Down South

“Do you think it is full?” The woman with a corrugated skin for a face addressed me.

She had that skinny, dehydrated body with a raspy voice that long-time cigarette smoke inhalers have.

You could tell she is an open book and an eager kindness, the one that you can’t help but respond to favorably.

Her husband happened to be a mix of contradictions, mostly of the repulsive kind. 

Next, an unlit cigarette sticking out of his mouth, the man reversed his car for me to cross the street. There was no additional emotion or acknowledgement of his accommodating gesture other than a brief eye contact.

The heavyset woman in a wheelchair, dressed in all flowers, was adamantly discussing something I chose not to eavesdrop, as I continued on my search for a tea kettle, which I couldn’t find in the jewelry store tended to by an anorexic-looking, tattooed and pierced woman whose spine was curved inward and downward, as if she was trying to hide into herself. Or maybe her world was too weighty for her to carry. She couldn’t have been more than 45 years old.

“Hello, baby!” “Hey, baby girl!” Nothing special in these greetings, just a standard choice of words extended to strangers. It functions as an immediate acceptance into the heart of the one bestowing the sounds, just as it disarms the unsuspecting ear of mine. It makes me giggle and throw out a figurative hug fueled by my heart’s joy.

Why Believe?

I was listening to him speak when all those talks I’ve listened to over the years about belief rushed to the front of my perception, and a genuine “why do we have a need to believe” thought floated up and out of my mouth. 

It wasn’t until several hours later, as I lay in bed unable to sleep, that I realized it was about fear. As I also heard, the most fundamental human emotion is fear. Fear of what? 

A belief serves as a mental anchor, a feeling of security and comfort to the scared mind. Maybe it is a fear of being alone or of being left alone, or the discomfort of having no control, or actually, a disguise to the unspoken truth of actually not knowing how life works.

And so the mind builds a fortress called belief and lives in it to keep the uncertainty at bay. It feels more relaxed and protected from this intangible fear. 

The belief can serve as a guide, as a stabilizing force, then as an identity. It becomes concretized over time and takes on a life of its own. But it is all made up. It only lives in the mind. 

What would it be like to have no belief about anything? Like a mind of a newborn or a toddler but with the capabilities of that of an adult? 

Suddenly

I looked at him as he sat down on the bar stool after helping her put a few items away, and a surge of love burst out of me, and it was all I could do to keep myself planted where I was and not envelop him in my arms, for I very well know that he has his heart on lockdown, his energies closed, and such unexpected and irrational behavior from me would have an opposite impact or simply lost on him. 

He is not yet ready to experience an embrace that comes out of nothing and will disappear into nothing as quickly as it appeared. Such things don’t happen in someone’s kitchen in early evenings. Not to him.