Mistral
With my heart cracked wide open after the experience in Konya, lines from Rumi’s poetry flooded through my being and thoughts, touching my wounded and vulnerable places like a healing balm. We started the long process of working through who and what we were …together. And what we might be…apart.
Together we were tender and gentle. Ronald deeply contemplative of his recent actions and the consequences. He seemed still amazed at himself in terms of what it meant for us. It was as if something was needed to jolt me out of the nest, out of my comfort zone. As more subtle and less obvious acts and signals had not got the message through to me, something drastic was required.
And voila! there it was. No going back. Drastic.
He found himself saying quietly now the words ‘Go,… and Grow’.
Difficult. But it seemed that my mystical explorations and discoveries were increasingly difficult for him or perhaps difficult for his rational mind to accept when I tried to express the excitement and wonder of it all.
I was aware that language was not as viable a means for our communication as it had been. Ronald spoke six languages of which English was his third, with proficiency in French and German ahead of this, my mother tongue. So, not surprisingly, nuances sometimes got ‘lost in translation’. Words began to fail us, often. It was only through music that our souls seemed to connect, and we could return to balance and love at its higher frequency, after the music had come through me, powerfully, touching Ronald’s heart as he lay on the couch listening deeply with his eyes closed.
During these difficult months I was working through Entering the castle, Carolyn Myss’s exceptional material, deeply and diligently. This inner work provided both the impetus and means for me to confront some difficult truths. I could feel myself growing, and as Rumi says about cracks in the heart, ‘how else will the light get in?’ Broken hearts are a prerequisite for soul growth it seems, and for art and creative energies to really come through in their fullest expression. So, I moved into a very creative time – feeling very open to further self-discovery.
My life partner Ronald had gifted me with two powerful messages. The first, in my dream of us in the compartment of an Italian train, with the clear words he had offered in his parting,
‘Now, Get to Know Your Self’.
And now, this second succinct instruction to me, ‘Go and Grow!’
And for this I clearly needed to be alone.
Before I left for Cape Town, we made one last train trip to the south of France, to Marseille which we had always wanted to visit. We walked along the rugged shoreline and experienced the build-up of the mistral wind from across the Mediterranean, bringing red sand from the Sahara and depositing it everywhere in a fine layer of dust. It was November and an unusual time to be there as winter was making itself felt. We had some great meals and long appreciative discussions and sharings, but we could both sense the tide change beginning in us too as the seasons changed.
Dramatically, as our train pulled out of the station, the skies were a dense metallic charcoal streaked with lighting, and the trees almost touched the ground as the powerful mistral wind bent them double. In the comfort of our compartment, and feeling the closeness between us, we travelled across France in this powerful storm.
We had often used the metaphor for our life together as sailing in our little ‘walnut’, being held together in turbulent times. And here we were in such a time. The poignancy and significance of the storm in our cracked walnut and impending separation, hung thickly yet unvoiced in the space between us.
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A week later I was back in Cape Town – the first visit since my mother’s death, and Ronald and I continued our contact every couple of days, checking in on each other. Besides, I had provided several strategic inputs into the early shaping of the Geneva Declaration for the Reduction of Armed Violence for Development as he discussed the process with me. We were still partners in several important areas, and we both felt and hoped that this would continue to be a part of the next phase of our relationship.
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