Meditations on Words

I’ve encountered words that I think are in need of help. Unknowingly, they are in the midst of an identity crisis. Because of this, I cannot learn them, know them, retain their existence in my mind. 

I’m reviewing for the GRE, deciding that my only potential escape from the mundane cube I’ve been suffocating in for about two years is graduate school. So, I must get in, freedom is at hand. I’m preparing myself, mentally refreshing, because I’m a horrible test taker and will really only get one shot at this before applications are due. My overly priced vocab flash cards have made me realize how much I miss words, the written word, and how imaginative worlds are woven from the perfect neighboring of words. Almost like alchemy. Word combinations create sentences, meaning, mix and match them and see what product comes from these interactions. It is quite the complex equation, a formula that if something is amiss leaves it all in ruins. 

But this is only possible with the entailed meaning of a word. Meaning is subjective, in the beginning anyway. A word is created, defined, and eventually its existence is accepted, and thus, its meaning has a general consensus for the masses. However, at times I find myself meeting a word for the first time, and upon learning its meaning am confused. This isn’t you? I mean, really, this doesn’t SOUND like you. This is a problem. You’ve been given the wrong identity and you don’t even much know it.

I have no real logic behind this and it just comes from feeling. A meaning feels off, and because of that, I will likely never remember that word. Two examples…take the words Slake and Nadir…just ruminate about the potential meanings of these words or if you already know then proceed to start questioning the definitions pairings with these words.

 

Slake – to calm down, moderate

Nadir – lowest point

This is an identity crisis at its worst. Slake…it sounds like a nasty thing. Something of evil nature or movement. To slake around. Nadir…really should be a noun. A woman’s name with beautiful dark eyes, rounded like an almond. Nadir knelt by the stream to take a drink of water with her bare hands, blistered from the sun. 

This has always been a problem for me. Meeting words and wanting to change them, find out their true purpose in this language. However, I can’t really argue this on the GRE and must find a way to retain these words even with their poor aliases. But it makes me wonder about the meaning of words, the broader significance of it. Because much of interpretation comes from what we say, write, or read. Words create laws, debates, cement marriages, move people to action or inaction, to change the world…so meaning in itself has so much weight in life that goes unseen.

Grown Ups Don’t Tell

Words mama and daddy never say…

Little girl, no one cares what you get. Awards in a box. Degrees in a drawer. The boss man, the next door neighbor, the postman, ain’t no one going to care about what you’ve done, what you’ll do. The self is what’s on their mind. 

Miracles. God’s intervention. But no one likes to talk about the non-miracles. The times when God’s head seems turned away. Doesn’t it say just as much when a God chooses not to act? Inaction has powerful revelations, too. Ask the bodies of dead Jews, gypsies, gays, of women called witches and burned at stakes…Why didn’t God CHOOSE to act, to create a miracle when whole worlds seemed to cry out, to ask for God to come down from on high. And after all these years, the history, the atrocities, it isn’t enough to say God is a mysterious being, can’t go understanding the incomprehensible…then don’t be giving credit for the good if you can’t give credit for the bad.

Lives are webs woven of experience and lies, and to find anything of real truth is a difficult, but deeply cherished thing.

This is a world of the Lost. Life didn’t go their way. And they fill up on tv, internet, drugs, and drink to make it better. To feel a lot of nothin’. When you find solace in one of these things, don’t be fearful, find a new way, get out, run, curse what everyone else has become. 

These are things that go unsaid. Don’t know why. Had I known this a bit younger, how different things would have gone. No use in crying, it can’t be undone. Just keep an eye to the future, weave it how I see fit. And in my pocket the fading words of Isadora…”You were once wild here. Don’t Let them tame you.”

The Foot Path

I’ve come to appreciate dirty feet. Strange. Indeed. 

India refused to permit me pure, untainted toes and soles. Never could a bucket shower manage to cleanse the remnants of winding stone and dirt paths. Paths that had been carved from the back of Himalaya, been trekked upon by thousands of feet before mine. The history of foot paths. Stories of all before, and all to come. Dirty feet no longer defined as unclean, but proud symbols of each step taken. Though footprints runaway with wind and water, never does a foot forget the journey. 

My heels are hardened from years of flip flops. How naked and vulnerable a foot can be, but it adapts to its surroundings. No matter if I step fifty paces in a day, each will be adorned with a fresh dusting. Last night, in denial of an empty ink cartridge’s state, I shook photo black noir hoping to jostle enough ink to finish a print. Not only was it unsuccessful, but tiny droplets of black ink sprinkled the carpet. Oblivious to that fact, I walked across the carpet several times before sensing a mild damp feeling. Little black dots stained my feet for the night. I had no urge to wash away the absurdity of ink on feet. 

I think it strange that often dirty feet mean unclean. I’ve read religious texts where feet are used for metaphors for a person’s social status, the bottom of the body, how it is of the earth. Nothing else would I prefer but to be of the earth, be a part of something so real, rather than lay fat and idle on a cloud. 

Dirty can be lovely. Forever it will remind me of the paths taken, by me and strangers alike.

In the Land of Shiva: Part XIII

We rose with the sun in search of the holiest site in Sikhism. And I relished the plush green carpet beneath my feet, the Western showers, hot water pouring down, a four star hotel for the same price as a Motel 8 room in the States. It was luxury.

Not the same can be said for the taxi driver we reserved for the weekend. I discovered his bed was the backseat of the taxi, likely a quick face and ear wash with cold water in a bathroom nearby. He packed no change of clothes, np overnight bag for our two day journey, only his thinning button up shirt, pants, and a Punjabi music cassette that we’d listen to for over 5 hours that weekend. I thought it odd to memorize excerpts of a song in a language I didn’t speak, words whose meaning I failed to grasp. 

He left us in a parking lot. Melancholy buildings loomed around, Indian men’s eyes stared at these six Western women huddled together, whispering concerns, debating direction to step. The driver just waived for us to walk away, and hesitantly, we complied. But after five minutes, the same decrepit structures and eyes with different faces remained. It felt like post war Europe invaded with immigrants, and we panicked, racing back to the lot. Taxi and driver gone. Shit. Abandoned in Amritsar. 

We decided to retrace our steps thinking perhaps we didn’t go far enough. But nothing fit, nothing made sense. We were in search of a building of gold, but we were encompassed by forgotten structures, their facades faded and subdued. It would be like finding Eden within the bounds of a wasteland. 

After a ten minute walk and rounding a corner, we came to see this was indeed the case. Red and silver streamers glimmered in the morning light, a party at the edge of disaster. An immaculate structure encircled the Golden Temple, a threshold to be crossed, separating sacred from profane. 

Beneath a tent, we slipped off our shoes and handed them over in exchange for a chip. Within the tiled ground were basins of water. Slowly walking through, washing my feet of impurities so as not to taint holy ground. As I climbed the steps, a sliver of gold began to appear. At the top, all was revealed, a temple of gold that almost seemed to be floating on water. How the rising sun warmed its walls with light, causing it to radiate. 

At the sight of it, Haylee cried. Others wanted a moment of silent meditation. And I was in a state of horrific concern. Never would I share my thoughts at that precise moment with them, even with Jaye, nor with another when I returned home in the weeks to come. Before me was a building that invoked awe. That awoke the numinous and compelled people to to their knees, to prayer, to tears. But inside me, before that great temple, was a terrifying silence, a void of emotive fervor. So scared was I of this absent emotion that I almost broke down and wept. And the source of my tears would have been misinterpreted drastically.

The hallow state I felt then haunted me for so long after that day. I thought myself soul sick. How could a student of religions, so passionate about this discourse, feel nothing before one of the greatest temples in the world? And how could others that knew nothing of Sikhism, little of this temple, of its significance to Sikhs, could be struck so powerfully just at the sight of its walls? I evaded ruminating on this for months, fearing what I may unearth about myself in the process. I blamed it on the sickness waking from dormancy in my belly, the nausea and pepto chewables I ate like candy. Yes, it was illness, dehydration, a sick state of being that ruined my encounter with the Golden Temple. I knew this to be a lie, but I willed myself to believe it until the day I realized what had happened to me that day. A revelation that came almost an entire year later.

At the doors of the temple, sound changes. No longer can the ears distinguish between sounds. All there is is a series of voices, prayers, a chorus of bodies without a conductor to guide them. Men and women stand with eyes closed, hands pressed together all the while their mouths move. No room for air between brother and sister, feel the sweat of another, their breath upon your back. And the deeper inside the abyss of bodies, the sound rises, the mind hears nothing but hundreds of voices in indecipherable tongues and all that I can see is the center, the reason for bowed heads, and prostrations, tears and prayers. Roped off is three men and the sacred text, the eternal prophet of the Sikhs, the Guru Granth Sahib. 

Standing but several feet away, I am pushed, jostled, shoved away by pilgrims earnestly reaching towards the sacred heart of their being. Rupees are being tossed in, crumpled bills, meager coin change. Dozens on their knees, arms stretched towards men who hold folded orange fabric. These are blessed, to be worn by men upon their brow, but only if the right number of rupees fall to the ground. So many palms open, waiting to be filled. 

I am entranced. Paralyzed by so much before me. My eyes attempt to take it all in, I want to remember it all. And the voices make it difficult to focus. I see the intricate craftsmanship of its underbelly, vivid paints on all its walls, blues, oranges, whites, and the reflected light from its gold walls cascades inside. I cannot move, cannot dismiss these prostrating bodies, their prayers, the smell of their skin, the reading of scripture, too much in this place lives, too much to segregate in the mind. And then I feel my sickness rising, the heat of too many bodies causing my body to concede. Now I pray a silent prayer, “Don’t throw up in their sacred space. Do not throw up in their sacred space.” 

And I’m chanting this over and over in my head. Trying to inch my way towards the closest open space, a bit of air and perhaps I’ll be okay. And then I feel a quick slap across my head, then another. I turn to find an old woman, hair white and face pruned, berating me in Hindi. She slaps the side of my head again, and I jerk away from her, think her mad. But then she smacks her own head, and I realize my grave error. In the midst of my fixation and illness, my headscarf had slipped off, exposing my dark brown hair, a naked head before something so holy. I am horrified, and quickly adjust my scarf, tuck back my hair. All the while I’m apologizing in a language no one around me knows. Long ago was I separated from the others, now alone to face my gaffe. I’m inching away, giving a half bow, the only Hindi word I can think of is Namaste, no use in this context. But I think myself forgiven, for she laughed at me, then went back to her prayer. I managed not to vomit on sacred ground, but brandishing an uncovered head just may trump illness.

The experience and exertion of the morning had drained my energy. I was so tired that all I yearned for was the small cot and window air conditioning that awaited me back at the hotel. My belly and soul were soured, and I just wanted to retreat back to seclusion.

A year later, I once again confronted the void I felt at the sight of the temple. It was an issue I kept analyzing for months, wondering the extent of the illness in my soul. But one day, I realized why it had been such. In Religious Studies, it is said that one sees religion one of two ways: from the top down or from the bottom up. Those focused on the top are usually fixated with god(s), philosophy, abstractions, manifestations of the sacred, symbols, and so on. But those that start at the bottom likely never raise their head enough to even see the sky. The bottom is the people. The focus on the ritual, the internalizing of beliefs, the manifestation of religion in thoughts, speech, action, the union of spirituality and religion with a person, a community, a people.

Since the day I devoted myself to the study of religions, I have been a practitioner of from the bottom up. It is within the lives and stories of the people that I seek religion and spirituality, abstractions do little to entice and engage me, as is the same with gods and philosophy. I felt nothing at the sight of the temple, but was greatly overwhelmed within its walls, engulfed by hundreds of devotees. I sought to etch into my mind the images of praying, prostrating, puja, the smells, all I touched, the sensuality and spirituality that saturated that space.  It took so long for me to see, to realize, what truly invoked me, but the day that I finally understood this gave me insight I had lacked even into my own being.

Persepolis

I first heard this word from a woman in admissions at the Art Institute, who in her earnest speech to convince me to attend, diverted to more interesting topics. In my last meeting with her, we spoke of art, religion, travel, and Persepolis.

Again, I was reacquainted with this when a friend informed me he was in process of reading it. So, finally, Friday night I found myself succumbing to a Starbucks craving, and while walking around I stumbled upon it, swept it up, and purchased it. But it wouldn’t be until Saturday night with a dead internet that I would turn the first page, and I closed it 2/3 through to finally sleep.

Simplification entails a beauty and genius that is often unnoticed. It is never how long the story can be, but how well it is crafted, whittled down to necessity, an enlivened finesse. Any writer will tell you that a simple sentence can inflict great agony upon the mind and hand. Because nothing should be wasted, no word without purpose. I find that one can tell when a writer has become successful because the books become more obese, the editing hand lax due from a freedom reaped from sales and profit. In my Theories of Religion course, I went through a phase where I thought many articles were unwarranted, and began leaving many out of my essays. One day, I went to my professor’s small office with hovering book cases and stacks of papers to retrieve an essay. He asked what was wrong with me, my writing was leaving out words, it seemed odd to him. I explained I thought some articles were frivolous, but I couldn’t quite win him over. In the end he told me the paper deserved an A-, but at the time, CofC’s grading system hadn’t incorporated a minus system. So he decided to give me a B+ rather than an A. I would have rather he omitted his reasonings for my grade.

In regards to mastering simplicity, Persepolis is a delightful example, but in a method I’m not accustomed to. It is a biography of a woman who grew up in Iran during the Islamic revolution and Iraq war, but her words are accompanied by comic strips. The merging of nonfiction with art is a fine marriage in this case. Only the words needed are provided, and all else is conveyed within the black and white sketches, shades of dichotomy that can prove quite powerful in particular moments. A face half shadowed can be poignant and rattle the nerves.

But, what I adore the most is the woman herself, Marjane. She is blunt, abrupt, careless, intelligent, crass, vulgar, revolutionary, passionate, rebellious, sensual, prude, lost, and found. All within circumstances that many will never know.

It reveals a flip-side perspective on various issues. The methodologies and goals of the Islamic regime seemed unsurprisingly similar to Christian extremist in the U.S. And if anyone wants to know why my heart is greatly filled with joy by our nation’s President-elect, it is because it restored my faith in the people of this nation, that they do not desire the road a conservative party has paved for years and with each step, has worked towards stripping citizens of rights. I hope in my lifetime I do not find myself living to see a Christian regime usurp the government and people’s rights like the theocracy Marjane witnessed and lived with.

And Marjane is critical of it all. When asked why she doesn’t like wearing a headscarf, she replies that if hair was meant to stir such passion within men, that Allah would have surely made everyone bald. The wit and insightful rejoinder made me burst in laughter, practically applauding while covered in my sheets.

But I also recommend this book because it does give a perspective of Westerners that needs to be seen. In Persepolis, Westerners are the foreigners, the exotic other, and the actions of these people reveal much about European and U.S. cultures. It deconstructs the sense of familiar one has with his or her own culture to view it as an outsider would.

This novel makes one think…and how a mind deserves to be shaken.