A Brief for the Defense

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come. 

Jack Gilbert

On being a closet mystic

"Much of our life we are trying to connect the dots, to pierce the heart of reality to see what is good, true, and beautiful for us. We want something lasting and transcendent." - Richard Rohr
Seeking this truth, beauty, goodness....the lasting and transcendent is the life of a mystic, the life of us all.   So why be in the closet about it?  Because that's where the cultural norm in this country puts you, when you are not following the path to materialism and influence and power.
Mysticism is not magic tricks and hocus pocus.  It is the earnest yearning of the heart for the eternal in the moment; unconditional love in the face of the hatred and violence that besets the world in history.  It is the beauty, the gorgeousness of living freely within a self, a soul that's contained in a body.
Being a mystic these days is a hard road to walk.  It’s not sexy, doesn’t buy you a house and a big life and baubles.  And it usually plants you smack dab in the middle of the trussed up psychiatric system, labeled, packaged, medicated and miserable! I know because that is what has happened to me.  The official medical term for my particular brand of mysticism is bipolar.  For those of you who don't know what that means, it's when you have amazing times of expansive awareness and understanding and connection....with everything, everyone....so beautiful....then, as the beauty and awareness and understanding and connection start to fade, and disconnection and longing and sorrow starts to take hold, you get depressed.  This is a narrative I wrote about my experience:

Somewhere around age twelve, I was walking with my family on a warm spring afternoon, right after the rain had subsided.  My sister and I were ahead of my parents, running and splashing around in the puddles, laughing and having so much fun.  Suddenly the sun came out, streaming through the trees; I turned around to look at my parents and I was overcome by a penetrating sense of joy, even beyond joy; it was something like ecstasy.  I felt beyond myself, as if I was looking at my family from a distance and seeing them as they were from the inside out.  I felt full of love for them…they were beautiful; everything was beautiful and I felt connected to all that was around me, at one with the world that surrounded me, that was beside me, inside of me, part of me. Energy was coursing through my body and I felt truly alive – I was trembling with electricity; the light was brilliant and there were rainbow colors hovering around me. The feelings were real, more real than anything I had ever felt.  I felt whole; I was connected to my self, my family, to nature, to all of my surroundings in a way I had never experienced before.  I was free and full and deep and open and full of beauty and joy.  That lasted for what seemed hours, but it was only minutes and then it dissipated and I felt bereft, as if I’d lost something precious, essential to my being. 

You decide for yourself:  Is this pathology or is this simply experiencing the depth and beauty of life, this world, our potential as human beings to be connected to our world, in all its wonder and awe and transparency....join me someday....

A VASE

I am always holding a priceless vase in my hands.

If you asked me about the deeper truths

of the path and I told you

the answers,

it would be like handing sacred relics to you.

But most have their hands tied

behind their

back;

that is, most are not free of events their eyes have seen

and their ears have heard

and their bodies have felt.

Most cannot focus their abilities

in the present, and

might drop what

I said.

So I’ll wait; I don’t mind waiting until

your love for all

makes luminous

the now.

- Hafiz

Oasis

Walking through incandescent streets

cinnamon skin trees uncoil in pools of water

shining reflections of a girl

dancing in her red dress

laced with satin ribbon

she unties the silky ribbon

rippling it over the water

splashing prisms upon the street

a tiny wavering girl

she weaves among the trees

in her red diaphanous dress

she knows her dress

lapping in ribbons

flows languorously like the water

sifting slowly down the street

towards the calm of the trees

where the pretty girl

lays naked, fragile girl

without her simple dress

waiting alone inside the trees

cries rushes of water

puckered ribbons

flooding through tainted streets

glowing fluorescent streets

wrapping her in ribbon

curls, the little girl

now stripped of dress

drinks the lucid water

opalescent between the trees

transparent shadow trees

unveil the fading girl

who sees herself now dressed

as a woman, lush with fertile streets

and dancing waves of ribbon

slipping through her tender waters

ribbon trees sway softly

by the girl, entwined in nuptial streets

flowing crimson water, oasis of a woman’s dress                                   

Catherine Duclos

        The marketplace was crowded.  It had been this way since we arrived two weeks ago;  perhaps because Zomba market was renowned as the best in the country...but no, today was different, the air was agitated, pulsing, almost suffocating.  Becce and I crossed through the gate and at once were overwhelmed by the cloying stench of long dead fish drying in the sun.  Someone had just brought in a new load from the lake and the men were busy throwing them into piles:  chambo, kampango, tiny bite size ones and split flat fish we didn’t know the names of yet.  One of the fish sellers called out to us, “Ma-dam, please come buy my beautiful fish, a bargain, beautiful fish ma-dam.”  He picked them up, turning them over and over, slapping them on their creamy bellies so the scales flew off in silvery showers; as they sifted down along the spindly brown legs of the seller, the sun caught their somersaulting in flashes of tiny light before they settled with the rest of the dirt swirling around countless barefeet.  We retreated, to try to find what we had come here for, but as we squeezed through the crowd other sellers slipped their wares in front of our faces - mangoes nearly dripping sticky juice as they dropped into our hands, fat shiny cucumbers, tear-drop ripe papayas, avocados the size of  hand grenades, and pineapples that we smelled from yards away.  Women were laughing, their pink tongues flying between cracked lips, while the babies wrapped tightly to their backs were sleeping peacefully, oblivious to the wild gesticulations of their mothers, and the din of the market around them.

            A surge of people pushed in on us and I got separated from Becce.  I stood still, trying to relax until the crush subsided.  I realized then too that the banging of the tinsmith was ringing in my ears.  He was smashing his hammer onto the side of a half-finished bucket trying to smooth out the kinks; beads of sweat gathered on his forehead until a few dropped onto the bucket, dulling for a moment the screech of the two metals grinding together.  I was getting claustrophobic.  I thought I saw Becce across the market, by the bottle seller, so I moved to make my way to her, but something caught my eye.  I turned to see a woman walking towards me.  She was unruffled by the commotion, walking resolutely, in a straight line towards me.  Her eyes were so clear, but empty.  No, not empty, just far away, very far away.  I stared at her, at the landscape approaching me in her eyes, but she brushed right by me without stopping.  I followed her, but stopped by the edge of the maize stand as she approached the other “tomato ladies.”  She moved a little beyond the group and laid her basket down slowly, almost reluctantly, as if setting down this burden was like relinquishing a part of herself.  This basket of tomatoes was a part of herself, the many hours and days spent tending and weeding and waiting for the rain to come.  Now, the red blush of these fruits must certainly attract buyers to her, like lovers drawn to the freshly painted full lips of the one they desire.

            She stayed bent over her treasures for a long time, just staring at them, gripping tightly to the sides of the basket.  Then suddenly she snatched one from the bunch, turning it over and over again - then another one, and another one until satisfied that they were still ripe and plump, she let go of her panic.  Her blouse clung to her back, the tiny flowers of the pattern drowned in the salty sweat.  As she stood up she pulled the cotton from her skin to let the cool air pass through.  She paused, leaning back over the hand resting on her waist; her head slipped back so I could see her eyes flutter then close for a moment, her lips moved imperceptibly forming words unrecognizable, unheard.  But then as if this reverie would trap her somehow, she shuddered and straightened.  She gave a furtive glance around to see if any of the other women had seen her, lost in this indulgence, but they hadn’t.  She tugged the folds of her chitenje loose to tighten them again around her waist.  She wrapped it once, but it wasn't tight enough.  She kept wrestling with it, not quite getting it the way she wanted it; each time the birds on the material quivered on their branches as she swirled it around, waiting for their chance to finally alight in peace.

            I left her there.  I left my sister there, and walked up toward Zomba Mountain.  I walked past the Indian stores where tailors sat on the khondes pumping rivers of lush material through their machines, past the Gymkhana Club and the perfect white stripes on the tennis court, past the women laying out a colored puzzle of dripping clothes on the rocks, past the sprawling colonial mansions that were once Britain’s glory, until I came to the tall grass;  the tall green grass, that had finally come with the rain.  I didn’t look for the path, I had no patience left.  I walked into it, into the smell of it, into the length of it, into the silence of the swishing blades.

The winds are stirring again this morning.

            I heard them coming before I opened my eyes.  I lay waiting.  The sunlight washed across my eyelids illuminating the transparent maze of roads I knew the winds had taken to get to me.  They’d broken loose as the sun rose over Phalombe and raced across the plain, winding playfully around maize stalks as though waltzing with golden voluptuous women - then pulling them to the ground in a fervor, they released their captives, sending showers of pollen into the air, the aftermath of a brief love.  I saw them pour on, sparing nothing in their path, leaving footprints of red-clay dust clouds obscuring the land, the huts, still asleep before dawn.  Only the women returning from the hills with their head-loads of wood could feel the insistence of these hot-season winds wrapping around their hips.

            And now the winds are here, calling me from the acacia rustling outside the window.  They don’t wait for my reply, just slide through the slats, brushing aside the curtain.  Naked winds dancing around in this tiny room pressing up against me, stroking my body through the sheets then fleeing as I turn to respond.  I shudder from this fever withdrawing from me, my eyes are growing hotter and the roads are burning, leaving me alone with these winds pursuing me; every day now I’m waiting for the rains to release me.

            But when will they come, I ask the boy, Kunjerika.  And Kunjerika tells me, “Tomorrow, Ma-dam, tomorrow, I know they will come - don’t worry Ma-dam, and when they come you will remember what this world looked like the very first day it was born; the grass will grow as quickly as children, the papayas will drop off the trees just as many as the raindrops, and when you walk the path to Mulunguzi the jacarandas will spill their red, purple, white blossoms on your head.”

and I thought...yes, Kunjerika, I will remember.  I will remember.

•••

            It was a brilliant day, a blinding day, when we arrived.  The plane circled Lilongwe airport several times before landing, an oversized African vulture waiting to swoop in for its prey.  I looked out the window at the National Geographic Special we were about to enter and saw lots of tiny black faces following our movements from the lookout deck on the building below.  I found out later that this pilgrimage happened almost every day; adults and children alike came to find out what the metal bird had to bring them that day - a promise or a burden.  We approached each other that day in mutual awe, and disbelief.

            As I stepped off onto the runway the air closed in on me, heavy, sweet; the heat filtering in my nostrils brought with it the smell of many flowers, overripe fruit, sweat - dark, moist, perpetual sweat.  I drank of the heavy sweetness, the heat, as I swallowed and walked on towards the cool refuge of the concrete building ahead.

            Lucy and Mr. Nkwela met us after customs.  She was a big woman, from the Home Economics Department at Chancellor College, and he was a “driver.”  They had a white Peugeot station wagon with cabbages in the back.  Lucy apologized - the cabbages were cheaper in Lilongwe.  She couldn’t come this far north very often, so she was taking back as many as she could.  We didn’t care, we’d finally made it.  Our bags were thrown in with the cabbages as we settled into the burning leather seats for the last leg of our journey.

            I remember that ride so vividly still - my mother, sister, and I stretched out in our exhaustion, no longer shackled to our ten-ton bags.  We’d walked like inmates for days, dragging our “worldly” possessions along the ground, tripping as they wound around our legs.  I’d begun to dread every move we made.  The distance from the hotel to the taxi stand to the check-in line at the airport seemed interminable, unbearable.  In my delirium I couldn’t even imagine why we thought we needed all of it - the clothes, the shoes, sheets, and towels, and pots, and hair dryer, and coffee pot.  It was staggering.  I just wanted to get there.  And now we were here, our escape accomplished.  We were floating along, in a car, with a breeze washing over our aches and everything new streaming in the windows - no fear, no resistance, just silvery hills and dust, and red earth churning along with huts and women and children with no clothes on and colors of wraps around every woman and the one road in the whole country that was leading us to our home.  For hours we rode in this mesmerizing movie scene of childish wonder, letting our senses absorb anything this new land had to offer. 

            In the evening I saw the first signs of “civilization:”  A row of street lights cutting through the blackness at the outskirts of the town of Zomba.  They were such perfect, uniform spheres of light compared to the tiny fires we’d seen flashing up along the roadside on our way.  As we glided into this runway of fluorescent beacons, in our white chariot, I thought it somehow strange that this was the beginning of our life in Africa.