Why Won't You Stop Resisting?

            The bead of sweat drips down the bridge of Mira’s nose, covering the high points of her face. It hangs off the tip of her nose before jumping down to the work she is bent over. Relaxing her body and looking at the desks surrounding her, she realizes everyone else has left. Alone, bent over her desk, she stretches her arms as long as they can go – almost brushing the papers on the desk behind her. She bends back further, hearing the pops and crack of her spine, pressing the flats of her knuckles into the desk.

            Night and day are usually polar opposites, though in the twilight hour they can blend and create a world in itself. In the daytime, the ground is the devil’s belly and the dust clouds are heavy curtains trapping and reflecting heat. As the day ends and Mira steps out of the office, the world is 98℉ and the feeling is embryonic. As above the skin, so below.

            Sweat is born from work and pleasure. Something that can be called a waste and a byproduct of other, more important efforts. But the body is great at making use of everything, even trash. Sweat lingers on skin and dampens it, working its way back into the body and trying to course through veins like it once did. Eventually, sweat stops being a liquid droplet, it evaporates upward and meets the sky it came from as rain. The skin it leaves behind is cooler for it. The body it leaves behind is working and overheating, so absorbed in the important responsibilities it carries out it forgets that they are the universe embodied in an individual. It sees itself as an individual in the universe.

            Mira is not a body. Not a mind. Not even a spirit. She is all that and more, an essential piece of the world and beloved by the source she comes from. While that is true, has always been true and will always be true, the truth often appears as a kaleidoscope. A gem with divots and many faces, presenting the world as a severe repetition of events, overbearing the senses until the mind turns away and preserves a slice of truth. One tiny peek into the maddening reality. It’s a pleasure to forget the truth and come to the point of realizing it again.

            For now, Mira sees herself as a lonely body. A body that is itself a reminder of the vast history of her people, history in the bones of her face, tough muscles on her thighs, and fat on her waist. It’s true that history is beautiful, but have you considered how lonely it is to be a living memorial of a community that lives in the shadow of its past? Mira as Mira’s body is alone in the bones of a collective.

            Inside Mira’s mind, she is a flat tire turning on rusty chains by force of will alone. It seems like other people are well oiled machines who have never had the shame of falling. The mud caked onto the spokes of Mira’s tires tells the story of falling and rising again. Even now, when she is upright and trying again, she can’t help but think of falling and the fear and relief she felt at failure and the prospect of anything else other than this. That one time it all stopped and a strange memory that she didn’t know was important came forward.

            When Mira’s head hit the ground and the sound that reverberated inside her made a memory rise like silt at the bottom of a pond.

            A coconut slammed onto the ground under a high sun and an almighty priest. That's what Mira’s mother told her he was. He looked like just another man to Mira though. If you took a regular man and shaved his head, put him in white robes, beads, and intense facial markings that make his stare bore into you, I’m sure you could also find a holy priest. If you decide to look.

            The coconut smacked the ground and the ground hit back with a force that broke apart its shell and let milk slosh out and paint the dirt some sorrowful omen. Tiny white droplets held onto some fibers at the edges of fissure. They held on like survivors at the end of the rope with hands that blistered away into nothingness. Maybe these droplets hang on desperately because they're afraid of being in a different form. It must be jarring, going from a three-dimensional sphere to a two-dimensional splatter. Staring at a world that used to contain you but spit you out cruelly in the name of a God you never knew and sure as hell weren’t finding now.

            The memory ended there. Now, as Mira walks back home after a day of wasting ambition over a desk, her senses are dulled, like a massive ship moving through the immense ocean on a dark, starless night.

--

            Mira has heard of freedom before. Eventually, that idea floated away when the business of routine came into the foreground. One morning, Mira opened her eyes when the sky was still dark. Routinely, she rises after the sun. Evidently, today was a day the routine had taken a break.

            Even though it was odd, Mira didn’t think much of it. She looked at it as a chance to get ahead of the enormous stack of work that had to be done. When she poked a leg out of the blanket, she was determined to follow the routine that had been set for her, but by the time her foot hit the ground there was an idea sneaking into her head that led with, “no.”

            No? No to what? How could ‘no’ be an option when there is only one way to live? Shaking off this ridiculous idea, Mira continues with the routine, setting the tempo for herself even when there is no one to enforce it.

            By the time Mira walks to work, the thought that there could be something else grows stronger. Strong enough, even, to make her stop at the temple entrance. On an ordinary day, when Mira only looks outwardly, she passes the temple and makes her way to the office. Today, she stops. She peeks through the barred iron gates and notices the gates don’t have a lock.

With light footsteps, Mira steps in, as if by mistake. Too hesitant to belong there, she steps onto the grounds at once ignoring the heavy airs that pressed onto her skin. The water in the air itself was a reminder of the enchantment that the place still held.

            Her voice was lost, and it is to be found out of sheer determination to prove a contradiction was true, to prove who was at fault and who loved who. Mira’s eyes were the kind that flowed and liquidly reflected everything that you knew to be true, showing what you wanted to see while letting pass ripples of secret confusion and the betrayal of wonder.

            Wonder is betrayal because this should be familiar and sacred. Wonder is betrayal because this should be like sitting through droning conversations about times long gone and the ghosts of people who are still here, but it is not. It is like sipping cool water while there is water in the air, feeling water press onto your skin while it slips down your throat claiming you and ensuring you never forget what you belong to. 

            There is a carved block of stone at the entrance to the temple. The moss has already started to climb. There is small text at the base of the statue, but Mira can only make out a name in the old script, “Monk Yuna.”

            Mira remembers the name only because of the death associated with it. A few months ago, there was an outcry on the 100th year anniversary of the Yama exodus. The King made no statement and life went on, over the memories of those who moved away from the valley and those small bodies that floated down the river. Until one day, when the sun was highest in the sky and the crowds gathered, a flame rose and demanded that everyone look.

            The flame covered body of the stoic monk sat plainly in front of the palace grounds. When the flames died, there was no criminal to arrest. The days after, there were small white flowers at the scorched ground. Even if they were plucked away or squashed into paste, they appeared with petals fully formed or in the scent that lingered.

--

            Mira has never broken a bone before. A broken bone from, perhaps, falling from a tree would be from the outside in. The impact will meet the skin, ripple through the expanse, then pierce through that barrier. It will go as far as brute force will carry it. To break a bone, to do a job well done, the impact needs to meet at a point where the force will distribute across and into the bone as deep as possible. Mira is so well insulated that when she does break, she expects to break completely, from the inside out.

            She is obsessed, obsessed (!) with her own demise.

            When she looks down at her clothes, she sees she’s dressed as Ms. Mira. But when she stands naked in front of the mirror and she can trace, squeeze, feel the outline of her body, the way her skin folds over itself, and the way her pubic hair curls to meet skin again; she can feel that she is distinctly not Ms. Mira – but not anyone else that she can imagine either.

Question: Why won’t I stop resisting?

Answer: Because there must be something better. I didn’t know I believed there must be something better until I said it. But now that I know, I believe it wholeheartedly.