The Nature of Ruins

Abstract

The nature of ruins is that they consist of entangled narratives, the human story often becoming concealed and at one with the landscape. A ruin is described as something in a state of deterioration caused by lack of maintenance or by a willful act of destruction. This can be extended to our mental well-being. Theories of ruin and entanglement provide models for reflection and unravelling of uncomfortable truths revealed in postcolonial landscapes and related migration stories. Plants offer an element of balance and healing.Textiles played a significant role in African history, with traditions of skillful weaving and dyeing that can be traced back thousands of years. Textiles were also hugely important in Caribbean plantation economy, traded alongside and sometimes for enslaved Africans. The interweaving of warp and weft forms the structure of cloth. Pulling threads symbolizes a controlled manipulation of the cultural fabric of societies, weakening the structure. Reconstructed threads create a hybrid, giving life to something damaged or ruined. Once pulled, do threads retain traces of their original source? Working with textiles and natural dyes allows for a more sustainable and rooted practice, with metaphorical “play” helping in processing the complexities of intertwined history and cultural identity. The unspoken, the dislocation, the hole is often where the healing lies.Our history blows in the wind, and threads unravel with time. Empty patches of knowledge lost, some never to be regained. How do we weave new narrative and connect to the lands where we live? It is interesting, the sense of urgency I felt to connect to a stone pillar of Nubian design seen on a ruined 1835 flax mill in Northern England. The pillar kept me strong, helped me identify with an ancient part of my African heritage in a land where I was classified as “minority ethnic.” Great Britain, land of my birth, land that fought for ownership of Waitukubuli. Her tall green body divided into tiny economic plots, sold, abused, and then abandoned.After many years of mental tug-of-war, I have returned “home” to Dominica, land of sunshine, hurricanes, and volcanic energy. Living here, I feel a greater sense of belonging and connection to my drumbeat pulse. Nature lures me to the rusty sugarcane rollers shrouded by an entanglement of healing herbs. Roots dig deep, cracking solid stone walls of abandoned mills, reducing them back to dust. I dig hands in rich red soil, grow things and extract botanical color for textile works. It is the plants such as the wah-wah and noni that speak, revealing hidden stories of survival and African retention. Wah-wah, an indigenous wild yam (Rajania cordata), a means of survival for the Maroons who escaped the plantations.I feel there is also a sense of loss and pain buried in the core of every living thing that roots itself here, for even the plants have been transplanted. What connects us to the soil as Caribbean people? We plant, pick bush, talk herbal talk. Elders speak of bush baths and rubs for achy joints. What do we use here to heal residual trauma?I think of Stuart Hall, the sadness in his eyes, and know that through his struggle, through his work, he too, like the Nubian pillar, has strengthened me, kept me upright in times of yearning to be home. Can we, I wonder, as Caribbean people, ever embrace ruins from a purely romantic stance?