Meanderings and Ramblings 1

Ian Whitney

There was a storm, an orange-cloud storm swirling of red dust and turning the sky, the air, the buildings into a maelstrom of soundless sounds. They resonated through the air as the vortex in its freedom sucked them in, only to throw them to the edges of consciousness. The khamasin roars for 50 days or more some years. Driving a path of burning wind straight from the Sahara, it moves the earth and reshapes the landscape. Its sculpting erases. Some say it is Nature’s way of showing forgiveness, erasing the emotions, the words, the deeds, the lives of the past leaving a ‘clean slate’. She could not be as generous as Nature, though she had tried. Forgiveness was for God. How could she? When she tried, inevitably the forgiven were undeserving and turned the swords they stabbed in her back once again, with a laugh. Her back was strong. So, she began another way to follow Nature’s examples. It was simple. She took a piece of cloth and poured into it all the memories, the thoughts, the rage. And then, she tied it to a tree. A little piece of cloth for those who had been taken, for her hopes, her future, her heart. A little piece of cloth tied to the tree during the 50 days when Al-Khamasin blew. She trusted Nature. Nature would take the cloth up in its magnificent, whirling, red arms and cleanse it as it pulled it in, farther and farther into its center. Once clean again. Once pure again, the cloth would be thrown out into the edges of the world again for another chance.

This was how she had lived, in metaphors and symbols. She wanted to speak, but words would not come. There had been a time when her voice floated through the air like a songbird, an evening call on the wind. That was long ago, it seemed to her now. The songs were still there, but since the first time they had killed the music, in her last days of youth, the songs had hidden themselves. They darted in and out for a while, trying to cheer her to give her direction, to relight her passion, her belief that good things happened to good people, not bad things. As time went on, their sounds curved ever more inward, distant reminders of a porch swing, lilacs and the sounds of laughter. And, now, she told herself, they rested, safe behind the stone walls, the steel and concrete she had built around her heart to protect them. Those notes were her children, the unborn that someday, she was certain, would be born. They understood metaphors best, so it was for them that she had carried out this way of communicating. When she was a child herself, she had written a poem she had titled ‘for the anonymous sunbeams’. It had been while sitting at a table, watching the sun play on the lake at summer camp, that the phrase had just jumped into her head. Sounding out ‘a-non-y-mous’ had been one of her half conscious mantras those few weeks, along with other new words whose sounds flew by her so quickly, she could not quite catch them. So, this repetition to herself of what she had thought she had heard. No one in her family ever had time or patience with her to sound it out. She was too old and they only laughed at her when she mispronounced the words she couldn’t understand in lyrics on the radio. So, this quiet regimen had become a frequent habit and a safe haven to withdraw to, when shocking, surprising things happened, particularly when anyone paid her attention that she didn’t understand. She knew that if she could not understand it, whatever it was, was likely to have elements of danger to her in it. It might only be sneering laughter at her large stomach, or at an idea she had expressed or a question she had asked, but there was danger in those mocking voices and straightening the back was easier when she withdrew inside, never letting her eyes wander from their forms. Deep inside, words were being sounded out, slowly, group by group, as she quietly faced her challengers. They kept her still. She was not even conscious of them. For her, everything was silent and quiet inside her. She only knew that until the danger passed she shouldn’t move in any other direction except straight up, in one place, silent and staring. The tactic inevitably worked and the danger slipped away. Many years later when she met a black cobra, coiled and ready to spring, only a few inches from her sports clad shoe in the jungle of autumn India, it was this same series of events that took place. Perhaps it was because she had been sounding out the words she heard and tried to remember from Hindi and understand what she was hearing in Marathi, that had put her back in the practice. What took her to that place of stillness and absolute quiet as the cobras eyes turned towards her, its profile steady and its forked tongue flicking out to taste the fear she thought it probably was praying as hard as they were was not there, may have been something else completely, but it worked, the king slowly lowered himself after making sure no one was moving, and slid quietly away to the opposite side of the ancient stone steps that had been leading them to the caves below.As she had watched the black, curving line extend itself and move slowly over the white stone into the golden-green of the woodland beyond, she had been amazed. The contact had been as between humans, between the most magnificent royalty to those who had been allowed into his court and for whom he had opened the gate for them to pass through. She had been content with the honor, for in the next moments she remembered nothing. She only became conscious of what she was doing when she had reached the top of the stairs. Why she had run blindly away, she couldn’t say, What she could say was that although she remembered nothing, inside she had remained perfectly calm. The message to her had seemed more a warning and the example of the royal’s actions, slipping away into familiar places, had been a suggestion her logic had accepted as both practical and expedient. There had been four of them, the human court, and the snake, knowing its power had retreated in dignity and grace. She had run, clumsy and awkward, but she had understood the message well so that even after the exertion she had not been out of breath despite the 30 or so stairs she had dashed.  She had remained quiet in the storm….

~ by debussytime on June 9, 2010.