Portals

There's an adage about looking into someone's bathroom cabinet to see a portal to the soul.  The neatness of shelves, the products within, the nature of the hidden beast.  In theory, you'll find the not-so hidden caches of hillbilly heroin and combos of STD creams and fungal disinfectants.  I, like scores of others, don't keep my pills in the bathroom cabinet.  For reasons of science: the changes in room temperature can distort the little gremlins I pop daily to the fact that I keep them on a dresser to see when I first rise and last lie my head every day.  Though, that adage .  . . It's about the secrets, the components, and and the matrixes that make a life.

Perhaps my medicine cabinet looks run of the mill.  Perhaps it's a tale of the weary soul . . . an ice bag, band-aids, dental floss, vapor shower tablets to breathe when the next round of bronchitis sets in, heat pads for muscles unable to move on their own, q-tips for everything from cleaning jewelry to removing the polish on my nails, replacement toothbrushes, expensive and ethical face lotion, more of the face cream with sun screen built in, my favorite hand lotion (in hoarding quantity) brought over from Turkey in yearly visits from me and friends, deodorant, and spare razor blades.  The story of life . . . Well, a sign that a woman lives here with the honey scented lotion, vitamin C face gel, and blades scented like a summer breeze or some such.

The organization  . . . Perhaps a lover would see that and say that's the sign of a well-kept woman.  Well, if you saw the rest of my place you'd say "that's  a sign of a lady who lives in an apartment the size of a child's blow up pool."  That being said, I've long wondered about this adage.

It's no secret that I have Lupus, as I was diagnosed at sixteen and long, long ago I stopped attempting to hide it.  Seven or so years ago I wrote for a Lupus magazine, which in and of itself says that there is no suppressing it for me.  My bathroom cabinet says little to that effect.  The muscle pads . . . Well, in my forties those are normal.  Of course, the cache of running medals hanging from a random nail by a closet door notes that there are other needs for those too . . . It's all in perspective, as we say.  

If we re-examine that medicine cabinet as a portal to the soul what would it hold? 

Evil eyes, a paperweight duplicating "The Kiss," a Pandora bracelet, favorite tea from Turkey, my NYC coffee cup representing home to me, a well used passport, prayer beads from a religion of a maj babcia and of a trip halfway around the moon, faux vintage maps of Istanbul replicated on pottery for coasters, favorite nail polish colors, Paris, the scent of a woman, daffodils, an Italian fountain pen I bought at the Christmas market in Piazza Navona a few years ago, a pricey leather notebook that is the outline of a forthcoming book, travel guides of favorite places and the Paris I've never seen but dream of daily . . . These are the markers of a soul, a life, a reason to come back for a second look, date, stay.  

Within these tchotchkes mark hopes of the places, I'll go and see, serve as tangible memory markers for me and others--as it often seems--as notes of culture, allure, or aloofness.   My longtime love of Greece, my desire to return for a long-term stay, my hopes of waking up with eyes on the sea, the memories of a Greek man I loved . . . A travel guide can not actually capture that nor can it tell you the secrets that we keep.  My ramblings in French, my penchant for stripes and scarves, my long ago notion that I'd walk along the Seine and drink white wine one day is also hidden in these layers and pages.  The conversation, among old friends, in Amsterdam, while gazing at Gustav Klimt's The Kiss still echoes in my mind.  The sushi we ate later that night, with mackerel so lush and warm and sweet that I can still taste it years later, are the romantic notions of travel . . . of how it changes you, centers you, brings you new experiences and feelings that money can pay for but never genuinely buy.  

Of course, the pill bottles and metaphorical bullet holes don't show here.  The Lupus is never satiated these days, but life still presses on .  . . Or I do at least.  Within these trinkets we keep, the images we craft, and the places we remember the other side of memory and place arises.  The path of buried pasts, memories we have long packed away, and those we wish we could forget.  While in Denver last week I met up with a cousin, and we drove down to Colorado Springs.  While hiking, and getting lost on the small trails there, signs alerted us to higher than average rainfalls that have destabilized some of the rock formations at Garden of the Gods.  These markers reminded us that they could fall today, tomorrow, or never.  It would just be a matter of being careful while the world waits . . . 

Somewhere along the way, the skirting yet addressing the issue of a sexual abuser from my past surfaced. In a matter of an instant those emotions and moments I long ago dealt with, yet never actually finished as you never do, surfaced.  This time the notes of travel and life made the scenery representative of life itself.  Organic, weathered, and erupting . . . Unstable from time and the unknown . . . Those are the real moments and emotions of life.  As we talked about the issue--and my cousin got a deeper a glimpse of the not-so family secret--I remembered someone I loved in my late twenties telling me--upon my confession to him of it all sans gory details--that my being a liberal made me think I'm a victim and that every woman he knows says she's a victim of rape.  Just like that.  

I haven't told a lover, since, about that dark past.  Yet, as we wandered my rocks did not fall . . .  A handful of years ago they might have.  Instead, much like those layers of tchotchkes giving insight into my soul the good often outweighs the tragic.  While we choose to display the charming, in all reality the crevices of our lives can never be hidden with carefully placed jewels and handcrafted leather notebooks.  

I think that might be the larger factor here.  Travel, life, and experience craft our portals.  The organized bathroom cabinet will never tell you if your lover talks in her sleep, drinks milk from the carton, or always puts the shampoo cap back on.  A map of tchotchkes and a stack of road maps will not reveal the dark, the pain, the overcoming of a past and present that wasn't always her choice. 

It's a balance after all.  An equation we craft, just like we meticulously choose our airfare, hotel, and next tourist destination.  The appeal is how we view it, how we craft it, how we live it, and how we tell it.