mudita
“Persecutory, I follow you
tether, muscle.
And you always resemble
everything that runs, time,
the current.”
Dear Anias,
Today is one of those days where I do not want to write to you. I slept deep and hard and woke up to the bells. The repitition is wearing me down. I put on different pajamas for the sake of mixing things up. How many other people have chosen red for this reason?
What I lack in decorum, I make up for with enthusiasm.
To hell with convention! I repeat myself for the sake of strengthening; I don't regurgitate the same thing for lack of imagination. Concentration is the season's focus, and the emphasis this week, these last days of the month, is on feelings.
I cannot trust what most people say; I must follow my feelings to get to the truth. Does every empath encounter this disruption? The discord between what is executed versus what is emotionally expressed?
My practice is getting stronger. I perform light movement each evening reclined on the floor under the skylight. The draft is cold and it keeps me awake. Last night it was very windy and the window panes shook from the effort. The door between the bedroom and kitchen breathed with me, gently waving back and forth with my inhales and exhales. A Great Gale shook the trees and the birds did not know where to land! I spoke through the wind.
It's still blowing hard, the wind.
Abderrahmane found a dead dolphin at the beach by his home in Morocco. I do not know if he was in Rabat, at the beach I've frequented and can easily picture in my mind. Or if he was in Sale at the beach, he goes to without me.
Is a death of that size more difficult to witness because it's unrecognizable? The skin is not of my species, so would that make it easier to digest?
No, I think not.
Dying is the same, no matter what the wrapper looks like. The intention and procedure can be distinct, though the result is the same. Expiration.
If I squish an ant with my palm, is that the same as the whale choosing to breach itself? Or a leader who initiates a war?
The action is the same, resulting in death. I would say the difference comes down to the intention and the thought process of the individual causing the death.
A dolphin chooses to die if sick or injured; it feels the end coming and goes with it willingly.
I've killed too many insects to count, unconsciously. Though, if I'd sought out bugs to burst, my intent is defined and makes me no better than a person with power who uses it to suppress and destroy.
Be it a bug or a kingdom; killing is murder if performed with malice.
In my dreams, I had nowhere to live. I could not find a home. I kept trying to affix myself to one place and it never worked. I wound up in my home from childhood and attempted to share a bed with my siblings. Each said they would have me though performed actions to push me out without saying a word. It was so loud and bright, I could not settle.
One sister invited me to her room and allowed me to set down my bags. As soon as I reclined, she started playing games on her phone with the music blaring.
The second invited me to her room and made it utterly uncomfortable with her sharp, agitated movements.
Finally, the last sibling bid me to her room, where she had her boyfriend. There was no space for me to be with them. I said thank you, and I left.
I carried a brown suitcase with a black handle that bumped against my shins. It was cold. I had no coat. I desperately wanted to lie down. I was so tired and hungry and heavy.
I sat outside in the rain and cried. And then I got up to find a newspaper to house hunt. I found a small home in a tree with wooden floors and a flat roof with no heat. It was expensive. I had no job in this dream. I took the home and offered to babysit the landowner's children to compensate for my lack of money.
They agreed.
I set my beaten luggage in the tree house and went shopping. I purchased white sheets, yellow curtains, and a blue teapot with tiny ceramic cups and saucers. Someone put a vase of flowers from the garden on the table and as soon as I made the bed, I laid down and passed out.
When I woke up, it was to the church bells chiming. The curtains were the blue ones I'm used to seeing in France. The blackbirds were outside, gliding high in a broken line.
If feelings are first, I will never listen to another word spoken by those not connected to their inner world.
I cannot trust them.
In the past, I did not trust myself and would willingly go into the disjointed realms with people I could see. Family, friends, lovers; the label doesn't matter. It is what is felt. The hidden, the unseen.
I can see into that space with my inner eye and now that I've developed consistency with that light, the fight is over!
I do not need to resist to protect myself. I can willingly receive and sustain my own while giving space to what erupts around me.
Number 2 is a perfectly eloquent example of a situation where my head and heart were in conflict and he said the right things though I never felt them true.
I was young and hopelessly romantic! I still am.
We were making love at one point, and I felt like a bird that had struck the window, thinking it was a hole to fly through. We lived in a highrise with long windows facing all directions. To the north, the mountains never moved. To the east, I could spot the bridge to my parent's home. West was the metropolis, and south contained the outdoor pool where we swam every day in the summer.
Small birds, brown and peppery, would hit the window at full speed. Most would pop up within eyesight and continue to fly, stunned and sloppy.
One hit the window and did not rise. We found it by the pool with its legs splayed.
Did you know cats will not eat a dead bird or rodent? They like the game as much as they do to be sated. I think they enjoy the chase more than the meal. People do. Why not animals? We are not very different if you remove the wrapper and feel for the inside.
In this apartment, I felt the discord while we were making love. Number 2 wanted to diminish me. Destroy me. Consume me entirely and fling me out like that bird that collided with the hard glass.
You're diminishing me! I'd said, so so far, below.
What? He'd said and looked down at me.
You Are Diminishing Me!
You can't breathe?
I pushed him hard, and rolled to the edge of the bed, where I slid off and grabbed the sheet.
I didn't say suffocating.
I went to the bathroom, shut the door, and turned on the shower. I sat on the toilet and sobbed to the sound of running water. Then I threw up. I turned off the hot water, stepped into the cold, and stuck my head under the stream. I didn't feel anything.
When I returned, my hair was still damp and my eyes were still puffy and I didn't care.
He was playing video games. We didn't look at each other. I couldn't speak.
We broke up that day, though it would take me years to acknowledge what I felt. Three more years of the same ritual. Dislocation. Cold showers. Sobbing on the toilet. Suffocation.
Love and death arise from the same source. One enlivens while the other dulls. I trusted the words of affection and caused myself affliction while suppressing my feelings.
Like the dolphin that willingly pursues its own death when it knows nothing left to live for, I threw myself onto the ledge, hoping someone would see my pain.
They didn't.
Like the bird who did not see the obstacle until it met its full force, it would take me many years to feel the flicker and fly upright again.
People are like felines on the hunt. They prefer the thing twitching to the carcass with no life left.
Photo source.
