It’s a rain forest. Not a jungle.
Unsure of the distinction here in the crumply volcanic mountains of Costa Rica, covered with fronds so cartoonishly massive I feel like “Eat Me” must have been inscribed on something I, Alice, ate today (probably that string bean – seemed to have some sigil to it’s skin). This jungle – pardon me: rain forest – features highlights from southern California’s all-star house plant team – growing in technicolor so vibrant, the Wizard of Oz is envious. In dimentions so numerous, Avitar’s eyes cast downward. With fruit so abundant, a raw foodist stops making mental meal maps. Twenty feet high, these jungle giants; fruiting, flowering … outdoors.
Quite a jaunt from Playa Caletas on the Nicoya Peninsuala, where I was living on a quite uninhabited beach without running water nor electricity. We flushed by carrying water from the ocean and pouring it down the stool. It was one hundred degrees and too hot to do anything but hammock the day. At night we tracked turtles til sunrise. The ocean was never clam nor quiet; the waves a constant 10 feet or higher, the moon; a dramatic actor giving show stopping performances come 3am. I held hundreds of ancient endangered sea turlte babies one by one between my thumb and forefinger before setting them to sand, whispering a silent “grow” and midwifing them from protected nest to wild water destiny with an easy release.
But here in the rain forest, where I’ve come to partake of the plant medicines ayahuasca, peyote and sacred tobacco, the continuous cacaophony of deafening ocean orchestration is replaced by the fairy brigade’s soft shoe sonnet of gentle rain drops across some far above overhead canopy. Here we flush with saw dust.
I am a plant worshiper. By goddess, it’s practically a religion at this point (I surely have been saved). I firmly expeirence plants as intelligent beings, each one a teacher with wisdom to impart. It is my training, as student, to develop my senses, sensitivity and sensuality so that I can hear the teachers’ lesson. An adept student will hear the teachers voices whose wisdom she is ready to recieve. The fact that some plants’ voices are so clearly heard by all of humanity suggests all humanity is ready and requires the lesson.
Medicine: I am listening.
Oh, Shilajit. Oh, dirty, brown earth. Oh, blackened minerals between thighs of mountains forming. Just a powder, just a body, just a feeling.
Goodness, weren’t you made perfect? Weren’t you just so lucky – the world; all of us lucky – when you got manifest. When that golden heart found a home in your fit, wild body. Just a powder, just a body, just a feeling.
I’ve been all over the road. I’ve been all over the world. I’ve been all over your lap and nothing seems as perfect as this quiet rocking and rolling. Catch a wave. The world can wait to be saved. I’m birthing femininity and everything good about being alive. A powder, a body, a feeling.
It’s all in the feeling. The motion carries feeling. I thought I might liberate, so pleasing was the escape. I thought I might die, so fulfilled the appetite. I thought about only this, only you, only some thing can ease my life:
An orchid.
A lucid dream.
A brisk sotto inhale.
Oh, Shilajit.
It’s good to be a big girl now. It’s good to know what I do.
And then do the opposite.
It’s good to be a woman now. With stories to tell and touch to give. It’s good to know I can touch you. These precious things are for now.
Sweet like cherries. I’m not kidding. Sweet like soft skin, the side of my breast. Sweet like seventy degree sunshine and afternoon naps with the windows wide open in the city. The calm and breezy city. It’s good to know what I do.
When I get a moment alone I do what I know. Just breathe. Just dream and breathe. Magnificent transformation. Energy transmutation. From the vessel, the enduring drink.
Bless this wind blowing over my body. This bird scattered now that I am known to be here. Hands on my feet – giant hands on my feet. I am adored the way I understand adoration to be.
Simple are the pleasures opening eyes each morning - The adventure, the Sun, the laughter above all. Adored is the inhale, the exhale; my breath. A mentor of gratitude this pleasure be.
There are clouds like heaven’s bath tub ring, sticking to the nite sky. There are plants with waxy dark green leaves growing in pots on the balcony.
I might be hanging up the cell phone at another red light not long enough yellow or I might be scuffling down the sidewalk outside my dance studio, noticing underripe fruits dropped at my feet – looking up it is another date palm. I might be doing anything, just minding my own business and
there it is.
There are lilies from a Lover mustering up the strength to open on the mantle. There are organic cherimoya ripened perfectly in the kitchen for tomorrow’s breakfast. There is a big cup of ginger tea throwing up steam next to me. There is a man in the next room whose face lit up when I came in to tuck him to bed.
I don’t know why I feel like this again. I don’t know why I feel sorry for people who love me. I do not know what to do to change this. I might be minding my own business, just picking out the clothes for the day and there it is, hanging around me, pressing down on me, whispering urgent blind lies into my mind. I might be relaxing into the bath tub and then the next thing I know …
There is a dad who likes to hear the boring stuff as well as the exciting stuff. There is a voicemail from a casting director inviting me to an audition. There is a drawer that holds my panties and some of my favorite incense and there are five shiny fingersnails on the end of each hand.
So tell me why it has found me again.
Waiting for a hurricane as he sucks on my toes. The calm before the storm they keep saying on the television. In a moment the primal forces of nature will emerge from Chaos itself and tear fabric seems through the sky, force themselves upon us, have their way with us in this resort fortress on exposed shoreline. About to be shattered like a ceramic bank with the last nickel in. He sucks my toes and takes his silent time. Waiting for the hurricane.
Windows boarded up. Handwritten signs in store fronts something about ‘closed early’ – no notice to reopen. Last flight out has come and gone, and all of his cast and crew members already chartered back to Los Angeles, are safe and sound in southern California where someone drives down Sunset Blvd in their tricked out sled, someone scores a corporate record deal, someone sloppy drunk leaves with a total stranger reeking of clove cigarettes . But fatal romance, drastic demonstrations of passion and a devilish fascination with adventure called my Lover and I to stay in Lucaya, sharing suddenly private moments in this island ghost town, with unspoken commitments in each stroke of the hair, each loaded glance across the room, each careful petting like it was our last. Knowing it will not be. We’ve got forever to give to receive – what’s the difference anyway – when a black cloud devours sunset before your very eyes. Confirming; we’ve got forever.
I will take him again and again and again. Facing the ceiling, I will cradle his head against my breast. I will make elaborate gestures, layered in Everyland’s archetype, and create a ritual that honors every act of love and pleasure ever imagined, suggested or acted upon. His thick forearms flex in slow motion. His rough hand traces the curve of my upper thigh. There is nothing to do but make love out of boredom. We are obsessive thoughts repeating ourselves until comfort. We are moths, insane for the light. We are sipping kukicha tea and haven’t bothered to dress. The wind has picked up outside the glass window and there is nothing, absolutely suspiciously nothing, to do. We are so alive.
Before I arrived, my impression of Japan was that of right angles and straight lines. A systematic society functioning amazingly efficently because of its adhearence to rules and its respect for order. A coloring book with perfect caligraphy strokes on every page, where bleeding out of the lines is frowned upon and dramatically expressive sensuality seen as a threat to this well-oiled machine.
But yesterday, after hiking through the ghostly Aokigajara lava woods (written about in a famous Japanese suicide novel and to this day romanticized and utilized for the same morbid purpose) I detoured into an underground cave where ice forms stalagtites and stalagmites like arctic birthday candles . As I entered the cave, climbing down climbing down, I was hit by the cold dragon breath of mother earth reaching up from Never’s depths – a harsh contrast to the unforgivingly hot, heavy, humid summer air sticking to my skin five feet higher. How simple the sensation – cold contrasting hot. How deeply it penetrated – how complete the effect. It was then the easily overlooked essense of Japanese sensulaity made itself known to me.
Today, after a demanding climb up volcanic Mt. Fuji herself, I visited the volcanic mineral pools (called Onsen) – a traditional Japanese public bathing ritual that resembles a luxury spa experience in the states – and was gently confronted by what is becoming a stimulating theme; As I enter the Onsen, I notice in the corner, illuminated and centrally focused, a single lily stem in a thin glass vase. As I become light headed in the steam room, I fixate upon a ceiling mural, a red female character with hair in high bun, the only color against an otherwise off-white environment. As I ascend the outdoor bath stairs, I listen to trickling waterfall running aside the path, a sound only audible on certain stairs. As I return to the dressing room, I step onto the soft rittan bamboo floor, and relish the way it feels underneath my bare feet.
The art of Japanese sensuality is not one of low cut blouses and exposed inner thighs. Japanese sensulaity is not a dramatic seronade at the window or passionate kisses in glass elevators. It is the tempurature of the first sip of green tea. It is the skill with which one handles their chop sticks. It is the space between the horse and rider. It is the thought that will not be shared.
And I am all the more aware now, as I touch lips to my Lover’s, he half-Japanese and sensual as the path is endless, how intently focussed, how deeply personal, and how complimentarily inclusive the Japanese regiment and passion can be.
And how truley fortunate am I to be the object of such a refined expression of the sensual arts.
I fall in love with the touch. Whomsoever has the talent of hands can touch me most.
I wake up kissing. Before I know what city I’m waking up in, he is kissing me. During the transition from dreaming to puffy-eyed coherence, when subconscious is forefront and I am most impressionable, whatever happens during this magickal morning moment is imprinted, for at least the entire day, most certainly longer. Imprint passion. Imprint choice. Imprint presence with this kiss.
Love is not a noun – a state to procure, pronounce, or possess. Love is an action, and takes practice to perfect. It moves like my pelvis when the bass hits the brown note. It sounds like the fan moving air all hot nite. It looks like sweat on California skin. It tastes like avocados. Feed me Love.
He is my Lover because he Loves me like a verb, like an action that only exists while it is happening. And that makes me the Loved, being touched, kissed and danced with. Drunk on avocados, lying naked in front of the fan all hot nite.
Like a snake is how to put a foot on the floor. I am not shrinking, but going further at astonishing rate. Accelerating like a tornado like a twister funnel cloud sucking down and not up. Spiraling down. Had you thought of that yet? Spiraling down as a soulular paradigm. Without judgment, what is down, what is dark, what is black art? Spiral down and get large on the ground. Cover ground with every inch of your hard sensual being. Like a snake is how my lips will search over yours – with the most surface area, with the entire thing in my mouth. The entire world words and verbs and verbs. When I say I live, I live.
I like it.
