rechauffe
“Loneliness: there is no organ that can take it all.”
It is one week exactly that I have been in Morocco. I arrived in Rabat after nearly a full day flying from Sau Paulo last Wednesday afternoon.
Timelines feel longer - it feels like I've been here for one month and seven days. My landing is much faster than it was when I left Vancouver. It took me three weeks to settle in Arizona; three in Barcelona; two in Tagazhout; two in Rio; and now just one week in Rabat.
I have sequences I employ to help myself ground. I establish an altar and a place to do yoga every day. I devote myself to the activities I have carried with me for nine months. Yoga, dance, writing, reading, listening, and sending voice memos to friends. Routine helps quell the angst of questions when considering too much of my surroundings.
Why am I here - what am I doing - what is the point of all this?
I mean in the smallest sense (why am I in Rabat and what will I do in this city?) and in the grandest sense (why am I alive and what is the point of my arrival in this timeline on earth?)
Rio feels like a different lifetime. I became someone wholly different while I was there. She wore tight shorts and loose dresses and purple eyeliner with gold glitter. She woke up with the sun at five am and made a french press coffee. After writing for three hours, she would go for a ten-kilometer run through the jungle and along the narrow footpaths in the hills. Breakfast was at noon; eggs and pasta and cheese. Midday was filled with work and phone calls with friends and colleagues. Nighttime was reading, yoga, and a trip to the beach if the weather permitted.
The girl in Rabat is very different. She wears baggy sweaters and linen shorts with drawstrings. Her pants feel loose and she attends the gym for weight lifting twice weekly and dance class on Wednesdays. She runs once a week by the beach, where it is flat, cold, and damp. She eats tajine, veggies with rice, and warm oatmeal sprinkled with nuts and berries. The mornings are reserved for writing and evenings; she curls up with a book beside her lover.
I become someone new when I arrive at my destination from travel. I don't have a preference for any of the people I design. I have a deep longing and nostalgia for the woman I was at twenty-eight. I chose this age as it was the year I discovered community through yoga and the wise women who would be my teachers, mentors, and eventually, friends.
I had no idea how blessed I was by the friendships I'd cultivated in Vancouver.
I've carried very few with me, and meeting kindred souls is not as easy as I understood it to be.
Fortune favors the bold, and I continue to assert myself, a little more gently as I go, in an effort to make friends.
Girlfriends.
I enjoy being surrounded by couragous and compassionate women.
My soul is soothed by it.
The morning walks by the beach—as I watch the sky lighten from dark to a smear of purple, pink, and light blue—I look for signs that reinforce my decision to be here in Rabat. Triangles are the only sign thus far, as they align with the man in my dreams.
Sheba has visited me twice, once in Rio and once here in Rabat. I met her the first time at the ceremony in Whales only I did not recognize who she was. In our first meeting, she was just a shadow- a dark stripe against the orange sunlight - with her hair piled high on her head and wrapped with a scarf. She had a beautiful profile- a strong nose and plump lips. She gave me the snakes that moved in long squiggles between the rock and water; you must go to the desert, she said. I did not want to listen to her and as I resisted the words, the snakes moved faster in zigzags and hissed at me with split tongues.
Making a concerted effort to listen means receiving with more than your ears. I cannot trust the words people say; we are parrots repeating the things we hear out of automation, not choice. Free will is developed through discernment, and this takes patience and discipline. Wisdom develops with experience, and it also requires time- to absorb and assimilate the information into the body.
I'm using the body as the term to EMbody the information, to illustrate that it is not rote, repitition, or automatic. It is the same as listening with your whole being - not just the faculty of earing as the ears.
I heard what Sheba said and I forgot it immediately. I left the ceremony emptied. Physically and mentally, I felt nullified.
When I flew out of London, I deposited my dream in the space between Europe and Morocco. The flight was short in comparison to my previous trips, though long enough to drift into the dreamscape and empty myself of all questions. I landed in Morocco with plans to leave for Brazil and stay in the jungle for six months, if not longer. Latin America would be my home. I would find what I lacked in the balmy cliffs where Christ presided with his arms spread wide to receive the entire continent. Myself included.
I had one week left in Tagazhout after my time in the UK and on my last night, I took to the beach to say goodbye. It was a red sunset and fishermen sat with their rods and families, eating sandwiches and drinking tea from little glass cups.
My sandals were wet and my feet the color of Tumeric from the golden leather bleeding into my skin. I'd worn loose linen shorts and a silk shirt and had my earbuds tucked discreetly in my ears, hidden by my hair.
I felt Sheba before I saw her, that shadow that slid over the rocks as the sun disappeared into the sea. This time, I saw her full form cast as a shadow. Her ample figure, her bare feet, her palms facing opposite directions, one to the earth and the other to the sky. Though her hands moved upwards and down, I was focused on her heart at the center of her chest. She nodded her head three times and then pointed toward three men walking on the stones closer to the water's edge. Two with short dark curls, one with long blond curls.
This was my introduction to Ayoub, Haro, and Adderahammane. I saw them and they approached me, and I moved my flight to the Jungle to spend three more weeks in M'ahmid and Marrakesh. I left for Rio with a heavy heart and lighter bags than I'd arrived.
In Rio, Sheba came to me for the second time in a dream. I was treated to a more magnificent vision, her gold and royal blue robes and long dark hair. Her nails were painted red, blood red, on her hands and feet. She wore rich jewels on her ankles, wrists, neck, ears, nose, and head.
Thunder rolled and lightning lashed. I could hear the tempest over the riots of the favelas where fireworks cackled and music boomed from dawn until dusk. I fell asleep in a fit and arrived in a narrow room with walls that tinkled with water. My bedding was damp; no matter how many cold showers I took, I was hot and could not settle.
Photo source.
