novaturient
“For love, there has to be a distance across which lovers can approach one another. The approach is of course just an illusion, because love in fact separates people. Love is a polarity.”
Dear Simone,
I've two weeks left in Rio, Brazil. I'm discovering all sorts of hidden trails in the jungle close to my abode. There is a river that runs off a waterfall; from its lookout point, I can hear children laughing.
Yesterday, I was caught in a terrific thunderstorm. I chose to walk down the hill to purchase groceries, just toilet paper and ginger, and en route; lightning cut across the sky. I knew it would rain though I didn't expect the gutters to fiil, so the water ran high as my thighs! I hopped in a taxi, and neither of us could see out the windows. He kept driving despite the blindness. I quietly sang the maha mrityunjaya mantra and hopped out when I saw people in the streets. The soccer game was on, Brazil was playing Switzerland. Bars and restaurants were packed with people spilling out into the streets, despite the inclement weather.
I hung out beneath a striped awning orange and red and watched the match. A group of young women sat and smoked on their soggy cigarettes, their hair in wet curls down bare backs. I wanted to join them though I did not know how to ask. I stood aside and watched. Brazil won.
I waded home after purchasing a few things from a shop. Many were closed from flooding, they said. I think it was to celebrate the soccer match. I added a tin of chocolate trail mix to my list and walked the hillside home. The sun peeped out and my shins and face were warm.
The walk took me close to an hour and, when I arrived home, I was slick with rainwater shaken from the boughs in the wind and my own sweat. My shoes were soaked and the golden leather stained my feet yellow. I felt glorious.
What is it about pushing something up a hill that feels so utterly satisfying? I seem to need to do most things the hard way in order to feel alive.
My heart sang the entire way home, pumping and pulsing as it ways.
I enjoy work; it gives me a purpose. I feel pointless in the world without something to do.
This is also my Achilles; part of my angst (and illness) results from overthinking and not taking the time to unwind.
The storm that brewed overhead teased out the tempest within me. In the cab, as the driver cursed in Portuguese, and I with my mantra in the backseat, I felt something dark and sticky lean against the window sill.
I put my palm over it and it was cold. It wanted to get in and the driver must have heard me, for he rolled up the passenger side window on the front seat. Sealing us in.
The dark thing was gone when I fell from the car into the puddles. The driver had stopped in a large pool of wet and I had to work to open the door. Thinking the dark thing may be in the water, I held my purse over my head and ran to the nearest shop.
From where I stood, I surveyed the lake forming in the street. Leaves, bottle caps, and cigarette butts peppered the muddy surface. No thing else.
I forgot about thing as I watched the soccer match, shopped, and waded home. It wasn't until I arrived in the thicket of the jungle at the peak of Mirante Dona Marta that I felt the stickiness on my skin.
The cold started at my shins and ran up my abdomen to my throat. It wrapped its layers around my neck and slid into my ears. I heard a buzzing, like wasps, and my nose burned. I stopped walking and brought my hands to my neck to pull the thing off. There was no thing to grab onto. I could feel it in my body; my mouth was full of it and I couldn't speak to scream my terror.
When fear fills you up from the inside, it is paralyzing.
The scarcity complex I witness in people is the same. It takes hold from the deepest root and propels individuals in a direction outside of their consious control.
I don't believe that people do terrible things because they want to. They do them because they feel they have no other choice.
The most important question to ask oneself is this: what choice do I have, right here- right now?
I had the choice with the thing, to stop moving and feel. To listen to what was going on inside of me and track its movements in my body. I could not control the rain, the monkeys rapping at my window all night long, or the people partying in the favelas with music, trumpets, and firecrackers. I could not control this thing that had taken up residence inside of me.
However, I could control how I listened to it and reacted to its motion.
I sat down on the street's edge, setting my bags on the sidewalk and my purse in my lap. While I waited for the thing to do something, I reflected on my dream from the previous night. The thing was in my esophagus, immobile.
My dreams are more vivid when I'm sick. The thing must have been listening because it stayed in my throat as I relived the memory of the night before.
In my dream, I was teaching yoga in my living room. I'd hung white curtains at the windows and four walls, so it felt like we were moving from inside a cloud. A girl appeared and told me my haircut looked awful. She looked like my friend from high school- the one with the dead sister. I bought her a green necklace with beads that hung down her breasts. The necklace was heavy and I never saw her wear it. In return, she gave me a pair of pearl earrings with little green leaves. I wore them every day that year and still have them in a small beige box.
The class I taught was all heart and hip opening. Taught to kapotasana, which is King Pigeon pose. As I pressed my pelvis to the ground and bent my back leg, I heard a great cracking sound and saw the bars to the curtains break. The veil fell, and I could see a parade of men wearing blue marching down the street through the window. The men were walking up a hill carrying large water jugs on their shoulders. I stood up to get a better look and the girl followed me, frowning.
'We should join them,' my friend said, 'they need us.'
As she spoke, the drapes were released from the walls and the sun broke through the window panes. Glass shattered and as I screamed, I felt the thing slip from my mouth to the floor. It splattered everywhere.
So that's where you came from! I cried inside, and the thing somersaulted in that tight corridor.
Do you belong inside of me, or outside?
The thing didn't answer.
I was no longer afraid of the sticky thing, having seen it again in my waking dream, so I stood up and collected my bags and walked home.
I couldn't eat with it there, lodged between my mouth and my gut, so I skipped dinner.
I did a yoga class and mimicked the moves from my dream, building toward that deep, hip-opening and backbend. As I moved into King Pigeon, I heard thunder growl from the jungle and saw the flashes of lightning scar the sky. The thing shuddered and slithered down lower towards my heart. It nestled itself in there and felt like it had folded itself neatly into a small packet.
Like a love letter, you would crease and press to a palm.
I lit a new wand of iincenseand three candles, and as the storm broke, I reclined on the floor in savasana. I shut my eyes and asked for the shapes to appear.
Three corners arrived as small dots and between them appeared three lines. I gave the symbol its names: Rajas - action, Jnana - knowledge, Bhakti - devotion. The three stages of learning. A great winged creature flew into the shape's center and spread its wings. It was a butterfly; its wings were bright blue with large white dots at each tip. Its body was black and burnt orange. As it spread, it tucked its nose at the base of the triangle so the overlay with the wings looked like a star. The six points are created by the butterflies nose, two wings, and three corners.
I opened my mouth to ask the butterfly a question, the thing contained in my heart, my voice was free to fly up and out!
Before I could speak, I heard the wings rustle and the insect whispered,
'What is your one wish?'
The SH dragged out until it was a hiss like a snake and my hands became cold. Like an amphibian. I pressed them to the floor and as I did, the showers broke through the trees. I felt the weight of every raindrop on the leaves as if they were my body.
I kept my eyes closed and my gaze on the six points of gold, blue, black, and burnt orange.
Subtle fire, stirring smoke.
The thing was wriggling in my ribcage and I was happy to feel its discomfort. Now I knew what to provoke it with and how to get it moving.
The questions for the heart always stir up a calamity within. Desire frees us and binds us to the things we love most.
I think it's liberating to be bound willingly.
I choose my tethers; it's the feathers I have not asked for.
The wrapper contains the thing and cloaks the individual in disguise. I wear many masks and one of my favorites is the Idiot. I laugh a lot and ask many questions; for this reason, when many people meet me, they think I am dumb.
A friend who studied law and worked in a firm in Gastown admitted this to me once. We danced ballet together as kids and bumped into each other one night while running to catch the bus in the rain. Twelve years later, though, our hairstyles were the same. She with the same short bob. Me with long uneven layers. We missed the bus and went to dinner. I ordered fish and white wine and she had a burger and beer.
We chatted for five hours and took separate taxis home.
During our conversation, she leaned in across the table with her mouth full of beef and told me how Hilda and Charmaine had thought I was stupid and were upset when they realized how many books I had read.
We were eight years old.
She invited me to a party at her law firm that weekend, and I went. There were beer kegs and a catering service with bartenders in tight red dresses. I walked around with my hot hand tight to the same bottle of rose until it was too warm to drink. My ballet friend introduced me to everyone she knew and I watched her win seven ping-pong games. When her boyfriend arrived, she introduced me to him too, and then they disappeared to have sex in the bathroom.
I chose to leave and walked home without realizing I was still holding the crystal glass of warm wine.
Maybe I am a bit stupid sometimes.
Many of my friends think it a bit mindless to have traveled to Rio alone. To have booked thirty days in the middle of the jungle, in residence so far, no buses or taxis or Ubers will go up the hill. I have no SIM card, so my phone will not work without WiFi, and I cannot get internet in many public spaces without a CPF number. I don't speak the local language, and it's rare to meet anyone who speaks English.
Overall, Simone, I am wandering Rio with this black thing in my belly as my closest confident and very little technology to support my ventures.
When my friends say I am reckless, I tell them that I still have all my fingers and toes and have made it through life just fine.
Is having all your limbs intact a good measure of success?
Photo source.
