A la Follie!

Life has a way of turning the deepest sorrows into profound joys. It is in the everyday beauty of the little things that this pilgrim learnt of love in a whole different spectrum. She found life in death, joy in sorrow, calm in pain, and hope above all else that this path was the path. New chapters closed around her like young rose petals over luminous, colorful, pollen as if to protect a hidden truth, a well preserved treasure. She knew she wasn't the only flower standing, in fact, she knew that there were many other budding flora.

The last she'd felt of real joy was whe she saw her sweet mama's smile the day of her graduation. It was the same smile she saw at her high school graduation except that there was something different about being a university graduant. That something that makes people suddenly talk to you different, wish you good things in a different manner, allow you to realize that you will very soon be dependent on your own means. Tears formed in her eyes as words, which were always at the tip of her tongue, dissolved into boundless humility. Yet here she is again, months since graduation and every waking moment is pure bliss because of a hope that's taken over her in ways she cannot verbalize.

She sits in her quiet room every night and reads and reads and reads and all the while, a silent, fervent prayer is being sent up to the high heavens. So keen is her faith that she almost can't believe it… almost ;-) The ease with which she has been able to leave the past behind and concentrate on the here and now simply continues to drive her to greater heights. Miss Pilgrim has taken on many names. She answers to Miss E because she is a lady of character and mystery, she's been through some sufferings but she knows well that they were only temporary and above all she recognizes that no amount of suffering could be compared to the glory she will find in her Father's kingdom so she endures and always pulls through to the next round. She answers to blessed, destined, devoted, called… all names of virtue that were meant for such a time as this. Nothing in the world can make her bitter or resentful. Even the suffering of the world she now sees as a way to acknowledge God's infinite power and in faith she can call out to Him knowing that suffering is but for a moment and life is for eternity.

Thinking back on days passed, a fascinating thought dawns on her. She is who she is because of who He is. Now, in light of all the wisdom imparted to her in these last few months, she is able to wake up thankful, complain free, trying her hardest to be the person she was born to be. In all, she gives thanks for the tribulations, the trials, the tests, and the blessings. Redemption has never felt sweeter!

Shalom!

Beaucoup

She always found herself in strange but very real predicaments. Trying to articulate her own beliefs was like having to say a million tongue twisters in a million different languages, and still she persisted because it was imperative that she was understood… or so she thought. She learned long before, that there was a certain feeling of self-inadequacy lurking around every 'sane' mind. Why is it that when little black girls looked over at their age mates they thought to themselves, "she has the good hair"? Was good defined by all the things we weren't or didn't have? Or the little white boy who gave up on his athletic skills because he was told that his place in society was in a large room filled with grown men that made exaggerated, goofy looking gestures as they screamed their offers to a giant screen controller. Everything seemed to come in color, degrees of pain, and constant unjust judgment. There seemed to be a rift between modesty and arrogance, the latter easily bruising inert victims. How is it that there was no in between? The search to learn to know, to be aware became one huge tough choice. How much did she want to know and how much of that did she really need to know? She had always thought that relating to someone's struggle was to form some sort of unity, some common ground that allowed a lighter load on broken shoulders, masking the limp of sufferance. She was wrong. People liked to own their struggle as if their stories were immeasurable, incomparable. They had to be hardcore. And when their time came, they'd foolishly misuse it to tell their story, their struggle, their prosperity all the while forgetting that gentler minds surpassed greater trials years before because they knew that nothing was new under the sun. There were no silent helpers. The days of humble servitude, for faith, for love, for God were long gone. Many times she bumped into souls on their journeys in search for truth and some sparked a beautiful light inside of her birthing feelings of gratitude, complete joy and love that could shimmer a light so bright even the hardest hard would succumb to a knowing smile. But just as she was about to hold on tight for the rest of the ride, skepticism she wasn't accustomed to asking questions that implied blame. She did not live her life wondering why the bridge was built after someone had fallen, but rather musing at how quickly she could build the one bridge that would save a life. She did not smile while her heart was bleeding and neither did she weep but somehow things came together in the end. She knew that his way with words was so crafted it felt like a violently gentle rivulet of bubbling sunset colored lava was pouring out of a quaint volcano. She could not and would never really be the dusty foot because as much as the original dusty foot was able to sketch his language out like a picture vivid, colorful, sometimes shockingly gory staying faithful to his truth, they were not her worlds, not her feelings, not her struggles, and not entirely her dreams.

Reconnecting with persons in the midst of absurdly diverse identical struggles brought the dawning of new waves of comprehension. She vibed with the Rasta understanding Christian man and understood him in ways she'd refused to look to in the past. Words set apart from the individual were divine but when mingled with the carnal became a confusingly predictable presumption. She wondered about places she'd never been. She was homesick for places she'd never called home before. In a surreal seventy two hours she was thrown into a sublime whirlwind of reality. The same reality that said, all men are one and the same, that suffering was actual, pain was definite, peace was obscure, and freedom was present despite resistance. All were intangible.

Little Miss Dusty foot found a chink in her plan to simply be. She wrestled with voices that told her that all this was so different from what she'd always known to be true. Questions flashed before her as she listened to stories of books unpublished, grudgingly hidden facts, ignored wars, unrestrained rage, necessary violence.. Necessary violence? She had long forgotten that to feel someone's pain was to share a part of onesself. Little-Miss-Dusty-Foot perched herself on a cloud and looked down dismally at her crippled siblings. She no longer heard their knife-like whimpers because her cloud played deceptively melodic harps that stabbed with seductive tunes that tickled a masked soul.

She sat looking into the hazel eyes of a brown skinned man that glared right through her as if he could sense the urgency in her core. He spoke patiently … genuinely. He became the one she had been waiting on at that moment in time. She tried to wiggle herself out of the discomfort that came with looming change by chirping awkward jokes, but awareness was one thing she could not avoid. Not with the composed fist clenched around her heart. She knew that the fist was not part of who she was and it was certainly not liberating. It was a fallacy that had been implanted there from the moment she could discern wrong from right. It was the excitement that ran with the masses when they rapped on about the struggle, the adrenaline that pumped revolution through her ready veins. It was a fight with someone else's cause… or someone's brother's cousin's nephew's cause. Sitting low on four beige floor cushions, she looked up and saw that there was no fist here; there was no antagonism or force. There was amity in the small living room. The hazel eyed brown skinned man became separate from his body. His soul shone through and the Word prevailed. Little-Miss-Dusty-Foot came down a cloud. She thanked him with glistening eyes, convinced that good did prevail and truth could never be suppressed. A hug and a kiss parted them and the clouds thinned out bringing her closer to the previously distant whimpers.

Life had by now decided that truth was the order of the day. She continued on. Not too far down the road, she mingled with the poet that she'd admired for months before. He had a way with words, articulation she wished she possessed. The poet spoke of lost friends, she wanted to reach through the apparatus that transmitted his pain and give him a hug that said, 'let me bleed for you '.The poet was not aware of her open heart, he did not see past his bushy curls, irregular hand gestures and puzzling voice from high to low. He didn't let her bleed. He preferred to own his pain. It was here that she saw the separation of soul and all things earthly. His hurt was real and immeasurable. Not many people walked around with as many stories to tell. He was hardcore; he had seen it all and was still standing. As the words were thrown like javelins at little-miss-dusty yet all she saw through her not so young not so old eyes was a man lost in his pains past. He did not see the big question in front of him – what now? She felt that awkward droop that fell disappointedly into the pit of her stomach every time she mistook a situation. She let him be.

The gentler soul sat quietly to the side and smiled when looked at, laughed hard at jokes when they were told, and brushed his hand against her shoulder when chance allowed spreading unspoken warmth. She turned her attention to him and remembered that life was about letting go and living in the here and now. That skipping was far more fulfilling an experience than talking about the past and being stuck in it. He reminded her that it was okay to lose one's way because it was a forked journey all the way through. He stopped to show her that time was needed to figure things out, and sometimes a friend's help was needed. In his gentle smile she saw a likeness to her own. The most humble voice she'd ever heard spoke calmly as one curly wisp of hair flirted musically with his eyelashes on the long walk around a city of lights that seemed to be reflecting the illumination shared. Of course there were times in the night where he became the body-man but all through, the soul-man shone through and rested his amiable hand on her soul leaving jovial sparks of wellness in the air.

It had been a long while since little-miss-dusty felt such rushes of consciousness. She was alive. She knew it. She enjoyed every moment passed even when it ended in slight disenchantment. It only served to teach lessons she'd hold dear for the rest of her life. As she flew home once again for the last time in a long time, she vowed to keep only the pure things closest to her heart. People were imperfect but they all had purity within. At home she found journeys stretched out before her some long and breezy, others short and winded. One wise man told her,' you know the way'. It was then that she committed herself to a journey she would call her own. No more little-miss-dusty. This was her world, her feelings, her dreams and our struggles, our pain, our salvation. She smiled in a blissful ignorance, without a name holding plenty of purpose and took her first step into His and her pilgrim, Him holding her hand, walking in front of her. Her eyes closed, trusting with faith that He was and is and always will be Truth.

Un peu

Four years spent in a city where dogs are as common as the air we breathe, their poop even more common in uncommon textures, sizes and distribution, usually on small, stone-paved roads leading to student apartments, unvisited dentists’ offices, and the occasional ‘Arab store’, where the garbage trucks make more noise than army tanks, starting at six in the morning and coming back again to haunt expectant ears at dinner time. The very first year was one of mere adventure. A dusty foot daughter of the continent trekked worlds she’d not known before, all the while thinking that mentalities and goals were analogous. She learned in that first year that although friendship was hard to find, company could easily be arranged; unsuspecting leaches looking for a good time would well heartedly prepare themselves to be present at her small 32 square meter apartment after happy hour until a guest with the intention of sleeping in his/her own bed would glance at his/her watch signaling the rest for the last metro. Everything was touchable, everyone was allowed to taste because after all, exploration was the best way they could learn. And so they touched and tasted and ate and feasted to their fill but still there wasn’t enough to fully fill so some were shed off and life continued.

She messed up in almost all possible ways but somehow she was granted the chance to get back into the game. Slowly she learned how to pay her bills, manage her money, not be bothered that the only mail she ever got in her box consisted solely of bills for three years in a row. If care packages were what people got in their mail then her service providers sure did love her. She started to cook and eat in more; her ‘favorite’ meal though she’d never reveal that secret, was pasta because it was the fastest cooking cheap thing when famished. Frozen dinners never really did it for her but junk food did and haagen dazs was once again reunited with its greatest fan. This didn’t feel like that first time two years before when she’d left home to go and venture other pastures. In fact, her first month was delightful, filled with the usual motherly love, home-cooked dinners, and plenty of cross country shopping. That month came and went too fast.

Going to sleep in a bed alone is one thing; she started handling this well when she was about five. Having to sleep in an apartment by herself, with no one she knew in the whole complex was another thing. Try as she might to calm her shaky soul, she often found herself awake at odd hours of the morning thinking of what the people she loved were doing at that exact moment. She hiked up her phone bill calling the only people awake at such hours, her lovely friends from a previous journey on the other side of the ocean. Oh how she missed them. What was it about realizing how good things were after they were? They seemed to miss her too. That was comforting. Friendships last a lifetime. This she has learnt over and over again. Those who loved her then love her now and will love her more tomorrow, no matter the distance and the time apart. Days went by in a haze often begging to turn into night by pushing her body into afternoon naps, little escapades into absolute nothing.

Looking back now, growing up seems to have happened awfully fast. The memories caged up in her mind are playing hide and seek with her present and some of them shall never really be remembered as they occurred. One thing remains certain, when she reminisces of the ‘good old times’ she realizes that her body might tell her that those times were better but her soul knows for sure that where she is now in a much higher place. Acceptance received a whole new welcome, one that not even she could have imagined years before. She learnt the language, was stubborn enough to refuse to speak it regularly until she allowed herself the blessing of being where she was and learning what most people dreamed of and so she spoke this tongue twisting, throat scratching, and rolling language. Even with a globally confusing accent she took pleasure in it. Patience at this point she thought was one of her greater virtues but like most other lessons, she was reminded that the learning never ends and humans are not perfect. Time for time for time became more evident with every moment passed in solitude. Its realness and ungraspable paradox, its absurdity and yet very conscious sanity, its usefulness and at other times its complete waste… all these things she exposed.

Anger... or the closest thing she convinced herself she’d come to this emotion put her at an all time low. The reality of it all was that she’d never allow such an intense emotion to shower over her, not back then and definitely not now. There were questions, milliards of unanswered queries floating around in her head like eels in murky swamp water. Constant battles she fought with herself to win a war that had already been won for her. Love. Love. God. This for her was the ultimate state of soul. It still is. And because it is, the words to appropriate her true findings and sentiments to love remain safely in her soul as if refusing to be tarnished by all that she is sure is waiting to soil her last refuge. She tried to love despite all wrongdoings and even then she was reminded that she has yet more to learn.

Some have said that these four years are the determinant ones in life and without them, one’s destiny is changed. Little Miss Dusty Foot doesn’t agree. She, in her culturally mixed pot, ironically from same culture parents, begs to differ. Yes these years taught her a lot but the question of where her life would be isn’t for any PHD holding person to decipher. Faith that every action and occurrence has reason behind it keeps her on her toes and though she’ll look on these years with fondness, the future looks brighter than it ever looked.