ARTIST. GRIOT. ACTIVIST

“What is this?” I had asked.

“It’s an exchange, a revelation, a probing, a sampling. It is meant to be fun. If it isn’t, then it needs to stop.”

“Who gets to define fun here? Who is having the fun? How is the absence of fun going to be gauged? And who gets to decide when it stops?” That was what I was yelling in my head, but all I could audibly manage was a weak “OK”.

There was a culmination of a conversation that, to me, felt like offense and defense, and this was its climatic end…or rather, a pause.

I hate confrontation. I hate feeling the need to become defensive simply because my way of being is not the norm. I am not the norm, that is obvious to anyone that is around me for a bit. It is futile to pressurize me into bending in a specific direction because I snap back in place pretty fast and it is uncomfortable to all. I am not conformable. I’d like to think that is the most obvious thing about me.

I repeated that last line to myself in a whisper “… If IT isn’t, then IT needs to stop.” I don’t know what IT is. I thought I did, but the more it unfolds the more I realize I really don’t. Something about this whole picture hurt. It would have been bearable if the hurt just stayed in the mind, mine has the bad habit of traveling through my body.

I could feel the pain clutching at my core, right in the solar plexus where the butterflies flutter. I sat there in the dark, in silence, counting breaths and trying to calm the pain. She walked into the room and looked at the heap I was on the floor.

“This is from the yelling isn’t it…” It was more a statement than a question. She sucked in her teeth and went to her piano.

Claude DeBussy’s Claire de lune filled the air.

I am blessed to share space with someone that understand what sound does to my body. I got off the floor and got in the shower and stood under the hot water for 20 minutes and listened to her play DeBussy over and over. I felt the calm and quiet return to my body. I got out of the shower and dried off enough to slip under the covers without drenching my bed.

I don’t enjoy conversations that feel like a passive invitation for me to defend myself for being different. I felt a flash of anger, at myself, for going that path, I should know better. I know to never argue Truth, especially my truth. I know to assert it in all its vulgar innocence as I plunge under its manifold folds of flesh to take hold of its soul. For only then can I exchange the clinical, antiseptic neatness of its sanitized robes for the sweaty, animal smell of Man. I know that much…but only in theory obviously, otherwise that conversation would not have taken the path it did. It was an all too familiar feeling and I hated it.

The music stopped and there she stood at my door again. She noticed I was not in the heap she had left me earlier. I was in bed, scrolling through my list of eBooks for one to read myself to sleep.

“Thank you for the music,” I said.

“Don’t engage people that make you feel bad in anyway,” she responded, “they are not worth the trouble.” She started to pull my door shut then stopped

“I’ll leave the door open. Call me if you need me”.

“Thank you. Buona notte,” I said.

“Notte.” And she was gone.

My thoughts went back to the conversation. It had started out pleasant. It’s amazing how fast the energy behind an exchange can morph into something unpleasant so fast. It’s the challenging, or modification, or qualifying any opinion I express. And, of course, it is done in what feels like a patronizing, condescending manner. So, I keep my thoughts and opinions to myself. The over-inquisitive glare of the unblinking eye of this microscope dulls the sharp edge of the joy of this…IT. Thus, the promise remains unfulfilled, and I am beginning to feel like I am in a circuitous retreat.

I don’t know how I feel about that…but peace always begins with me.

©Naan Pocen