mutluluk
“Kindness eases change
Love quiets fear.”
What do you offer the world? What do you keep for yourself, and what do you lend? His bag was filled with what I gave him; I would have given him so much more. He never asked. There was never anything in him that reached out and took or grasped. It was why I could contribute so willingly. It came from my heart and into him.
When there is a demand, it is through force. There is very little I can do in those situations. The only force I’ve ever imposed is upon myself. I see it in my body through the injuries in yoga. My knees and feet. My shoulders. The weakness is in my joints, where the pain presents itself.
Sometimes I wish I were like the women around me. I am sitting at a restaurant outside with the seat across from me, bearing only my jacket and plaid sack where I carry my computer. I am wearing my yellow and white dress with little buttons and one ring on my middle finger. I dressed lightly today. I feel a bit outside of myself, and yellow is a good color for me in these cases.
My hair is down and must be washed. I hate washing my hair. It takes so long. I would love for someone else to scrub my scalp. The soap Camia used smelled like candy. I will get my hair done when I go home for Christmas. If only to get a trim and loving scalp massage.
The women to my right and left are dressed decadently. They smell luscious, like fig and apple and clove. They wear dresses with matching nail polish, and their hair has been curled and combed back. Attentive and considerate in their appearance. These things take time. I am up and out the door within the quarter hour. I want my morning hours to write. I can’t spend that long in front of a mirror, or I will crack, and it is not worth the effort!
Of all the ways to engage the world, I choose to use my words and presence. I understand that appearance is linked to how people feel about you when you stand before them. Hygiene helps sustain friendships. Though how my hair falls has nothing to do with how a person feels about me, and if it does, is that relationship worth it?
I care about appearances in the state of the body; a healthy human is what I desire. There are external indications that I tend toward, though none of them are what I seek out or go after. I like darker hair, though I’ve dated blond men. I like clean teeth and nails. That is a hard angle that I am unwilling to release. How a person takes care of their body and home says much about how they feel about themselves.
I am shaking from the amount of caffeine I have had, and it is very cold given that my shoulders are bare and it has been blustery for the few days since I arrived. The cats are cold, too; they lean against the windowpanes and growl at me.
I cannot let them in! Even the orange with one eye. It is not my space, and I worry that once inside, they will not understand that they cannot come and go as they, please!
Must everything boil down to a struggle for power? Are we that dense of a species to think that this is what it takes to survive? Power over instead of power with? I cannot go there in my being because it is not true. I know it because I feel it, and the thirst for power is the loudest cry of insecurity that there can be! Fear is palpable and contracts. I cannot go out without touching other people's pain. I have created a white shield I wear around myself like an egg. The shell cracks when I am tired or hungry. I must take care of myself before I leave home, or I bleed out into the ether, and there’s no room for that sort of mistake!
I absorb too much, and it all comes out one way or another. I need to be more careful. Tidy me up.
The two times I cracked were moments I let my guard down. I opened the sheild, and something rushed in. I felt too deeply. I saw all of it - all the sensations I’d been holding just outside my heart swept in and cleaned me out! I was exhausted afterward and cried until my throat was hoarse and my pillow was matted. Does it matter who or what the tears are for?
Two women in kerchiefs are standing on the balcony across the way in a green building. The man in the white robe owns the restaurant, which makes sense the way he strides to and fro. He keeps his sunglasses on even though it is not sunny. I do not trust people who do such things. It is a way to hide what they are thinking and feeling. Perhaps he is sensitive. Perhaps he is manipulative. Perhaps a little bit of both.
The woman looks like they must be Muslim the way they stand and dress. Istanbul is not like Morocco though there are prayers five times a day. My home is beside the mosque, and this alignment makes me feel very close to my soul. I felt empty in France. I wonder how I will feel in Barcelona in the fall. A little less forlorn since I have been there, or all the more so since I do not have any community.
There is a table of eight men sitting across from me, all on their phones. Why go out together if you want to be alone? Does anyone know what it is to be in solitude? I am more comfortable by myself; this I learned on the plane with Abderrahmane. I do not want to travel with a companion. It was a bit tiresome for me to be with him like that. I am used to caring for myself and filling my time with a book. Having to wait for him and explain things over and over was like being with a child. Not sexy. Not sexy at all.
I guess it helped the transition from lovers to not lovers. I would never call him a friend. I slightly insulted him when I said that, though I did not mean it to be cruel. It was simply the truth.
Photo source.
