milota
“He sees me only as a woman. He cannot or will not rise above the sensual. He doesn’t see me. He doesn’t realize that he does not love me. I don’t really exist for him. He merely loves my body, the outer cloak which is merely a manifestation of my true self! How horrible! How debasing!”
Dear Anias,
All I have is in one bag. Blue and yellow and grey. The contents of who I was have been emptied into so many bins. I donate what I have and carry what I cannot give away.
Clara sent me a package, and in it was my birds, a fox, a watercolor postcard, a book of love sonnets by Neruda, pictures of a girl at sixteen, a green scarf, broken glass, and a coloring book with two pages done in crayon.
The glass I emptied into the metal trash container. I taped the postcard to the wall for three days. The scarf I am wearing and the girl of sixteen I still see in the mirror. In my journal, I put the photographs in the poetry book and the fox.
I carry many people with me in these little objects.
Last night I dreamed I was in a cellar that smelled of musty wine and moths. Bumble bees were in the clay. There were no flowers. There is no life that far underground unless you dig for it. I had a spoon to take small scoops of dirt from the walls. It was cold and I had bare feet.
He was with me, not in a physical sense though I felt him. His large hands and warm chest. The dark hair and eyes are his mother's.
I met his family yesterday, Anias. We ate Seffa together in a circle. With large silver spoons. When we entered the home, we gathered in the living room and drank Moroccan tea with sweet chocolate biscuits and a type of bread like a croissant. I met his mother, grandmother on his father's side, aunties and uncles, cousins, father, brother, and relatives not related through blood. An aunt or uncle by blood has a different name than the aunt and uncle through marriage.
He translated for me when it was necessary and I spoke a little with the aunt and uncle who knew some English. I have a stronger desire to learn French. I felt a bit entitled and inadequate with just my English. Everyone I meet knows two languages, minimum! Some people from Europe I have met know up to seven languages fluenty.
We spent a few hours together in the room. I absorbed as much as I could through the sounds, laughter and animated discussion, though I picked up more from the body language. The unspoken.
He is so much like his mother in looks and energy. I knew this from their close relationship, what he said to me, and photos.
Her large, brown eyes are also his. Not merely in appearance, he is also filled with her warmth, kindness, and compassion. She has filled him with what she is and I see her in his eyes, complexion and bone structure. She is smaller though strong; I can see it in how she moves. In her cheekbones and hands, the way she sits so comfortably in herself, taking it all in without looking. This is also in him.
His essence, his signature of being, is so much of her, Anias. He is Muslim in his roots; the family gathering revealed another layer of who he is that I had not previously perceived.
His father is thinner and less porous. He is ill and moves slowly, though there is more air and acid in his bones. Abderrahmane and his mother are Kaphic, earth and water. Cool and contained, tender and receptive.
The grandmother of his father is a lively woman. She held court in a purple dress and white hijab. Her laughter lit up the room.
The aunties were enthusiastic and provocative; they kept the conversation moving. I wanted to contribute in my usual way, with questions and considerations, though I could not. It was a very different way of being with people for me. To sit and listen and receive. It was wonderful and also disquieting.
We took a photo and his mother sat beside me and pressed close to thread her arm around me.
I understand him better from this experience. His mother does not say much, though she shows her affection in other ways.
After lunch, he took me upstairs to the terrace where his white and orange short-hair cat had four kittens playing in a wooden crate. There were two small white ones, one orange, and one striped orange and one white. They had blue eyes and sharp little teeth. Two refused to come out of the crate, one hissed at me, and the striped one almost licked my finger. They all shook uncontrollably, perhaps from the cold or the fear of not knowing my scent. I did not stand too close. I wanted to hold them close to my chest to stop them from trembling.
Love is like that, too, Anias. The desire for closeness, though, if I were to clutch at those kittens, they would be struck with fear. I would have been scratched or bitten.
Why is love like this? So terrific and terrible at the same hour? I want so badly to hold the thing close to me and when I get within a breath's distance, the fear overcomes the love in the other. I felt it in the kittens and I feel it in him.
It comes down to control. The cats do not know me or understand that I am not a threat. I am outside of their scope of understanding. They do not spend time with humans. They spend time with their mother on the terrace in the sun, wind, and rain. This is all they know. The plants and their wooden crates act as a makeshift womb. One day they will leave the concerte rooftop and slip down the stairs into the home. Perhaps they will enter the street and learn the smells and sounds of civilizations. Perhaps one will get hit by a car. It is the risk one takes entering the world of form: Death.
I have died so many little deaths.
My mantra yesterday was to Shiva. My God is blue with three eyes and long dark hair. My God is terrific and terrible, like the love I have in my body. It fills me with a need and terror. A tremor that lights me up and gives me life! The first breath I took was a gasp and I hope the last is a deep sigh of release.
The cats do not know God; how could they? They are unaware and unable to form conscious thought processes. It is the gift of being human, this ability to reflect and refine ourselves based on what we come to accept and understand.
I will never fully understand him, Anias.
Our reference points are so different. What is rooted in him, what was put inside him when he entered the world, goes so far back and beyond what either of us can control. He is threaded into a system of belonging, as am I, and we cannot belong to each other due to this never-ending cycle within and outside of ourselves.
What is a lifeline? We exist in a limited framework, though what we came from and what we leave behind is much longer than what we can grasp. I participate in rituals that were established thousands of years ago. My yoga practice is not mine; it is unique to me and yet it was constructed over centuries of devotion. It's like the Moroccan mosaics in the Souk; I must step back to see the mandala. Up close the colors are so strong and I cannot see the design.
Are emotions like those colors? The blue, red, pink, purple, yellow, and white? And what is the design? Consciousness?
I am shifting from my need to understand. I previously sought to comprehend the intent behind his action and thought processes. Now, I think my approach will be acceptance. I will never understand all of him, all of it; it is too great!
No matter what I read, research, ask, or study, there will be a gap in my knowledge until I embody what I wish to know. How can I embrace a culture and religious identity that I do not believe in?
The paths to God are many, and I am developing my own ideas of what it is to be sacred.
Photo source.
