So much so, I’ve memorized roundabout routes to work (and back from the grocery store at sunset) to give me better glimpses. Which is why it vexes that my nemesis is Dumakulem: capital letters and everything, Guardian of the Mountains.
And it’s not like I don’t believe in what he stands for, it’s just that we’re both in love with the Goddess of Lost Things. We both know her as Anagolay, though siya has other names.
You’d think I’d be on his side, you know, cuz I’m like against fracking or whatever and because my love for tunnels is less about my hatred of my nemesis than my leap of breath at the light on the other side, the temporary feeling of suspension that doesn’t make sense but somehow accompanies — for me at least — being inside a vehicle or a train in a tunnel, especially one that runs through a mountain.
So, now I try to think of tunnels as a form of winning. But, I try not to think of mining as some kind of victory over him. For wider reasons, but selfishly because I’m not a miner and I’d want the help of a guardian of mountains if I were going to be on the inside of a canary shaft with maybe a helmet between me and the depths of time. There are musics who find their origins here. And I come from a people who terraced mountains to grow rice. Whose cousins offered their arrows to the mountain who granted them safe passage.
Meanwhile, I wasn’t even brave enough to be part of the exploring party of kids that entered the culvert down by my childhood home, emerged an hour later on the other side of a field and over the next street. Well, I entered and went a few crawls in, got my cheers of them to echo, and turned around. I mean, when I describe standing in the Cave Rock chamber, just up the hill from where I used to race before migration, it should be in third person. As you can tell by now, I am a poor nemesis for the Guardian of Mountains. But I stay his willing if unworthy opponent. Because I’m still in love with Anagolay.
The other problem is I get it. I mean, if I were a Deity of What’s Lost, I’d want a lover who was the kind of person who isn’t losing things con-stant-ly. I mean sure, mountains face the carving years from water & wind (which is a form of loss but not a form of harm, you know?). And sure, there’s never quite a final resting shape. Still, it’s not quite like they lose so much as have parts of themselves taken.
So, yes, I get that siya is into being with someone steady. If I were me (and I know I am), I might say: as a mountain. And, while I feel Dumakulem’s real struggle, what with all the tunnelling going on these days, the mines and the fracking (which, yes, is a serious problem) there’s a part of me that appreciates his attention being divided between loving Anagolay and having his own set of nemeses to contend with.
His attention being divided allows me more time to lip sync to The Goddess of Lost Things. I just can’t sing. Despite my karaoke lineage. Even in the hopes Anagolay might leave Dumakulem for me. Never mind that she’s got to be proper polyamorous, maybe more so than anyone else. Because the world is so full of large and tiny losses in every given moment — and takings siya must attend as well — Anagolay’s busy all time long. Maybe too busy to notice my overtures, but hopefully also too busy to notice how often I lose things. And, omg, I lose things and temporarily misplace them almost as often as anyone buys anything solid that came out of a mountain (I say solid to avoid dealing with power and skip to the next part: it doesn’t work).
I do love crystals. At least there’s that, so when I buy crystals I’m taking a little shot at Dumakulem. I don’t know how the crystals feel about it, first of all the whole extraction thing, the people who belong to them, and then the whole complex of the journey from mountain to final purchase thing, with each attendant extraction on the way, then finally the whole me using them to take shots at my nemesis thing, but that’s just how it is: if you’re a crystal and in my apartment, you’re a soldier in the battle I’m waging against the Guardian of Mountains.
Or is it that I’m inviting Dumakulem into my home with every crystal? By caring for them: inviting him to do his work right here in my living room, writing his little crystal odes to the Deity of What’s Lost. Each one of them, dammit, cradled, turning. In my actual lover’s hands. Caressed by Mahal’s tattoos: story touching story. Catching, reflecting, prisming each angle of light, basking in their wonderstruck attention. Mahal, who might — how can I blame them — be in love with both: Guardian of Mountains and Goddess of Lost Things.