Is it possible to find God in a bath tub?
I don’t know the answer.
I only know that what started as a normal bubble bath turned out to be something completely different and unexpected.
I am a Taurus. A Bull often walking in a china shop. I am blunt and direct and sometimes diplomatic is not an adjective you might easily associate with me. I am supposed to be a sign of Earth.
But I truly believe I am a water child.
Water is the element that always reconnects me to myself. I so cherish the power of it over my psyche that any summer, before taking my very first swim in the ocean, I have to pause and take a deep breath to welcome again the water over me and me inside the water.
All my most cherished memories are associated with water.
I do enter - always - in my tub with a sort of childish excitement.
So today I put on my favorite music ...some of my Baroqe adagios.....i put my cell close to the edge, only in case of calls from my daughter....
The rest of the world is meant to disappear.
I fill the tub with the warmest water I can stand....i dip my toes and then my legs and then I finally lay on the bottom ....for a very long time...i submerge my head and I found again that familiar sound of watery silence I know very well.
I prefer wash myself with a cotton cloth....
I move the cloth all over my body...i wash my toes, my ankles, my calves, my butt, that soft area of my body where the hips descend in my valley....i wash my tummy and my chest, I reach the neck and the hidden spot under the line of the hair...my ears and my shoulder,...both my arms and my hands...
I put the cloth over my face and let the water drip over my face...
This is what I think: I feel like a Tuareg woman washing at some pond of an oasis in the desert at sunset.......i feel like the daughter of my ancestors...i close my eyes and listen to the music...i imagine to be an Ancient Roman.....Claudia, Sabina, Giulia...washing themselves on the edge of the Tiber...i imagine to be a Nefertiti ...a Sarah in Mesopotamia...a Greek Sophia or Alcione or Prosperpina....
My cloth lays on my face now...i sense the warmth on my skin,...my pores open....my nose smells the rose and the jasmine of the bath lotion...
And I start imagining hands touching me now...not mine.....hands that are strong and gentle...hands that know where to touch and how long ..they know the right pressure and the right release of it ....i feel my muscles loosen up, distending along their length, the feet finding their solace...
I keep my eyes close...because I don’t want distract my inner eyes that see.
They see those hands over my body.
Those hand that change constantly....they are the hands of different men.....my past lovers....and then they are the hands of ex husband and also the hands of my soul mate....
I recognize each of these hands and I accept them and salute them.
I feel like they came to me to keep me company for a little while even though their owners don’t think of me anymore.
Even if these hands stopped to touch me long time ago.
Even though those hands left my body to never lay on it anymore. Even though some hands have never touched me at all.
It doesn’t matter.
They are not sexual. They simply take care of me.
Moments like these ones are capable of giving me that deep connection I crave, I need, I miss.
But since the missing is released and recognized......out of nowhere ....tears arrive ...mixing themselves with the water...
Salty they are and flowing like a river no long capable to restrains...
I welcome them too...
I don’t know the borders of my body anymore..
Liquid......i am liquid inside and outside. And the walls of my skin are too thin to contain my emotions.
And so I understand.....i am saying goodbye to myself.
Like a New Year Eve party I have been surprised with.
I didn’t know I was going there.
And yet I am here.
I am saying goodbye to my past myself. The one I have been with this past year...
Even though in the end she is already gone.....she left me with a smile thru those tears and touching me thru those imaginary hands.
I am not more her already while I am here writing about her.
Luce Irigaray, a feminist, wrote a book I read many years ago....”Sea lover” is the title...she talks about the solitude of the women incapable of finding themselves and looking for external gratifications forgetting their roots.
I know my roots are not here.
I don’t belong here.
The woman I am has been washed away by so many tears.
And yet she is still here.
I cry and then I stop crying.
The cleansing is over. I cleaned my body and my soul today.
.
The bath tub turned magically in a Mediterranean sea in full storm. But the wind has now subsided....it didn’t wreck my ship.
My sail is still here.
I don’t know where she will lead me.
I could have found the answer in that bath tub, wouldn’t I?
I could have found God too.
But God is not for me.
If it will ever be.
So I let the water drains away...i lift my cleaned and god smelling body in all its beauty and majestic immanence...
We are all God in our presence and mortality....
I look in the mirror and i recognize myself even though I have changed along the years.
I am changed and yet I am still the same.
Good bye myself.
Have a very happy New Year.
I wish you all the best.
Because, damn it, you deserve it.
