shoshin
“Singing is like a celebration of oxygen.”
When I'm not with you, I can identify what matters to me the most. When you are here, I am confused. I get caught up in your story. The boundaries blur. Your expression becomes mine and if you're sad I am too.
Segmentation is different from separation.
I've parceled my life into segments. Division by force; I put myself over here to avoid contact.
As my friend says, where do you go when life gets real?
I stayed in a clay hut in Zagora for two weeks in the summer. There was wifi from one tent and a shared dormitory to eat and shower. The huts were small and squat with traditional Moroccan rugs layered over the golden sands. My dwelling had a single bed, a wooden table and three chairs. One bare bulb hung from the peaked ceiling. The two small windows were sealed shut with sand. There had been sandstorms for four days and the grains were in everything. I could taste sand in my sleep.
Zagora is the gate of the Sahara and I went there on a whim. I followed my heart; it tends to lead me astray sometimes. This was not one of those times. I ate boiled eggs with bread for breakfast and drank black espresso. I wrote in a small black journal every day and accepted the beers from the group of French backpackers when they arrived in a long white caravan.
At night, we sat around a fire. A man and his wife visiting from Spain sang sad songs in French. The wife had a beautiful voice and the man played a beaten guitar with long fingers. They stayed for two days and for 48 hours, the beauty of their songs lighted up the camp. They departed on camels with water jugs tied on either side of the beast's long necks. The woman had wrapped herself up in a pink and purple scarf. I did not recognize them as they walked out into the Sahara.
The camp was very quiet after that, and I took to going on long walks in the morning before it became too hot to be in the sun. I spent many afternoons drinking beer and playing cards with the French troupe. I repaid their generosity with tarot readings. I'd stick wands of incense in the corners of the huts by peeling back a corner of the carpet and sticking the wood into the sand. The Frenchmen would smoke small beedies and the girls lounged in bed with cigarettes. I sometimes held a wand between my fingers to mirror their gestures.
A symbol of belonging.
The tarot never said anything shocking. One man became particularly upset about drawing the turtle. Though the way his girlfriend smirked proved the accuracy of the cards. I drew the moth repeatedly, which tells me I have yet to fix my focus.
One of the girls, the slender one with blond dreads, drew the rabbit and I could tell by the way she fingered the paper between her thumb and forefinger that she was contemplating a situation she feared.
We played other card games with a deck stained red from wine and ate dinner together. Tajine with lamb, vegetables, and couscous, mostly. Our bodies were tired from the heat and full of lethargy from the beer and lack of movement. In the evenings, we'd look up at the stars in silence.
There is little momentum in the desert.
Morning time was my favorite. It tends to be no matter where I am in the world. On one of my sunset strolls, I happened upon the well.
The well was a twenty-minute walk from our camp to the southeast, in the direction of the main road, though I could not hear or see any cars.
I almost fell into the well upon my discovery. I had been watching the dunes crawl with shadows, the sun slowly rising, spreading rays across the cold sand. I wore a pink silk dress with a denim jacket and white socks in leather espadrilles. I put my foot out, struck something solid, and looked down to see that I'd hit the wide rim of a dark tunnel boring deep into the ground.
The hole was three feet in circumference, and when I knelt to peer into the void, I could see nothing past a meter; it was that dark.
I sat and stared into the tunnel until my back burned from the heat. I never took a phone or timepiece with me, so I don't know how long I'd sat at the well.
When I arrived at camp, I asked the woman who tended the space what the hole was for.
It's a well. For water. She said. She'd been folding napkins in the kitchen and brushed me off as she started dicing carrots. Will you take lunch with us today?
I never ate lunch with the camp community. I could tell that some took it as an offense, my standoffishness, and didn't care.
No thank you. Does it get water?
The woman sighed. I don't know. We are having a shrimp and vegetable salad, should you change your mind.
The well became a fixture for my morning walks after that. I took a meditative approach to the time I spent sitting on the stones I moved to form a circle around its mouth. I started leaving earlier in the morning, just a little before the sun's appearance over the sands, so I'd arrive when it was still dark. I liked to feel the warmth spread across my back as I sat. I liked to be with the well in the dark and daylight hours.
I bring up the well because this is the place that I go when shit gets real. the well is where I return when I feel out of place in the world and out of sync within myself.
The well is my retreat to the inner world I create.
Eyes closed.
Palms on thighs.
Seat on stone.
This is where I focus when calamity ensues. It's my retreat and accessible to me at any time. I connect to the cold and quiet of the well. It's an abyss so mysterious and strange. I wonder what is down there without wanting to go down and see for myself. I tossed a few pebbles down the well once and heard them echo and bounce but never landed.
Is that how life is? A constant rhythm with pause and tumble, without a significant or final endpoint?
If I create my life's meaning, do I steer the pebble down the well's path?
Sometimes I don't know what my life's purpose is, and in moments like these, I seek out the dark. From its edges, I can sometimes hear the echo of that pebble.
Other times it is just silence.
Like the mornings when you are gone and it's just me.
I realize how much of myself I've lost in your presence in these moments.
What is the point of all of this?
I will never ask you that question.
It would be too hard a landing.
Photo source.
