires inside their bodies, hidden under their skin. Their organs were wrapped in them. This gave them a sense of containment and security. However, their lifeforce was hurting and desperate, also yearning to sing and to dance.”

vanessa andreotti