Where the Dogs Fight
Dear Simone,
I woke to the sound of the dogs fighting and lit incense to clear my space. I use Palo Santo because it is heavier than the Jasmine sticks I purchased at the market. I need something dark to remove the throaty snarls from my consciousness. The dogs are big and white. One sleeps outside the apartment on the blue and yellow tiled stairs with its black nose tucked between its paws. I don’t know where the other dog reclines. Perhaps this is why they fight. The stairwell is a good location.
With the stick of wood in one palm and my red lighter in the other, I move through the small studio and chant quietly to myself. Om Mani Padme Hum. I walk in my blue slippers. When I left Vancouver, they were fluffy. Now they are mostly flat. The puffs are worn from treading back and forth indoors. I cannot walk barefoot when I do not know who tread before me. I wash the floors with a cloth and soap whenever I arrive somewhere new, and I still wear these slippers. Finding small balls of pale blue fuzz between my toes is a comfort.
I’m currently looking out at the ocean. The tide is high and the waves crest forward to the shore where they drop their foamy skirts of white. Rinse and recede; life moves in these cycles. Progression is a myth. Haven’t we been here before? I feel as if I’ve been speaking with you my entire life, yet we’ve never met. The longer I look at what you left behind, the more I understand my place in the webbing of relationships. I feel like the spider, the creator whose work is easily destroyed.
The fishermen have appeared at the seaside with their rods and blue boats. The engines sound like lawnmowers. My first morning here was very confusing. I felt displaced. My memories went back to my childhood when I’d rise to the sound of my dad cutting the grass in his cracked leather shoes and a top splattered with paint. My dad always wore his old dress shoes without socks to mow the lawn. I remember my mother wearing tight white shorts with bangs held off her face by laundry pins. The details I’ve chosen to reflect about my past lives reveal more about my identity than the persons I recount. My sisters would recollect other images of our parents.
What we pick up is also what we lay down for others to see and receive. There is little to collect from the sand on the beach where I live. In Vancouver, seaweed and broken shells create a fringe between the sand and the sea. The beachfront in Morocco leaves a fine coat of dust on my shins when I go for a walk in the breeze. The windiest days are my favorite. There are fewer people by the ocean and dunes because of the sandstorms. I like to watch the ripples the wind creates on the water and earth. The textures are distinct; one feels soft and sounds like home. The other brings pain with it and fills my ears with crust.
I’m learning to hold the inherent paradox in each palm without looking too long at either side. Maintaining both is the practice and keeping my gaze somewhere in the middle. The heart leans a little to the left, a metaphor for the imbalance I feel regardless of how I strive for perfection.
I did not choose where my organs were placed in my body. There is so much I cannot control, and acceptance is the only way through the frustration of powerlessness.
I ask questions to develop my own mind through the knowledge of others. Sometimes I feel a bit greedy; I learn so much by listening. No one notices how much I take because I am so quiet.
The dogs are fighting again. Six pups were born when I arrived and they followed me until they could run. The bitches bickering in the ally could be that pack. I named the litter Gemini because three dogs were white and the other three black. Split in half and mirroring the light and dark in each of us.
I fed the animals during my initial weeks here. I’d take them packages of bread and meat. I set out small dishes of water. There was a litter of kittens so small they could not walk. The mother, a striped orange short hair, carried them in her mouth one by one and placed them in a small apple carton in the corner of the cafe I frequent. One day the carton was gone and I heard that the mother had moved her family to spot under a shelf of rainbow surfboards in the shop next door.
I’ve been seeking a corner to tuck myself into where I can write with some ease and consistency, though I realized- perhaps a little less quickly than the cats- that the far angle of the room is not where life abounds.
The mother forced her young to a more visible location where her kittens would open their eyes to the chaos. Long-haired surfers with golden skin and freckled backs. Europeans in their linen skirts and shorts. Teenagers with longboards tucked under an arm and women in spangly bracelets and bikinis. Paper cups of dark coffee with bowls of eggs and bread are served indecorously. Groups sit on the tiled stairs smoking spliffs and sharing bags of tobacco. The cats sit under the boards with wild eyes, taking it all in without understanding.
The body is porous as the mind. Do we need to be consciously aware of the events we encounter, or is it enough to fill ourselves with the sensation and ideas we witness in each experience?
I am like those kittens, pushed hot and steamy from a womb into a cold world where I sat back and watched everything until I could pick things up with my own hands. One day, the kittens were on the blue tiles pulling shoe laces and batting toes with tiny claws. They had started to climb chair legs and eventually leaped up to the benches to examine plates of food and drink they could smell from where they played on the floor.
The dogs are fighting. It is a sharp and terrible shock at this time of day. I anticipate the violence in the nighttime when the music blares from tiny windows and I can see people strolling the beach with blankets and bottles of beer.
The music, the dogs, and the smell of meat are why I cannot sleep.
There are six open markets on the street east of my studio and by nightfall, the tenders come outside and barbeque kebabs of fish, lamb, and beef. They use bamboo fans to spread the smoke into the streets. The dogs linger in these corridors and whine, whine, whine. No one feeds them. Sometimes a child will drop its meal and the animals watch with their tongues lolling out and wait for the perfect moment to pounce.
Are we all like that? Waiting with our mouths agape once we see the thing we believe will nourish us?
The boats have gone—twelve in total when there are usually eighteen. I counted as I sat at my window with you, writing. The windows are grand. Six feet high with stained glass and scalloped edges. My room is gold and pink. The sun sings into the mirror and I leave the glass wide until midday when it is too hot to enjoy. I pull the curtains tight at this time, around 2pm, and work with my seat on the tiled floor. It is cooler on the ground and hot higher up.
I cannot see any of the boats on the water; they are so far each has disappeared. I ache for that view, surrounded by sea and sky—the smell of salt and the taste of freedom in my body. I was there once and will write about it, though not right now.
The woman who had been swimming in a green bathing suit has left and four young men with fishing rods are in her place. The boys who play soccer will appear shortly. I like watching them run and flip the ball. It is a conversation without words and a competitive dance. Winning feels wonderful when it has a rhythm.
Today I will pack my belongings. The pale silk romper hanging from the mirror, the striped green pillowcases that look like peppermint candies, and the wild orchid lotion I purchased in Spain. I placed a small gold statue of Ganesha in the only plant pot at the center of the room. These small and seemingly insignificant objects signify my home. I need them to anchor my sense of place. Home is so many things. It is a ritual. It is community. It is relationship. It is love.
I have these things no matter where I go; the return will be formidable when it occurs. I am on the beam catching light in my eyes and shadows in my palms. I am witnessing the decomposition of all I believe in exchange for a different vision of what it means to exist.
Simone, I need you more than ever and I am grateful to have you here as I write. I’ve chosen you, which says more about my desire than anything else that informs my identity.
It is a solace to my soul, knowing that you cannot speak and are always listening.
Today will be another farewell and I will say it with footprints in the dunes as I wander and watch the sun burst from yellow to red. I have a spot midway between the desert and the ocean where I prefer to sit and catch the sunset on my body. I close my eyes and feel the warmth turn cold with one palm up and the other down against my thighs. The left side receives and the right side gives. As the darkness cloaks my shoulders, each star appears clear and contained. The individual luminaries are part of an ever-expanding constellation and illuminate great mythologies that have dictated human experience through Astrology.
The stars may present the path, though we need the dark to see their messages.
Photo source.
