The small, semi-lit studio in Portland smells of the female sex, sweet earth, and sweaty participants of the hot yoga session that ended fifteen minutes ago. The pungent scent and warmth circles us like a womb, at first uncomfortable and then dark and sheltering. We are there to honor the goddess Kali in a ritual intended to live lives of action without attachment and to recapture soulful wishes and dreams – and what better way to wish fulfillment than with a group of similarly-minded women.
My friend had mentioned the Spring gathering she was hosting earlier in the week, and I immediately paid the $25 sign-up fee. Yet, when I arrive, Amber doesn’t acknowledge me. She’s moody. When I first met her three years ago her moods were discomfiting, but now I attribute them to the pot she boasts of smoking daily. When I run to her she sometimes says “hi,” sometimes she doesn’t recognize me, and sometimes she invites me out for drinks. Another friend in Portland, who also smokes pot daily, always forgets our plans to meet up for coffee.
At the studio, Amber talks with other attendees about past trips to visit family in fhe Middle East and how while there she asserts her will to go out on the town without a male companion, even though her aunts and cousins insist she do so, a story I’ve heard her share several times before -- like an affirmation that she is a willful, strong American feminist. The women in the studio listen quietly. The ritual hasn’t started, and we wait for the others while sitting in a circle, cross-legged on throw pillows in a studio with an oversized painting of a golden Ganesh hanging on the wall.
Most of the attendees are in there 20's and 30's. I am the oldest one in the group. The age difference makes me wonder whether or not these women will in their 40's trade youthful exuberance for the serious-minded self-righteousness of some middle-aged, white Mainer women I've met around town who would never entertain the mystery, fun, and release of goddess worship. The women in attendance are beautiful and sweet with long hair and flowery skirts, like the life-size painting on a Portland street corner of a young Mainer woman with Scandinavian features and braids of rainbow colors flying around her head.
It’s interesting how culture and place influence the female wish machine. When I lived in Miami, I daily attended a comparable sirenesque circle of Cuban American women, ranging in ages from early 20's to late 60's, who pumped iron and cycled in a black-painted room lit only by candles while repeating affirmations of being and feeling like fierce goddesses: love, presence, breath, soaring, action…. And the two hour sessions of pumping, pedaling, and pushing were so intense they once claimed the life of a male guest who had heart attack while exercising with the group.
Before we begin, the other woman who is hosting the event explains the ritual of meditation and the hot reiki touch she will provide when she walks around the room. She instructs us to cry or carry on as we like. I know of this woman: Cynthia is the friend Amber mentioned to me last month when we went out for drinks and talk - the friend who doesn’t care for sex and doesn’t’ know why, even though she adores her boyfriend. Cynthia is a beautiful, lithe yoga priestess with long flowing hair. She wears a long print skirt, cropped black top, and thick silver talisman around her neck. As she walks around putting her reiki hands on us, I imagine her being capable of amazing sexual feats, stretching and pulsing until her biological rhythms reach Circadian rhythms that send her lover to the moon. Why doesn’t she like sex? I wonder, unable to focus on the meditation. In the meantime, the young girl lying next to me inhales and exhales with such force I expect she will soon pass out. But the warmth of the studio feels comforting and the ritual invigorating.
When Amber walks around the room, she invites us to imagine we are trees, our feet as roots firmly planted in the soil and bodies the branches of dreams and wishes rising towards the heaven alongside our souls. As lovely as the ritual is, I'm still in my head. I peak at Amber with her dark good looks and full head of black curls she didn't wash for a year so that her ringlets became like tangled roots in a forest fire she had to have chopped by hairdresser. If her friend doesn't care for sex, Amber is a sex goddess, queen of dirty talk. She's confessed to me of her past escapades with two men at the same time. She's no Eve but more like her wild, untameable counterpart, Lilith. She is not in love with her husband either, but she doesn't know it yet. I do. He's more like a stopper, a brake to her wild fire of a nature. I've met this man before. He's sweet, nice, shy, quiet, but no match for his wife.
On its face, Maine with its conservative citizenry might seem the perfect place for Amber to bury wild roots, but, really, Maine is one of the wildest places on earth with seagulls that soar in blizzards and thunderstorms; bobcats that track and tear up unsuspecting hikers; coyote packs that surround prey; moose that trample you underfoot; and the North Woods, a hangout or hide out for wild men and women, including Thoreau, who wrote a travel book about the place, which I'm currently reading
Amber once told me she's glad "all that is behind her; she's safe now." Strange thing to say. She's still in 30's, and I wonder when her fire will come rushing back to claim its part in the real and authentic life it insist she live; maybe when she's in her 40's she will have to decide whether to staunch her fiery drive with more safe relationships or let it rage in relationships that beat alongside her pulse.
We are all the same boat--starting or continuing on journeys while stopping by individual truths we either hide, fight off, bury, forget or claim as part of our own blueprint of life-affirming freedom-- like me who in my 40's had to admit I was not so much afraid of not being noticed as I was afraid of being too noticeable, a truth I flip flopped into my psyche until it reversed, straightened itself out, and came rushing at me like a watershed of groundbreaking epiphany.
When we stand in the circle we speak our wishes out loud in words and short phrases: Abundance, wildness, freedom, creativity, mystery, magic, Kali, wild sex… When a car drives by the studio blasting John Lennon’s “Imagine” we all get goose bumps. Read my exciting memoire, "The Continent of Ruby," available at: https://www.amazon.com/Continent-Ruby-Memoir-Because-sometimes-ebook/dp/B00TT5DDWO?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0
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