ailuromancy
“Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.”
Dear Simone,
I write to you from the damp and dark crevasse of the jungle.
Everything breathes on its own- I feel the tree's respiration against my skin no matter where I go.
The tiles are stained by mildew. The pots are cracked and beetles run up and down my legs when I do yoga on the terrace. They are fat with wide wings that crackle and split when I hit them with a shoe.
My shoes were white and I worry that they will darken with time. I make effortless demands of myself and I don’t know where I am going after December 13th.
I arrived with one bag and zero questions. I’ve lost the tether to the sweetness inside. I exchanged it for love and left the sweets with someone else. I won’t tell you his name. Speaking it out loud makes it too permanent and I want to stay in the fantasy.
My protest is the reality of waking.
Yesterday I walked home in the black night. I was warned against roaming alone in the jungle of Santa Teresa. My friend was robbed of her money at the beach. I ran in my heavy sweater up the hill, the cobblestone paths speckled with beer bottle caps, and watched the lights of the favelas sparkle in the purple dusk.
I do not feel angry about the potential of being robbed. Economic disadvantage is rife with complexities. No one wants to beg or steal to become what they are. I walk a fine line between giving and taking and took off all my gold rings before I left my apartment. I want to be stripped, but only of the unnecessary items. Fear. Loathing. Envy. Greed. Someone can have my angst but no one wants it. Instead, they'd take the leather purse with the blue stones and the disappointment at nothing inside would be the cause of my reckless laughter!
I carry everything that is valuable inside of my heart. I don't tell my secrets to anyone but a few people who are flung out as starseeds across the wide web of the world. If they said something to someone else about any of it, it wouldn't matter.
Not many people know what I look like. I don't post photos on the internet. I don't want to be remembered by my face or body. I want my intellect and the way I pursue language to have a lasting effect on whatever stone is dug deep into the earth bearing my name.
I haven't written for days because I was soul-sick. Ripe with wanting all the things I left behind. I cried in a white dress on a white bedsheet and my black mascara left stains on the sheets and my hands. I cried for my sister. I cried for my mom. I cried for Code and Frankie and the playground and the smell of the rain.
Petrichor is the word for the scent of rain on pavement.
I miss home and yet my idea of what home is has changed. I don't want to go back and I don't know where the forward is pointing. I keep asking my guides and because I haven't been writing they will not answer me. The lofty space in my soul is vacant. I was not visiting so the spirits left. I understand. Everyone feels neglected as some point or another. I need to get quiet and come back in to my rituals and then the visitors will appear. Clarice and Hilda are the reason I am in Brazil and I feel a bit touched that they haven't appeared to me yet. It's been one week and no one has called on me, but I've made zero space to sit with them.
Today has been my first offering. It is Sunday. I woke up very early to the sound of the birds. The monkey's scream though it is usually midday. They chase each other in the trees and the boughs shake. It's been raining so the wetness falls as the monkeys run. I've been doing yoga outside on the terrace and when it rains I enjoy the mist on my skin. It reminds me of Vancouver. I have not tasted rain like this since I left. I've been in the desert and to Spain. My skin is a bit caramel from the jungle and I burnt my belly in savasana the other day during the two-hour class with Clara. It is cloudy though the sun peeks through and blesses the monkey and me while I practice and they play.
A toucan is around somewhere, too. I say its bright orange bill in the dense green underbrush. Where I live overlooks Mount Corcovado where Christ the Redeemer Stands. Cristo Redentor in Portuguese. His arms are spread wide and at night he glows purple. It is the largest Art-Deco sculpture in the world. April 4, 1922- the day Brazil was liberated from Portugal- is when the first stones were laid for the statue.
The arms spread wide is an expression of the heart. Throw the windows open- he yells from the hilltop. Embrace the unknown with the reckless abandon of the jungle, once you enter you cannot look back because the path is not paved or lit.
How do you know what is pure?
The jungle is pure because it throbs with life.
My heart is pure because it throbs with the pain of desire.
I am because I feel and what I feel is not always pleasant.
I was sick for three days upon my arrival to Brazil and my heart was not sick it was in my guts. The illness crept from my head to my belly through the vagus nerve, that snake that caresses each organ from the brain to the pubis. I keep thinking my way into a small, tight box with no windows. It's airless and when I'm there my knees collide with my chin and I cannot breath because my ribs are tight to my thighs.
I hold my breath and my wings contract.
To be free I must open; I breath to become. I take the air into the back of my lungs where there is most space to feel from the fetal position. I tuck myself into a comma when I'm sad. It feels like the womb and that was a safe place for me at one time.
The jungle is my womb right now and I've watched the wind lash the trees and the sun strip the shadows and the rain dampen everything so the cashews were mushy and the coffee was a bit wet as well.
I had to throw it all out and all I've eaten for two days is eggs, tomatoes, and olives. There is acid in my belly and, therefore acid in my mind.
The thing that is one place bleeds into the corners and so my fingers and toes are as confused as my belly and brain. I stick my hands on the yoga mat and take a downward dog and the rinse of movement helps clear the clutter clogging the arteries to my heart. I need to listen to what my heart says to know where to go in a month. It is not even a full thirty days and I have no thing booked. I've been traveling around based on information from the outside. The next move I make must be from the inside.
What am I in this instant? I am the dour smell of the old pillows. This is how I feel. I feel spongy and less strong than I was before. Where has my resolve slipped off to? I was a person who decided things based on my demands and now I have overlooked what to ask for.
I cannot ask questions of anyone else. That would be false. I cannot let external influences compose riddles that insist on confusion. Everyone has a story and our past influences the present. My naive protects me and must be reflected in the mirror. I look into my own eyes and see the sky where there is infinite potential. Marjon recommended I go skydiving and I already have; I do it every day from the cliff of my comfort zone into the abyss of what I have yet to experience.
I am terrifically discomforted right now. The disquiet creeps like the jungle. By day, I am watching with my bright eyes and absorbing my new surroundings. By night, I listen to the sounds that spring up where I sense movement. What information do I pay the most attention to, and what information do I neglect as a result? This is what I am sitting with right now and I have more questions than answers.
I want someone to tell me what to do and reconcile the angst in my abdomen!
There are doorways open to me pointing East and North. The incongruousness of my situation feels like spiderwebs and I was terrifically sick from it earlier this week. I don't want to trust- I DO trust.
How many people said, I trust, as their last?
Photo source.
