I am at a park near my house. 
It is some place I have not seen 
in years, not since me and the bros 
were taken away, back when our 
parents had to make off-the-books 
money. I had forgotten that 
there was a lake here! I approach 
it, and of course, I start to Shout 
a bit, like the ancestors would 
whenever they were in nature.

I needed to be there. It was 
a rough, stressful day. I wandered 
about, and I took in the sight 
of the trees, and the warmth of the 
sun. There were geese and swans, and 
alot of red-eared sliders (turtles) 
in the water. I could tell the 
water was experiencing 
harmful algae blooms, because it 
was very green. But I was 
okay. I felt calm.

I gazed into the water at 
the turtles, watching them as they
slowly moved through it, floating. They 
would occasionally poke their 
heads up, before heading back down, 
to not be seen again. The sight 
of this: the swimming, the movement 
upward and down, it wound its way 
like a soft whisper into my 
eyes, to my brain, where it massaged 
my head from within.

It was almost as if the light 
waves bouncing into my 
retina from off the water 
and the bodies of the turtle
were etching something gently 
behind my skull, and the 
sensation was so strange that I 
could only make sense of it with 
the word <<enti>>. And this is what 
I decided to call turtles 
in my speculative language. 

—-

When I observe or 
experience something, the way 
phenomena unfold or 
occur or operate always 
elicit some kind of weird 
cross-sensory response. There’s this 
whisper-like tingling, at once a 
noise, at once a feeling, yet not, 
like a soft touch, in between my 
temples; almost like there is a 
temporal residue that gets 
etched into my body, and it 
is very visceral, and can 
get overwhelming at times, in 
the same way that a heat wave can 
make you feel woozy, or being 
hungry can make it hard to 
concentrate.

When I need a way to parse these 
various stimuli and 
understand the causes thereof, 
the tool for mediating their 
jumbled place in my mind, is a 
constructed language. Also known 
as a conlang. It is called 
<<Nya Ragwa.>>

You may speak of it as 
“the Undulatrix.” It is 
a system that frames everything
I think of as though they were 
wavelengths, flowing into me. 
When your brain works like mine, that’s how 
reality always is. There 
is no past, present, future: all 
of it is an 
intersubjective set of bands 
that flow and stream in my head, 
like ripples stirred by a rock that was 
thrown. 

The scientists call this 
“Synaesthesia.” The basic 
definition is that certain 
people have combined senses. That 
is how their brain chooses to make 
sense of linguistic and 
sensorial information. 

For some, it is a mind’s eye thing,
and others it is felt in a deeply 
somatic way. For me, it’s both.
It’s a reflex, just like breathing.

The constructed language
is what helps me
explain or understand what
is going on with me in ways
that English cannot do for me.

It is like an oar that parses
the ups and downs of a raging 
ocean, by which a tired, sick
seafarer might struggle to guide
the vessel of my body/mind
so tossed hither and thither by
the whips and scorns of time.

I am here to share it with you,
through four parables, to immerse
into the life of my mind with
tales, poems, and meditations.

<<Tuom oha venreoga, 

etali h’atha he 

eréná ko thedi.>>


“Take rest in the 

Deep, where all comes 

and stirs.”


<<Skavohava 

ara thedi 

ranziriga.>>


“With a potency 

unmatched, the 

Deep always rumbles and quakes.”

<<Thedi ono 

lananakaga

anjarw’ohe ara 

eréna onanatenreoga.>>


“The Deep is dark and so 

envelops all things; all things can 

consist and persist in the Deep.”


<<Thedi tuome 

lanankikoiga

thedi’ohe metienele

lanansuaga, etali 

éra thedi ahi

onatheleréanreoga.>>


“The Deep is nothingness, 

the Deep is the source. 

Existence rests in the Deep.”

Endnote: This is the word translated as “rest” in English. It also means “zero” in the Undulatrix. The stories of <<Nya Ragwa>> assert that when one closes their eyes or goes to sleep, they end up having dreams or visions because the back of the eyelids is a fragment from the darkness of the Deep. Thus, the mind, a site of information gathering and perception of events, etc, is associated with the Bottom of the Ocean, a site of tectonic and volcanic activity and the origin of Life on earth. The formulation was inspired by the many dreams about the Bronx River I have had, that have given me much inspiration. It is also a way of representing how my synaesthetic brain seems to work through the undulations of stimuli and subjective experience that are instituted or elicited by outside forces, impacts, dynamics, interactions, and cultural symbols. Finally, there are some influences from quantum theory (in which everything is a wave at the quantum level) as well as traditional African beliefs like the cosmic ocean myths and prevalent associations of water with the ancestors and divine power.