A song is muffled under
the weight
of thousands of tons of sand
under the weight
rocks break
and on the limestone, I lay
listening to the night
we cannot see our hands before
us but
they are orange
stained from the dust
that coats the wild dog’s fur
and sifts between the camel’s lashes
you, small and skinny,
misplaced your desert lover:
vulpine and wily
you found your way
through the sand
sink deep into the dunes
and lie with me
There exists a dissonance when you finally acknowledge that which had previously gone unnoticed. It’s all subconscious consumption and blissful unawareness until you wake up one morning in a bed you’ve woken up in dozens of times before to find yourself someplace new– it is here you find yourself, once oblivious, now in love over again. After being gone so long, it is so strange to suddenly be back.
watch her melt into
the sand, her heart claims this land
where date fruits taste like
home
Hello. It’s been a while.
Quite a while, actually. As per the title, welcome to my confession-session about being smacked in the face brutally hard with some good ol’ writer’s block.
This is a surprising occurrence as I was certain all my new and exciting experiences abroad would surely open up the creative gates to incredible amounts of new journals, poems, stories. Instead, I have used the very little free time that I do occasionally have by sleeping or staring at blank pages and blinking cursors, frustrated. I have decided, as a means to hopefully stimulate something, I’m going to free-write. At least this way something gets put down, you know?
As a writer, artist, poet, what have you, I believe there will always be an inherent struggle to create. This will always be the method in which good work gets put out: through dozens of drafts, deleted notes, and often long pauses between spurts of creativity. Somehow, this just feels different. Almost even more frustrating as I am increasingly surrounded by so much inspiration and so many new experiences that I still seemingly cannot do anything with. It feels like a sin not to write.
The experience of studying abroad is fairly overwhelming on its own: juggling five university courses and their workloads, a part-time internship, mental and emotional stressors, while also trying to explore the country you are in and have fun has honestly taken a bigger toll on me than I thought it would. Not only is there very little time to process these experiences enough to document them, but there is also very little motivation to do so as well. I’m drained.
I do not think what I am experiencing can be exactly categorized as writer’s block– I have so many ideas, feelings, and opinions I want to express and to document, but I just can’t find ways to express them. Usually, a writer’s block for me is just a lack of inspiration and bland ideas. In this case, though, I feel heavy with a lack of motivation, lack of expression, and lack of creative oomph. I’m drowning in new feelings and ideas and just feel more and more behind when I come to write them down.
So now what? I go to the basics. Why do I write to begin with? As a means of processing and articulating feelings, ideas, and opinions. To document how I felt during a single, particular moment. To remember. To feel. So I go back to the basics. Analyze parts of my life that are fundamental yet ones I have not thought about looking at more closely. For example, my morning routine in Amman is incredibly different than my routine in Seattle. I wake up here to the sounds of stray cats outside my apartment and sheep in the distance. Instead of getting in my car every day, I walk to the main road and filter through taxis to embark on the twenty to thirty-minute ride to the University of Jordan. From there I enter a pedestrian tunnel that goes beneath Queen Rania Street, lined with small shops with flowers, breakfast snacks, and coffee. Upon resurfacing I meet my Falafel Man. I’m certain he has a name and I will definitely get it before I leave, but he has faithfully provided me with 25 cent mana’eesh (Arabic breakfast pastry) every morning before class and lovely 50 cent falafel sandwiches for lunch right after. He (competing with the next-door shawarma guy, who is just as good) is the true hero of this whole trip, honestly.
There are still so many greater feelings with new friends during late nights in strange houses singing strange songs that I want to express but they just don’t come out as beautiful as they used to and again I’m left with nothing more than a bland summary of my day. I just feel like I have missed so much. I don’t want to forget the names of the people I have met here. The small cafes I frequent. My performances and the new audiences each time. I have favorite streets with familiar graffiti, favorite snacks (looking at you, Falafel Man), favorite Arabic words. Very small nuance things that make me happy here that I could be writing about. There’s so much history, I’m in one of the oldest cities in the world! The culture, the markets, the people, the war, the hospitality, the desert, the rain, the floods. I could be writing about anything but it feels like I suddenly have forgotten how. I am surrounded more and more by beautiful, awe-inspiring pieces of poetry and spoken words and non-fiction and art and more and more often I find myself sinking into the familiar hole that deems all of my work inferior. I find my pieces are dull. Lifeless. They lack edge.
These are my confessions.
I can say over and over that I just am too stressed or that I simply don’t have enough time. I find myself wanting to sleep anytime I am finally not doing anything else. I guess all that time could be spent writing, I’m sure the greats lost sleep over their masterpieces, right? Maybe I just need to begin by writing, like this. Writing anything down, taking small notes here and there on my phone just in the hopes that something comes out that I can make beautiful later.
What I find myself remembering are my favorite poems that I have written and published. How behind each one of them was 20 others saved in a laptop or a notebook somewhere, half scribbled out and too awful to even title. It takes time, it takes dedication. I don’t really think I could ever quit on poetry. I am a poet. I am The Poet. Maybe the stress is a result of my lack of writing as opposed to the other way around.
So how does a troubled writer become untroubled? By finding cliche one a day prompts to get the pen going again. Becoming untroubled looks like crumbled pieces of paper, like random words that make no sense together and half-written sentences. It manifests from days without writing, ink-stained heartbeats, headaches, and stress.
It looks like finding other writers and inviting them into your home. Removing the barrier label of “stranger” between you, for you are both poets. You both breathe the same truth and so you let them guide you instead of allowing yourself to fester envy. I suppose, inter alia, by publishing really long, aimless journals that simply articulate their thoughts to get things straight for themselves.
It looks like sucking it the fuck up and just writing, so here we are. Writing.
midday sun melts
like silk in thin limestone crevices
squint between
the folds of your
kufiyah
protect yourself
from the sand,
military presence
hidden in desert hills
destruction in the
desert
a warm breeze
brings home the faint smell
of gold
I am in love with the desert. The jagged canyon walls and sandstone mountains surround you in a world of muted reds and pinks. You come home to the city covered in dust: orange stains between your toes and fingers and you are pulling grit out of the ends of your hair. Dark orange sand stretches as far as your eyes can see, this is the closest you will ever be to witnessing Mars.
The desert of Wadi Rum is the largest in the country, expanding 720 kilometers. The desert is home to prehistoric and biblical-age stories, inscriptions, and ruins. It was a historical treat learning all the different bible stories that took place right here, on these sand dunes! Rum is also home to the Bedouins, the indigenous nomadic peoples of Southern Jordan. They live in large tribes in the desert and serve the best tea I have ever tasted. I had the pleasure of camping in Wadi Rum near these peoples and integrate into their culture and lifestyle a little (it was definitely glamping, see below).
Persian rugs covering the sand beneath colorful Bedouin tents
Among eating traditional Bedouin food cooked under the sand and dancing and singing to traditional songs, I did the Bedouin thing: they put us on our own little camel caravan. I am so stoked to finally check that off my bucket list, which is super superficial but you know, when in Rome! If you’ve never actually seen a camel before, you can’t really register how massive these guys are. It felt like being propped up on a dinosaur, no joke. They are the strangest things, watching them navigate their sandy home was truly amazing.
A little over an hour or so into the camel ride, the Bedouins stopped and switched us to the backs of their pickup trucks to spend the rest of the day drifting around the sand and touring the rest of the desert. Maybe not as traditional, but equally fun.
We also were able to spend a day in Petra, the lost city carved from rock. Despite being a huge tourist attraction, as it is literally one of the Seven Wonders of the World, Petra is still filled with Bedouin families who have lived in its caves for generations. They have actually become the tour and history guides for the whole archaeological site!
The Treasury, Petra
Desert Dogs
From donkeys, horses, camels, goats, and dogs, several native animals were employed as a means of transporting food, water, and people up the intensive mountain hikes. I use “intensive” subjectively as I, a small girl, am very out of shape and was really pushed trying to climb up to the steep mountain steps towards some breathtaking views that other members of program finished in half the my time. I am very thankful I made it up, though. It made for some fantastic scenery!
I am still very interested in learning more about the Bedouin peoples: their movements and traditions in a modern and continuously more progressive country. I’m sure this won’t be the only chance I get, still three more months abroad to go! Stay tuned for the Petra goats. They deserved an entire post to themselves.
does the bitter cold of dusk
grip you so? can you hear
the last lunar sliver call out to us?
she is whistling, softly
we are under the same stars
they wrap us up
in the threads of their
constellations
our eyes unfocus into
dizzy shotgun skies: above
us they breathe, pulsing
to the pattern of our love,
they pull me toward you
with miles of string
faintly lighting
my way home
