louring
“Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who’s in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It’s like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven’t seen in a long time.”
Dear Simone,
I am anxious and irritable. I have a thread of disquiet I've pulled and it has unravelled into a messy ball with loose ends pointing every which way and I don't know where to begin. It is easier to look outward and see what to fix than to sit in what I feel.
The New Year is in five days and it was my birthday this weekend. Outside, it does not feel like Winter, though I can touch a hardness I've been unable to name in my heart.
All the doors of the mosques, churches, palaces and art studios are shaped like keyholes in Rabat. I want to enter each and every one of them to see what is on the other side. In the main square, I stood on my tiptoes to peer through the cracks of wood where the door stood slightly ajar and saw the most resplendent garden! A fountain held court at its center and three white cats slept on its ledge.
My issue is that I do not want to put time into anything. I have a fear of missing out on something more important. I have not learned that there is no better place to be than where I am.
Yesterday, I was shut out of the garden. Abderahmanne and I walked to the beach through the market and the stalls were open to Sunday travelers. Leather shoes with pointed toes and glittery tops, small satchels with embroidered belts, tiny silver teapots with four matching miniature glasses, cookies shaped like stars, and long robes with tassels on the sleeves. I walked with my eyes closed and my arm was interwoven through his and steered by his torso's motion. The people pushed up close and the scent of bread and fish clouded the air. The door to the garden was down a long corridor with fewer people, shops and stalls selling meat and pastries. We navigated our steps toward the clearer paths and as we passed the tall keyhole, I detached myself from him and walked up close to the doorway. It was a little bit wider than a thumb, and without touching anything with my body, I peeped into the crevasse.
What did I hope to see, Simone?
What is it we are looking for when we seek outside of ourselves?
Reconciliation for what was- validation for what is- consolation for what is to come?
I need a touchstone to root into what I want to become and you are that five-pointed star for me at this time of my life. I am not willing to let you go, though I've turned 35 and it is the Year of Hilda Hilst, or so I've named it. I will commemorate our symbolic death on New Year's Eve, but I will hold onto you until it feels right to set you aside and step onto a new track.
What I'd planned for myself in the coming year is not what is being revealed. I do not know how much to pull and how hard to push. Do I force what I foresee or do I soften into the flow?
I don't need you to answer that question - it is too easy.
Surrender is the taste of black tea with that last lick of sugar melting on my tongue.
It is Abderahmannes hands in my hair, soft as the sand, warm with affection and sun. He found a beetle the size of a fruit fly in my bangs and drew it out without crushing it. The gentle giant; all that he touches is soothed by his inner quiet.
Especially me.
The strength of my agitation reels and moves to strike outward, and I've stopped the blow each time. I do not want to provoke him or propel myself in a direction for or against him. I do not want to negotiate or navigate space with or around him.
As I looked through that small slip between the door and the wall, the cats lounged, the water gushed, and the plants whispered in the rippling shadows. A wash of light and dark spotted the leaves shaped like fans and flowers the color of pomegranates and mango. My mouth fell open and saliva coated my tongue. The quietness of those felines reached into my heart and settled there with a sigh. The rushing water entered my veins and told me to breathe. The dark earth bearing the plant roots scented the air with its ripe and wild scent.
I felt him close beside me and inhaled deeply against the door without physically touching it: connection without direct contact. With the exhale, he slipped his hand into mine and we walked side by side to the beach.
When I look outward to better understand who I am, I become cloying and clingy. I do not know my voice and never know what to say when I sit down and bring my hands to the keyboard or pen to the page.
To step into the heart where the truth lives asks more than courage and vulnerability- for I have those two qualities. It asks for reverence. It requires deep listening. It also takes patience.
The armor of my heart is cracking open like that mysterious door to the fountain. I did not know to find that path; I did not walk there alone; he was by my side. Curiosity and a voracious desire drew me to that doorway, and beyond I did not know what to expect. Does the unseen need to be viewed- or can it simply be felt? Would I have been satiated by the question of what was beyond the door? I did not consider who may be beyond the door if it was private or public property. If it was for sacred purposes or commercial investment. I let go, opened my eyes, went to it, and looked without thinking, asking, taking, grasping, or demanding. I stood at the edge and looked in, holding my breath, and discovered beauty beyond the bustle.
I was outside the room, yet I am still in that room. There is a familiarity flush with a tenderness. A wild comfort that is contained for the time being. When I close my eyes, here and now, and drop into the throbbing of my heart space, I can hear the water and smell the flora and see the little cats stretched out in the sunlight.
As I exhaled and slid away from the door, a cat yawned and stretched its legs into the other cat and it pushed back and growled. The cat furthest away opened its eyes and blinked three times before standing.
A conductor leads an orchestra; the timekeeper waves the wand back and forth, up and down, dictating the song's tempo.
Life is a mystery because we cannot see the conductor, and yet we all move in a rhythm influenced by each other.
My departure impressed the cats to rise and as I walked away, six blue eyes witnessed my departure from the world I brought into being.
I have been writing this to you for twenty minutes, and my angst has settled. For now, I feel as if I've accomplished something worth recognizing. However, these meandering musings are of little interest to anyone, including you.
Who do I write for and why do I write? I have asked this many times over of myself.
I write to reconsile this ache inside, to settle the longing, I feel for the temporal elements of being human. I am utterly romantic and always sad. The ending is here and now; creation is the only way to let go.
Photo source.
