Intimates: A Journey Towards Sacred Sexuality
Page 30
CHAPTER 22
Pregnancy. Birth. Coupling. Again, pregnancy, birth, Coupling. Family. Meaning the loop and the looping back. Seeing one’s self in the flesh; experiencing one’s presence in the hug, the nightly kiss goodnight; bedside; playing out the Coupling Play as the young ones grow into Courting and their own Coupling. Family as the greater family; extended. For these, the Four-Square: not their own naming, not even as taught as a Gathering Day notion, rather, what was being made of them; by the Embrace; by whatever having been In Africa had been.
Why not Mark and Cilla fully pregnant?
Mark and Zav opened a restaurant. Each had ventured into a job, then several others, till they decided, "Why not?" It was an undistinguished kitchen, but one which survived because of that key ingredient of success: location. Like the most ancient vendor of victuals who parks his or her vehicle of transport to dig a pit or pile some wood or install a technology: their oven was in the right location; the aromas did the rest.
"Not a killing, but a good year," said without exclamation; uttered as Zav had come to anticipate, actually come to relish, as Mark tidied up the last accounting tidbits for the year’s end; the tax commissioner cometh!; knowing the phrase in its heartfelt message: "She’ll be happy!" Indeed, the shes were: they never in fear of starvation nor destitution, such being inconceivable notions, never concepts, here in a society somewhat unaware of its peculiarity as materially suffuse, with no economic downs: just that, "Doing our share!" is what each and all had been raised to do, and as Mark’s columns balanced, so was their life, "Good!" - yet knowing no one for whom it wasn’t such.
For all this The Embrace did not care. Did not pay an iota of attention. Watched the children come. Them grow. Drew them into the dreaming. But "they" weren’t but distractions; fugues; other lives, important to the four, but then not, not in the grand scheme of things.
It came to Zav in as bewildering a way as that letter: "Greetings," and they were drafted.
"I followed Prissy the other day."
What do you think of that, Xer?
Zav was at halt: total abrupt jerk and frozen in step. The air about him became thick; he saw himself like an insect in amber: forever in this moment of halt.
In this halt, the fury of the last days - no, as soon as he halted, it was a time-shot, a blast through days into weeks into months into years, right back to when they met: the parking lot: right back to where he is now: halt: the last months on re-wind now slowly, almost as if too cold to move: January cold: Collegeville - those years like fish under the ice .... Blast! hearing Mark question the Elders, not like a question wanting an answer but a question like a challenge, as if "How can you say that!" meaning the Elders, they who have been absent for years, not gone, always around, but coming back as they did towards the end of Courting, now the near end of Coupling - "Why are we together?" being the question initiating Coupling, now its transition - "To what?" the logical question: men and women of their age: no longer zygotically pregnant, no longer parents as Coupling novice parents are, slipping into "What?" - so does Mark’s question express a questioning of why even the question has to be asked. Not like Courting. Not young students. Not young seekers. Now, Coupled lovers. Now, parents. Asking the other: "Why are we together?"
Zav hesitated to tell Lilith. What would he be telling her? That their whole life together was ... what?
"Prissy." He just said the word. She was lying in bed. Only the night-light warded off total blindness.
She said not a word. Her breathing never broke regularity. It was just time between them: both fell asleep.
Lilith had watched her parents. Kept up an openness with her mother. Not a nakedness of soul, just an openness. Certain things just were unsaid between those working on different aspects of their presence. Gathering Day teachings and practices kept them focused on what each had before them; the Day never called for too much curiosity as to what was not before them; ahead. There was a common acceptance of "What is now before you, demands all of you!"
So, they talked, they shared what they could, they were happy to be part - whatever part that was! - of each other’s world, but they were, simply, too deeply into their own to seek the depth of what lay ahead.
But as she had observed, so what she had seen did not disturb her.
"My folks are happy. They’ve really become friends." Such was not an uncommon statement of the times.
No one -- at least none focused on Coupling -- probed just what that word "friends" meant.
Prissy. There was something in the sound which was clear to all that it was not friendly. Mark spoke her name. Zav repeated the hiss. Of the two, Cilla heard its unfriendliness. She laughed. Lilith heard her laugh: knew what Cilla was about.
It is the time between us, now!