Tag: women

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The Women and the Shopping

I am not shopping. For a multitude of reasons. I need nothing. I have no house to put anything. I don’t know where exactly I live. I am already carrying to much. Figuratively and literally. Like want to find a UPS store to send things home carrying too much. I understand and can appreciate the ability to leave things behind; I have just never figured out how to do it myself. I tend to bring my favorite things, because I like to wear my favorite things…which makes it difficult to edit down a suitcase. It’s hard to know what you’re going to be the happiest with when you’re packing and you don’t really remember what 110 degrees feels like. So that beautiful linen shirt becomes a heavy weighted thing you refuse to put on. But it’s beautiful and you’re not leaving it behind. And I know I tend to wear the same thing over and over once I arrive….I just never know what that thing is going to be ahead of time.

It doesn’t help when you’re probably depressed by your current Riad and the surrounding neighborhood and are wearing the same thing for 6 days straight. Wash it out in the shower every night and it’s so hot and dry it’s good to go again in the morning. This Riad is beautiful in all the right ways. Orange trees, cooling pool, couches with decorative pillows, rugs, candles everywhere, string lights, painted wooden doors, piles of books, bougainvillea climbing the walls, multiple courtyards. And a buffet. Kiss of death. Never a good sign for me….means it’s too big and it will be harder to make friends. Too many staff all focused on doing their jobs. But I break in a little with my Darija with the breakfast ladies….Said, “Sbh nour” to one and she smiled and said it back and then stopped and turned around. “What did you just say? You speak Arabic? Where are you from?” And we have a little chat and a laugh and we’re both delighted. She smiles at me every time she passes me. But in general, everyone is friendly but it’s the friendly where the smiles don’t reach the eyes. Probably because it’s in this neighborhood….and being friends with the breakfast ladies only gets you until 9:30 am and then it’s out to the scamming men.

Anyway, I decide I need some ladies, and I need some retail therapy. I saw a couple of dress shops on my wander the other day. It’s a very different experience shopping in Morocco because you do it with the shopkeeper. What are you looking for? Do you like this? Try this. They help you put everything on. Tell you it looks bad. Try this instead. You want to try it on again? Yes, I’m used to doing this alone and I can put something on three different times without someone laughing at me. I make her happy by choosing the one she said four garments ago was the best. We are in agreement. She humors my try it on three times to be sure method. We chat and laugh at my darija, she teaches me words. And I leave a little lighter. I’ve been seen. Next shop more of the same, but she is a bit chattier…where are you from? Are you a tour guide? Your Arabic is good. Teaching me words for things. Have a beautiful day. And I’m a little lighter still. I don’t care what I’ve bought. I wanted the interaction. Another shop the credit card machine wasn’t charged so, “please do you have a little time, here have a seat. Are you in a hurry? Can we wait for it to charge?” And so, we sit and talk. Where we are from, what she likes about Marrakech. I should find a man and move here. I’m sorry it’s taking so long she says. I’m not. What else am I doing? This is lovely. We laugh a lot.

So now I have a few souvenirs for people and three new garments that I didn’t really need. But I needed people. I needed women. I needed to talk and to laugh and to be seen. To be in spaces where I didn’t feel like I was being taken for a ride or that I needed to be on my guard. And I will love these dresses because I will remember the ladies saving me today.I am not shopping. For a multitude of reasons. I need nothing. I have no house to put anything. I don’t know where exactly I live. I am already carrying to much. Figuratively and literally. Like want to find a UPS store to send things home carrying too much. I understand and can appreciate the ability to leave things behind; I have just never figured out how to do it myself. I tend to bring my favorite things, because I like to wear my favorite things…which makes it difficult to edit down a suitcase. It’s hard to know what you’re going to be the happiest with when you’re packing and you don’t really remember what 110 degrees feels like. So that beautiful linen shirt becomes a heavy weighted thing you refuse to put on. But it’s beautiful and you’re not leaving it behind. And I know I tend to wear the same thing over and over once I arrive….I just never know what that thing is going to be ahead of time.

It doesn’t help when you’re probably depressed by your current Riad and the surrounding neighborhood and are wearing the same thing for 6 days straight. Wash it out in the shower every night and it’s so hot and dry it’s good to go again in the morning. This Riad is beautiful in all the right ways. Orange trees, cooling pool, couches with decorative pillows, rugs, candles everywhere, string lights, painted wooden doors, piles of books, bougainvillea climbing the walls, multiple courtyards. And a buffet. Kiss of death. Never a good sign for me….means it’s too big and it will be harder to make friends. Too many staff all focused on doing their jobs. But I break in a little with my Darija with the breakfast ladies….Said, “Sbh nour” to one and she smiled and said it back and then stopped and turned around. “What did you just say? You speak Arabic? Where are you from?” And we have a little chat and a laugh and we’re both delighted. She smiles at me every time she passes me. But in general, everyone is friendly but it’s the friendly where the smiles don’t reach the eyes. Probably because it’s in this neighborhood….and being friends with the breakfast ladies only gets you until 9:30 am and then it’s out to the scamming men.

Anyway, I decide I need some ladies, and I need some retail therapy. I saw a couple of dress shops on my wander the other day. It’s a very different experience shopping in Morocco because you do it with the shopkeeper. What are you looking for? Do you like this? Try this. They help you put everything on. Tell you it looks bad. Try this instead. You want to try it on again? Yes, I’m used to doing this alone and I can put something on three different times without someone laughing at me. I make her happy by choosing the one she said four garments ago was the best. We are in agreement. She humors my try it on three times to be sure method. We chat and laugh at my darija, she teaches me words. And I leave a little lighter. I’ve been seen. Next shop more of the same, but she is a bit chattier…where are you from? Are you a tour guide? Your Arabic is good. Teaching me words for things. Have a beautiful day. And I’m a little lighter still. I don’t care what I’ve bought. I wanted the interaction. Another shop the credit card machine wasn’t charged so, “please do you have a little time, here have a seat. Are you in a hurry? Can we wait for it to charge?” And so, we sit and talk. Where we are from, what she likes about Marrakech. I should find a man and move here. I’m sorry it’s taking so long she says. I’m not. What else am I doing? This is lovely. We laugh a lot.

So now I have a few souvenirs for people and three new garments that I didn’t really need. But I needed people. I needed women. I needed to talk and to laugh and to be seen. To be in spaces where I didn’t feel like I was being taken for a ride or that I needed to be on my guard. And I will love these dresses because I will remember the ladies saving me today.

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Begin again

Every time you think you know something, it changes. Something shifts. 

I don’t know what this is. I thought I did. A discovery of a home. A Lost place. Found in Morocco. But I’m not sure it was ever about the place. I think the place was the trigger. The space that provided the catalyst to reconnect with

Myself. And maybe that’s what I’ve been searching for my whole life. My home. I’ve looked in others. Asked for guidance and permission. Validation. Fit into their ideals and their boxes. And this hiraeth. This longing for a home that may never have existed… what if it has been a longing for me. For myself. For all of me. A place. That may never have existed. But I know is true. I know exists. Even if I can’t touch it or place it on a map. A deep longing for all of me. To come home to myself. Maybe it’s been a longing for my own heart.

So here this blog thing morphs again. And I don’t know what I’m doing (which I know I’m supposed to stop saying) because I do know. I just don’t quite have the words to put to it. Or more accurately, I don’t have the words to put to it that fit nicely into the language of society. Of what’s par for the course, one foot in front of the next we’re trained to want and do. And I truly don’t know the next step. Just that I’m following my intuition like it’s a map from the gods. Because I think it might be. The only way to decipher it is surrender and listen. Surrender and follow. Surrender and trust.

I met a woman today. She was amazing. And we needed to meet. And it made me realize I feel like I’m floundering and floating. Free falling with God, as Jacque keeps saying. And I’m half terrified- half trusting. But I still keep one foot in front of the other even if I can’t see the path. Because I’ve heard the only way we can see the path clearly in front of us is if we’re on someone else’s path. So here I am with machete in hand bushwhacking my way through. And today I meet this woman. And she was like a signpost. She needed my story today. It helped her see light in her own life. And through that I felt so seen. For real. Not as this brave adventurer that people tend to label me as, which doesn’t feel to me to be the truth of it. But she saw me as someone making a very clear, if wandering, choice to try something else. Because you reached a point where everything you’ve lived no longer exists. Not because you want an adventure. But because everything you have known up to this point has burned to the ground. And instead of rebuilding, reconstructing the shape of same thing…you thought maybe there is another way…another path.

To be seen by her and have her recognize our lives as similar and that she could reshape things in a new way too, gave me reassurance in myself. Recognition. To see the light in her eyes….like of course we could do it differently. That when everything burns down, maybe it’s because something entirely new is ready to be born. That there is light in a dark place if you’re brave enough to believe you can follow it. I need to figure out how to sit with everyone telling me how brave I am. I don’t think it’s bravery…even though I just said it’s brave to follow the light. I think it’s more true that…it’s that there is no other choice but to try to create a new path.

And so, perhaps this will be a collection of my adventures, the paths, the days, the wins and the redirections. The discoveries. Me saying, wow! Look at that!

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waiting to meet me

Sometimes, maybe when I’ve been exposed to beauty, I feel such an aching fullness. A hope. Thick and real. Like something sticky and fleeting like it’s dripping through your fingers, and you can’t quite hold it but some of the residue is left on your hand. Driving through Roses Valley- all the doors. Metal with designs. Layer upon layer of paint. So many stories behind each closed door. Each curve. Each woman standing in her threshold. Sweeping out. Watching all the cars go by. Full of tourists. Full of gawkers. I want to paint these women…all their eyes so full of fluid light. The wrinkles. They seem like wise women, like they have some sort of magic I want to know about hidden behind their slight smiles. I want to paint them. Juicy, oil- turpentine smell in the apartment I don’t yet have. The real artist space I’ve longed for my lifetime. Brushes in jars. Light coming in just so. My hair half-crazy and tied up. More ideas swirling around like dust motes in the sun than is possible to nail down. I want to capture the doors, the passageways. The women in the thresholds to their spaces. Their worlds- so many untold stories. And yet all our stories are the same. Our hearts ache in the same language. For the same things. I wonder how many other people feel homesick in the same way I do. I am homesick for all the people I’ve yet to be. As though I can see them all standing in a line, on a dirt road waiting to meet me. And I can’t get to them fast enough. Because I must have this version of myself first. I must lay the foundations and the parts for each next me to be able to come forward.

I’m also homesick for the wild and the stars. The dirt devils. The mirages and the knowledge that just beyond the horizon is a line of camels. Slowly. Languidly. Waltzing their way across the dunes. Their oversized plush feel puffing the sand. The hind leg stepping exactly into the print the front foot made. Marching from nowhere into nowhere, but it’s all the center of everywhere. It’s all home. The moon rising over the dunes. Racing alongside the car as we speed through the desert. The mountains ticking beside us like clips from a film reel. The whole time the huge glowing moon keeping pace with our speed. Hand out the window catching the wind.