sarang
“Sometimes you have to lose what you have and find it again for you to know the value of the blessing that you have always owned.”
Would we be together in another place and time?
No, I do not think so.
The rampant patter of my feet is much softer in the sand, though;
I am still running.
Glass, stone, rubber, wood.
None deter me from my quest.
I am a lighthearted djinn, a speck of desire blown across the plains.
My heart is wrapped in linen. I keep it clothed just so I can peel away the layers as one would take the shell off a hard-boiled egg.
Do you leave the icing for last? Or do you lick it off right away? I approach the carrot cake from the bottom with a tiny gold spoon the length of my middle finger. Bite by bite until the cream cheese frosting is a glob shaped like a crescent moon. Sprinkled with goji berries, pumpkin seeds, and currants.
It is much easier to forgo the flavor of love and focus on food.
A body bursting with vitality! I rise to the sound of the Fajar and settle to the sight of the swallows. Bless the little birds who swoop so sweetly to and fro. Mouths wide, hoping to catch a bug.
The cross represents time x space. Jesus died for our sins is the story, and the untold secret is that through Him, we crossed into the next dimension.
Did you know that the pyramids controlled the weather? The Egyptians did not need predictions; they had the tools to endure!
Writing is the first layer; sound is the second layer; movement is the third.
Stories die once they are on the page; things need sound to flourish! I can hear my fingers tap-tap-tap on the keyboards, and is this enough to fuel the fantasy?
He is gone, and I am glad for it. My heart was buried beneath the dunes of dismissal. He said I don't like France. I know why. The topless women; womanliness is too strange and provocative.
Souls that willingly go towards suffering. I used to ask why. Today, I say goodbye.
We met at the beach where I laid my red blanket on the sand. The wind teased my hair, and I was cool enough without the water. I am reading a good book about the Ottoman Empire. I perched my bike to one side and hung my bag and clothes from it, tucking my water bottle in the shade to keep cool. I kept my romper on as I sprawled on my belly to read.
He arrived, and his eyes lit up when he saw me, though his movement was contained. I feel his heart and see the vigor on his face, though the rest of him is steely as a stone. Civil, constraint, concentrated.
We exchanged pleasantries. He asked me how I was, and I asked about his day. He showed me his new phone, and I told him about the story I was focusing on.
Do you know about the election in Turkey? The votes will be in tomorrow.
I did not. I don't follow such events here, there, or anywhere.
There are good changes for Muslims in Turkey. The candidate everyone wants to win, he wants to make drinking illegal. He has the majority vote.
Do you know what I am talking about?
I didn't, and I said something stupid. He looked down at me, literally and figuratively. The candidate is Orthodox. Clearly, I didn't say that; I didn't say anything.
I am going for a swim. He took the flippers I bought from the bag I lent him and went to the water.
I felt unfocused and forlorn. I flipped over onto my back to feel the face on my chest. My heart was wild. Cacophanistic. Woeful and furious! I put my hands on my body, one on my solar plexus, the other on top. I breathed in for the count of eight and out for the count of eight until my pulse settled, and I felt grounded again.
The up and out! I am catching it quicker now than ever before! How I move into the fear of the Other and roll with it instead of staying in the place, I am strong, guided, and attuned. My Heart.
Something is stripped from me in his presence. Because I let it, I give it away. The thing has a heart, or it is a head game, and I go into the game instead of feeling, instead of feeding my intuition.
To restrict is to deny.
The heart is boundless! Mine has no limits! The up and out is magnificent when there is a space to greet the Other. God, divinity, community, counsel, whatever the name may be. I'm not writing to Clarice. I'm not writing for Simone or Anias. I am writing for my Soul! I am writing to wring out the wanting and woebegone struggle of Stephanie Dawn!
To feel is to free yourself of the Other's limitations. The tribe. The need to belong. The need to be free.
There is no need- it is a question, not a request. A question of the Soul and not something that can be squandered or stripped unless YOU allow it.
Things appear as they are because we have all tacitly or formally agreed upon the terms. The basis of this agreement is fear. A Stronghold of Suspicion and Secrets.
To name it is to take the power back. Not to God; to the heart! I feel alone; I want to be touched; I crave human connection through shared values and a desire to support a higher purpose.
If God exists, he does not feel as we do. I am here in the desert, my heart thundering wildly between the warm sand and the burning sun. Who is with me? A divine power clapped Their hands together thrice. Once, the Goddess blinked. Twice and the womb was formed. Three times for the finale, life slipped out with a painful cry we know as Amen/Om/Alhamdulillah.
When he returned from the water, he set his blue towel on the other side of my bike. Split in two like a pomegranate, and the seeds were scattered between us; life through longing. I started to pick my nails and stopped. I rolled over and sat up.
I don't think we should go to Turkey together.
He came to sit beside me.
What? Why?
This is over you and me. It is done.
What are you talking about?
Something has shifted. It's different now. I can feel it.
He started to say something and then didn't.
In the past, I would have filled the space. I would have opened my mouth and spat my heart up and let my pain and need to belong fill the void. I did it with Zak. I did it with Dakota. I did it with Frank and Dan, and Greg. I have been the one holding it all. My hands out, my heart splayed, and they always listen and nod. And it continues in the way they prefer it to be, removed and withdrawn, and I go up and out into their angst.
You cannot coax a mouse from the corner. I've never seduced a lover; I have shifted my entire constellation of being to serve someone else's demand.
I no longer want to fit into someone else's story, especially when the narrative originates from fear. A Stronghold of Suspicion and Secrets: the heart cold as Glass. Ice melts; glass shatters.
This is over. We cannot go to Turkey together.
I can't be in a relationship right now.
I understand.
We can go as friends?
No, you are not my friend. Something in you has changed, I can feel it, and I am no longer with you. That is not what this is...
The day Zak pulled away from me energetically at the bar with Hugh and Mallory, I felt the same thing. A vacancy in my center. One minute, the person is holding an umbrella over you to protect you from the rain, and then without any notice, they take it away. And you are left standing in the wet and cold, wondering where they went. And why.
Dakota left me while we were lying in bed, thigh-to-thigh. He was on his phone, and I felt it.
Frank, we'd been sitting on the couch, me on his lap in a white dress.
Dan, we were in Kitsilano, walking along the beach. I was looking at purple flowers.
Greg, we were in Thailand. He took off on the motorbike, and I sat and cried on the stoop outside our apartment. I put on a silk blouse and red lipstick. I packed my bags. I was ready to leave. His friend appeared and said that Greg was arrogant. To forgive things take time. So I stayed. It ended six months later. I felt it and didn't flow with it.
Abderrahmane kept saying the same thing: it takes time. Give it time. When we are in Turkey together, everything will be revealed.
We sat for twenty minutes together, looking at the water. He opens his mouth to speak and then shakes his head. I breathed deeply and willed myself to stay silent. For once, to be still and quiet and feel.
It is not enough to want the things for the other person. They must want it badly enough for themselves. I asked Abderrahmane the time before when I saw him; I asked him to meet me at the cliff's edge and fling himself over with me.
So, you want to kill me? He joked.
No, I said, that is the risk you take in Love.
He is not ready. I felt it many months ago when I was working at the long desk, and he was on the couch studying English. To be free, you must break. To be in the rapture, you must rupture. To be an individual, you must separate from the collective. To be in Love, you must acknowledge the Ache.
I am in so much metaphysical pain right now! My heart is floating, and it won't take much for the waves to take it away. I cannot sink into that abyss. I have to hold myself higher, up-up-up. Take life as it comes.
He finally stood up.
I have to go now to work. Do you need your backpack?
No, you can keep it.
Thank you.
While I worked that day and he studied, I felt him. I understood then that this would not last. He was so content with things as they were, and I enjoy ripping the curtains from their hanger far too much to be contented sitting with a lover with our legs entwined on the sofa!
We booked Turkey the following day. I have done this with every one of my lovers; I used a trip in hopes of retrieving what I felt in the relationship.
Frank, we went to Organ. Dan, we went to Whistler. Dakota, it was LA. Zak, we were planning on going to his Cabin with Hugh and Mallory. Greg, it was Thailand.
If I do not act on what I feel, it is denial.
How much of mySelf am I willing to withhold and deny in an effort to avoid my own aloneness?
That is the question I am sitting with right now. Abderrahmane and I ended mid-February. It is why I booked France. I was so sick of myself, and Clara offered to meet me in Paris. I had to reset my Visa, so I booked a three-month trip and told him afterward.
Two days before my trip, he placed Islam between us, though; I could feel it was not about religion.
It is about fear and control, the willingness to step into the wild frenzy of feeling and take life as it comes. It is too much for many; people perish and move through life like zombies.
Reading and writing are the things that quell my angst and give me hope when I am so sick with sadness I cannot eat, think, or move. I've consoled myself through characters since I was five. Bless the broken-hearted writers. Bless the artists and mystics who know that to survive, one must place themselves in the act of something sacred.
Art is my protection. My writing gives me a sense of time and place; I enter the third dimension where nothing is personal, and whatever is said has less meaning than what is felt.
What is said does not always align with what is felt. Abderrahmane said nothing, and in that, he gave me everything. There is a wall around him and me on the outside. He has a strong heart, a steady gaze, and an abundance of warmth and reassurance. However, he acts on one thing: fear. It is not religion, tradition, or culture that makes him this way. It is the unwillingness/unreadiness to face how he feels and confront the savage beast within.
I could care less for reputation, civility, and decorum. I want a person who is brave enough to be vulnerable. I want a person who makes mistakes and takes ownership of what's occurred but is ready to move forward with a smile. I want a person who can follow the rules and also understand how, when, and why to break them. I don't want a rebel or a martyr; I want both. I want a person who can shapeshift. I want a person who can be loyal to their family AND construct their own framework of values, beliefs, and spiritual validation. I want a person ready to confront mortality through death; for an ending is a beginning, and for one thing, to start, everything else must come to an end.
I am becoming that person, and it is a delight to get to know all the ways I come into contact with myself through the fury of my courageous heart!
The Sufis were Muslim; they were the poets, the mystics, and the wild at heart.
I will disappear for a while in the wondering words of Rumi while I am in the desert of Morocco. I want to go to the mosque. I want to teach yoga. I want to edit my short stories and write hopeful endings! For I am a beam of light and a blessing full of hope. I will never stop being who I am and pushing myself up and out into the world. I am learning to dim when I need to and follow my guts. I have loved so deeply, and this passion inside of me is for LIFE and LOVE and not the person entirely.
This is not a personal process; it is universal, and the sadness I have is for the focus on fear instead of following what is felt through the heart.
Abderrahmane, I feel for you. I wish you well. One day, you will fly if you choose to.
I am so high, soaring between the stars, waiting to burst. And I will. The Ache never lasts for long. And once I rise, there will be a new world for me to engage and people to explore!
I want abruptness. I want a slow burn. I want solitude, and I want to be consumed by the Other. I want to feel my body burn with lust. I want to feel exhausted in the arms of a lover.
It is not about timing; it is about courage. It is about being uncomfortable.
Life is messy and awkward, and ill-fitting. I will never join the spectacle that claims otherwise!
Photo source.
