My trouple leader, having been inspired by the fabulous Leila Haddad of France, wants me to pair in an Algerian Ouled Nail (pronounced "nile") duet with her. This would involve yet another elaborate costume and headpiece, but I'm all for it. The Ouled Nail women danced to earn money for marriage; click on the link to find out more about them. I'm really excited about this--I am not used to dancing except in a large group.
I have been looking ahead, thinking of the next book I might put together after The Strega's Story (yes, I need to get it done, but, in typical Gemini fashion, am considering the next horizon. I am going through old journals for ideas; I have journals from 1977 though the present day, thirty years' worth. I am missing a few, but I have most--strangely, a section just preceding a horrific breakup with the man I was with after my marriage has vanished, even though I saw these pages in my house not too long ago. Maybe, out of anger and a need to purge that terrible time, I tossed them. This would be very unusual for me--I rarely toss old journals, but that time was so awful, secretive, and painful that perhaps I needed to exorcise it.
I don't know what stories or essays will come out of these old journals, but I hear myself speak in them, a language of despair I no longer know. My life is far from perfect, but it is far less unmanageable than it used to be, and things that baffled and frightened me no longer do so. I've come to accept that there is a basic amount of chaos in life, and that I can control my attitude and reactions to things. I don't do that part perfectly, either, but it's a lot better than it was. My old journals remind me of someone pleading to God from the bottom of a well for help.
Here is an entry from November 8, 1996 (after a really rotten breakup, with things that happened in it which I won't make public, but rest assured, they were pretty bad. I have to often exercise daily forgiveness for this person, whom I realize is one of the "still suffering" ones spoken of in recovery. Praying for his mental and emotional healing feels like the right thing to do on my part, but I do NOT excuse his behavior, which caused me and my family enormous pain--besides, this is just to show the contrast between that time of my life and now. It is not a condemnation of any one person):
"My life has changed so much in the last week, so many worlds shattered by horrible
revelations, (the man I was with) lying to me for three years. I wear numbness like a cloak right now. This is a beyond-words type of grief. I must rebuild my shattered trust, with myself and my family, so utterly broken, like a veneer of deceptively thin ice over unspeakably murky water. The only thing I have kept out of it all are the five tulip bulbs we bought together--they do not hold the poisonous essence, the liquor of malignity, they will be wrapped in the cloak of the earth and the cold needles of rain will bless them. I dreamed last night I was choosing daffodils, all types, from an old man, a flower vendor, very kind. So much has changed, losing the "false" one, the one who said he loved me, a surreal loss, as if the kind, gentle person I knew was simply a mask, a shut door behind which lurked the real one. I will not become like this. My tasks now are to grieve and heal, to move on."
Current journals have entries like this (from March 31st 2007 morning pages):
"I toss on a jagged sea of dreams, open my eyes to bald moonlight, the stalk of the agave like a silver spear piercing black shadows. Later, I wake to light, dress in my favorite dance pants, Melodia Phoneix, pure ink black with a rose-and-purple lotus at each ankle. Then hard work in the crowded Saturday morning class, today my teacher wears fingerless gloves, a color between melon and sunset, embroidered with small white flowers. Her hands are so sure, delicate, but strongly expressive, like sun-bronzed birds that rise easily into the arc and scoop of floreos. I relax and follow, no longer a clumsy heron in a flock of egrets. Can I just forgive myself, sail beyond the wild ocean of regret? Focus on today, this day, only the next 24 hours--the past is done, the future a song that has not yet been written."
