Reverse Osmo(cis): Restoring Circulation
- Kiing Curry
- 6 hours ago
- 5 min read
Colonialism altered the membrane. Healthy systems filter and circulate. Colonial systems transform membranes into walls, creating hoarding, pressure, stagnation, respectability, inherited fear, and survival identities.
Reverse Osmo(cis): Restoring Circulation
Saltwater African, Freshwater
There is a process called reverse osmosis.
At its simplest, pressure is applied to salt water, forcing it through a membrane. The membrane allows water to pass while leaving behind minerals, contaminants, and excess salt.
The goal is not to destroy the ocean.
The goal is to make fresh water available.
I have been thinking about this process as a framework for understanding the self.
Especially the self shaped by colonialism.
Especially the self shaped by the Atlantic.
Especially the self shaped by survival.
I am a saltwater African.
And freshwater.
Both things are true.
The Atlantic lives inside me.
The rupture lives inside me.
The survival strategies live inside me.
The anxiety lives inside me.
The adaptations live inside me.
But so does something older.
Something moving beneath the sediment.
Something that refuses to disappear.
For years I have been building the Wata(ring) W(hole) as a framework for understanding embodiment, memory, movement, intuition, regulation, and return.
What I am beginning to understand is that reverse osmosis may be another language for the same thing.
Not purification.
Not transcendence.
Not becoming someone else.
Discernment.
The restoration of circulation.
When the Membrane Becomes a Wall
Because colonialism did not simply steal land, language, ceremony, and relationship.
Colonialism altered the membrane.
A healthy membrane filters.
A healthy membrane understands that not everything belongs inside the body.
Not every thought.
Not every fear.
Not every inherited story.
Not every expectation.
Not every wound.
The membrane exists so life can continue moving.
Colonialism arrives and the membrane becomes a wall.
No longer filtering.
No longer circulating.
No longer discerning.
Only stopping.
Only accumulating.
Only hoarding.
The wall becomes a gate.
The gate becomes a checkpoint.
The checkpoint becomes a prison.
Soon entire communities begin carrying things that were never meant to remain inside the body for generations.
Fear.
Shame.
Respectability.
Hypervigilance.
Gender rigidity.
Silence.
Perfectionism.
Surveillance.
The wall keeps growing because nobody remembers that it was once a membrane.
Pressure Looking for Circulation
And when circulation stops, pressure builds.
Water knows this.
Rivers know this.
Bodies know this.
Lineages know this.
Pressure that cannot move eventually becomes force.
Anxiety is often pressure looking for circulation.
Hypervigilance is pressure looking for circulation.
Obsession is pressure looking for circulation.
Generational fear is pressure looking for circulation.
I think about the stories many of us carry around blood pressure.
Not as a medical diagnosis.
As a cultural metaphor.
As a lineage story.
As generations of people carrying more than they were ever meant to carry.
Holding more than they were ever meant to hold.
Containing more than they were ever meant to contain.
The Atlantic.
The plantation.
The migration.
The church.
The family secret.
The violence.
The respectability.
The constant need to survive.
Pressure passing from body to body.
Story to story.
Generation to generation.
What happens when a people become so accustomed to carrying pressure that pressure begins to feel normal?
What happens when circulation itself begins to feel dangerous?
Because circulation changes things.
Circulation introduces new information.
Circulation requires trust.
Circulation asks us to release what we can no longer carry.
And release is terrifying when survival has taught us that keeping everything is the only way to stay alive.
Preservation Is Not Nourishment
I recently wrote about watching parts of Black culture become elderly.
Not elder.
Elderly.
There is a difference.
An elder helps culture move.
An elderly culture becomes afraid of movement.
It becomes afraid of adaptation.
Afraid of new information.
Afraid of disability.
Afraid of queerness.
Afraid of mental health conversations.
Afraid of changing language.
Afraid of questioning inherited beliefs.
Because movement threatens preservation.
And preservation has become sacred.
What if preservation was only supposed to be temporary?
What if preservation was never meant to become identity?
Salt preserves.
This is not a criticism of salt.
We are the salt of the earth.
Salt keeps food from spoiling.
Salt helps bodies function.
Salt remembers.
Salt carries history.
Salt carries the ocean.
Salt carries the Atlantic.
Salt carries the tears of generations.
The goal was never to remove all salt.
The goal is to restore relationship.
Desalination is not the destruction of salt.
It is the restoration of balance.
The removal of what has become excessive.
The filtering of what has become poisonous.
The return of what can sustain life.
A people can survive on preservation for generations.
But survival and nourishment are not the same thing.
At some point we must ask:
What is feeding us?
And what are we merely carrying?
The Body Electric
This question appears everywhere inside my work.
In Afro hair.
In movement.
In fungi.
In cannabis.
In OCD.
In adornment.
In queerness.
In the body itself.
The body is constantly filtering.
The kidneys filter.
The liver filters.
The lungs filter.
The skin filters.
The gut filters.
The nervous system filters.
Every moment the body is deciding:
What stays?
What leaves?
What nourishes?
What overwhelms?
What belongs?
What does not?
The body understands something many of us have forgotten.
Keeping everything is death.
And yet culturally we are often encouraged to keep everything.
Every trauma.
Every fear.
Every expectation.
Every story.
Every rule.
Every shame.
Every inherited wound.
As if release is betrayal.
As if filtering is abandonment.
As if circulation is disrespect.
A Concentrated Brine of Respectability
The result is a concentrated brine of respectability.
A concentrated brine of fear.
A concentrated brine of “what will people think?”
A concentrated brine of “that’s not how we’ve always done it.”
A concentrated brine of survival.
And eventually we mistake the brine for culture.
But culture is not storage.
Culture is movement.
Culture survives because it moves.
This is why accessibility matters.
This is why disability justice matters.
This is why mental health matters.
This is why learning matters.
This is why adaptation matters.
Because every one of those practices asks the same question:
What needs to continue?
And what needs to be filtered?
Not discarded.
Not erased.
Filtered.
A membrane is different than a wall.
The membrane remains in relationship with everything it encounters.
It simply refuses to carry everything forever.
This is also where reverse osmo(cis) enters the conversation.
For many years I was taught that queerness existed outside of Blackness.
Outside of spirituality.
Outside of ancestry.
Outside of indigenous knowing.
Something imported.
Something modern.
Something suspicious.
Something to survive despite.
Now I understand something different.
Colonialism did not create my queerness.
Colonialism attempted to filter it out.
The membrane became a wall.
The wall became shame.
The shame became silence.
The silence became inheritance.
Reverse osmo(cis) is the process of restoring circulation.
Allowing what was trapped behind colonial walls to move again.
Adornment.
Pleasure.
Fluidity.
Multiplicity.
Gender expansion.
Spiritual complexity.
Embodied knowing.
The return is not about becoming queer.
The return is remembering what was always there.
And perhaps that is true for all of us.
Perhaps the work is not becoming whole.
Perhaps the work is restoring circulation between the waters.
Between salt water and fresh water.
Between African and diasporic.
Between ancestor and descendant.
Between body and spirit.
Between memory and imagination.
Between survival and nourishment.
I am a saltwater African.
And freshwater.
The Atlantic remains.
The rupture remains.
The history remains.
The salt remains.
But beneath all of it there is still a spring.
Still moving.
Still circulating.
Still remembering.
The Wata(ring) W(hole) is not asking us to abandon the ocean.
It is asking us to remember how to drink.
First for ourselves.
To trust that our own bodies know thirst.
To trust that our own spirits know water.
To trust that sovereignty is not isolation but relationship.
And then together.
Not from scarcity.
Not from hoarding.
Not from preservation.
But from circulation.
Because a watering hole exists so that life can gather.
And life can only gather where water still moves.
Reverse Osmo(cis): Restoring Circulation
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