two years of being back on the mat rather regularly and with some assiduity, has my feet calloused and tough. the only part of me that is tough, the sole of my feet and the skin on my toes. i vaguely remember how very smooth and soft my feet were two years ago after i had been off the tatamis and hardwood floors for over one year. smooth, and apparently uncurled my toes were. my feet were soft and smooth when i was walking the sands of arabia. i was never smooth.
it seems that while my feet where soft, it was my heart that was rather calloused and tough. was it? from all the great and joyous moments of being in arabia, what is it that i remember?
i do not quite know how to describe what i feel right now. it is a mixture of pounding myself with the question of when will i have all the administrative work squared away. it is something of that, it is realizing that i have some difficulty in deciding what to keep and what to throw away. it is going through piles of old architecture and interior design magazines and getting caught in the photography and the imagination. i keep thinking of the house where i was born, and how i want to bring it back to its simplicity, or could i also say farewell to that house? it is talking to my aunt on the phone and crying, it is wishing that i was with family, my family. it is not knowing who my family is. it is hesitation all over again. when i feel myself hesitating, then i think of the man with the bent toe.
that bent toe of his means a world to me. that is, how can somebody otherwise rather wise and handsome have both such a bent toe and such a delight in teasing me? is he teasing or is he again flirting with me? not that the answer to the latter question really matters, preciously little does matter, much less the fact that his toe is bent.
oracles come in all varieties: gurus, the so called spiritual leaders, the religious leaders, the futurologists, the software engineers, the pop icons, the super-stars, the celebrities and a few odds and ends from jesus to the dalai lama, and passing by the fashion popes of this world. if that was not enough to confuse most of us, then there are horoscopes, numerology, tarot and a few others that i have already forgotten or never heard of. people who read and live by horoscopes as the source of truth are no different from those who interpret the bible literally. lost fanatics, all of them. the illusory search for the truth is a fascinating excursion in human derision.
just last night i was telling a friend who came over for dinner about the one scene that had occurred at the very spot where we were sitting. it was the kind of scene that i had imagined existed only in fiction and cheap novels, and that certainly nothing like it would ever have happened in the so called real life, and most certainly not in my real life. surprise!
there, sitting across from me, once upon a time sat a man whom i had dared to like. he looks at me and with that smile and expression that can only mean contradiction, tells me that he had informed himself about my birthday because he wanted to be sure that i had the right horoscope, and that he hoped i did not mind.
if i had a mind, i would have minded. but, in that moment, i had no mind, i did not mind. had the fact of looking up my birthday remained an isolated instance of esoteric meandering, then what would have there been to mind? in retrospect it is rather easy to assess the past: that was the first indication of that one human's inability to deal with reality and his absolute belief in oracles. the case still fascinates me. never before have i met somebody so bent on control and so devoid of the capability of responsibility for what is nothing more than the random nature of life.
last night this friend of mine and i we ended up going through the repertoire of our experiences in relationships. it was a rather enjoyable and down to earth honest exchange of views and experiences. no wonder that the one with the bent toe, after some giddy interaction of ours, comments the exchange with a claim that the pleasure is all his. pleasure is always mine, and a bent toe means absolutely nothing.
(to be continued)
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