Roots and Legacies
“Satorl Shimmering Marsh - Night”
by Manami Kiyota
I don’t really have ancestors to venerate. I have older cousins—Zer0 and Grímnir—and I have a family, a very large and loving one. But I don’t have ancestors or predecessors. I’m Korean but that barely means anything to me, though I can relate to the 880,000-won ($750 USD a month and living at home with your parents because you can’t afford rent and get no benefits) Generation who don’t feel that their nationality matters in a landscape defined by hellish, mediaeval levels of inequality. (I guess I’m Korean after all!)
My—and when I say “my” I mean Cocoa’s—grandparents on both sides survived the horrors of Japanese war crimes during the Second World War. Forced death marches, starvation, torture at the hands of Japanese troops, playing dead amongst heaps of corpses. They’ve all gone to their graves cursing Japanese fanaticism, though somehow they’d managed to reconcile that with their reliance and preference for Toyota cars. So if they saw Cocoa dating a half-Japanese half-German man (nnph), celebrating Japanese holidays, eating Japanese food, learning Japanese, and reading about Japanese folk practices, I think they’d be extremely unhappy. Fortunately for everyone they’re dead.
I’m—and I mean Cocoa—not very close to any side of my family. OK, actually, I’m just going to call them Cocoa’s family, because they’re not mine, and they’re arguably not hers either. She doesn’t know the language aside from food words, and they’re all highly religious Christians that don’t dance or sing because it’s sinful and don’t eat pork or shellfish (they can’t be Asian!) because Leviticus said those meats are unclean. They’re fiercely homophobic and racist, and also hate Catholics and anyone else who doesn’t follow their religion. Also, disabled people are God’s way of cursing sinful families. These people are thoroughly colonised and have zero connection to their “native” culture.
None of us wants to call it “native” culture, because that implies some form of “purity” in a culture that was highly syncretic pre-Christian colonisation. There are heavy Confucianist, Taoist, Buddhist, and Islamic influences, and practically every region has their own creation myth. Cocoa’s favourite foods are all Spanish-imported: custard, cheese, ensaimada, Spanish potato omelette. I don’t care for “cultural authenticity” or “purity” myself, celebrating an amalgam of Norse, Irish, and Shintou traditions, to name a few. I just don’t like it when cultural practices are eviscerated, exploited, and falsified for private profit. All heritage is human heritage. That’s about it.
So what about ancestor veneration? I don’t know why the idea of having a heritage to be proud of is so appealing to me—or if it’s actually appealing at all. (My opinions aren’t very strong on it.) It just seems “neat!” but it’s not particularly important to me.
Cocoa does have a heritage that she’s intensely proud of. It has nothing to do with her blood relatives or any religion. The people she’s most proud of are chosen family, not blood.
Avúreyon has settled as our household deity, but no one sees them as an ancestor. And someone pointed out to me—Cocoa did—that Bithisarea has mentored us—not particularly me, as I’ve barely been here—consistently, provided guidance, sympathetic company, and psychological resilience in the few instances he’s taken over. (It’s very hard to shake Jin, so when that happens, Bithisarea steps in. And really very few things bother Bithy except the abuse of metal and metalworking.) Bithisarea, an older widow, taught Cocoa how to enjoy life again and live with grief, a shattered future, and unrealised love. And they’ve lived three and a half lives together by now. All of us can always go to him for help. –when he feels like it. (Sometimes he’s asleep. Other times he pretends to be asleep for fun.)
“So you should be the ancestor deity!” Cocoa to Bithy.
“What? But I’m not a god. I’m your partner. We’re equals…” One of the few times he’s genuinely bothered. “I don’t like the idea of being prayed to and worshipped. That’s my partner’s thing.” Jin pretends not to hear anything…
So again, we’re left without an ancestor to venerate and Avúreyon as the household deity. And he’s really more like the intelligent family pet that everyone feeds, than a power we supplicate and appeal to for strength and fortune. That works for us. He likes it that way, too. Recently he’s discovered a love for soft cheese. That makes him completely different from Bithisarea.
Maybe “roots” aren’t that important (to us). If they are, they’re not “roots” in the traditional sense. We don’t descend from a specific lineage—well, apparently we’re 1/64th Chinese, and a maternal great-grandparent was actually a Spanish aristocrat—and we don’t have any specific family traditions to preserve. Everything we do, we’ve established in the course of our generation. From the dancing to the cooking to the pagan holidays. I don’t know if there are other systems in Cocoa’s extended family, though apparently Cocoa’s biological mother and maternal grandmother saw ghosts.
Maybe we’re our own roots, and Bithisarea is everyone’s helpful Uncle figure.
There is one man that we definitely consider a family member worthy of veneration, however. He’s come through in the absolute worst of times. He’s the reason any of us are alive in the first place. Cocoa, Dietrich, Giovanni, even Axel… have always gone to him for advice, are very anxious and respectful about what he thinks about things. We don’t see him as a god, though, no praying to him for power. He’s just a very good man. One of those few good men good and exceptional enough to be great… That’s all.
He’s not an ancestor, but more like a foster father… It feels… wrong, to ask him for “strength” or good fortune or things like that, when it really feels like we owe him. Is this filial piety? Maybe…
But we don’t want to set up a shrine or altar to him or anything! That’s weird for us. Even an ihai is pushing it because even that doesn’t feel right.
In a very real way he doesn’t feel like a “living relic” of the past, of a past time, with a power from before. It’s here right now, his business isn’t done. If anything we’re the ghosts. Not him.