Saturday, August 20, 2011

Driving out of the box

I am really happy to have come back from a great European holiday and to be able to look forward to a short break in Oman almost immediately. We have booked for Masera and Ras al Hadd for the Eid break. I am a huge fan of the beautiful island of Masera, its wild emptiness and vast beaches and the two completely different personalities of its east and west coasts. I love camels on the beach!
I haven't visited the turtles in a long time, as I became annoyed with the behaviour of the tourists, but apparantly it is better organised now, and the man hasn't been, so it has to be checked out again. I hope we get to see the babies. The sheer strength it take for those little mites to wiggle and wriggle their way out the sand and make their way to the water is incredible. You hold one of them in your hand and are immediately in awe of the life force they radiate. And the turtle beach at sunrise is a truly magnificent experience. Yes, it will be good.

I count under the many that took my mother for granted when she was around. I always expected her to be around forever, and I remember when she died, I did not only grieve her loss, but had to actively and consciously grieve for the loss of the dreams we had together. I am so grateful that we had those dreams, that she taught me to dream, dream crazy and out of the box. That I am now able to harbour dreams for myself again.

Another lesson I am thankful for, is her teaching me how to separate my emotions and feelings from other peoples'. I used to come home from school with a grumpy look on my face, and she used to ask, "So,Stefs, ma se kind, aan wie behoort die kak? Is dit joune of het jy dit by een van daai kinners opgetel?" So, my child, who does this anger...frustration...crappiness belong to? Is it yours or did you pick it up from another child?
We deal with so many people every day, and they love to dump their stuff on us. As open and receptive and caring human beings, we take it on and make it our own without even realising. Whenever I am in a shitty mood, this is the first question I ask myself, do I own this or is just someone else's thing clinging to me. If it isn't mine, I can of course drop it immediately. if it is mine, I can look at it and deal with it appropriately.

One avenue of my life where I have great difficulty applying this principle is with bad driving. Oman is notorious for the really atrocious drivers, and has one of the highest death toles per capita on the road in the world. We have a saying here in Muscat that if you see someone using indicators, they are clearly new in town. On the airplane form Germany recently, we commented that we had not heard a hooter even once in 3 weeks.  I think one could drive for a year in Germany not even knowing if your hooter is in working order. Here people will hoot behind you 1 millisecond after the traffic light has turned green. A friend says they do it as a favour to one another as everyone is looking down while busy texting; we should not take it personally. I could go on and on.

When it comes to Ramadan, everything gets completely off the scale. I am driving 10 km over the speedlimit, people come zooming past me on the inside...people pass me on the speedbumps. .. incredible crazy weaving all over the road... And my blood pressure rises every time. I have tried my Mozart, Leonard Cohen and even super chilled chakra clearing CDs, but terrible profanities still cross my lips.
So, I just make peace with the fact that I am also not using my indicators, I am also passing on the inside, passing on speedbumps and using my hooter at a whim. At least by foot is not on the dashboard as I am driving, or dangling out the window.
When in the sandland, do as the camelriders do.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Love and the gunmetal sea

'There ain't no cure for love'    L.Cohen

So, I have been so busy being in love, that there has just been no time to write. That does not mean that I have not thought about my blog, or that I have not written, no, I have been writing in my head all the time. I have also been jotting a lot of things down in my journal; but that's not sharing, so I guess it doen't really count.

I have been wanting to tell you about it for ages, but what to say about love, it is such an incredible subject. It is so private, so precious, and so fragile, but still it keeps growing against all odds like those unbelievable tough and plucky plants one sees pushing their way out between rocks in the mountain. They grow into huge trees and flower and live a life on that precipice. Or like those little flowers one sees coming up between the cracks in the pavement. What is with that?

Forgive me if I have told this story before. I remember years ago being on a grief seminar, everyone so torn that they could hardly speak. The Fransiscan nun running the workshop was using pictures to help us come to terms with all the complex emotions inside. One of the images she showed was of a little purple flower growing through the cracks of a cement tile. I remember being able to cry for the first time in many years. I perceived that picture to be the perfect symbol of hope. Nature doesn't think of the future. Nature just does what come naturally.
Maybe that is really how I feel now. I am in awe, quite speechless, am just watching and partaking in the flow of the process. And I allow myself to have hope.

It is the first time I have loved and preceived that love to be completely mine, mine, mine. This belongs to me and it is my experience: the joy, the excitement, yes, the beating heart  and anticipation when I know that I'll see him, the contentment, the peace, the mundane moments, all these things belong to me. It is not his doing, he is not responsible for it; he is part of it and shares in it as much as he wants, but this is my love. I have owned it.
I am basking in it, surrounded by it, have surrendered to it,  have opened my heart to it. I am complete and whole and can enjoy it completely and wholely. He is whole and complete and how he perceives it, and lives it, is his experience.
I am not projecting my feelings, expectations, longings or even gratefulness onto him, and it feels good.

There is so much silence and so much space between us, and so much intimacy in that silence and space.Also there is laughter and play and much joy in the ordinary things.
I seek to change nothing.
It is also dififcult and painful and sometimes I struggle. I have fear because after all we live in the world, but still I seek to change nothing about this complex and wonderful thing. It is too late to run.

Today is everything. It is a love of drifting together in the quiet gunmetal sea after sunset with the lightest frostpink in the sky and a slight mist around the street lamps in the distance. Being held by the soft water and that simple cool moment being all encompassing.

As my dear friend in Oberschwaben , Brigitte, said last week on the phone, 'Only the wind knows what tomorrow brings.'