Sunday, May 28, 2017

Jerusalem

Exerpt:

As I sat in the shared taxi, squished between the door and my mother, I looked out to the night sky.  I could see Orion and the stars so vividly.  These same stars looked down on my home an ocean away.  I was in a strange land after being in other strange lands.  After over twenty days spent walking among ancient Greek ruins and feeling my soul touch the lives of the past I was here, in Israel-Palestine, at night in a car on the way to Jerusalem.  I had no idea then that Jerusalem and my time there would change my life forever.

The taxi stopped at a small youth hostel on the street in front of a huge gate set in tall, crenelated stone walls that had creamy peach colored lights shining on them.  I stepped out and went up to the mezzanine;  it was lit by a garish fluorescent bulb.   There I met an older man and a young man. The young man had soft, curly brown hair; the kind that is springy and the curls were big instead of kinky.  His eyes were huge;  his eyelashes were dark and long.  He cocked his head, slid one foot outward to his left and angled his foot upward.  Then he smiled and his teeth were so white against his beautifully tanned skin.  He asked me if I would like a room.  He spoke English rather well.  My mother and I said we would take a room and we were given room 16 which faced the front of the building and had a private bathroom.   We fell asleep in the rough beds after using our own sheets to make them up.

The next morning, I awoke to the Muslim call to prayer;  it was the first time I had ever heard it.  The sun was just coming into the side window and it was rising over the Dome of the Rock;  a golden dome.  That call; it pulled my soul out of its moorings.  This was not like anywhere I had ever been.

 My mother and I dressed and went downstairs where the same young man met us and told us where to get breakfast nearby.  The bread was freshly baked, warm, with sesame seeds on it.  There was a hard boiled egg with it and some spices.  Hot mint tea with lots of sugar in a  small glass  came with it.   Then we went  down to Damascus gate; that same huge gate I had seen the night before.  Like all desert places, the sky was a piercing blue.  We entered between two huge, bullet-ridden doors into a darkness;  we turned left and then the light was back. That doorway passage had been filled with hanging dresses, trinkets, a money changer, and people going in and out that were dressed like no others I had ever seen.  Women with scarves on their heads, men in keffieyehs, children scampering and tourists of all kinds were coming and going.  As we passed back into the light, the way opened up and there were wide steps down into a market.  People with large trays of sweets on their heads walked among tourists; donkeys with kids on them carrying merchandise mingled with everyone.  On each side there were small shops that opened up to the step way.  Farther in there were several walkways that led off the main open area.  Each was shaded by their narrowness and the buildings built over them.

I had stepped out of time and into an Arabian Nights story.  I could smell the spices and see them in huge sacks along the one alley way.  The age of these streets, the stones, the walls, the very air was astonishing.   The sights, smells, tastes;  all were an explosion of the senses.  I was on overload and felt fully alive for the first time in my life.  I felt like a dormant flower opening for the first time, a chrysalis splitting to allow my new, butterfly self to emerge.  

A fire was lit in me then, a fire so strong, so fierce, so intense that it would rush through me and in me, burning  me inexorably into a new self, a new being, a new life.   I wanted to whirl and dance, scream a primal scream,  cry, laugh,  be silent.  My heart began to sing.   A  hitherto unknown, unexpressed,  nascent passion  grew in me;  feeling  at home in this place like nowhere before. 

I was  eighteen years old.


Exerpt:

We packed up my few belongings and got into a car.  As Jericho receded in the distance, we entered stark desert hills.  There were villages in these hills but mostly it was just desert.  What a strange and alien land I had chosen to make my home.  This land was ancient and covered in  the blood of many battles.  Religion was soaked into the land with that blood.  I could feel it permeate the very stones.

 I looked at the young man next to me.  I  thought for a fleeting moment that I must be stark raving mad to entrust my body, heart and soul to him;  he was a stranger to me  despite our passionate embraces and letters to one another.  Why on earth had I come?  The enormity of what I had done swept over me and I turned my head and looked out the car window.  The rational mind I once had  was muted but in moments like this, it came rushing back and questioned my choices with a harshness that was frightening.  So I buried it under the emotions that were in me.

I ignored the many warnings my mind had about this choice I was making.  Instead, I was moving headlong into a life I was ill prepared for.  Many years later, I realized I did so because of  the emotional starvation I endured in my  family.  Better to trust a stranger with my heart than to trust my family who had betrayed that trust  several times and, unbeknownst to me, would do so even more so and in even more devastating ways in the future. 




Limbo

It dawned on me yesterday that I have been in school for TEN years. No wonder I am feeling tired, listless, burned out. I wanted to write but I feel like no one will ever want to read it. I posted something recently in 3 places and in 2 of the places, people kind of jumped on me for it. It was information sharing and agreeing with the other posters. Only one out of three seemed to "get" what I was saying but even they had a negative response (not aimed at me though) about it.

This is why I sometimes think my name should have been Cassandra. I am also feeling older, unable to DO things I so wanted to do. Mostly things like using the knowledge and experience I have to be helpful to others. The thing is, it isn't because I can't do them but because if I do them, other people disregard them or actively attack me over them. No one wants information; not even helpful information, anymore. No one wants wisdom or experience; at least not from me. ::::::sigh:::::

In every job I have done, I gave and gave and was so kind  to everyone; always allowing them space to vent, being compassionate to them, never taking them personally when they would snap at me, always  validating them and their feelings.  Yet I was the one that got fired or let go.  The company would keep the whining ones, the non-productive ones, the crass ones, the troublemakers and dissonant ones but they would let me go despite my hard work and compassion and peacemaking efforts.  In all the years I worked outside the home, I never worked longer than 2 and a half years.  Perhaps my being a third culture person, raised in several cultures, made them feel uncomfortable.  Perhaps I was not petty enough, not greedy enough, not grasping enough, not  back-biting enough.  Perhaps they just feared my non-American ways of cooperating instead of competing.  I do not belong in my birth country and I felt it (and still feel it) every day. 

It feels deflating to have so much to offer and nowhere to offer it. To have a lot of energy but no one feels comfortable being around it. To have such helpful knowledge and experience and no one to hand it off to in order to help sucks. It is like watching someone being in pain and not having any way to alleviate it but only because the one in pain rejects the alleviation I have. I am an empath and the worst thing for an empath is to feel pain and not be able to do anything to try to alleviate it.

Every effort to make friends here (IRL) goes nowhere. People are just not interested. Even trying online hasn't worked. And I notice that I feel too old and tired to make the huge effort I used to in order to make friends; since menopause I have so little patience for the bullshit people do in relationships. I see it and have no energy or desire to deal with it.

So I feel like I am in limbo.  It is depressing. People are depressing. I used to love helping people but lately I am just tired. Tired of the onslaught, tired of the stupidity, tired of the pettiness, tired of the bullshittery, tired of the ignorance, tired of the meanness.

I am tired and fed up. Sorry to be a Debbie downer but it is what it is. I can't always be the up one for others; I have my down days and lately there have been a lot of them.


I need to leave this country;  I have no means to do so but if I had, I would take my family and go.  

Saturday, May 27, 2017

Falling...falling....falling.....

Falling, falling, falling.....
into that deep well of pain,
into that quiet and tearful place,
into that emotional pain that is sharp and fierce and intense.

I am breathless, unheard, unimportant. 
I no longer feel the deep welling of compassion;
it is buried under an avalanche of  hate, indifference,  greed, selfishness, stupidity……
a limbo of  not knowing who I can be.

Compassion was breath for me, life, my essence.
It is still there but it is now smothered
under the dissonance of selfish,  mean, greedy, indifferent  people.

I  have no patience anymore.
No compassion for sycophants.
No patience for stupidity.
No time for  pettiness and discord.
No heart for  games or posturings.
No ear or mind  for  mean, uncaring, selfish people.

No  more of myself to give to people too busy
pushing and herding for position and voice.

No more of my soul to give to people who would
take and take and take until there's nothing left .

No more heart for the emotional vampires in life.

No more of any of me for those who cast aside caring people.

I suffer no fools, no willful ignorance, no hate, no greed.  Life is too short for all that drivel.

Where, oh where are the kind people, the smart people, the unafraid people who are open to new ideas,  new information,  new discoveries?

Where, oh where are the people who are not intimidated by smart people?

Where, oh where are the people who are not threatened by  intense, energetic, passionate people?

Where, oh where are the people who are not afraid of  people who are "different?"  Not the known "different" but the unknown "different?"

Where, oh where are the people who desire cooperation,  helping, sharing,  loving, giving, lifting up others?

Where oh where are the people who value knowledge, cherish wisdom, desire the voice of reason and experience?

Where, oh where are the compassionate healers, the givers,  the helpers, the listeners, the learners who are unafraid to learn?

Where, oh where are the people  who value and act with reciprocation, with giving back to others that which was given to them?

I  feel like I have lost myself.  
That self who was willing,
who was infinitely compassionate and patient,
who was a giver without reservation,
who loved deeply, broadly, passionately.

I feel like my wisdom, my compassion,
my love, my caring, my giving, my passion
has been tapped out, thrown away, trampled, used.
I am peopled out.
My faith in humanity seems gone.

I know there are good people.  My mind knows that.  I know they reside in my neighborhood,   in my area, in my town.  I just can't seem to connect with them. They don't want new friends,  new "different" people like me.  I don't fit in, I cannot speak their cultural language very well.
I have too many cultures inside me.

Sometimes being strong  and giving   hurts.

Sometimes being strong  and giving means being alone....always alone.

Sometimes being the strong, giving one means being taken for granted.

Sometimes being the strong, giving  one means needing time to  just fall apart,  time to disintegrate into tears and  curl up in a ball.

Sometimes being the strong, giving  one means being needy for once.

Strong, giving  people  need  compassion, too; need a space to be weak just for a while,  need time to  be vulnerable.

I am so tired and done with people.
Not just because of Trump;  this has been a long time coming. 
The cuddle hormone has left me since menopause and I feel a sorrow, a rage, a deadness in me.

This is the dark closet of my being;
leave me to it for a while.

I need this time for myself.