kontal-kontil
“Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.”
Dear Simone,
The bats came in yesterday. Small ones with furry wings and red eyes. It's been one month since their last visit. I didn't hide this time. I let it happen. That last time, I was in the jungle and I fought it. Hard.
My mother used to say that which we resist persists.
Clara says that she leans into people who push her.
I used to say that I wanted someone who would kick me back.
Resistance is a necessary force. I use resistance in the bar classes. I push the floor, wall, and legs to strengthen the specific muscles. Mainly my pelvic floor.
It is the same area the bats target, only where one fortifies the other destroys.
I was lying on the floor when I felt it. The gentle tap-tap-tap at my navel. The indicator is always lower than the heart. It's a low vibration; I can hear Amanda saying; the type of energy you want to move away from.
How do you move away from something rooted inside of you?
I remember when I was small, perhaps three or four, in our home in Regina. In the recollection, I'm squatting on our couch. I'm wearing light blue pajamas and my hair is the color of straw. It's big and beige and soft. My arms are wrapped around my legs and I'm crying, no-no-no-no!
Tap-tap-tap.
My mother and father and grandpa and grandma loom over me. Their faces are very big and their arms are very long. My mother holds a pair of tweezers in her hand. My grandmother holds four small white tic-tac treats. My grandfather has his hands on my feet. My father has his hands on my back. I try to shake them off and protect my body. No-no-no-no-no.
Rap-rap-rap.
My mother reaches for my left leg and holds it. She is stronger and bigger, but I am lithe and wriggle like the worms I watch in the dirt. I writhe and scream and kick at the hands. The tweezers fall into the crevasse of the couch. I scurry off to the far edge of the couch and curl into a tiny ball, my nose at my knees.
They left that blue sliver in my foot until the skin puffed up all around it and I couldn't walk. I eventually went to my mother who collected the tweezers to dig it out. I sat on my father's knee, and he held me and rocked me back and forth while my mother separated the skin to see the small piece of wood lodged between my toes.
I nuzzled my nose in my dad's chest.
I was given four tic-tacs afterward. They were orange and tasted like a creamsicle.
Laying on my rented living room floor, I wished I'd had someone to lean into. Every time the bats visit, I am alone.
Fear favors the desolate.
I let the feeling come, praying it would pass. In the jungle, I'd been cooking tortellini. Big fat packets of pasta stuffed with cheese and mushroom. It had been raining and as the water pounded the rooftop, I bellowed at the bats.
GO AWAY.
I waved my rented wooden spatula in the air and continued to watch the pasta. Boiling. Like me.
The bats held off while I squirmed and screamed. Perhaps enjoying the thunderstorm. The power had gone out several times and I'd turned all the lights off. Three beeswax candles burned on the table and I cooked in the moonlight. It is always fat and full when the bats visit.
I track the timeline.
The favela music boomed louder than the thunder and when the bats broke through the barrier, no one heard it but me.
And Jemima Joe Kirk, she's always with me in a burnt orange sundress.
I need to remember to give her a new outfit.
Withstanding is exhausting, so I didn't last night. I let the bats in. The sun had set, and the moon was waxing Aries. I stayed on the floor and felt it. Their hunger. Their need. Their greed. Their desolation. Their desperation.
It was a short visit, the shortest I've ever experienced. Maybe because I didn't withhold. Maybe because I put Jemimi in jelly bean green and a furry hat. Maybe because I didn't think about the bats, I felt them; I invited them in.
There was nothing to give, which was the biggest reason the duration was short. I barely ate all day and the pantry was bare. What visitors want to linger when you've nothing to feed them?
Rap-rap-rap.
My favorite part is the aftermath; cleaning up the mess. I start with myself, washing and brushing all the bits from head to toe. The intensity of the visit leaves me lucid. Sometimes I pretend I'm a wet leaf floating on the water. Or a rose petal stuck to a rough branch. Or a feather floating in the ether.
Yesterday I was none of those things. I was simply Stephanie in a taupe dress with that black cable knit sweater I loathe and won't get rid of.
After my body, I scourged the bathroom, kitchen, living room, and bedroom. It took me nearly an hour and it was midnight when I crawled between those crisp white sheets and closed my eyes.
I felt marvelous.
I felt free.
Why do I feel so liberated after a purge, Simone?
Taking out the garbage is magnificent. Just because you cannot see it doesn't mean it is not there. I get such an intense thrill from robbing my teeth of plaque with floss; wiping the trash bin free of murky residue; rubbing my shoe soles free of dirt.
What am I really cleaning when I scrub these rented surfaces, Simone?
As a child, my mother pulled my slivers and fed me candy to soothe my tears.
As an adult, I wish I could locate the fragments causing pain with this ease. I wish I could go deep into my guts and locate the source of my anguish. I wish I could feed the bats without wasting myself.
Counterbalance, Simone. For one thing to exist, the other must resist.
Is this true?
If it is, and I exist, what is it that I resist within myself?
And if I could locate the origin of my rebellion, would I be free of this cycle of purging?
I don't think so, Simone.
If I located the sliver and yanked it out, I would lose the construction of what I call a soul.
I think the thing that ails me and makes me sick and draws the bats to come is the thing that gives me purpose.
The will to create and become and pursue!
Simone, it is such a gift to be wild.
I am willing to accept the bats.
I will not fight them. I will not hold them off.
I am learning to use force, Simone.
Attention: rap-rap-rap.
Where does it go?
I woke up and felt like someone had cleared my cache and reset my memory. I made mint tea with a bit of honey and opened the windows wide to receive the sun.
The bats don't visit during the daytime, Simone.
They never have.
Photo source.
