cevap
trnsmssn
hope allows me to expand.
if i soften, so will everyone around me.
the fear brain helps me focus.
singing enhances the space.
the ego must be fed.
if I feel fulfilled, I can take care of myself.
i prefer to be alone.
My entire outlook arrives from my thought patterns. And who planted those seeds where they are? whomever I listened to as a child put down the first layer of dirt. The institutions came next, and by the time I was a teenager, the clay had hardened into a brittle casing. A pickaxe will do to smash the pieces into shards I collect and put in the trash bin like the rocks under the bathtub.
A man was in the home yesterday for four hours fixing a leak in the hot water tank. He bought me a chocolate bar and asked if he could smoke in the kitchen. I said no. He said I could shower before the silicone set, and I said no.
You don't need to feel ashamed, he said; it is just me. I will wait downstairs while you shower.
I shook my head.
He kept smiling despite my refusals! Would it be this way in Canada? I don't think so. People are far less pushy and more polite in a way that seems nice but isn't.
I prefer the bravado of Turkish people. At least it's honest and in your face.
I spent all afternoon editing a short story I wrote over a year ago. I still need an ending. The narrative is a catharsis, less of a tale and more of a purge. My process is to acquit myself through poetry. I write to release. I cannot move forward without reviewing the past, and even with a new name, a residue must be counseled.
The story is not good. I don't know what to do with it when I'm done.
What is it to construct a well-written piece of work? I know how to write what I feel though shaping a story is entirely foreign to me. I have so many ideas and wonder where to place them. It is like a vinyasa class; a sequence of things develops the mind as much as the body. It is my responsibility to guide people through the end-point is as much up to them as it is to me.
Some writers are bad at endings. I am one of those writers. I never know what to say. I didn't tell anyone I was leaving Vancouver because I couldn't say farewell. It will be the same when I leave Istanbul and the next place. And the place after that.
Everyone in the apartment building has placed the blue beads, the bonk, outside on the doorstep. I've set one on the desk by the plant I took from the living room. I need something alive by me as I work. I don't know what I am warding off; I don't feel the negative energy in the home. My feet are always dirty no matter how much I sweep the floor, but no spirits loom in the curtains.
I am sitting with the question of how to take up more space. I was placed next to a woman with a hot pink mat in the yoga class two days in a row. She has blond hair and rainbow gel nails. She wears bracelets on every limb; there are too many to count. Her outfits are as loud as each gesture. She often places her hands, feet, hips, and shoulders on my mat. This isn't uncommon in a yoga class. However, there is usually a nod of greeting. This woman has never acknowledged me. Yesterday, he hit me four times with her palm as she stretched to the side and fell onto my mat during side crow.
I didn't say anything. I didn't know how to approach the situation without being obtuse and disruptive. I was too emotionally charged by the reckless and arrogant behavior! I should have said something on the first day to set the boundary. But I didn't.
I have this issue in most relationships. I don't state how I feel at the beginning of a situation, and then by the time I am ready to confront the person, the events have been taken past the point of my comfort. By the time I say something, I am upset and undone. It is partially on me to speak up and partially on the other to witness the effect of their actions.
Beneath the bedrock, there is a river that runs between the stones. It is wet and dark and cool. This is the layer beneath the clay, and if I put enough pressure on the surface, it will allow me to go down. Dig deep, as Douglas Brooks likes to say.
I am uncomfortable in this arena with so much ego, yet I know it is where I need to be. I have put myself here for a reason. Nothing is a coincidence; everything is divine intervention.
After class, the teacher's assistant approached me and said my backbends were beautiful. Your heart is so open, she said; you make it look so free!
Do you know what the counterbalance to heart-opening poses is? Twists. And binds. Wring that shit out. Open it up and then contract. Rotation, rupture, and release; I crave all of it.
In the final ten minutes of the class, we sat in meditation and savasana. This was when I received the wisdom. The voice is always colorless and toneless. There is no joy or excitement. Nothing leaps or ripples. The voice feels very contained though I know it is boundless. I was blue, totally indigo, sending the currents through the room. I wish you well; I sent to the woman with the rainbow nails, for she is full of thorns.
My hands became hot at the fingertips to touch, so I turned my palms upward and sent my gaze down to the earth. Too high, and I wouldn't be strong enough to return, and in a roomful of strangers, this can be dangerous.
Exhale-exhale-exhale. It is blue and purple, and everyone sighed deeper into the ground, and I heard a man's voice say, lay down for corpse pose.
Photo source.
