The chalk on the floor

The chalk on the floor

5 July 2018

Courtesy pinterest.com

 

She readjusted the dish-stand. It still looked crooked. Nothing seemed to be straight in anything that was going on around her she thought. Her shoulders hunched slightly in defeat. She turned the dish-stand around lengthwise against the wall and it finally seemed to fit straight. At least one thing that would be in order she thought. She laughed to herself at the idea that her OCD behaviour seemed to be returning. This was definitely not the place to have those compulsions she thought to herself. She shrugged off the nagging impulse to set straight the jars that were drying next to the sink.

On the floor a cockroach was running towards shelter under the sink. She gritted her teeth and tried to swat it with the broom but it was too fast for her. She re-positioned the broom but it had already disappeared under the sink. She did not feel like going to search for it. The mere idea of pursuing the insect under the sink nauseated her. She looked for the chalk she had bought earlier and that was said to keep away ants and roaches. Slowly but surely, she began drawing straight lines all across the floor, around the sink, the granite topped cavities that acted as makeshift cupboards and the small wooden cupboards.

After she had finished drawing the lines she stood up and gazed at them. Some seemed slightly crooked and she bent down to draw straighter lines after she had rubbed away those that seemed crooked. She repeated the experience when she felt the result was unsatisfactory. After a while she was far more pleased with the result of her drawings. She stood up and gazed at the drawings from above. They were indeed very straight now with the intersections giving forth clean right angles.

From the corner of her eye she could see one of the huge ants that had been there earlier run towards the cupboard and then stop before the line in front of it. She was extremely pleased to have bought the chalk. It seemed like her ticket to sanity in this insane circle of huge ants and roaches that had been taking turns in attacking her stock of groceries. She looked at the lines again beaming at the idea that they would finally protect the groceries. Under the tube light it seemed to her that the chalk on the floor beamed back at her.

 

Opa Tsupa – Les deux Guitares

The Stigmata of Sexuality

The Stigmata of Sexuality

19 September 2015

 

I was recently warned about the sexual content of my poetry and the accompanying images insofar as it was published together with my profile on a professional website and might hurt my professional image.

The person was a very good friend of mine and I knew her not to be really bothered by such matters but more concerned about its impact on my image from an external standpoint as this was a conservative region – unlike the western regions. Therefore I just exchanged with her banal thoughts on the fact that I write poetry and this is who I also am, which I am not willing to suppress to please the rampant hypocrisy of the region. Besides, needless to say that this region knows a flourish of sexuality, albeit in a very hidden and sometimes distorted way if you take Saudi for example.

 

This incident got me thinking however about Sexuality and its connotations and manifestations on a more global level. Needless to say and there are profuse sayings about this matter that money and sex are what really seem to rule this world. It is fascinating to notice though how these elements are transformed, darkened, soiled and then returned to the world with a negative emphasis of their essence.

 

Money, which started out as a symbolic energy exchange is now mainly used to corrupt, to buy something that ethics and basic decency would not allow for. It is exchanged under the table, between conniving looks and slithering fingers so that a deed, that would otherwise not be carried out finds some sanctity in the eyes of the person having to commit it for this price.

 

Sexuality is used in a certain way to corrupt too. Many business transactions have been consolidated on the basis of a hooker or a few hookers who are left with the person making the decision to facilitate the business transaction or with the person deciding himself. It is also used to obtain power whether direct or indirect and to trap unwary people into the web of blackmail depending on situation, gender, position and nature and extent of the sexual happening.

 

In both cases, the bait is given and everybody looks the other way because these items represent the final boundaries of decency and morality. Thus, sexuality like money has earned an increased social stigmata. Expressing sexuality has become the epitome of expressing the desire to be a whore because today, sexuality has finally become totally associated with “whoredom”.

We don’t even need to step into the earlier stages of how religion transformed sexuality from its original healing intent into something dark and foreboding to be shunned, thereby sweepingly relegating women as a gender into the role of the gate to a purgatory leading to hell. Even without this terrible legacy, modern day antics would have anyway succeeded in transforming sexuality into something lurid and to be totally associated with only what should be kept in the dark.

 

Even sexuality within marriage is still somewhat akin to the forbidden. I know of one woman whose religious conservative husband wanted to divorce her because she was expressing too much pleasure during their lovemaking. Apparently he expected her to lie down and live through it without a word as if she were some dutiful wife just stitching a button on his shirt or cooking without his presence beside her. He thought that expressing pleasure was a sign of her being more like a whore than a wife. I remember one incident involving myself when an earlier boyfriend refused to even think about the earlier stages of a sexual relationship saying that he respected me too much and did not consider me a whore – thank you very much!

 

Those who seek spirituality in the eastern world are the other ones aside from religion who have given sexuality its stigmata as they consider that sexuality must be taken out of the equation of attaining higher realms because it would bring them down from their endeavours into a carnal world. They believe that sexuality is a directly limiting factor of accessing higher realms because of the lust associated with it. They seem to forget that all the temples throughout Asia showcase to some extent or the other sexualised representations of the Gods that they themselves pray to. It would therefore seem in all fairness that sexuality was a means of attaining higher realms or at least was associated with the higher realms as the Gods themselves practised it. Today, only those who practise Tantra still think of it as a way to attain higher realms although they do it in a more concentrated way focusing mainly on the sexual happening and less on the other items associated with spirituality (here too the various masters differ in their way of interpreting Tantra).

 

Personally, I have always seen sexuality as a healing source and a means to transcendence if used in the right way and therefore fail to see in it something that could soil despite the various incidents I have witnessed or any I have been subject to. There was a time when sexuality was regularly practised as a means to heal people and women who would now be called whores were then hailed as remarkable healers. In fact, the legend has it that Mary Magdalene herself was one such healer while today’s history books list her simply down as the whore who got redeemed by Jesus’s Love and compassion.

 

It is about time to remove the stigma associated with sexuality and finally allow it to reintegrate its role in healing and nurturing instead of leaving it distorted and creating negative energy throughout our beings and throughout the world. This would also finally allow women to lose their ill-fated designation as the gates to a hellish purgatory and reinstate their roles as nurturers and healers.