Mama Atlas, Mama Marrakech

I ran my fingers over the smooth surface of the Medina, like rose petals caressing a tombstone. I felt the filth and coveted the beauty, inheriting all within the walls. I was lost, still carrying a sweaty fistful of wilting mint in my left hand that had been handed to me to mask the putrid smelling labyrinth of the tanneries I was previously lost in. Animal skins of all sort, being shape-shifted into decadence... even luxury has its hell.

I wanted the real Marrakech,  and it took me by a beggars hand, furled and wove me into the tapestry of a harem pant pocket. I saw how privilege breeds ignorance, and lack of privilege breeds deceit. Hunger and greed everywhere among the locals and tourists, embellished by the intricacies of sublime Moroccan design.

I sit at a picnic bench in the food stalls of Jemaa El Fna . The face of a baby boy, no more than 2 with a face punctuated with bruises and scabs, still imprinted in my memory.  His little hand outstretched towards me holding a small packet of Kleenex,  his eyes dazed in the distance as his mother towers over him waiting for the 4 Dirham exchange for guilt ridden Kleenex.  The poor baby, can barely keep his eyes open from exhaustion, and his face the obvious result of being pulled around negligently as a money maker. Empathy for his mother who was clearly mentally ill, but rage for his innocence succumbed to it all.  Monkeys, pulling at the chain held by its tyrant ,  and the sight of snake charmers mythicized by the sounds of the bansuri.  Perhaps I should have let this wash over me as any tourist, however I realized that never again, can I merely be a visitor in our world,  and not take my surroundings in its entirety to heart. A sentiment birthed after the experiences I've had in the past 2 years.


And then Mama Atlas, in all her swelling dignity. I spent 5 days in the Atlas Mountains, coddling baby goats and lonesome donkeys, and processing more than just the past few days in Marrakech.  She gave me this through meditation;

Mother Atlas, 

give me the energy to grow, to thaw and let go. 

To reign in prowess with humility among humanity. 

To nurture, protect, to forgive and relinquish. 

To observe and not judge, in high humbleness, 

and to remain pronounced through all the changes.

To bloom and flow, and gracefully heed our existence like you,

 Mother Atlas. 

God Bless the Mango Tree

It's 8:30 am in Windsor, England, and I just had a Mango for breakfast for the first time since living in Asia. The nostalgia and memories associated with the scent, the taste, even the pulp between my teeth was enough to fill my eyes with surprising tears.

When I lived on Gili Meno, it was my routine to walk 2 minutes to the little makeshift shop of the village Nenek ( grandmother), and buy two fresh ginormous mangoes from her, for roughly the equivalent of 50 cents.  It was my routine so much that she often put aside 2 of her best mangoes waiting upon my early morning arrival, shooting me that sweet, puerile and toothless child-like grin.  Although we couldn't communicate via words, the mangoes became our language.

So every morning around 7 am, I'd carry my mangoes back to the jungle fortress of my front porch bungalow, strip down to my underwear and go to town . I never nailed the efficiency of the way the Asians have perfected the precise unity of knife and mango, but I suppose part of the fulfillment was eating it messily, slicing pieces of the fruit unskillfully from the pit and scraping every last bit of mango off the skin with my teeth, like a true Neanderthal:p   After my morning mango meditation, I'd rinse the orange evidence off in my salt water shower, and walk to the resort to teach my morning yoga classes.

This morning I stood in an oversized sweater, peering out the kitchen window with flooded eyes at a cascade of English cars in their morning commute as I leaned over the sink , once again scraping the remaining fruit off the skin with my teeth, juice splattering everywhere.

For a moment I was brought back to the songs my heart sang, and often cried in the little Indonesian village of Gili Meno. Every bite contained the vivid red of the hibiscus sea laden across the sandy village of Meno. It contained the laughter of my 3 year old neighbor, the fluidity of the sea turtles in their underwater dance, and the warmth and uncertainty that the yellow and purple skies after sunset beckoned every evening.