yakamoz
Sometimes I wish I smoked. So I have something to do with my hands. There are only so many coffees one can drink alone at a cafe. Outdoors, scented with conviction. I cannot fake anything. If I feel doubtful, the entire space fills with the aroma and blocks the flow. Uncertainty is not the same as insecurity.
Smoking does not look sexy on me. It does on some people. They wear it comfortably. Like a crushed velvet dress that clings neatly to the hips. I watched a young woman, not even twenty, in a knitted dress that rippled as she walked. Strappy, floor length, and gold as a sunbeam. She was braless and had hair cropped tight to her earlobes. She was glorious and basking in herself. She knew how people looked at her. No one has ever glanced at me that way, though I have never dressed so decadently for a midday stroll. She held a cigarette in one small hand, and her nails were pale as butter. I wanted to lick her fingers.
There are so many beautiful people strolling through the streets of Istanbul! My friend with short hair wants a home one day and works six days a week to save for a down payment. It is safe, she said. I want the security. Nothing lasts forever, I said, thinking of the girl with the knit dress. She won't be that person for very long until she unties the gown and it falls to the floor. Her ripe body will wrinkle, and new information will introduce itself. She will say this is who I am now with her lips, likely brushed with a gloss. Her nails may be orange at that time, or perhaps beige. Women tend to soften their palettes with age. Another act I will stoutly refuse! Why stay in one home when you can sample so many? If I were a painter, I would add blots of color to a pan and mix two and two. Four is the number of the day, and it is the shape my body makes when I sit down on the stool at the cafe I frequent.
The man who works here annoys me for no good reason other than he talks too loud and tries to take my cup away when I still have a wee sip.
There are some things I rush and other things I prolong. If I smoked, I would draw out each inhale and exhale. I would allow myself one cigarette a day and sit briefly with it cupped in a palm. I would let the flame die between each puff just to have a reason to use my other hand to light it.
The cafe sells all sorts of small cookies and sweets. Pistachio and almond cookies are shaped like crescent moons. Apricot, sesame, and tahini cakes. Buns with cheese. Buns with jam. Buns with olives and something green. A girl who is perhaps twelve serves me each day. She wears a kerchief with polka dots or red flowers. Today it is spotted with blue diamonds. Her ears are pierced, and she dresses only in white down to her socks and shoes. It is her choice, and she takes it.
The wind rouses the plants, and small green and yellow buds are on the keyboard as I write this. I am hungry and will not eat. I am fussed today, and I do not know why. I am upset and unsettled, and I wish I were in the mountains already. I fly to Antalya in three days, and my mind is already there. My body was left behind, as usual.
Day two of the Skinner Immersion was six hours. We took an hour-long break between two evenly split sessions, and I went to a tea shop and tipped my face to the sunlight. It was a terrible thing to be trapped in that room midday! Thirty degrees outside and inside, it was boiling. We worked with suspension and gossamer threads, and I said, this feels like reiki, and the teacher said, I don't know what that is.
She did not ask me any questions. I am no longer shocked by the lack of inquiry I receive. I used to think that I was uninteresting. Today I know it has nothing to do with me. How I speak, dress, move, and act influences my surroundings, though how others engage themselves is on them.
I must trust that people will find their own way, as I am mine. I have not fully developed my method. It is why I want to flee! To be alone in my thoughts in the forest. The next home is a wooden tree house with a little bed and much space to play outside on the terrace. I will rent a car and navigate solo. This is my way for now.
We ended the second day quite late again, and I was ravenous! I could not eat from the heat beforehand, so I stopped at a small shop on the walk home and bought a spiral bun with cheese. I sat on a stoop and ate it. I washed my hands beforehand. A cat came and rubbed against my leg, and I felt content for a few minutes while I chewed and filled my body with warm food. Then the cat left, and the bag was empty, so I got up and finished the trek home in solitude.
It was an uneventful night. I slept deeply, and the music from the nightclub did not bother me. Before I drifted, I lay in bed with the sandbag on my chest. I placed my hands on my body and breathed in and out. Ten, ten, ten.
It is a long line for me to unravel. It will not be easy. It will not be sweet. It will not be a task of suffering unless I make it so. We each choose our misery. I have chosen hope over hunger; even when the flies come and bite me, I do not hit them. I don't need to break a body to feel safe. I wave my hands at the mosquitos in wide arcs, and they leave me alone. I send them orange light. Why orange, if you ask, I cannot say. It is what showed up.
My palms are always moving. So are my feet. The quest is to simplify the story and infuse each movement with an intention. I do not need to pick up any more objects. Cigarettes and coffee included.
It is nearly noon and getting too hot to be outside in the sunlight without a breeze. The bugs are about, and my hands tap-tap-tapping away at the keys, telling you about my weekend and what I will do today.
A pipe burst in the new home, and water flooded the bathroom. I used pink towels to mop up the mess, wrung them out, and hung them in the shower. More handiwork.
I am pragmatic above all else. Perhaps a little bit cautious and more reckless than contained. I can be both things, all the things, all at once.
Photo source.
