#48: The Girl and the River (pt. 2)
the gurgling of things, Algerian music, and more.
Dear reader,
There is something in the water. It gurgles deep, and rich, and pulls a Girl into a trance. It is nothing like the musical twinkling of a brook, or a fountain in the middle of those enchanted gardens you read about in storybooks.
No, this is one of those inky black city things. Rumbling like thunder, like the growl of your stomach, tempting as the purr of a tiger in the shadows. The sound of a final lullaby just before the kill.
The Water Truce, the sacred hours of day where hunter and hunted sip from the same source, is broken.
-
A couple of months ago (how are we in March already??) I wrote a post about moving. Really, it was a long winded way of sharing this one quote. I’ll paste it here again. It lives in my head constantly.
When you find yourself in a new situation, a new circumstance, a new life experience, everything that requires healing is going to rush to the surface. And if you don’t take a minute to breathe, to gather yourself, to pray, you will do what you have always done. - Iyanla Vanzant, in conversation with Oprah
It was a beautiful quote when I sent it, but I'm unfortunately watching it play out in every corner of my life. While it would be oh-so-effortless and perhaps a bit chic to say everything is going wonderfully and I'm painting rainbows through the work week, I am drowning in panic. Not nerves, not anxiety, but total panic. In some ways, everything I have been in the last five years is antithetical to who I think I’m supposed to be now. But I’m finding a way to stitch them together, slowly (and somewhat painfully). They say you must dress for the job you want - and there have been days when I wear a crisp suit, only to float/swim/drown in it.
For the years I was chasing my dreams, there have been disappointed looks and questions about a real job. For the weeks now that I wear a headset and navigate Microsoft Teams, there have been soft nudges, texts from family offering poetry websites and magazines that might be useful for me. It is at once infuriating and full of genuine tenderness. This is part of being a woman - when you are alive, roaring and kicking, they prefer the pasty silent skin of death. When you are dead, all they want to hear again is your laughter.
The Girl and the River meet again, and it swallows her whole. No. She dives right in to find out what’s beneath the surface, and her entire being explodes - POOF! - into foam. She is gone, a journey short-lived. The water is quiet, and suddenly clear - the milk-mist surface of it separating, revealing clean paperwhite sands underneath. The Source from which all life springs has become calm once more.
A North Star of mine offered me a book before I arrived in Dubai - Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert - and she writes about all of this. It’s an odd thing, looking to the past for guidance for our future the way we do when we read, when we stargaze, when we remember. Time holds her breath.
I try to hang on to the bits of the Girl I was barely six months ago, full of drive and intention and purpose. In Corporate Speak, they call it a Personal Brand.
She believed in her decision to bring me here - and all I can do now is have faith in the freakin’ rollercoaster ride. I try to follow my own advice - trusting the process and all that. Answer questions with a smile while contemplating becoming a DJ. People told me I was crazy to uproot my life the way I did, and I do have to agree with them now. But there’s no going back.
I suppose there was nothing else for the Girl to do but dive right in and die. And in the deep nest of the River sits the sweet clay earth, the thing from which the Gods built their children. She grows anew.
Links I’ve Been Loving:
This desert performance of Amidinine by Tissilawen, a band from the Algerian Sahara.
The story of Chanel’s CEO.
Kyla’s Substack, as always. In this article, she dissects Gen Z and the end of predictable progress.
Sending you love,
Kaav.
I love this. I love you. I believe in you. You are the magic, babe.
what an exciting thing chaos can be <3