In orbit.

 

 

It’s easier to breathe in an empty room. Yet, somehow more difficult to do so in an empty room that was once full. “No te olvides tu io”, my papa lilted in Spanish. Don’t forget your io. While my mother was always the one with all the tales from Spain, the South American folklore of “io” (like Jupiter’s moon, Io) is one my father used to tell me often throughout my childhood and more often during my adolescence. It was folklore he had heard amongst the tribal community where he was being raised in Bolivia. (Or was it during his Uni days in Argentina? The origin is unclear.)

The legend describes an “io” as a piece of you that breaks off where you experience something that impacts you emotionally. This creates an emotional satellite that orbits around a place like a little moon. There are good ios and bad ios, and the only way to cut a bad one’s orbit is to return to where it was created and “pick it up”.

Having lost a parent now, I wonder where these pieces of yourself orbit. It’s not a place you’re leaving. Where do you pick it up?

This was my parents’ first move in over 15 years and despite playing Billie Holiday (something I do through happy transitions) there was a feeling of weighted stories. Stories that had shaped my life thus far. Stories I felt would grow in importance very soon.

I deliberately left behind a little moon.

~ by Keira Dazi on May 19, 2019.