Sauci Bosner

Once upon a time, many bodies ago, a young man stood up and offered me a seat in the tram. That moment is clearly imprinted in my memory. I was wearing my white woolen winter coat which when wet reminded me of my years in Jerusalem. When kerosene and goat smells never quite lifted from Abu Tor, one of the rocky valleys before approaching the walled city of Jerusalem. I was a hippie then , wearing bells around my ankles which attracted the attention of the goats and their herders as I crossed the valley on my biweekly meanderings though those ancient stones and emptied green colored seven-up bottles. This all in a time when soda cans didn’t exist and everyone could walk freely in those hills. Even girls and women , with or without veils. Danger lurked in fresh droppings and goats taking nibbles at shiny bells tinkling and moving along the dampened earth, before the sun dried up everything and anyone with any sense sat inside sipping sodas and waited for the sun to set.

Standing on a crowded tram seventeen, AH plastic bags in one hand, my red tram card in the other, I must have looked desperate, tired, lost. My coat was wet and already I was worrying how long it would take to dry with one small heater in the living room and the coat rack in the hallway. The tram came to a quick halt and I almost landed on some stranger’s lap. A young man , dressed in Levi’s 501 and motorjacket stood up, motioning for me to sit in his place. I smiled saying, “what a gentleman”, catching a glimpse of my disheveled appearance in his reflector sunglasses. I only realized later while hanging up my coat and unpacking the groceries that he gave me the seat because he thought I was pregnant.

Years later, bigger and pregnant, I understood that this was the very first time in my life that I had total permission to eat, to enter my body. Kundalini yoga, meditation, rebirthing and a sensitive doctor supported me in both these inward and outward journeys. I began to release myself from patterns of bulimia and self-destruction when I gave myself permission to be. Without judgment, without projection, without having to choose between servicing the world or sacrificing my particular individual needs and desires. Not an easy task when motherhood, partnership, work and religious and spiritual conditioning cast their shadows and demands on a fragile emerging identity.

My body is consistently changing, adapting her forms to the needs and concerns of the outside world as I practice listening to the songs, tapes, wisdom, experience flowing through my bones, blood, fluids, systems, through my thoughts and accumulated memories. An evolving, harmonious dance, balancing between the realm of memory and the ability to see, hear, feel, smell, touch Life, my life here, now.

Responsibility- the ability to make the appropriate response to the situation now. Total permission to live life and not merely survive. Looking, adjusting, releasing that which is no longer necessary.. My lessons for this life are what I share with others. That which we need to learn is hopefully that what we can offer in the physical form of work.

Adjusting to new realities is confronting. The body changes on the physical level as well. My hair is graying. I fall asleep within minutes of getting horizontal on my new hard mattress. There are light brown spots emerging on my hands. Sometimes I don’t hear the television so clearly (or is it that I don’t need to hear MTV six hours a day and half a night any more). My teen aged daughters tuck me in bed at night when they want to stay up to watch the late movie. Once in a while someone stands up to give me his/her place in the metro (“Gaat u maar zitten mevrouw”)…..

Luckily the dawn of Aquarius has arrived, I can buy Indian bells and chimes at the Dappermarket, and Cora Kemperman has wonderful hippie clothes, in XL! A sense of humor and realizing that the biggest secret of the body is that there are no secrets anymore. It is an unfolding true life story.

There really isn’t very much to be afraid of then, is there?