Thirst and Hunger
It’s a strange thing to find yourself lost in a place you remember as home. A place you made in so many ways, your own. A place you loved taking new people around, showing them this building, that park, that bar and that little spot for Lucio’s fegatini. A place where you lived out roaring winter fires and drinks on the patio in summer, spring hikes and autumn afternoons in the park. This place where you went for morning walks with the Great Dane and ran the trails with that labrador. Where your cat lies buried near the pomegranate tree and where you made out with that girl in a jazz bar doorway for the first time. A place where you jumped to your mates defence in a crowded bar and danced to cheesy jukebox tunes with the crowd on their ‘save the natives’ volunteer tours. A place where your heart first opened to the sounds of jazz bringing you home, grounding you. A place where you found not just artists painting but whole people sharing fragments of themselves with the world, on paper, on used floorboards, through light and colour. A place founded on the base ideals of settler colonialism and celebrated for being the el dorado of its age. A place where you put down a toe and stepped on more than a few of them too. A place you lost your heart to and found your soul wandering along paths you never dreamed of. A place that has made you in so many ways. And today, you stand on this holy ground of your soul and being and find yourself displaced and lost.
I reach out to the dervish and share this lament about being displaced in what has always been my place. My home, the very space in which I feel most at home, most welcome, most well-suited to, most free. After a few failed attempts to connect, we finally succeed. The dervish has the usual view in the background, she’s out of screen but I hear her greeting and reply and find myself surprised by the warmth of my own voice. Clearly, she is too and her face pops into view on screen and she looks intently at me. I’m silent and she excuses herself to complete whatever she is busy with and eventually returns. I don’t mind the wait, it’s balm to see the view I’ve become more accustomed to than I had admitted before she answered the call. She settles and we speak, and all the adjustment of virtual for people who prefer in real life happens. It takes another few calls before we actually get to what I had mentioned to her. She’s unequivocal in her response; “You’ve outgrown the space, moved far beyond what it represented to you and what you thought it signified. You’re seeing it for the crutch it was to your ego and vanity. Either those have grown to the extent they no longer need the crutch or you’ve succeeded in diminishing their importance in your life. I suspect the latter. Well done. Now don’t develop a new reliance on me and this connection to replace that one. Drop them all, you’ve tasted what being free is like; don’t fail now”
I’d like to say I was flattered by her words but I’m mostly unmoved. I’ve felt her assessment from that first minute of being displaced in this village that was my forever home. Hearing it come from such a source of grace is not just affirmation but the gentle warmth of a message about a rough day from someone you love hearing from. It’s the friend who will insist you choose what you want for dinner on your first night in the village and the child who listens with care when you prattle on about modern science being limited and our humanity being unlimited. Growth is pretty much the most natural process for all forms on this perfectly suited planet. It’s the default for human beings too, except we have chosen and glorified ways of living that are counter to this natural order. We then medicate and consume away the chafing we experience from running counter to not just the natural order but the very essence of being in a human form in this specific environment.
Hazrat Inayat Khan, the scholar, priest and sufjan once said that life is the soul’s yearning to fulfil its thirst and hunger. In the current world order, it’s possible to fulfil our thirst and hunger in every way we wish, regardless of our location, the season and the natural sensibility of doing so. But what of the thirst and hunger for existence that goes well beyond the material? I’m no dervish and certainly no expert but one does not have to be either to know that the great scholar was not just referring to base material needs of daily life under rabid capitalism. Being in this state of displacement in what I’ve always taken as my home reminded me of that time I met the man who told me he had a cellar with over 3000 bottles of wine. The young(er) me was blown away and somewhere in my head, I made a mental note to step up my wine collecting. Without even knowing it, I saw what he had done as an achievement to be emulated. In the end, at some point in my misspent life, I managed a wine cellar in the dusty basement of a house numbering in the low hundreds. Only a few souls ever laid eyes on it and fewer still enjoyed the pleasures of the treasures stored there. Least of all me. In the end, it mostly went to gifts and for a song to a small local off-licence when I left the village.
A few nights ago, a dear friend was making penne ragu for dinner and given the Highveld mine dump village chill, I did something uncharacteristic and asked for a glass of wine with dinner. She smiled and dug into the wee collection under the kitchen counter and produced a bottle of wine. We uncorked and proceeded to toast to our good health and having survived the pandemic (so far), the riots, the floods and the general misanthropy of modern life. The wine was ambrosia and during the course of dinner it occurred to me that having thousands or hundreds of bottles of wine is no achievement at all. It means zilch. What matters is having a single bottle of wine when you want it and being able to share it with the kind of company that levitates your entire being. In the end, we each only drank that first glass and my thirst was well served. I’m looking forward to this friend’s board again before I leave, as much for its epicurean treats as for the feeding of my soul and being. Maybe the great sufjan Khan knew what he was saying after all and once you’ve slaked your thirst and eaten your fill you learn (finally in my case) that this is only the start of what your real thirst and hunger is for.
It’s taken longer than I like to realise it but being displaced from what has been my go-to refuge has been the best thing to happen to me. It has finally brought me to the point of seeking the home I need now. Not just one that fits my growth but one that encourages, nurtures and supports it. And feeds my thirst and hunger with ambrosia for the soul and being, effortlessly and with grace.
Thirst and Hunger is a tribute to growth and the beings that take us where we need to be and stand by us patiently until we see again what we had closed our hearts to.
© Jesh Baker, 2022
