The Lessons Learned

I am about to be on my way to Rabat. I will be back in America by the end of this week. I have reached the end of my service in what is known as ‘medical separation’. This pains me because I just started English classes and the association I helped start is just getting off of the ground, but it is necessary for my health. I remember, when I first arrived, that I would write my blog as a series of lessons. Though they aren’t fully lain out that way, I was able to cull a series of lessons from them, which I will share with you, dear reader. They aren’t in any order of importance.

Lesson 1: Do not be afraid to ask questions. Asking questions is how we learn about things. It does not make us stupid; it makes us curious. We have been taught to be self reliant, but this is a lie; everything is interdependent; everything relies on one another. The best thing to do in order to relieve ourselves of doubt is to be willing to ask question.

Lesson 2: Do not be afraid to answer questions. One of the kindest things you can do to help someone is to open their eyes to knowledge. If many people ask you many questions, it can get tiresome, but understand that they ask you the question for a reason. On the flip side, do not be afraid to say ‘I don’t know’ if you do not know the answer. To pretend you know the answer is even worse than lying, because then it becomes a lie that you believe, as well.

Lesson 3: Just because someone gives you an answer you do not like does not mean they did not understand the question. I wrote about this in March of 2010. So many people in life assume that the things they believe are automatically correct. Therefore, when they ask a question of someone, they tend to expect a certain answer. When someone with a different worldview does not give the expected answer, the asker is upset. Learn how to learn answers.

Lesson 4: Words are powerful. I remember writing about the power of words in April of 2010. During the election of 2008, people threw around the word ‘madrasa’ to describe Obama in an attempt to paint him as un-American. This is a tool that people use to keep us fighting one another, to make us sound foreign to one another. The truth is that we all share the same values deep down; we simply use different sounds. These values may sound different when we use the sounds of our mouths, but if we listen to the sounds of our heart, we will see that they all sound the same.

Lesson 5: In May of 2010, I wrote of how we are more powerful than we think. A few years ago, I had never left my hometown, with the exception of vacations with family and the occasional trip with friends to New Orleans. It was not expected for me to last this long here, but I did, and I have created wonderful things here, and have witnessed Moroccans create wonderful things here, too. On the flipside, it is important to understand that even though we are more powerful than we think, we do have limitations. Events have become stressful for me, to the point where I am not effective as a volunteer. Rather than let pride force me to stay, and not provide the best that I can, I am left to admit that I have reached the end. There is nothing wrong with this.

Lesson 6: The more we speak, the more likely we are to start saying things we will regret. It is strange how easily that right speech is undermined by idle chatter, gossip, and complaining. It is important to understand and control what you say, even if that means remaining silent most of the time. To speak only when necessary is itself necessary in order to reduce the likelihood of negative speech.

Lesson 7: I spoke in May and June of 2010 about my first bus experience with another volunteer. I was charged for her seat, too, because the bus driver assumed that we were married and I was paying for both of us. I did not understand the language, and so I assumed that he was just trying to rip off the foreigner. I have learned since then that people are not like that. People in the world are inherently good, and rather than assume the worst in everybody, it is far better to assume trust, and only be proven wrong. This allows your heart to be more open.

Lesson 8: There is a difference between being alone and loneliness. most people tend to confuse being alone with loneliness. Loneliness comes from not wanting to be alone. Aloneness, on the other hand, is merely the pleasure one takes when one knows oneself. One is able to plumb the depths of one's own consciousness and being and see within themselves the attributes of infinite numbers of people.

Lesson 9: Bureaucracy sucks. However, it is necessary. I know that when I return, I will have to get my license renewed, but after living in Morocco, where it took me two weeks to get signatures and stamps back in October 2010, I think I can manage a Florida DMV.

Lesson 10: I know that, sometimes, we want so much to believe that the bad events we witness - wars, violence, inequity, injustice, propaganda - are the result of some conspiracy, and that there are people who are all good and people who are all bad. But the truth of the matter is that we are all heavenly bodies, drifting and drifting and drifting in an almost infinite sea of emptiness. Every interaction is a glorious burst of light in that blackness, even if our limited consciousness cannot comprehend it that way. Every event, every moment, every interaction, regardless of whether or not we want to believe it is good or bad, is simply that - the collision of heavenly bodies. This is the truth that I have learned, and with all of my heart and all of my being, I don't think that truth is something that I can ever let go of, or that can never let go of me.

Lesson 11: Princess Valencia Carmina is a perfectly legitimate name for a camel. Likewise, Queen Elizabeth Montanegro is also a perfectly legitimate name for a gecko that climbs into your apartment every night and likes to climb in your hair, and Oh-My-F*%king-God-It’s-Going-To-Kill-Me is a perfectly legitimate name for a camel spider the size of your hand that makes you shriek and run out of your bedroom and keeps you awake until 4:00 AM because you’re too scared to walk past it in order to get into your bed.

Lesson 12: In January of 2011, during a New Year’s in the desert, I said, “During the day, we have the illusion of a blue covering above us. We have the same thing on a cloudy night. But on nights like this, we have no protection from it. The infiniteness of it all. When we can’t see it, then we can pretend that all of our little fights that we have over religion, race, sexuality actually mean something. But now, looking out at these things, these lights, and knowing that it is so great a distance that it would be impossible to reach them, nobody can help but realize just how petty and stupid all of those fights are. But the funny thing is that even though mankind has been able to look up and see all of this, they continue to do it.” What I want to say is that our differences are pettier than we think.

Lesson 13: ‘Success’ is a very loaded term. We think of success in monetary values and in figures and facts. The truth is, success is mainly ineffable and experiential. I have learned that such little things can be successes: picking olives with your village all day, climbing a treacherous mountain to go to a wedding, discussing Buddhism to a Muslim, traveling from town to town working at festivals, and eating a lunch a Moroccan has provided, even if you aren’t hungry. These are all successes in their own way. They opened me up to new experiences. The same can happen anywhere. Go sing karaoke, go backpacking, take up a hobby you were interested in but never had the time. Any attempt is a success.

Lesson 14: The Ayacana Sutra is the story of the Buddha being requested to teach. The analogy of the lotus was used. We are each both the Buddha and the lotus. We all have something to teach the world, just like the Buddha. Likewise, we need to wait until we are ready to teach, like the lotus that has arisen out of the pond and opened its petals. Take a deep breath, you have time. Don’t worry.

Lesson 15: Facebook is going to become a necessary evil. Everyone is on Facebook, and without a Facebook, I will not be able to communicate with people in the future. Employers are looking more and more at Facebook accounts, so I will need one, of a Linkedin account, or whatever the devil they call it is nowadays. However, since this is now necessary, you may as well learn how to control yourself when expressing yourself. The internet’s memory is very long, as is our regret at an unwise action.

Lesson 16: The ability to express oneself should be sacrosanct. In June of 2011, I wrote of individuality, and I have to admit that the ability to be myself and be understood has been a source of stress for a while. I am an individual, a unique one, at that. I have learned that I value that ability very highly, much more so than I did before I left.

Lesson 17: I cannot comprehend how people can expose themselves to only one point of view and then claim that as ultimate truth. I cannot understand the so-called "Real American" who never leaves their hometown and waves little plastic flags made in China at Independence Day parades, without even questioning what their responsibilities are to continue to contribute to the ideals of equality, justice, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Lesson 18: Freedom is the ability to control one's own destiny, without barriers placed by a foreign entity. I have learned that everything and everyone that I have been taught was a foreign entity is, in fact, simply a potential extension of who I am. Even my ego is a foreign entity, and beneath all of my so-called personality is an emptiness.

Lesson 19: After my trip to America in August, I have learned to always have a backup plan. This reduces stress, and the likelihood that you will end up vomiting on a train at 9:00 PM in Marrakech. This also reduces stress when you call your mother from a payphone in Los Angeles telling her that you won’t make it home, only to have the phone cut off mid sentence.

Lesson 20: You cannot save everyone. You cannot help everyone. You cannot force help on people who don’t want it, and it is arrogant to believe that simply because some people in the world do not live like Americans, then they must be miserable and in need of our help. People are generally happy in their lives, and the amount of material things that they have plays no part in that. In truth, it is those who have many things that can sometimes be the most miserable. Like the Buddha and the lotus, you teach when you are ready, and others learn when they are ready.

Lesson 21: It is all right to know when to quit. It is wise to learn when your journey has reached the end. I have learned that lesson, painfully, by trying to force myself to deal with my emotions on my own and letting my pride get in the way of my health.

Lesson 22: This one,perhaps, is the most important lesson that I have learned. Without it, none of the other lessons are able to be learned. The final lesson is this:

Know yourself. Because if you don’t know yourself, then how can you be yourself? If you don’t know yourself, then how can you love yourself?

So that’s it. Twenty months, twenty-two lessons learned. I think that’s good enough. “me graves in morocco” is reaching its conclusion. I believe it is a good one, and one that I will always look back on with an overall sense of happiness. There may be an epilogue when I return; we will see. I have missed my family, and I have missed life in America. I have missed being able to fully be myself. But I would never change anything, I especially will never forget nor regret the time spent here. So, I wish you peace, love, and all of that, but I just need to remember to offer a little of that to myself, sometimes.

Love,
me graves

Silence and Sound

I went to the youth center to teach my morning Engish class. Most of them are beginning English, so for my first lesson, I decided to teach pronouns. I listened to them echo my words: I, you, he, she, it, we, you, they, me, you, him, her, us, you, them, my your, his, her, its, ours, yours, theirs. They say the words, their eyes are glazed over. It hadn't quite connected that these words are used to describe things and the subject pronouns are the English verb "to be". The verb "to be" has no Arabic equivalent, so I try to break it down into simple sentences for them: I am a teacher, you are a student, the teacher is me, this is my book, this is our classroom. I thought of how religions would use old languages; the traditional Tridentine Catholic Mass used to be spoken in Latin, but the feeling of saying words one does not know makes one uncomfortable, so they changed it in the 1970's, Buddhist practices are in Sanskrit. We have the translations, but saying the words in the old language rings hollow at times. This is the meaning behind sounds being so silent. In a way, it feels like a thick sheet of glass has bene placed between the speaker and the listener, an unpassable chasm and spreads between the divine and the mundane. The class finished, and I hoped that at some point, the connection would sear itself into the minds of my students.

When the class was over, I sat outside of the youth center and listened to the sounds around me. The sound of people speaking a language they did not know was replaced by the sound of the wind in the trees, and small birds flying overhead. It is autumn, and a cool wind finally began to blow through Errachidia. As I sat there, I wondered how these seeming small sounds can become so loud. I sat and waited for the other two volunteers to come. We had promised the week prior to go to the house of one of my students for lunch. It was now 11:30, and neither of them had shown up. One of the volunteers hadn't called me in a few days, while the other had said an hour earlier than he would show up. The student asked me where everybody was, and I answered I do not know. My phone beeped and I read the message from the volunteer. HEY ON SECOND THOUGHT I THINK IM GOING TO SKIP LUNCH HAVE FUN. I had no money on my phone, so I asked him to at least call the other volunteer to see if she could come. He did so, and later I received a message saying that she didn't want to come. I left the youth center with five men who speak only Arabic and French. The two volunteers who cancelled spoke Arabic, while I spoke only the dialect that none of them really knew.

I sat in a large room, ten by twenty feet, painted green and adorned with red couches. Now it was my turn to listen to words that I did not understand. I emptied my mind and tried to pay attention to the sounds that left their lips. I was able to guess that they were speaking of Gaddafi, of Libya, and of other places in Africa. I could offer nothing to the conversations, and so I remained silent and listened. We went through courses of salad with tuna, chicken, beef with plums, a plate of fruit, and finally a dish of cold couscous with buttermilk. I have returned to vegetarianism, and so the host had made a special plate of vegetable couscous for me to eat. He kept apologizing to me, but I simply replied "no problem." He was able to understand that much of the dialect. Because I could not contribute verbally to the event, I decided to focus my attention on eating the bites slowly. The rice in the salad had a hint of lemon in them, the tomatos had acquired the sourness of the onions. The couscous wrapped around my teeth as I tried to chew, the baked carrots were sweet, and the cucumber had become tart. The pomegranate seeds exploded as I bit down on them. The buttermilk couscous dish provided a strange taste of both sour and savory. Finally, after my host apologized to me yet again about meat, I replied in my dialect, "No, the kindness of your heart is as large as the ocean." Someone tried to translate, but it didn't connect. In Morocco, I learned, feelings are felt through the liver, not the heart.

As the conversation continued, I began to imagine what it must have felt like to be Catholic in the 1960's, knowing that something divine was taking place, but that I had no way of understandingt it. The chasm between myself and the Arabic speakers grew; the sheet of glass grew thick. I have been trying to learn Arabic, but knowing how little time I have left here, and how much energy I used learning the dialect, makes concentrating on it difficult, at best. The sounds once again took on the characteristics of silence, and my mind kept telling me to simply smile and look around the room, tilting my head occasionally as though I had managed to understand a word or phrase, saying "mm hmm", laughing when others laughed. There are so many other characteristics to communication beyond the mere sounds of words. The lunch completed, we made our way back to town.

Tonight, I teach a yoga class. The exercise classes are not as successful as the English classes. I have yet to have a student express interest in either yoga or pilates. I have learned, instead, to be satisfied in the aloneness of the room, the meditative bamboo flute music I play usually permeates the room, but occasionally I hear the sound of birds outside, and when the wind picks up at night, I can understand that the earth is sighing, as though to say, "This is simply how things are."

An Event

The woman sits at the corner of the market, holding a child. The child is crying, and the woman is holding out her hand, asking for dirhams. Footsteps on concrete. Men call for items from the vendor. They walk by her, looking up into the sky or focusing on their cell phone conversations. Children play in the street outside as rain falls lightly on the concrete. They kick a plastic soccer ball back and forth. The baby continues to cry. Someone walks into the market and passes the woman. Apples are bought, as are cheese and bread. Someone walks by the woman, stops, then turns around, goes to the vendor, and buys milk. Footsteps past the woman with the crying child. The bag of milk is dropped. The woman tries to thank the person, but he places a finger over his mouth, telling her not to make a big deal out of it. The person walks away as the woman rips open the plastic bag of milk and feeds her chlid. The crying stops. Someone walks away, feet crashing against the pools of water that have formed on the street.

Pillars, a Double Sestina

1. Declaration

Sunrise. Shadows are dissolved by the light.
Colors seep back into the valley, just
like paint on a blank canvas. A living
canvas, this pastoral, evoking peace.
And I am buried beneath it; a kind
of death, I suppose. Like shadows, the way
they all simply disappear when the real
world reemerges from its sleep. Each one,
each shadow, retreats into Earth’s loving
embrace. Darkness, it seems, can never last.
But light does not seem to be eternal,
either. How do you want me to answer?

Is there a question that I must answer?
Is the answer related to the light?
Is this the same light that came from the last
night, and the night before that? I have just
one question. If I can have just this one,
I will agree to become the living
embodiment of your truth, the same way
water will reflect all things, when at peace.
Like sky over ocean, an eternal
reflection of each other, in loving
union. The truth we share will be that kind.
The question: how do I know which is real?

2. Prayer

After the bombings, I was told that real
Muslims know fighting is not the answer.
“My Lord is Most Merciful, Most Loving.
It is man who turns away from the light.
Even the word Islam translates to peace.”
I nodded, looked to the sky, to the last
of the evening light. I have been living
here for over a year, and I think, just
as when I first arrived, people are kind.
All people can be kind. This eternal
truth - that when people see themselves as one,
they know that they can act no other way

than with loving kindness - it is that way.
“Prayer," he said, “Is how to join the real
light of God. To join in that eternal
bond.” Then, as if to serve as an answer,
A child gives money to a beggar. Just
a dirham, but still an act of loving
kindness. Today, it is nearing the last
days of spring. The summer will bring the light
of longer days. I watch as, one by one,
children riffle through the various kinds
of ice cream. They will only be at peace
once they find what it is that they want. Living

here, I see it is the same as living
in the US. One child stands in a way
that says my father doesn’t have that kind
of money to buy ice cream, but the real
parallel appears when she holds the light
ice cream. Her friend sees, and the eternal
reaction she makes is one of loving -
she pays for it. The girls smile. This answer
to a question that finally brings peace -
all acts of kindness are prayers. Each one
is a desire to see each other just
as we desire to see God. Joined, at last.

3. Alms

And the first of them will say to the last,
“Because you did not care for the living,
you will endure punishment.” There is one
man who sits in the same place on the way
to souk and asks for money. The answer
I always hear is “May Allah be kind.”
Everywhere I turn is an eternal
line of beggars. I know that they are real
people. (At least, I act as though I just
treat them like they are real.) It gives me peace -
the thought of them is too heavy. A light
heart is needed to continue loving

life, and a loving God in a loving
world would not allow injustice to last.
But still, at times, between moments of peace,
I see them in my mind. Countless living
people, lying in dirt. This is the real
world, the world that I have allowed. This one
world is made by us all. This is the kind
of world that we want, and in this way,
we say, “Poverty is how we see light
in ourselves. With no possessions, we just
have ourselves and Allah.” As I answer
the beggar, I accept this as eternal,

For how can I support this eternal
line of people suffering? What loving
can I commit to them all without just
raising my arms in defeat - in one last
show of forfeiture? I know of no way
to remedy their problems and bring peace.
Sometimes, I feel I can’t bring even one
instant of hope to those who are living
in this world. My thoughts become an answer
to those unable to see that the light
within all of them is still just as real
as the light in us. May Allah be kind.

4. Fasting

It is the leaving behind of these kind
of things so that, once we reach eternal
life, we are prepared to embrace the light.
The things that we believe we are loving
today - fine clothes, physical things, living
in comfort and without want - these are just
distractions from attaining lasting peace.
Because God is both the first and the last,
all else are simply shrouds that hide the real
nature of things. We attach an answer
to them, not knowing they are in the way
of the answer. All things are part of one

existence - God’s. Upon learning this, one
finds it is easy to give up the kind
of things that others think are the answer
to their problems. One sees the eternal.
Seeing that nothing of this world will last,
one gives up these things and chooses the light,
instead. We learn how to love others just
as God does. It is a kind of loving
insofar as they are nothing, the way
one loves the refraction of light from real
jewels. The complete spectrum of living
is within it, and to know it brings peace.

5. Pilgrimage

“You must accept the religion of peace
before you learn the details,” is what one
man said to me while riding to Fes. “Real
faith comes before you know something.” That kind
of belief seemed impossible. Loving
the knowledge that I can know the answer
for questions is needed, for me, as light
is needed by life. And for eternal
questions related to ways of living?
I could not even understand the way
that mindset works. But then, during a last
call to prayer, I lost consciousness just

before dawn. I dreamed that I was standing just
before a black stone. I remembered peace,
watched white sails as they would float on the way,
surround the blackness, and were absorbed, one
by one, into the black, the eternal
hole that was once just a stone. Which was real,
I thought, and how can I know the answer?
I awoke to see light. It was the kind
of brightened light that takes place at dusk’s last
moment, meaning the dream I was living
had lasted but a moment. But, loving
that moment, when black joined white, dark and light

were joined in loving embrace, and the light
and all things, just as they were, were at peace.
At last, I thought, I could see those living
that way. It was never about the one
right answer, but the right kind of question,
whose real answer lies in eternal black.